The Establishment
has Brought Pakistan Shame & Ignominy
By
Kamran Shafi
IS
IT INDEED that, or is the rather loud resurrection of the Kalabagh
Dam problem (since the Kashmir issue is always referred to as
a "problem" why not this one too?) yet another red herring,
yet another stratagem devised by an over-confident and too clever
by half Establishment to divert the people’s attention?
An
Establishment, its unwitting pawns must realize, not noted either
for good sense or great victories ... if anything it has consistently
brought Pakistan defeat and shame and ignominy.
I
write this from the mega polis of Karachi where I am on one of
my bi-annual visits — this time to attend a family wedding,
and from everything I see of the city, it is dirtier, more battered
and frayed and pot-holed than it was the last time I was here
ten months ago. To boot, its beaches are now also crude-oil soaked.
Remember
please that I am staying at a friend’s, very near where
some of Karachi’s most powerful people live, for Mary Road
is just around the corner from Bath Island. Yet, take just one
turn away from the "VIP route" and you run bang smack
into the largest and deepest pot-holes you ever saw; just get
off the main Clifton-Saddar road towards the prissy shops around
Schon Circle and you have to hold on tight to your car seat and
brace your back for the most awful jolts and bumps. Plastic bags
are everywhere, clogging every sewer; and flying hither and yon
on the oil-reeking Karachi breezes, disgustingly even along the
popular eating joints of the Boating Basin.
Indeed,
all of Karachi just has to be one big garbage dump if the areas
where the beautiful people live are so filthy. For example, I
chanced to drive along Bonus Road in the vicinity of which there
are many gracious homes. Well, even Bonus Road is now a great
big refuse tip, specially that part of it which runs right behind
India House, the now closed Indian Deputy High Commission. The
sight is unbelievable, even to eyes used to seeing many an unbelievable
sight, and if it is a pointer to anything it is a pointer to the
fact that Pakistan-India relations are not going anywhere in a
hurry.
Couldn’t
the "good governance" wallahs at least clean
up this mess, if only because it lies right behind another country’s
mission? May one disturb the deep sleep of the "core-professionals"
of the FO and ask them to please wake up for a bit and require
the Sindh government to clean up the environs of the Indian property?
And if it doesn’t act, could the FO please allocate something
like 10,000 Rupees, that is all, and order its Deputy Chief of
Protocol in Karachi to supervise the needful? Can we please show
that we have some little respect for our neighbor, a country that
should be the most important country in the whole world for us!
Yes,
sirs, the news from Karachi is not good. As if the criminal and
stupid bungling of the Federal agencies such as the Karachi Port
Trust which had everything to do with the Tasman Spirit disaster
becoming worse did not add greatly to Karachi’s pain, the
General himself has delivered a stinging one-two to Sindh’s
already battered jaw. There is no social gathering that I have
been to where this "damned" as somebody said, dam problem
is not the subject of fiery discussion. Indeed, there was one
gathering where there were a couple of Frontier wallahs
too — not your average political activists by the way, but
educated, urbane gentlemen — who were as one with our brothers
and sisters from Sindh.
The
TV channels too are choc-a-bloc with discussions on Kalabagh which
our General may or may not know of, but which will be most instructive
were he to see them. I can straightaway recommend he immediately
see the program on which appeared the Sindh Abadgar Board Chairman
Qamaruzzaman Shah and former PML(N) MNA, Sheikh Tahir Rashid.
Whilst the very loud and very brash gabroo jawan
Tahir Rashid failed most completely to make a case for the dam,
the angry Qamar Shah said things which the present residents of
Islamabad’s ivory towers can only ignore at the country’s,
and their own, peril.
Now,
whether the sycophants who have him isolated and only give sab
achha (all is well) reports will ever tell him the truth
about the actual situation on the streets and in the villages
is something which you nor I can influence, what the General himself
should tell us is why he has appointed himself the advocate of
the Punjab? Why has he, of all people, elected to say that the
Punjab has sacrificed this or that or the other for the smaller
provinces? I mean "real democracy" is already thriving
in the Land of the Pure as is ceaselessly drummed into us, is
it not? There are PML(L) governments in two of the provinces whose
Provincial Assemblies have voted against the dam are there not?
More than anything else, the political wizards of the House of
Zahoor rule the roost not only in the Punjab but also in Islamabad,
do they not?
Instead of the General himself, why can’t the Chief Minister
of Punjab, and his cousin and Pakistan’s strong-man Chaudhry
Shujaat Hussain, convince their fellow politicians in the other
provinces that Punjab indeed wishes them no ill, that it has always
given rather than taken? General Musharraf, who considers himself
President of all of the Land of the Pure should be way above provincial
politics. He should never give the impression that he is speaking
for the discredited and Punjab-dominated Establishment. Why is
he rushing in where angels fear to tread?
He is not alone, however, for his
"tight" friend George ‘Dubya’ Bush is doing
likewise. The latest pearl from the leader (shiver, shiver) of
the world’s mightiest power is an admission that indeed
the US had no proof at all that Saddam Hussein had anything to
do with ‘9/11’. This, after Dick Cheney, he with the
permanent sneer, and Vice (shiver, shiver) President, has repeatedly
mouthed the canard. Bush has had to make this extremely damaging
admission to try and rescue some little of his administrations
lost credibility: lost by a relentless assault by his Democrat
challengers notably the good Howard Dean who has asked sixteen
searching (and damning) questions of Mr Bush. Whilst there is
not space enough to enumerate them here, the last asks Bush if
he still considers that the war on Iraq was legal, just, and necessary.
May
I now knock on the Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s door one more time:
this time to ask if Faith Pippinger, a 60-year-old retired American
school teacher who went to Baghdad as a human shield, and who
is now being prosecuted by the Department of Treasury of the United
States for that act deserves to be killed too just because she
is of the Kufaar? The lady faces the prospect of being
fined one million Dollars ie, losing her home for that is all
she has apart from her little savings, and going to jail for twelve
years.
This
is the gist of what she said, her eyes full of tears, on BBC TV
just yesterday: "I went into a house where there was a man
standing by his dead wife; whose six children had (already) been
killed; he asked me through his tears where I was from. "Through
my tears I said, America." Please, Naveed Butt Sahib, instead
of calling General Musharraf a traitor to Islam and calling upon
the Armed Forces of Pakistan to revolt, answer the question. And
if you agree with me that Faith Pippinger should be honored as
a heroine who stood up for what is right no matter which religion
she herself practiced, please withdraw, and cause the extremist
groups who share your viewpoint (and whose Fatwas you
support), to withdraw the blanket call to "kill Christians
and Jews."
And
while you are at it, please do tell us how many human shields
from your organization and its sister organizations went to Iraq
leaving behind the comforts provided by the welfare states run
by Kufaar governments such as that of the United Kingdom?
Finally, whilst the High Commission
for the United Kingdom has once again chosen not to reply to the
oft-made and very serious charge of ‘Great’ Britain
quite disgracefully going back on its word re: gratuity payment
to the desperately poor "native" victims of Japanese
prisoner-of-war camps or their widows, let me castigate the tenants
of the Hotel Schehrezade for yet again being slothful and indolent.
Why have the High Commission’s six-month-old requests for
visas for additional staff required for their visa section in
Islamabad not been complied with?
But
why am I going on? Of course nothing will happen, nothing will
move. The babus (aka pen-pushers) will go on as heretofore.
These are, after all, the days of "good governance".
Why, the euphoria has even got to their Brit colleagues!
The
writer is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist Email:
shafi1@yahoo.co.uk
