Invasion of the sound byte snatchers

Khalid Hasan writing for the Friday Times

Pakistan’s politicians, sportsmen, actors, VIPs – in short anyone who is anyone, or is likely to be anyone in the coming days – are under attack from a new breed of guerrillas, armed not with automatics but with microphones in various colours and sizes that they use as weapons of attack. They don’t demand, “Your money or your life,” as any self-respecting robber or highwayman would before taking one or the other. They simply thrust the microphone in their quarry’s face, sometimes hitting him or her on the chin and on occasion nearly knocking out his or her teeth, and demand that their question be answered. The waylaid one risks life, limb and reputation if he or she declines to provide the sound byte being demanded.

Every day I read, hear or get told that President Pervez Musharraf should be impeached. While I will not be marching from Lahore to Islamabad screaming slogans, I hope that to the list of charges against him will be added the free-for-all he is responsible for providing in the form of more TV channels in the Republic than there are mushrooms in Michigan. The microphone marauders on the prowl operate on behalf of one or the other channel. But what on earth are they looking for? A sound byte, three words that can feed the running strip of “feeta” on their screens, provided the perpetually running commercials leave an inch or two for the “breaking story.”

NWFP HISTORY 4: Faqir of Ipi’s uprising and the Frontier Congress

by Yasser Latif Hamdani

In response to the first three articles, an ANP activist who is quite clearly very confused about history attacked me calling me – get this- a Jamaat-e-Islami agent. I have been called many things- indeed I am supposed to be on the payroll of everyone from CIA to Mossad and even Indian RAW but Jamaat-e-Islami was definitely a first and I was caught off guard. Perhaps the poor fellow was not aware of the history of Jamaat-e-Islami’s vociferous opposition to Pakistan and Jinnah. Jamaat-e-Islami believed that Jinnah and Muslim League were of a “Kemalist” bent of mind and therefore too secular and too westernized to lead the Muslims. And Jamaat-e-Islami’s ideologues were not the only one to suggest that- in agreement with them were the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind, the Dar-ul-uloom Deoband and last but not the least “Khudai Khidmatgars” or the Red Shirts. So for the purposes of this discussion at least, the ANP should find itself in agreement with Jamaat-e-Islami’s angle in 1947.

Let us be clear on some fundamental issues: For the KK and diehard supporters of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, secularism and left-ism are afterthoughts. Their alliance with the Congress was based on a belief (not wholly justified) that the Congress stood for independence. Ghaffar Khan was socially conservative and economically/politically a votary of feudalism. To his credit he never claimed to be anything but a champion of Pushtun identity and Pushtun rights. A progressive he was not, standing instead of Pushtun customs and the status quo of Pushtun tribalism. It was only when the Pakistani state marked an decidedly “Islamic” course that Ghaffar Khan and his family began to associate with Nehruvian secularism and socialism, partly because of their role in the National Awami Party – a truly left wing progressive alliance in Pakistan- which included people from all sides of the 1947 political divide. One of the parties that merged into the NAP was Azad Pakistan Party of the renowned leftist Mian Iftikharuddin – who was a stalwart of the Pakistan Movement. Like any society, Pakistan was re-organizing and re-aligning politically and within the NAP, Ghaffar Khan and his family were arguably the most conservative.

Bravo, Senator Obama

Feisel Naqvi

Islam has room for intelligent people in it so it would be nice if the whackos out there would stop trying to take exclusive possession of shared beliefs

“The United States always does the right thing,” said Winston Churchill, but only “after exhausting every other possibility.”

If the history of the US-Pakistani relationship is anything to go by, the United States certainly seems to have explored every bad option, ranging from supporting dictators to threatening popularly elected leaders to benign neglect. My point though is not to mark all the missed opportunities and all the failed policies, but to note that if Senator Obama is elected, we may finally see a sensible US policy towards Pakistan.

For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, Obama gave a major foreign policy speech a few days ago in which he made the following points.

Loneliness is like Absinthe

Loneliness is like absinthe,
The old potion of poets
Of Paris and its quarters
Only to be captured
In words or paint

Sour as you walk,
Feel these droplets of rain
Harder to swallow
The indomitable taste
When offered
The old pain

And in presence amongst us
Like those wild flowers
Scattered in time,
In an unmarked islands
To witness the old mosaics
Survive you may,
But remains in place,
The old prison

In Pakistan, a Sex Industry Has Begun to Boom

SEX IN DEPTH
In Pakistan, a dark trade comes to light
By William Sparrow

BANGKOK - Prostitution in the Islamic nation of Pakistan, once relegated to dark alleys and small red-light districts, is now seeping into many neighborhoods of country’s urban centers. Reports indicate that since the period of civilian rule ended in 1977, times have changed and now the sex industry is bustling.

Early military governments and religious groups sought to reform areas like the famous “Taxali Gate” district of Lahore by displacing prostitutes and their families in an effort to “reinvent” the neighborhood.

While displacing the prostitutes might have temporarily made the once small red-light district a better neighborhood for a time, it did little to stop the now dispersed prostitutes from plying their trade. Reforming a neighborhood, instead of offering education and alternative opportunities, appears to be at the core of early failures to curb the nascent sex industry. This mistake would become a prophetic error as now the tendrils of the sex trade have become omnipresent in cities like Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore, not to mention towns, villages and rural outposts.

An aid worker for an Islamabad-based non-governmental organization (NGO) recently related a story: quickly after his arrival in the capital, he realized the house next to his own was a Chinese brothel. The Chinese ability to “franchise” the commercial sex industry by providing down-trodden Chinese women throughout Asia, North America and Europe would be admirable in a business sense if it were not for the atrocities - human trafficking, sexual slavery and exploitation - which cloud its practice.

CHAOS: THE FACE OF TODAY’S IDEOLOGY

Vijay Sai

Born in a remote village in Andhra Pradesh, Gummadi Vitthal Rao, a Dalit student, discontinued his engineering course from Osmania University, took up singing as a career and travelled to remote villages all over India spreading social messages through his songs and writings. What spans as a career of over four decades came to represent the voice of revolution, and thus emerged balladeer comrade GADDAR. Living a life in hiding and under constant threat, he has been silently operating underground, believing that even if the person is not seen, the voice must be heard. In an exclusive interview with Vijay Sai, conducted when he paid a secret visit to the JNU campus in Delhi,he reflects on the state of affairs with the rise of global imperialism, on Third World countries and on the failure of social movements.

You have been involved in the peace talks between the Naxalites and the Andhra Pradesh government from the very beginning. How did these come about and why did they stop, just when everybody thought that a historical dispute was coming to an end?

800 years of Buddhism in Pakistan

Emi Foulk writing for The Friday Tines

The graveyard where the writer’s ancestors are buried. The mountains encircling Kyoto can be seen in the background <

;”> Takht i Bahi as it is today

A plan of the Buddhist monastery complex at Takht i Bahi as it might have looked in its heyday

The Daibutsu at Kamakura, built in the 13th century, was influenced by the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara Since arriving in the country six months ago, I have heard more than a few people speak of Pakistan’s Buddhist heritage as some sort of lost Utopia. The kingdoms of Maurya, of Gandhara, they’ll sigh, were progressive and advanced, tolerant and moderate; history, of course, is more complex.

Ahmad Faraz - struggling with his life

Poet Faraz not 100pc well, says physician

Poet Ahmad Faraz is breathing on his own without mechanical assistance, his physicians told Dawn on Thursday, contradicting earlier reports that he had died.

“He is not 100 per cent well,” said Dr Murtaza Arain who leads a team of eight physicians looking after the poet.

“He is not on a ventilator and not on a cardiac assistance device. He is breathing on his own.”

Another member of the team, Dr Tahir Rohail, urged Faraz’s well-wishers to pray for him because “his condition is not very promising.”

Faraz was brought to the Adventist Hinsdale Hospital near Chicago about 10 days ago with multiple health problems.

Crossed Swords,Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within

-Shuja Nawaz , (Oxford University Press,Pakistan , 2008700 pages; 13 black and white photographs, 6 maps; ISBN13: 978-0-19-547660-6ISBN10: 0-19-547660-3)

Book Review by A.H Amin

Crossed Swords is the latest addition to the list of books dealing with Pakistan Army . Written with an eye on the Western audience by a Pakistani who has settled in USA the book is a welcome addition to books on Pakistan Army.It contains some new sources and some new information .Unfortunately most of the information is anecdotal and the narrators are extolling their own performance.

The author’s viewpoint is somewhat subjective as he is a brother of one of the ex chiefs of Pakistan Army General Asif Nawaz.

The book contains some factual errors , some possibly typing errors,expected from Oxford University Press Pakistan which has a reputation of doing this.Some errors are however historical and factual and were entirely avoidable.On page 8 3rd Light Cavalry of Meerut fame is written as 3rd Light Infantry and on page 9 becomes 3rd Light Cavalry.On page 22 Ayub Khan is placed in Assam regiment though Ayub’s battalion officer Joginder Singh specifically stated that Ayub Khan was in Chamar Regiment in WW Two.On page 426 Naseerullah Khan Babar is promoted to lieutenant general and similar fate befalls Major General Sarfaraz Khan on page 223.13 Lancers becomes 13 Cavalry on page 305.On page 470 he changes the ethnicity of Sardar Balakh Sher Mazari a Baloch Seraiki by calling him a Punjabi , an honour that no Baloch would like to have.

A far more serious error Shuja makes while discussing the ethnic composition of Pakistan Army on page 570.He states that Sindhis and Baluchis are 15 percent of Pakistan Army.This is a serious distortion of history.The term Muslim Sindhi and Baluchi abbreviated to MS & B was given to Ranghar/Kaimkhani/Khanzada Rajout recruitment in Pakistan Army in 1950s.The aim was to rationalise the recruitment of Ranghars in Pakistan Army.Later the usuper Zia in order to appease the Sindhis created the Sindh Regiment but Sindhis as far as my resaech reveals are far less than Ranghars/Kaimkhanis/Khanzada Rajputs in the army.The Ranghars are a significant class in fightig arms being some at least 35 % of armour and distinct from Punjabis.The Baloch are hardly represented in the army.As a matter of fact the Pakistan Army has such a reputation in Balochistan that no Baloch would like to join it.All thanks to General Musharraf,Zia and ZA Bhuttos policies.

A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan

BOOK REVIEW
A confrontation with stereotypes

Story of an “emotional mulatto”
A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan
Author: Farzana Versey
Publisher: Harper Collins India

Being a Muslim in India is a tough job. Threatened and terrorised by a growing number of Hindu militant extremists, and constantly looked at with suspicion and treated with a certain degree of caution, the Muslims are believed to harbour a certain desire to separate from the union and create a country of their own a la Pakistan, which a modernist Jinnah created but has since been usurped by the dubious Islamist agenda. The suspicion is so institutionalised that the Muslims are hardly represented in the country’s million-plus armed forces.

This suspicion turns into contempt when an Indian Muslim travels to Pakistan. In the popular Pakistani imagination, India is a country of Hindus and if at all there are any Muslims, they are seen as infidels. Farzana Versey’s encounters in Pakistan are replete with her confrontations with such stereotypes. However, as her expedition of exploration furthers, she finds fascinating contours of a human society with diametric contradictions where ‘personal becomes political’. Reading her account in the book under review it seems that the Indian Muslims face more suspicion in Pakistan, because they are not treated on par with the Indian Hindus in the country that is supposedly Muslim.

In A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, Farzana Versey weaves a collage of her experiences that she acquired during her four visits to Pakistan in six years — a journey of exploration with continuous negotiations and constant reconciliation with her own identity of an Indian Muslim woman. “When I was on the soil of the land of the pure, my impurity struck me. I was the emotional mulatto,” she writes. She travels through the cities of Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar and meets a vast array of people — common tea-sellers, prostitutes, actors, poets and retired army men — to find out strange and contrasting factors of the Pakistani identity, if at all there is one.

Do not impoverish the National Academy of Performing Arts

Faisal.K writes in the News on the implications of the government slashing NAPA’s grant to one third of what it was

Three years ago there were only two countries in our region without an academy for the promotion of performing arts, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In 2005 the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) happily put an end to this misery in our neck of the woods at least.

To put it simply, NAPA represents an effort to take the unpolished raw coal of our society and through hard work, lots and lots of manhours and three whole years turns out glittering jewels of performing arts for us to enjoy as a nation. Yes, that is how long it takes to excel in a specific field of performing arts of which there are namely three, Music, Theatre/Drama & Dance. The amount of hard work and dedication required for each of these subjects is quite immense as witnessed by the fact that out of 50 enrollees for each discipline, the last graduating batch saw 9 students get over the finishing line per area.

Housed in the magnificent Hindu Gymkhana, the faculty for this academy is a quartet of immense power and experience, the chairman being Zia Mohyeddin and the board comprising luminaries like Rahat Kazmi, Arshad Mahmud and Talat Hussain, all grand masters in their own areas of excellence and proven stalwarts of our theatre, film and television fraternity.

Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan - Ayesha Jalal’s new book

This is an important book. We are posting another review by Khaled Ahmed here. This review also cites some revealing passages..

BOOK REVIEW: Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan

Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia
By Ayesha Jalal
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore 2008
Pp373: Price Rs 695
Available at bookstores in Pakistan

Not far from Balakot, the votaries of the Sayyid are fighting on the side of Al Qaeda against ‘imperialist’ America and its client state, Pakistan, and killing more Muslims in the process than Americans, just as the Sayyid killed more Muslims than he killed Sikhs

Ayesha Jalal studies the jihad of Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed (1786-1831) in India as the most immaculate articulation of the theory of jihad in Islam. Sayyid Ahmad may have conceived his holy war against East India Company while living in Rai Bareilly in the central region of northern India, but he moved his warriors to where Pakistan’s North Western Frontier (NWFP) province is today because he thought that the Pashtun living in the tribal areas under non-Muslim Sikh occupation were better Muslims than the settled Muslims of the plains.

Here was the first indication that Islamic utopia could be constructed more easily in a tribal society. He probably wanted to take on the British after creating a mini-state on the pattern of Madina in the NWFP and probably hoped to reform the contaminated Muslims of the plains as a means of enhancing his challenge to the British. Al Qaeda too discovered the Pashtun straddling the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the tribal matrix where an Islamic utopia would grow into a centre of the global caliphate devoted to reforming and uniting Muslims living unhappily as subjects of today’s nation-states.

It Takes a School, Not Missiles

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.

Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.

Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.

The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.

Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.

Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.

Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.

Light and Dark in Islamabad

Posted by Raza Rumi

Burqa-clad women gather at the Lal Masjid during a conference on Wednesday. Addressing the gathering, they vowed to avenge the deaths of the ‘martyrs’ of the military operation against the mosque in July 2007. afp

NWFP History: The dismissal of the Khan Ministry and its aftermath (Part 3)

by Yasser Latif Hamdani

In parts 1 and 2 of this present series, I presented the primary source record of the events leading up to the unfortunate impasse between the newly formed Pakistan government and the Afghanistan-backed Frontier Congress led by the Khan brothers. This third piece will determine whether or not there was an alternative left to the dismissal of the ministry as was widely expected and which was to be carried out by Lord Mountbatten with the prior approval of the Congress Party in Delhi before August 15, 1947. This piece will also determine how and why it came to be that the Pakistan government had to take this step?

Before the referendum actually took place, Dr. Khan Sahib had famously said that he would resign from his post if Pakistan got 30% of the electorate. As shown by the last piece, Pakistan ended up polling more than 50% of the total electorate showing that the Pushtuns were overwhelmingly in favor of Pakistan. It was in the aftermath of the resounding defeat for the Congress that Dr. Khan Sahib declared that he didn’t have to resign because he commanded a legislative majority (a situation analogous in many ways to General Musharraf’s notorious re-election to the office of the president in 2007 by a legislature that was no longer representative).

As for claims about “impropriety” of “referendum”, Dr. Khan Sahib himself agreed that the referendum was as proper or improper as the election that had gotten Dr. Khan sahib into power and this was promptly reported to the Viceroy by Rob Lockhart, Congress’ governor of choice (Congress had campaigned for the removal of Sir Olaf Caroe and appointment of Rob Lockhart in his place). Lockhart went on to advise Dr. Khan Sahib that the right and proper thing to do was to resign immediately. The governor also expressed concern that the continuation of a ministry so utterly hostile to the new state would be untenable and that the Viceroy should consider dismissing the NWFP government under section 93 which would be the best course available. Jinnah was repulsed by the idea of dismissing the legislative assembly whole-scale and he and Liaqat Ali Khan suggested instead that if given a chance Muslim League could form a coalition government with non-Muslim representatives which would give the Muslim League legislative majority and thereby bypass the section 93 dismissal. Since there was no constitutional requirement for an assembly session before the budget session in 1948, the Muslim League would have ample opportunity to re-align politically and gain a legislative majority. Rob Lockhart was of the view that if a change was to be made in fitness of things, it had to be made quickly because he recalled the Dr. Khan Sahib had warned of a mass movement which he “would try and keep non-violent”(Minutes of the Viceroy’s twenty third Miscellaneous Meeting Mountbatten Papers- also found in “Transfer of Power Papers, No 278, Volume XII, 405-409″ and “Jinnah Papers Volume IV Appendix IV.1″).

Lal Masjid Appeals!

Id has contributed this moving poem for the Pak Tea House.

Lal Masjid Appeals!

Will you raze me to the ground?Send shrapnel through my body

in which you reverence found?

Willfully violate my sacred soul

raging rivers of brethren blood;

to let insanity take its toll?

Where do those heart reside

that once flowed fulsome faith?

What prompts those tongues

to desecrate a divine domain?

Who so historically myopic

to not let past prevent?

When will you learn?

It’s not me you destroy or defend!

It’s the hidden human within

that seeks but self credence.

Posted by Id it is at 7/09/2007 12:51:00 PM

2nd century Buddha statue found at Taxila

By Amjad Iqbal

TAXILA, June 19: Archeologists have discovered a statue of Bodhisattva Maitreya at the remains of a Buddhist monastery in Badal Pur area some 13 kilometres north-east of Taxila Museum.

Talking to Dawn here on Thursday, Federal Department of Archaeology and Museums’ director exploration Dr Mohammad Ashraf Khan, who is conducting the excavation and preservation of the ancient site, said the sculpture belonging to 2nd Century AD of Kanishka-I dynasty was made of black schist stone and measured two feet high and 16 inches wide.

Dr Khan said other important antiquities were also discovered recently, including a relic casket made of soap stone, three grinding mills with Kharashoti inscription in which name of the owner is engraved, 10 coins, four iron and copper monastery bells and more than 10 beads.

History is Not a Farce: The NWFP Referendum

Pak Tea House’s contributor Yasser Latif Hamdani has been posting articles on the Pakhtuns and NWFP province. In response to his latest piece, Shaheryar Ali, looks back at the NWFP referendum held in 1947 and presents an alternative view- We welcome myriad points of view at this forum only to ensure that history’s linearity and constructed versions are unpacked for a better understanding of the past and the present. (Raza Rumi-ed)

“History is the memory of states,” wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the “peace” that Europe had before the French Revolution was “restored” by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been, The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners”

Howard Zinn

This is my favorite passage from one of my favorite books, “A Peoples History of United States”. Pakhtoon territory has been a victim of this “statist” history which has served to further the imperialist goals in this region. First British Empire used it to divide Pakhtoons, and later, American Imperialism adopted the same policy.

Under the British, a vast scholarship appeared on Pakhtoons which to this day is serving its purpose. All such scholarship must be re-examined under light of Edward Said’s “Orientalism”.

What happened in Pakhtoonkhawa is not the memory of State, its lament of a people, those who  are the  direct victims  o f two imperialist powers, and whose case, history, sociology, anthropology all acted in the same as Edward Said says, in aid of the White Man.

History is Not a farce

A fellow writers at the Pak Tea House has started this beautifully crafted series of articles on Pakhtoonkhawa, this latest article on the referendum. It demands a response. The article presents a partial, unilateral  view. Over time, in the mainstream discourse, the official position of the democratic representatives of the area has been largely ignored and colonial version of history along with Muslem league’s view point have been projected.

I would indicate here the position of Khudai Khidmatgars , the precursors of NAP and ANP to balance the issue -

High Court stops McDonald’s at Lahore, Islamabad airports

Let’s see what happens - before another bench sets this aside.

LAHORE: Justice Hamid Ali Shah of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday issued stay orders against the establishment of franchise restaurants at either of the Lahore and Islamabad airports since the restaurants were being established without advertising tenders for the purpose. The judge also issued notices to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) general manager (commercial) for permitting Siza Foods to set up franchises of McDonald’s at the two airports, the petitioner’s counsel Taffazul Haider Rizvi told Daily Times after the hearing on Tuesday. The petitioner complained that the law required the CAA to approve commercial licences only after advertising their tenders in newspapers. The procedure had not been followed, he added. The judge told the CAA general manager to file his comments by the next hearing. Daily Times staff report

Pakistan Turns into Toba Tek Singh

Isa Daudpota

Pakistan is like an airplane lost in a dark ominous cloud, running on autopilot. Its coordinates and destination were set by previous crew members, who have been made to disappear or have parachuted out.

Passengers with gurgling stomachs and sweaty brows having long realized the trouble and appear paralyzed. They have seen a stream of crew members pushed off the plane or bail out with parachute — shady hunks in khakis, but some rare trustworthy ones too.

The Captain, Asif Zardari, took over when his wife was shoved off the plane. The First Officer, Nawaz Sharif, is there propped up by his benefactor General Zia ul Haq. CIA operatives onboard, passengers learned, had forced Zia to jump off with a crate of mangoes tied to him.

Every so often the passengers are flashed the grinning faces of the two pilots to assure them that the plane is in safe hands. A sharp journalist on flight notes the lack of sparkle and empathy in their eyes and wonders if their bright smiles are a sham.

Air traffic control is in the hands of General Pervez Musharraf supported by American engineers. They built the autopilot and are the only people who now have flight plan that was entered in the plane. Suddenly, a violent thumping on the door disturbs the peace inside the locked control room. Outside, deposed Chief Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar and his attorney Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan having caught wind of the plot are trying to force their way in.

Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani

By Selina Haider cross-posted from here

An enthusiastic applause followed soon after Mehreen Jabbar’s ‘Ramchand Pakistani’ ended in a in a packed downtown cinema in New York last night!

The movie had recently been nominated for the competition section of the Tribeca Film Festival 2008, New York.

The film portrays the story of a family torn apart as a father follows his son who had accidentally strayed across the border into India, and both get captured by the Indian authorities. Nandita Das from the acclaimed hits of the 1990s like Fire (1996) and Earth [1998] plays the Pakistani mother stuggling for their freedom, and mourning their long absence. This story is said to be based on true events.

I will find it - a poem

Kashkin - (Pak Tea House’s poet-in-residence)

In these empty corners of this earth,
I belong somewhere, a land of my own
I hear my names, as my soul cries
Alone and abandoned, in my search
From one place to another, I move
Like an orphan from one home to another

In these empty corners of this earth,
I belong somewhere, a land of my own
As these caravans of my existence
Walk through these avenues of extinction
In distress, in despair out of horizon
Like an orphan from one home to another

In these empty corners of this earth,
Elusive this dream, elusive my reach
On the move, like caravans of the desert
In misfortunes my soul, wrapped up
From one place to another, I move
Like an orphan from home to another

In these empty corners of this earth
I belong somewhere, a land of my own
Will find it one day alive or dead
The light of my travels and existence
As I hear those places with my name
Etched and engraved, in silence!

Referendum and the Pakhtunistan Demand (NWFP II)

BY YASSER LATIF HAMDANI

(Continuation from “The beginning of the New Great Game”)

June 3rd Plan - agreed upon by Congress and Muslim League- envisaged a referendum in the NWFP to determine which constituent assembly the province will join.  Prior to this, Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress had waged a successful campaign against Sir Olaf Caroe, the governor of NWFP, removed because he was deemed by Nehru and Dr. Khan Sahib to be partial towards the Muslim League. Perceptive historians on both sides of the border have since concluded otherwise.  In any event Sir Olaf was replaced by Rob Lockhart.   It was under the new governor, who enjoyed the confidence of the Congress Party and its ministry in the Frontier that the referendum was to be held.

Howard Donovan, the Counselor for US Embassy in Delhi, in his periodic report of 26th June, 1948 addressed to US Secretary of State George Marshall, points out that “observers in New Delhi believe that the Muslim League will win the forthcoming referendum and that it is a foregone conclusion that the NWFP will join Pakistan.  This is unpalatable to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his recent talks with Jinnah and Gandhi in Delhi were an effort to forestall… Gandhi has supported Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan… Nehru, Patel, and other Congress members of the Government are understood to be opposed to the idea of Pathanistan.  It is of course ridiculous for the Congress to oppose independence of Travancore and at the same time espouse the cause of independence for the North West Frontier Province… Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s action will further complicate the situation in the North West Frontier Province and it will in all probability lead to further strife and bloodshed”

Pakistan’s Ruling Coalition must not Splinter

Raza Rumi
(An op-ed piece that was published in the NEWS, Pakistan)

On these erudite pages, and elsewhere, there has been much ado about the fact that now the ruling coalition should split in response to the great betrayals perpetrated by Asif Ali Zardari. In classic machismo laden bravado, the honorific narratives have been urging Nawaz Sharif and his party to take the bold step and stick to their “principled” stand. What is interesting about these exhortations is the brazen rendering of political discourse in black or white terms.

Many a former ambassador, the recent cohort to jump into the fray of political activism, has found a great post-retirement vocation. Once the plush tenures are over and all that could be extracted from the holy state cow, now is the time to speak the truth and condemn military dictatorships. Convenient and most opportune! This low-risk strategy is paying its dividends: a great whitewashing of all that they were a party to, and all that they let happen in front of their red-taped offices. The ex-servicemen whose record is even more dismal are even more vociferous in their advocacy for a democratic Pakistan.

Therefore, the confused citizens with a shred of historical sense are simply bewildered. Gen Chishti, the key player in toppling Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government and unleashing of eleven years of mediaeval darkness, talking about resistance to army rule. Surely, the realisation took three decades of lasting damages and fissures within the body politic. Another retired Army chief, Gen Beg, is also at the forefront. His vitriole cannot hide the years when he actively sabotaged the democratic process, admitted before the Supreme Court that he had “advised” a bench not to restore Junejo’s government; and disbursed astronomical sums of money to undermine civilian government raised through another shady character heading a dubious financial institution.

Mirza Yagana Changezi

Of God and Ghalib

Restraint was what Mirza Yaas Yagana Changezi knew little of all his life. Only towards the end, he realised that the price he paid was rather very high

By Dr Afzal Mirza

That Mirza Yaas Yagana Changezi was an able poet whose talent was mostly wasted on aimless pursuits does not need an overemphasis to drive it home. Writing about Yagana in his Takhleeqi Adab, critic and poet Mushfiq Khawaja said: “Undoubtedly Mirza Yagana is one of the important poets of this century. But due to his literary and non-literary polemics his poetic importance has been generally ignored. What to talk of a detailed critique of his poetry, even short critical pieces have not been written about him”.

Another well known critic Professor Mumtaz Hussain had this to say: “Yagana Changezi was without a sword but he would use the point of his pen as a sword.” According to Mumtaz Yagana had the habit of stinging his friends and foes alike as a “fly sitting on the back of a horse would”.

Dr Abul Lais Siddiqui who was at one time head of the Urdu department of Karachi University said about Yagana: “The personality and poetry of Mirza Yaas are contradictory. On one hand there is a new melody, emotion, strength and energy in his poetry and on the other his ego-centricity and self-indulgence that cross all the limits of poetic standards have tremendously damaged both his poetry and personality. That is the reason that his poetry has been marred by his reputation as a Ghalib basher.”