Age of madness

[RabzonKhan]

State of denial

The Express Tribune
By Chris Allbritton
October 14, 2012

The writer is a former bureau chief and chief correspondent for Reuters in Pakistan. He is now travelling and writing for Truly, Nomadly, Deeply. He can be reached at chris@trulynomadlydeeply.com



Pakistan is a land of many stories, and I miss them terribly. But what I don’t miss, having been forced to leave Pakistan this summer because of a possible threat to my safety, is the constant barrage of conspiracy theories and an unwillingness by smart people to accept what is clear as day.

The shooting of Malala Yousufzai is just the latest case. There are many educated Pakistanis who simply can’t accept that the barbarous thugs known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) could shoot a brave 14-year-old schoolgirl reformer in the head. No matter that the TTP spokesman claimed credit for it. No matter that he said they would do it again if given half the chance.

Curious timing, these conspiracists mutter darkly. The attack is obviously an attempt to force the military into an operation in North Waziristan against Pakistan’s will, they say. Or, it’s a plot to discredit the PTI and its opposition to drone strikes. (What drone strikes have to do with the bloody attack on a child is never clearly explained.)

This, if I may, as an outsider and an observer of Pakistan, is Pakistan’s gaping wound: a collective inability — or unwillingness — to accept responsibility for its internal problems.

Everything is a plot by the Indians, Americans or Israel. Or all three! Militancy, power cuts, corruption, economic stagnation, Osama bin Laden, all of it. I once had Latif Khosa, governor of Punjab, blame power outages on the American invasion of Afghanistan, and not the Pakistan government’s inability to settle the circular debt problem. Zaid Hamid, conspiracist extraordinaire, vowed revenge on the TTP and their “Hindu backers”. Even the match-fixing by the Pakistani cricket team was a set-up by dark forces bent on Pakistan’s destruction.

Goodness! How did Pakistan manage to acquire so many shadowy enemies? In short, it — or rather, the men who run it — invented them.

Anyone with a lick of sense knows the Pakistani “establishment” (such a polite euphemism) has for years cried wolf in order to justify claiming its outsized share of the national budget and foreign aid. India was poised to invade at any moment! The Americans are going to steal our nukes!


The efforts to spot dark plots and enemies under every bushel have found fertile soil in a population already poisoned by a school system that promotes bigotry against other religious groups, by a media that lionises murderers in a chase for ratings and by politicians such as Imran Khan and his PTI who pal around with men who openly support the Taliban and their vicious ideology. I refer, of course, to men such as Hamid Gul and Maulana Samiul Haq.

Pakistan has real problems, yes. India is an economic rival and the relationship with Washington is a complicated one. The issue of Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Durand Line has to be handled carefully. But instead of looking at what is right in front of them — the military’s support for jihadist groups since the 1980s has now gotten out of control and threatens the state — Pakistanis have been encouraged to blame others. They ignore the cancer that has been eating away at Pakistan since before the usurpation of Ziaul Haq: the supported rise of an intolerant and severe nationalism that conflates piety with patriotism. It’s an ugly nationalism that excludes and marks others as outsiders and, thus, as enemies.

This twisting of a faith was not the work of America, or India or Israel. This was done by Pakistan’s own leaders and generals for crass and short-term gains. The knock-on effects have been catastrophic for a society that was once more tolerant, open and welcoming to the outside world. It leads to smart people unwilling to see what is plain in front of their faces: That militants once backed by their own military are intent on killing anyone who disagrees with them, even if it’s a 14-year-old girl. And that the men with guns need to be dealt with. With all the severity they mete out to others.

In the end, the real enemy of Pakistan is not India or the United States. It’s not even passivity in the face of — or even acceptance of — a pernicious and twisted ideology. It’s the denial that the ideology has come from within Pakistan itself.

 

[RabzonKhan]

A man long forgotten


The Express Tribune,
October 23rd, 2012.
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash

The writer is the Chairperson of the History Department at Forman Christian College, Lahore

Sir Malcolm Hailey, sometime governor of Punjab, once wrote for someone that “he won like a hero and gave like a saint”. That person was also called, “the Architect of modern Lahore” and “the first modern South Asian philanthropist” by the people. This person was indeed Sir Ganga Ram, once the executive engineer of Lahore division.

A few days ago, I went around Lahore with some friends to find the samadhi (tomb) of Sir Ganga Ram. I knew that he had died in July 1927 in London, but that his ashes had been brought back to his beloved Lahore, with some scattered on the Ganges. Finding the tomb was a feat, since most people around the Karim Park area off Ravi Road seemed to have forgotten this great son of Lahore. Trying to pass the construction for the Lahore Bus Transit System, I wondered how it compared with the rapid expansion of Victorian Lahore and how people then dealt with the dust, noise, complicated navigation and simple nuisance of the development work at that time. Are we more planned, prepared and efficient now, I wondered?

After asking around for some time, a local directed us along a small alley way to a rather modern and simple-domed structure. After we negotiated our way into the walled-off structure, we were simply shocked that the samadhi itself was being used as a cowshed by the ‘caretaker’. The marble slab of the samadhi had been broken at several places and the stench and dirt of animal urine and excrement made standing inside the tomb unbearable.

While talking to the local residents, I gathered that this structure was relatively new and that the original structure was destroyed during the riots in 1992, following the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India. One of the older men told me that even though they knew that this was not a Hindu temple and that Sir Ganga Ram had done a lot for Lahore, ‘passions’ overtook the men who attacked the tomb over a period of three consecutive days. Locals told me that the old structure had a beautiful water tank around it and was covered with dazzling marble. The structure was so sound that it took them two days to just break into the dome. It was startling that the police did not bother to stop them and rather, abetted the attack on the tomb.

The state of Sir Ganga Ram’s tomb, I think, says a lot about our society — not just of today, but also of the last few decades. It shows that we are so senseless and ungrateful as a society that we did not even spare from our rage, the person who practically made modern Lahore and left most of his fortune for the benefit of Lahoris. We simply forgot that Sir Ganga Ram founded the Sir Ganga Ram Free Hospital in 1921, that Sir Ganga Ram’s house in Lahore, Nabha House, was the first home of the Hailey College of Commerce, that he endowed the Lady Mclagan School for Girls and that he built the Renala Khurd Power Station out of his own money. This is, of course, in addition to forgetting that Sir Ganga Ram supervised the construction of almost everything which is iconic in British Lahore — the General Post Office, the Museum, Aitchison College, Mayo School of Arts and Model Town, among others.

It also shows the recurring patterns in our society. Just as both Muslims and Hindus went on a rampage against each other in 1947, the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 elicited the same rage. We seem to have forgotten how in 1992, a number of still-remaining testaments of our Hindu past were deliberately obliterated. The recurring patterns, their planned nature and their continuation in different forms are certainly issues to ponder upon.

But, perhaps, all this shows we are not a ‘society’ in the sociological sense after all. Maybe, we are just a bunch of self-seeking, often bloodthirsty, illiterate people who mainly keep on destroying our own life and surroundings. The irony of Manto’s story of 1947, about the statue of Sir Ganga Ram being brought down on the Mall and the person injured during the process being ‘rushed to Sir Ganga Ram hospital’ is still certainly lost on people here. Perhaps, there is no need now to repair or care for his tomb; Sir Ganga Ram should have thought of better use of his money.

 

[RabzonKhan]

The Motorway and the Dark Ages

The Tribune
By Ejaz Haider
November 14, 2012

The writer is a senior journalist and has held several editorial positions, including most recently at The Friday Times. He was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and is currently senior adviser, outreach, at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute


This past Sunday, the Lahore-Islamabad stretch of the Motorway collapsed. Let me explain.

The Motorway is not just a road. It is a system with a structure, an environment that impacts behaviour and is in turn affected by it. To put it another way, the Motorway is a physical communication system, which allows for uninterrupted, relatively high-speed travel through a number of road safety measures that are both physical (rest areas, eateries, restrooms, petrol pumps, ATMs, a culture of cleanliness) and legal (rules and regulations about speed levels for different vehicles, where and when to stop and rest, lane discipline, road signs, reflectors, mobile workshops, ambulances, et cetera).

The efficient functioning of this system rests on two pillars: normative and coercive. The normative aspect of the Motorway, the internalisation of the culture, has developed to a point where occasional morons are either scoffed at or proactively chided by other commuters. This is complemented by the coercive aspect, i.e., through the enforcement of rules and regulations. The Motorway Police, decidedly the best component of the police force in Pakistan, acts with alacrity, enforces rules and does not like influence peddling. (NB: Sadly, some of their sheen is going but that is another story.)

This is what makes travelling on the Motorway a pleasant and much less tiring experience even though it is a roughly 110-km longer stretch between Lahore and Islamabad than the Grand Trunk Road.

On that fateful day, it being a sunny Sunday, I left Lahore with a book, comfortably ensconced in the back seat, looking forward to a nice, productive four-hour cruise. Instead, my journey became a nearly six-hour harrowing experience home to home. Reason: the Motorway had been assailed by thousands of medieval faithful returning from the Tableeghi Jamaat’s ijtama at Raiwind. They were in trucks, buses, big and small vans, mini-vans, cars, jalopies, jeeps and anything that could move on four wheels. They were sitting inside and on the roofs of the vehicles, with buckets, cooking stoves, utensils, the ubiquitous lotas, bedding, etc. often dangling outside — a hazard to themselves and others.

The vehicles, for the most part, could not have passed the fitness standards required for the Motorway and the manner in which vehicles were packed was against Motorway rules. This was bad enough. Worse, the drivers and the passengers showed no respect for the system’s rules and regulations. They parked on the sides, alighted and loitered around, sat cooking and prayed in collections of 20-25 at various points on the Motorway, throwing safety and security to the wind. They drove their vehicles with no regard for lane discipline, zigzagging and cutting into lanes. I sat in the back, the book forgotten, seething at the ugly spectacle unfolding before me.

This was as far as the road itself was concerned. The other component of the system, the rest areas were also chock-a-block with more of these people with brains and civic sense. The usually serene and clean places were littered and many faithful spat around, pursing their lips and ejecting spittle with the precision of a guided missile.

Here, too, they sat eating, squatting, performing ablutions, some of them doing it in the open, others in the restrooms, noisily clearing their throats and blowing their noses, putting their feet in the basin to wash off the grime, making the washrooms unusable for all others. It was difficult to figure out whether those doing the ‘needful’ inside were worse than those who sat, often scattered, just off the roadside, squatting and pissing. Micturating in the open is an exercise that requires years of practice and also the ability to squat and bend one leg at a certain obscene angle before (un)doing oneself. And if there is no water, one can do what is known as — though I am sure completely unknown to the 20-something upper-crust urbanites — butwani where the ‘u’ in ‘but’ is to be pronounced as the ‘u’ in ‘put’, thank you.

This incredible exercise in cleaning the musty underpinnings cannot be described here but readers are welcome to make their discreet, individual inquiries. For once, they will find Google at a complete loss!

The Motorway Police were nowhere to be seen. Throughout the agonising journey, I spotted one officer leaning against the median, his patrol car parked on the opposite side, looking on helplessly while a group set out mats to pray by the roadside.

On that day, dear reader, the Motorway was a microcosm of this country. As happens in our beloved country, laws go out the window the moment someone demonstrates piety. And the enforcers tuck tail when those that demonstrate piety descend on civilisation in hordes. This is how states lose their writ and with it their sovereignty. That loss was a fact poking one in the eye that day.

Where were the police? Was there a policy to let the uncouth faithful be, more interested as they are in the life hereafter than civilised, decent behaviour in this world? Did the government tell the police to make themselves scarce or did the police high-ups recommend this strategy to the government? Why was my right to travel safely on the Motorway ignored?

Someone must answer these questions or else I am growing a beard, losing my brains, raising a religious militia and telling the state to piss off.

Will some cleric tell us why piety doesn’t equal civic sense and regard for the laws and why the supposed spirituality of such congregations as the Tableeghi ijtama doesn’t translate into responsible civic behaviour?

Thomas C Schelling wrote in Micromotives and Macrobehavior: “How well each [individual] does for himself in adapting to his social environment is not the same thing as how satisfactory a social environment they collectively create for themselves.” He was talking about us.

Unlettered zealots, lacking the spirit of religion, pushed the Motorway back to the Dark Ages. If we don’t take heed, they will throw this entire country back in time. When that happens, we will end up a monument to oblivion like Ozymandias’ half-sunk, shattered statue.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Unmourned in his own country

The News
Mohammad Ahmed
November 21, 2012


Today is the death anniversary of one of Pakistan’s ablest sons, Dr Abdus Salam. Unfortunately, his achievements and services remain unacknowledged in his own country, where he was made an alien because of the belief into which he was born, although they are celebrated around the world.

Born on January 29, 1926, into a working-class Punjabi family, he went on to be celebrated as one of the world’s greatest minds as a leading theoretical physicists of his day for his contribution to the Grand Unified Theory.

Professor Abdus Salam was one of three scientists who received the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, “for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.”

At 31 he had been the youngest-ever professor of theoretical physics at London’s prestigious Imperial College. By the time he died in 1996, he had received 42 honorary doctorates from universities across the globe.

When his country needed him, he returned from the west to assume the position of adviser to the president. He expanded the web of research and development in Pakistan by sending scientists abroad. In 1961, Dr Abdus Salam approached the president to propose the setting up of Pakistan’s own national space agency.

The Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) was established on September 16 that year, with Dr Abdus Salam as its first director. The following month, he travelled to the United States to sign the Pakistan-US space cooperation agreement.

Two months after Suparco’s establishment, Pakistan started to build a space facility in Balochistan, and he was appointed the technical director of the Flight Test Range.

Dr Abdus Salam played a significant role in Pakistan’s development in the nuclear field. He called back from Switzerland nuclear physicist Ishfaq Ahmad, who became the man in charge of the Nuclear Physics Division. As the first member (technical) of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), he established research laboratories all over the country.

Due to the efforts of Dr Abdus Salam, Canada and Pakistan signed a nuclear energy cooperation deal in 1965, and the US provided Pakistan with a small research reactor. In 1965 the professor led the establishment of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology.

Pakistan rightly takes pride in its nuclear programme in whose development Dr Abdus Salam played a critical role. In the 1960s he was instrumental in sending abroad about 500 Pakistani scientists and engineers who were later to become the backbone of the country’s nuclear programme.

He was present at the Multan meeting of scientists and engineers in1972, which was called to orchestrate the development of Pakistan’s deterrence programme. Bhutto formed a group of scientists and engineers, first headed by Dr Abdus Salam, to pursue this goal.

In December 1972 he established the theoretical physics group (TPG) in the PAEC. In this connection he called two theoretical physicists working at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics near Trieste, Italy.

Dr Abdus Salam formed the Mathematical Physics Group that was charged, along with the TPG, to work on the mathematics involved in the theory of nuclear fission.

Although he left the country after Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims by parliament in 1974, Dr Abdus Salam maintained close working relations with the theoretical physics division at the PAEC, whose officials kept him informed about the status of the calculations needed to judge the performance of the planned atomic bomb.

He personally approved many appointments and sent a large number of Pakistani scientists to the ICTP and to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). He remained engaged in research with the scientists.

What has this country given to this great man in return? This is a question best left unanswered.

Pakistan issued a single stamp in honour of Dr Abdus Salam, but so did the African country of Benin. Except for the Department of Mathematics at the Government College University in Lahore, there is no department, or organisation, building or other landmark named after the greatest scientist of this country.

Meanwhile, the ICTP, which he had established in 1964, has been renamed Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.

In 1986, when he desired to become director general of Unesco, Gen Zia refused to nominate him, and instead named Sahibzada Yaqub Ali Khan.

Of course, there was little comparison between the scientist and the former general and diplomat.

In contrast to his motherland, Britain and Italy offered to support his candidature but he refused their offers on their terms. The result was that Pakistan’s candidate lost by a big margin.

Dr Abdus Salam served on a number of UN committees related to science and technology. He founded the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and was a leading figure in the creation of a number of international centres dedicated to the advancement of science.

The Higgs Boson, predicted and worked on by Salam, is at the centre of research at CERN, which has the world’s biggest particle physics laboratory. CERN has conducted the largest experiment in history in search of fundamental answers to the creation of the universe and has named a street in honour of Dr Abdus Salam.

He died in Oxford on November 21 and is buried in Pakistan. But the inscription of his tombstone was altered by the local magistrate to appease intolerance.

Can we forgive ourselves for how we treated one of the greatest sons of this country?

As acts of redemption a few steps need to be initiated. Naming an institute or two after him will be a good first step.

Inclusion of information about the services rendered by this great Pakistani is imperative in our textbooks. These are small changes easy to be carried out, but they would carry a strong message.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Courage as defined in the Islamic Republic

The News
Ayaz Amir
November 23, 2012



Islamabad diary

In the annals of bravery this must rank very high: brainwashing virtual kids into strapping suicide vests around their bodies and blowing them up as per the directions of their handlers. The boy caught two to three days ago in Peshawar wearing a suicide vest was a 13-year-old. His handler caught with him was 20-21.

It can be guessed that they thought they were on their way to instant paradise, the incense of martyrdom in their nostrils, convinced that houris of unimaginable beauty impatiently awaited their arrival. With my own sinful ears I have heard preachers advertising the delights of the Elysian Fields. Their recital of the rivers of milk and honey is relatively tepid. But when it comes to the accomplishments of the immortal virgins a kind of rapture comes over them.

What refined callousness to trick gullible youngsters into the dark world of suicide bombing? No shortage of this quality among the extreme devotees of the faith wearing the righteous badge of the Tehreek-e-Taliban. But impressive as their dreadful courage is I would be slightly more impressed if the vice chancellors of the suicide factories were to send their own kith and kin – why not their own kids? – into divine battle.

Why are the vice chancellors always picking on impressionable youngsters, most of them coming from backgrounds of extreme poverty? Why not let the incense of martyrdom come closer home?

One thing I have never been able to understand. Our bravery is pegged to the prospect of instant or eventual reward in heaven. That is the promise. When the votaries of one sect kill members of another sect, when the Taliban send suicide missions, when our own soldiers go into battle, sustaining their courage is the belief that their reward is permanent rest in the ever-green fields.

How many Germans died in the Second World War? How many Russians? In the uncounted millions. The Germans at least were Christians, some picture of the hereafter a part of their religious beliefs. But the Red Army was a heathen army, according to our way of reckoning these things. The faith of its soldiers was buttressed by no certainty of heavenly recompense. How they fought, both sides, their courage indomitable. So which is the more impressive courage?

What about Ajmal Kasab, of backwater Faridkot, another product of our jihad factories? Involved as he was in a heinous act of terrorism my heart still went out to him when I heard the news of his hanging. I need hardly say, not out of any sympathy for the deed of which he was a part but because of his extreme vulnerability...which made him such an easy target for his handlers, those who picked him up and trained him and sent him on his desperate mission.

This mentally half-formed kid, with little knowledge of the outside world, how easily brainwashed. What picture of a make-believe world must have been fed to him. Spies, espionage agents, commandos go on dangerous missions, not knowing whether they would return, but fully aware of the risks. The burden they carry is that of the profession of arms. There is something magnificent in this.

Hezbollah fighters coming close to Israeli Merkava tanks, as in the 2006 war, and using anti-tank missiles against them...this is true heroism again. But where’s the nobility in turning kids into suicide bombers? All you have is defenceless kids and extremely clever instructors. The devil would be proud of such cleverness.

And mark the caution of the divine brigade. From its loudspeakers will issue all kinds of fatwas on every subject under the sun but about the evil of child or juvenile bombers not a word. Look at Qazi Hussain Ahmed, targeted in the tribal areas by a female bomber and declaring instantly that this was not the work of the Taliban – perish the very thought – but of the Indo-Jewish-American lobby. Marvel at the reach of this lobby which can enter where our own soldiers are cautious to tread.

A special kind of bravery is also involved in the attacks on imambargahs and Shia processions we are witnessing this Muharram. Do the suicide bombers understand the complications of the web in which they are caught? They deserve pity and understanding. But what about their masterminds? What are they aiming at? Isn’t there enough disorder in the country already? Or is it the greater glory of their own particular sect that they seek? If this, then it is a demented frame of mind which finds glory in acts so despicable.

There are warriors of the faith, greatly respected in their own communities, who proclaim it their life-mission to eliminate sectarian enemies. Forgive my vague terminology but with fires burning all around us we have to be careful. And because they think that their mission is divinely-ordained they feel no qualms in stopping people, checking their identities and, if they happen to be on the wrong side of the sectarian divide, shooting them in cold blood. And this Muharram, just as it has started, Shia places of worship – in Karachi, in ‘Pindi and elsewhere – have been attacked. And all that the authorities can do is mount more police marches, which terrify no one, and issue meaningless statements.

Don’t discount conspiracy theorists who will say that this is the work of the agencies. And don’t discount the Qazi Hussain school of thought whose knights with solemn face will again draw attention to the Indo-Jewish lobby...everyone to blame except our own failings.

What are we coming to? No...what have we come to is more like it. The wages of what jihad are we earning? Seeking influence in Afghanistan, liberating Kashmir and setting our own house on fire in the process is the sum-total of our strategic brilliance. The grandmasters who gave us this philosophy deserve an extended stay in a correction centre.

But the past is the past; the future beckons. Discipline, even a modicum of it, has fled from our national life. Disorder is spreading and since we are not Maoists, nor ever were meant to be, we can’t say that the resultant situation is excellent. The litany of despair is long and familiar. No need to go over it again. But consider one thing: if even loudspeakers are out of control, how on earth do we go about fixing other things?

Milk adulterated, other foodstuffs adulterated, clean drinking water hard to come by, we all understand. But the call to prayer adulterated? Go to any town or village in Pakistan and listen to the tamasha made of the morning call to prayers: something added before the azaan and something added afterwards, and even when the azaan is done preachers making a nuisance of themselves, and the authorities helpless as ever.

Whether a political schemer of the first rank or not, Manzoor Wattoo as Punjab chief minister forbade the misuse of mosque loudspeakers and saw to it that his orders were implemented. For this one act of kindness his other sins can be forgiven.

Loudspeakers, however, can be controlled, as can the traffic on the roads. The tax collection machinery can be improved and the police reformed, although it will take more than pious statements of intent to bring this about. But looking at the craziness taking hold across the country our basic problem seems a bit different. It is the national psyche and our modes of thinking which seem to be out of order: the computer wiring gone all wrong. Is there any other explanation for juvenile suicide bombers and imambargah bombings?

 

[W.11]

poor rabzon getting no response since months

try harder, do more