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Despite the effort by the mindless Right that peoples the key posts in the Bush administration to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, it has not been possible to do so

Most American presidents like to have a doctrine associated with their names, long after they have passed into history, along with their deeds, good and bad. The doctrine George W. Bush will be associated with will be the Doctrine of Preemption which, its high-sounding name notwithstanding means you strike before your enemy. In plainer words, don’t wait to get hit: hit first.

While a case could perhaps be made for this particular strategy, it is less simple to establish to the satisfaction of an objective observer that a clear and present danger exists which necessitates and justifies preemptive action. That is where President Bush and his principal lieutenants have failed. Why would Saddam Hussein commit virtual suicide and risk the destruction of his regime and his country by mounting a chemical, biological or missile attack on the United States? Iraq is not the only country that possesses or is trying to attain certain kinds of weapons or weapons technology. There are many others. Why don’t they pose a threat to the world while Iraq does?

Despite the effort by the mindless Right that peoples the key posts in the Bush administration to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, it has not been possible to do so. The whole world knows that Saddam Hussein is no friend or admirer of religious zealots, nor has fundamentalist thinking or jihadi culture been allowed to take root in Iraq. The Iraqi ministry of religious affairs and auqaf keeps a strict eye on what goes on and does not permit sectarian controversies to be spread from the pulpit. What Iraq thought about Ayatollah Khomenei and his retrogressive so-called “Islamic revolution” was best manifested through eight years of the bloody Gulf War. Iraq is a secular state. The polity of the Ba’ath Party is a secular polity. If anyone is to be held responsible for pushing Saddam Hussein into adopting religious symbols and multiplying the number of mosques in Iraq, it is the United States.

There is little doubt that America is inexorably being pushed into a war that can only bring disaster. It will knock the bottom out of the ongoing US-led actions against Al Qaeda, or what remains of it, and overnight it will turn every Muslim country against the United States and its policies. If that indeed is the objective, then President Bush is on the right course. Through an unrelenting media onslaught, the average American has been convinced that “they hate us.” For “they”, please read “Muslims”. What he has not been told that it is certain given the policies and actions of the United States that Muslims find unacceptable. The blind advocacy and support by the Bush government of Israel and all that it does can lead any reasonable person to only one conclusion. This week, at the United Nations, for instance, the United States abstained when it came to a vote on the brutal siege of Yassir Arafat’s compound.

But there are voices of dissent. The saintly Jimmy Carter has spoken against war and former vice president Al Gore has come out of his hibernation to attack Bush on Iraq. Some idea of how unreasonable the advocates of war and the “Bushies” are can be had from a September 25 article by the Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. “Gore’s speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts – bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.”

Anatol Lieven, a British journalist currently in Washington said it best, “What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

            Last time I was in Pakistan, Naeem Bokhari was not smoking. Again. There can be no question now that Mark Twain was right about how easy it is to give up smoking, since he gave it up many times. While Naeem was not quite impressed with my suggestion that raw carrots were a good substitute for cigarettes, he wasn’t chewing that awful gum that is supposed to give you your required quota of nicotine either. On an earlier occasion, when Naeem was on the wagon – cigarette-wise that is – he was munching away at that awful nicotine-laced gum full time. During those weeks, he must have imbibed more nicotine than he would have by smoking three packs a day.

            One should never remind a smoker who is trying to quit about his earlier bouts with Lady N, otherwise I would have reminded Naeem Bokhari of that summer afternoon in Vienna when he stopped a young girl who was on her way happily smoking a cigarette not to do so. She soon realised that he wasn’t talking to her on the time-tested principle that one things leads to another. He was lecturing her on the evils of smoking. This was Naeem’s Crusade against Smoking phase. However, next time I was in Pakistan, I saw him smoking like a chimney.        

Is his pledge not to smoke as strong this time as another pledge that he declared on solemn affirmation he had made, a pledge whose precise nature better remain unspecified. When Naeem and Tahira (just T to friends) came to Vienna (they were together then), I had just stopped smoking and felt extremely brittle. Naeem gave me a long list of dos and an even longer list of don’ts if I was serious about staying away from the weed. I followed his tips, if not all, at least some, and have never smoked since.

The other day, a friend whom I will only identify by her initials ML (no, not martial law, at least not yet) asked me if I could give her some “how-to” help. Since she rarely asks for assistance, playing everything with the left foot forward in the middle of the bat, so to speak, I was flattered. Even ex-smokers have their uses, it seems. She is a devotee of long standing of Lady N. Well here is my primer for her (and Naeem?) and those who can’t kick the habit because PTV continues to hawk cigarettes with a brazenfacedness that should cause all those responsible for its operation to hide their faces. Why doesn’t the IBM man who can’t seem to stop talking think of the day when God, a non-smoker, will taked him to task for enabling the merchants of death to push hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis into an early grave. PTV is now one of the few public broadcasting services that carries tobacco advertising.

The first thing that a smoker should tell himself is that it can be done. Millions of people in the world have kicked the habit, so it is doable, but you cannot stop smoking unless you want to stop smoking. In the end, it is a thing of the mind. You have to come to the decision that you no longer want to smoke. It must not be a snap or a sentimental decision. You should mentally prepare yourself for the day when you will not be smoking. If it needs time, give it time. Few people can stop smoking on an impulse. You should think about not smoking for days, weeks, months, but not years because the sooner you are rid of it, the better. It is the best gift a smoker can give himself/herself.

One must not make dramatic gestures, such as tearing up the packet you have been smoking from, or throwing away that Dunhill lighter. It hardly ever works. You will be back on the weed and regretting the loss of the Dunhill. Take your time. There are two ways of doing it. You either go cold turkey or you bring yourself gradually to a point where your intake is scaled down. If you are too chicken to stop abruptly, then there is a method that has worked for many. If you smoke your first cigarette of the morning at, say, 7.30 a.m., push it forward by 15 or 30-minute segments. Smoke your first cigarette at 7.45 or 8 a.m. for the next two or three days. Go on doing this, till you reach a point where your first cigarette is not smoked until or after lunchtime. Make some rules. Don’t smoke before breakfast or while in the bathroom or when in the car (your own or someone else’s). If you work out a schedule, you may find that in six to eight weeks, you have come down from 30 or 40 cigarettes to just 10 or 15. When you get down to five a day, you are then in the zone to go cold turkey. Just kick the habit; or as the Nike slogan goes: just do it.

Those who write and smoke fear that if they stop, they won’t be able to write. This is bunkum. Women are afraid of putting on weight. You will put on a bit of weight (some people don’t), but if you watch your diet and eat a lot of greens and drink a lot of cold water, you won’t put on weight. In the beginning, the urge to light up would be strong, but it will only be an urge. You will ave to guard yourself against it. Don’t succumb and it will pass. In a few days or weeks, the urge will come at longer and longer intervals. And one day, it won’t be there at all. Stay away from smokers for the first few days. Don’t go into a room where people are smoking. Take walks. Drink water. Exercise. Eat carrots. Try green cardamom (I did and almost got hooked on it).Don’t substitute smoking with munching the betel leaf. It is an equally vile habit.

The benefits will be immediate. You will stop coughing. Your complexion will improve (ladies to please note), as will your eyesight. You will save money. You will feel more confident of yourself. You will feel proud of what you have done. If you can stop smoking, you can do most things. That is not a bad feeling, is it? You will smell nice. Your breath won’t be like a blast from hell. Smokers do not realise how unpleasant their breath smells.

And, yes, last but not least, you will start tasting food.

Musharraf may have shortcomings, but humility is not one of them. He sees no contradictions in the system he has foisted on Pakistan and speaks with a picture of the Quaid over his shoulder without showing the least awareness of what the Quaid would have thought of him and his actions

Since he was force-landed into power by Nawaz Sharif, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has visited the United States four times. On all four occasions, I have been assigned to report him; therefore, in a way, I can stake some kind of a claim to have observed him at close quarters in a foreign environment. The man has changed.

The first time he came to New York, I heard him declare at a dinner attended by over 1,500 Pakistanis that he was a soldier who liked his profession. “I have no political ambitions,” he said in front of all those people who can all be produced as prosecution witnesses were there to be a dream people’s court requiring the General to account for his actions. He went on to promise that he would return to soldiering because he had no interest in politics.

There were many in that auditorium who cheered him for his words. Hundreds of those people were in New York again, listening to the same man, except that the Musharraf who stood before them was another Musharraf. He now was the monarch of all he surveyed. Did he remember what he had said right here less than three years ago? He gave no such indication. In fact, he said that he wanted seven years to complete his “reforms.” Not many cheered.

I remember the late Altaf Gauhar once saying that as the agitation against Field Marshal Ayub Khan grew in intensity, one day he asked Gauhar if he could tell him what was going on.

“Sir,” Gauhar replied, “They are sick of all our faces.” How far is Musharraf from that point, is now only a question of percentages. Do nine out of ten people want to see the last of him or is it seven out of ten?

This time the General spoke for 80 minutes, which is 13 minutes less than he took last time I heard him. I once read in the London phone book that most conversations could be completed in three minutes. The General, who I am told, prides himself on being a media savvy person should know that this is the age of the sound bite. However, a Pakistani audience is a captive if not a captured audience. Only those of us taking notes for our news stories can now reproduce what he said.

What was evident was the abundance of confidence with which he spoke. That is a more generous way of putting it; the word that best describes his present state of mind and the way he conducts himself is one I do not wish to use. He appears to have no self-doubt of any kind, on any point at all. He talks like someone who is omnipotent, who can mould the world according to his wishes. He talks like a man who has been given a divinely ordained mission that no power on earth can make him veer away from. He may have shortcomings, but humility is not one of them. He sees no contradictions in the system he has foisted on Pakistan. He speaks with a picture of the Quaid-i-Azam over his shoulder without showing the least awareness of what the Quaid would have thought of him and his actions. Someone, even at the cost of losing his neck, should read to him the Quaid’s speech at the Staff College, Quetta, on 14 June 1948 in which he reminded the assembled officers of abiding by their oath of allegiance to the Constitution.

A footnote to the visit is in order. Gen. Musharraf bitterly attacked journalists who wrote against the country while living abroad. He said one of them had come to him for a job which he had refused and now the man was out here writing against Pakistan. An official told me the reference was to Hussain Haqqani, so I phoned him in Washington, where he is on a fellowship, and asked if he had indeed gone to Gen. Musharraf and asked for a job. “I don’t seek; I am sought,” replied Haqqani. That says it all. However, were I Gen. Musharraf, I would have given an arm and a leg to make Haqqani my information czar because in all of Pakistan there is no cleverer spinner. He can move the ball at right angles, if need be.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

            There are three monsters fertilising popular imagination in America these days: Saddam Hussein, the West Nile virus and the snakehead fish that walks.

            Let me take the West Nile virus first. How the virus managed to travel all the way from Egypt to the mainland of the United States only the virus can explain, though so far there is no evidence that it can talk as well as kill. A number of deaths have been linked to this minuscule critter whose name triggers, which is unfortunate, romantic associations with Cleopatra, that old serpent of the Nile.

One thing though the two certainly have in common: they kill, she with her fatal charms, the virus with some very unpleasant things it does to the victim’s metabolism. The West Nile visitor has led to the disappearance of the crow, that loud but romantic bird – in our folklore at least – who appears to be the virus’s favourite incubating place. Crows that the virus has not killed have been killed by the health police. The other day I found one right on our tiny street as I set out for a morning walk. It looked dead as a dodo, if that can be said of a dead crow. Had West Nile got him or was it a health police commando? We would never know as dead crows tell no tales. Someone wrote a rather sentimental piece in a newspaper recently lamenting the disappearance of the crow. There is no accounting for tastes. There are people who have tadpoles as pets, not to mention black scorpions. The question is how did the West Nile get stateside? Is there an Israeli plot at work?

Obsession number two is a much maligned poor fish from China made notorious by newspapers and television shows by the chilling name Snakehead. No one can help how his head looks, so if the poor thing’s head resembles that of a snake, it is not its fault. Look at US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. If the casting director of any Jamed Bond movie were to run into him (it is advisable to avoid him on a dark street at night), he would take one look at him and sign him on as Mr Big in the next production. Whenever I see his picture, I wonder why he has chosen to pass star billing in the World Wrestling Championship. What has Hulk Hogan got that Armitage is lacking?

While America may or may not declare war on Saddam Hussein, war has certainly been declared on the snakehead. This is what happened.  A couple of months ago, someone threw a couple of fish he had bought from an aquarium or a pet shop into an overgrown pond in Crofton, Maryland, a small town in the suburbs of Washington. Had the fellow known that his kind gesture would lead to the ultimate extinction of the creatures, he would have kept them at home where they were swimming around happily in their glass home and not bothering anyone. An angler who was out at the Crofton pool for a day of fishing, caught one of the fish and being unfamiliar with that particular variety, asked around as to what he had caught.

The poor snakefish’s fortunes began to go down the tubes from that point on. Suddenly, it was a big story on television and newspapers going to town with it. And what was the hullabaloo about? The Maryland fish, game and wildlife officials who seemed to want their fifteen minutes of fame more than they wanted the destruction of the poor snakehead, said that this was a very dangerous, a highly predatory fish which was foreign to the waters in which it had been thrown. If allowed to propagate itself, they warned, it would gobble up the native varieties. The snakehead, they said, could also crawl along the ground and thus go from pool to pool. So long was the list of what this fish could do that many wondered if it could also drive a car on Route 66 and sing ‘The star-spangled banner.’ In the first couple of weeks, the snakehead was running neck and neck in unpopularity with Osma bin Laden. It was accused of everything, except being a member of Al Qaeda.

Some weeks later the story died. But when everybody thought the snakehead was done in for good and the Land of Hope and Glory was rid of this menace if not of Muslim jehadis intent on poisoning New York City’s water supply, the snakehead hit the headlines as summer came officially to an end with Labour Day. If you have a queasy stomach, then it is suggested you read no further. For those who can take it on the chin, here is what happened in that Maryland pond on September 4. Here is how the Washington Post reported it. “At daybreak yesterday, Maryland biologists unleashed their ultimate weapon against the strange, toothy Asian snakehead (originally it was just Chinese, now the entire continent is being held responsible for it) that has turned the international spotlight on a small, overgrown pond in Crofton and provided a textbook case of the dangers of alien species.” The prose is so lurid that you expect Godzilla to be lurking in the next paragraph.

The biologists –who should be renamed biokillers – threw a milky poison into the pond, with scores of cameras focused on the action. The poison called rotenone, was described by one of the biokillers as “neat”. He explained why. “The poison is absorbed by the feathery surfaces of the gills which extract oxygen from the water and shuttle it into the fish’s blood. As the poison takes effect, the fish loses its ability to transfer oxygen into its blood. Carbon dioxide builds up, and as its oxygen-starved organs begin to shut down, the fish begins to suffocate. In a controlled setting, fish will surface within minutes, gulping air as their lips turn pink. Within seven minutes, they will start to lose their equilibrium, fins propelling them erratically up and down through the water. Within 30 minutes, the fish’s jaws will pump a few last hopeless ounces of water across its gills, but by then its ability to absorb oxygen will be gone. Moments later, it will float to the surface, belly-up, then sink to the bottom and die.”

If someone can tell me where the now reprieved former Czar of Pakistan, Saif-ur-Rehman (aka Malika-i-Jazbat), is these days, I would have him brought over, taken to the edge of that pond in Crofton and pushed in. He deserves it more than the snakehead.

Collins, a Californian, became a Muslim when he was eighteen. He networked his way first into Bosnia and then Pakistan from where he went to Afghanistan to “make jihad”

How much of it is true and how much fictionalised remains in question. But a book just out contains a firsthand account of a newly converted Muslim American who claims to have first waged jihad in Afghanistan and Chechnya and than turned informer for the CIA. He lost a leg in Chechnya but before long was disillusioned by the jihad industry because he says he was shocked by the way some of these groups were using Islam to further their own ends or attacking innocent people.

Aukai Collins, the author of the book ‘My Jihad’, seems to have glided into and out of Pakistan with the greatest of ease and from there to Afghanistan and back. One thing is quite clear. In a country like Pakistan where the state and its agencies are omniscient and where nothing moves unless it has gone through three or four levels of bureaucracy, it is not possible that so much cross-border militant activity could have gone on without the full knowledge and encouragement, if not sponsorship, of the government. The jihad industry flourished during Nawaz Sharif’s time, no less than through the years in office of Benazir Bhutto.

While Nawaz Sharif was personally a man of ultra-conservative views, ideologically supervised by his father, Benazir allowed the jihad business to be run by her interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, who not only looked like a tank, but moved like a tank and thought like a tank. In the Taliban hall of infamy, there should be built a column in his memory. “They are my boys,” he used to brag of the Taliban.

The jihad industry was and is run by the Pakistan army. The civilian governments neither had the conviction nor the guts to exercise control over the military. The elected legislatures were not only ineffective but also disinterested. No wonder Aukai Collins and thousands of foreigners had the freedom to operate in Pakistan with impunity and use it as their base in the region.

We forget too soon. Nawaz Sharif was all set to usher in the 15th amendment. The only benefit the Musharraf coup brought was that Pakistan was spared this disaster. Had Sharif lasted and the new Senate come into being, there is no question that today Pakistan would have been under Shari’a law (though just as corrupt and dysfunctional)

Collins, a Californian, became a Muslim when he was eighteen. He networked his way first into Bosnia and then Pakistan from where he went to Afghanistan to “make jihad.” In Pakistan, he says, he was directed to an outfit called Harkat-ul-Jihad whose primary goal was to annex Kashmir or form a separate Emirate. It also exported fighters to Tajikistan. Its leadership and that of a dozen other outfits had a loose confederacy with Al Qaeda. Collins came to Pakistan in 1993 and spent time in Islamabad. He says whenever he got on a bus with his hosts from Harkat, they would announce to the passengers that they had with them “an America mujahid.”

He was finally taken to Miran Shah in the Frontier (which he misspells throughout the book) and placed under the charge of one Commander Khalid who had lost a leg fighting the Soviets. Collins returned to Islamabad where he says he met some African-Americans, all Vietnam veterans, who had been contracted to impart military training to the mujhaideen recruits.

Collins says he met Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh — now waiting on death row for the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl — and they became friends. Omar wanted him to go with him to Kashmir where he eventually kidnapped five foreigners commanding a group called Al-Faran. They were all killed. Collins says he did not want to be part of something where innocent civilians were killed. Omar was later captured by the Indians and spent six years in jail, getting out only after the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Katmandu. This is a factual error in Collins’ narrative because Omar Saeed Sheikh was not involved in the kidnapping of the tourists in Kashmir. The three Britons and one American he kidnapped were kept at a place in U.P. and were later released without harm.

What is ironic is that those who led Pakistan down this path that has brought disaster and international condemnation are today in the driving seat, having overnight transformed themselves into “good guys” fighting terrorism.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

            Here is a quiz on Kashmir. Supposing next week or next month or next year, India is forced or persuaded to implement the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir, will Pakistan also implement them, considering that for nearly 53 years, these resolutions have formed the bedrock of its foreign policy? There is only one condition for taking part in this quiz. The answers have to be honest, uninfluenced by prejudice, history or self-interest.

            Assuming that India agrees to the full acceptance and total implementation of the UN resolutions, the ball will land in Pakistan’s court. Will Pakistan be prepared to pull out every single soldier now stationed on its side of the Line of Control? Will Pakistan agree to the expulsion or, if need be, extirpation of the Islamic fighting groups which continue operate freely with the permission or connivance of the official authority in Azad Kashmir?

Will Pakistan be prepared to accept that the Northern Areas are an integral part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as it stood on 14 August 1947? Will Pakistan agree to the holding of the plebiscite that it demands in the entire state, only 64 percent of whose population is Muslim, 33 percent being Hindu and three percent Buddhist? While the UN resolutions offer only two choices – India or Pakistan – will Pakistan be prepared to accept what has come to be known as the Third Option, in the event that the people of the State demand independence?

The answers to all these questions, frankly, are in the negative. The great tragedy of Kashmir is that neither on the Indian side nor on ours, have the people, whose welfare and happiness both governments claim to want, been associated with any of the decisions that affect their fate. Not once have they been made part of discussions between the two governments involving Kashmir’s future. No Kashmiri was ever involved in the decisionmaking process as the two governments and their representatives wrestled each other at the United Nations through the 1950s and the subsequent decade. There was no one to represent the Kashmiris at Tashkent in 1966 and there was no one to speak for them at Shimla in 1972.

In the last ten to fifteen years, various attempts have been made by Kashmiri politicians from both sides of the Line of Control, which they prefer to call by its UN-given name of Ceasefire Line, to meet in India, Pakistan or a third country. These attempts have failed to come to anything as such direct interaction has been found as unacceptable in New Delhi as in Islamabad. Whereas India can take shelter behind the legal fiction that Kashmir is an integral part of the Union and the Kashmiris are Indian citizens who are not free to negotiate in any other capacity, Pakistan has no such legal shelter because it officially maintains that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and its future dispensation remains to be decided in accordance with the wishes of its people.

While India’s despicable Kashmir policy is there for the world to see, it is only fair to examine objectively what Pakistan’s policy towards the part of the State called Azad Jammu and Kashmir has been. All other things Azad Kashmir may well be, but “azad” it is not, never has been, and, by all indications, never will be. In the early days of Pakistan, it was the notorious Ministry of Kashmir Affairs that administered Azad Kashmir. The Ministry was then headed by an officer of the rank of a joint secretary. The President of Azad Kashmir took his orders from this bureaucrat or one of his juniors.

Often, when the President came to Rawalpindi, he was by design made to wait for humiliatingly long periods before being admitted to the presence of his exalted highness. The prototype of this arrogant office was the late Amanullah Khan Niazi who considered Azad Kashmir his fiefdom and all who lived there as his “rayyaya”. When he visited Azad Kashmir, it was like the Viceroy visiting a subjugated territory. The one man who took on Niazi was punished. Divested of his office of President, he was thrown into jail for daring to do the unthinkable. The man was K.H. Khurshid who had been the Quaid-e-Azam’s private secretary through the crucial years of the Pakistan Movement, 1944-47. He was also the first inmate of the infamous Dalai Camp.

To this day, the two key officials in Azad Kashmir, the Chief Secretary and the Inspector General of Police, are “lent officers” from Pakistan. Once they get posted to Azad Kashmir, they are raised several notches in pay and status for overseeing the “natives.” The Azad Kashmiris cannot obviously be trusted with positions of such high responsiblity. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, the ISI, the Military Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau and others that we know not of, have heavy and intrusive presence in Azad Kashmir. No one dares cross their path, except at his own peril. The Azad Kashmir government is no government since it has little internal autonomy. If the president or prime minister of Azad Kashmir wants to proceed abroad, he cannot do so without the permission of the government in Islamabad. Even the statements he makes at such friendly forums as the OIC have to be drafted and cleared by officials from Islamabad. If he falls out of line, he can be required to offer an explanation in writing. I once was asked to draft one such “explanation” by Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, these days the chairman of the so-called Kashmir Committee.

For some years now, and especially since Gen. Pervez Musharraf took power, the affairs of Azad Kashmir have been overseen by the General Officer Commanding of the Pakistan Army’s 12^th Division based at Murree. He exercises viceregal control. These days even such minor matters as postings of officials have to be cleared by Murree. One of the most blatant instances of this overlordship of Azad Kashmir – much of whose territory was liberated from the Maharaja’s rule by the locals without outside help – was the imposition of Sardar Anwar Khan, an unknown Pakistani army general, as President. He was retired from the army and within a week he had been “chosen” by the majority party in the Azad Kashmir assembly as President. The only thing Azad Kashmiri about him was that, like Gen. Abdul Aziz, he came from Azad Kashmir’s Suddhan tribe. He has since assumed much of the executive authority to which he should have no claim, being a figurehead under the constitution. In September, it will be he and not the elected Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, Sardar Sikandar Hayat, who  will be representing the people of Azad Kashmir in New York at the OIC foreign ministers’ Kashmir contact group meeting.

Those who subverted a political movement for self-determination into a murderous religious war and reduced a liberation struggle into what the rest of the world sees as terrorism will have to answer one day for having laid to waste the sacrifices of the Kashmiri people dating back to that fateful morning in July 1931 in Srinagar when 21 peaceful men were shot dead by the Maharaja’s police.

Aziz Ahmeds are long gone and those who followed them are not fastidious about what the taxpayer should pay for and what he should not

General Pervez Musharraf is coming stateside and a quick spit and polish job is being done on the New York property that a far wiser Government of Pakistan bought during better times to house its UN mission. It is no small wonder that this property and the chancery at 2315 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington’s Embassy Row have survived the family silver “loot sale” which dodgy ambassadors backed by compliant friends back in Islamabad have managed with such disgraceful success in recent years. The elegant high commissioner’s residence in London’s exclusive St. John’s Wood is gone, as is the priceless riverside property in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill. But these are stories for another day. Right now it is El Presidente who alights on us come September 7 that I am concerned with.

Actually, he does not alight on Washington at all but Boston. Is there going to be another Boston Tea Party? The last one produced rather dramatic results. So who knows what may happen this time. The General moves in strange and unexpected ways and has so far managed to stay two steps ahead of the competition. What is taking him to Boston is not official but filial in nature. His son Bilal lives there and is said to be an actuary, a member of the tribe that predicts who will conk out when and thus helps insurance companies determine how exactly they will maximise their profits.

Originally, the visit to Boston was going to remain strictly private but given the flourishing gossip industry back home, the embassy here suggested that it may be a good idea for the President to do something presidential such as address a meeting. Frantic exchanges followed between our representatives in Washington and people at Harvard. Result: a speaking engagement, with dinner and a meeting with some members of the faculty thrown in. Bad move that, if you ask me because the basic purpose of the Musharrafs’ visit to Boston is to meet young Bilal Musharraf. Surly, nobody would grudge the couple that and surely it is entitled to private time. Why then make out that the business in Boston is official, official business being an afterthought.

From Boston, the President flies to Chicago where his brother Dr Nadeem Musharraf has been settled for many years. He also addresses a meeting organised for him by the embassy at an international affairs forum. That gives this leg of the US tour also the official fig leaf the President’s advisers think it needs. While presidents, prime ministers and other exalted individuals presiding over nation states have the right like the rest of us to have private time, the dividing line between the private and the official should be clear and distinct. I recall the late Mr Aziz Ahmed once visiting Ottawa for official talks and before his departure insisting on paying for the private use he said he had made of the embassy car that had taken him for a couple of hours of sight-seeing in the Canadian capital’s suburbs. But the Aziz Ahmeds are long gone and those who followed them are not fastidious about what the taxpayer should pay for and what he should not.

The one good thing that Gen. Musharraf has done is to slash the size of the entourage he travels with and to take commercial PIA flights instead of commandeering an entire aircraft and disrupting the airline’s worldwide schedule. Another good thing the regime initiated related to journalists. It decided that no longer will the government pay for their travel or stay abroad for coverage of presidential visits. The pledge was broken last year when the President came to the States. Will it be any different this time? And one more thing. Every Pakistani head of state or government who has come to the United States in the last ten years has been made to follow the same routine. In New York, they have been invariably taken to see the New York Times people and speak at Asia Society. It is to happen yet again.

When Gen. Zia-ul-Haq was to address the UN General Assembly on behalf of Islamic states, he asked that the final draft of his speech be shown to the late Iqbal Butt, then press minister at the Pakistan embassy in Washington. Butt took one look at the first para and said. “The President is made to quote the New York Times, whereas it is the New York Times which should quote the President.” Then he took out a red pencil and crossed out the para. Earlier, I said the Aziz Ahmeds were no longer around, to which I add: and neither are the Iqbal Butts.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

            The summer of 1977 in London was long and sad. It saw the overthrow of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government by his army commander-in-chief, encouraged and backed by some of the very political parties and men who are today clamouring for the return of civilian democratic rule. Air Marshal Asghar Khan wants his writ petition against Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg heard. This “heroic” bid at accountability of the uniformed ones can have little credibility with those who remember how he egged the armed forces on to bring the elected Prime Minister down and how he sabotaged the accord reached between the PNA and the government of the day.

            But it was the summer of 1977 in London I was thinking of. That was the summer Ibne Insha, a poet and writer whose like we may perhaps never see again, lay fatally ill in a suburban hospital. I remember the afternoon a friend and I spent at his bedside. He showed not the least concern for his condition and kept delighting us with one story after another. He insisted on walking with us to the door and then through the corridor down  to the ground floor.         

The other day, I came across what is said to be the last piece written by Ibne Insha . The effervescence of his limpid prose I am unable to capture because all translations are at best approximations of the original, but whatever the effort’s worth, it may still tell those who did not know him and have not read him, something of that delightful man who was always full of the light of life and sparkling humour.

            This is how he describes his illness. “What ails us is named after Dr Hodgkin’s, an Englishman, who discovered it in 1832. It has something to do with lymph nodes. Discover it he did but its cause he failed to find, so its treatment you can forget about. To this day, no one knows what causes it. Our first reaction on being told what ailed us was one of joy. Our disease had an Englishman’s name, which gave it quality and made it rare. It is no garden variety disease like influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid or malaria. But when we read a little about it, we did have a moment of anxiety. No straight simple illness this thing is. In fact, it is actually terminal. There is no guaranteed treatment; what goes by the name of treatment is experimental. These Englishmen, Americans and Germans appear to have nothing else to do except discover new diseases. Then once they get hold of a patient, they push ten different medicines down his throat on the assumption that one of them will work. Surgery is thrown in for keeps. Why can’t they find one single antidote like our Amrit Dhara, which can be eaten, applied or drunk with water, even sniffed through a handkerchief. The magic potions invented by our physicians and hakims are a miracle, effective against constipation, diarrohea, earache, skins sores, lack of urination, excess of urination, falling hair or, if applied to the skin, programmed to remove hair. One gentleman has been advertising his miracle drug as “effective against piles and other ailments of the eye.’”

            Ibne Insha was operated upon for the removal of his spleen. He writes, “The other day, we had barely had that tube they have stuck in our nostrils taken out, when in walked Faiz sahib who is in London. If there was to be some certainty that Faiz sahib will come to look you up, that is reason enough to undergo an operation … There is nothing to surgery these days. Even if you don’t need it, doctors perform it out of a sense of fun. There was this gentleman with a cough who went to pick up a linctus. The doctor operated his calf instead. And while it is true that the pain in his calf became a permanent feature thereafter, the cough disappeared completely … There is an array of buttons at the bottom of our bed about whose precise use we remain in the dark. Whenever we have attempted to push one of them, the result has invariably been contrary to what we intended. Often, by mistake when we press something, a machine comes to life. Result? The head gets lowered while our feet point skywards. This is a veritable devil’s workshop. In our hospitals at home, all they have is a simple winding mechanism. Even more surefire is the method whereby a couple of bricks are placed under the feet of the end that needs to be raised. In the event that no bricks are at hand, books can do nicely. Under one foot of the bed you have ‘Behishti Zaiwar’ and under the other ‘Alipur ka Aili’. Obviously books have their uses.”

            Before his operation, the late Muslehuddin of PTV who was in London with Yusuf Kamran, Kishwar Naheed’s late husband, went to the hospital to record an interview with Ibne Insha. Muslehuddin had also recorded a long, haunting interview of Nasir Kazmi as he lay dying in a Lahore hospital. This is how Ibne Insha describes the encounter. “Before being carted into the operation theatre, we had recorded a monumental essay for the world and its people and placed it in a sealed envelope wherein we had enunciated our philosophy of life and asked others to follow the strait and narrow path that we ourselves had been unable to take for unavoidable reasons. What a pity that that masterpiece of eloquence and rhetoric will not come to light for the time being. From Pakistan our friend Muslehuddin of PTV was in London recently and after spending an unmentionable sum of money, he came to visit us in the company of an English cameraman. We were photographed from every angle. Yusuf Kamran who was also here asked us some very learned questions. Several of our poems were also recorded. We knew why they were doing this, but we kept a straight face. Why break their hearts! What saddens us is that they wasted a lot of our national television’s money. You see, if the desired opportunity to broadcast that interview does not arise soon, not only will there be questions asked but there may even be an official inquiry.  But we are not to blame for this … or are we?”

            Ibne Insha’s  prophetic poem ‘Insha ji ab kooch karo, iss shehr mein ji ka lagana kya’ had been written some years earlier. Ironically, it was sung by Amanat Ali Khan who also took that road not long after.

It is logical that if the ambassador in an important capital is to be moved, his or her deputy should be kept in place so that the new incumbent can be properly briefed and shown the ropes

There is a complete change of guard at the Pakistan embassy. The ambassador is gone, so is her deputy and so is the key political counsellor. The first secretary who used to keep an eye out for what was going on in the southeast of the district where Capitol Hill rises, is also going and, for good measure, to New Delhi, not the most hospitable of places these days. Since men and women, both civil and military, receive marching orders from the same source, given our current masters, it was only to be expected that the head of the military mission will go home too and so he has.

A clean sweep under any circumstances. Also unique. No other country would move its ambassador, the deputy chief of mission, the key counsellor and the crucial first secretary all together and, to boot, from the most important capital of the world, Washington. Is this yet another first for the Foreign Office and its self-complimenting mandarins?

But that this should happen is not surprising because that is how things have always been done. Without plan, without thought and with utter impunity. What does it matter if it takes the new team months plus to find its feet! Why, it takes several weeks for someone newly arrived to find his way in any big Western city. One needs much longer to get to know people, to find the right doors to knock on. More than one meeting or call is required to start doing business.

It is logical that if the ambassador in an important capital is to be moved, his or her deputy should be kept in place so that the new incumbent can be properly briefed and shown the ropes, the dos and don’ts, the names of friends and opponents, the shortcuts and the long routes that end in a ditch.

However, all that is for more thoughtful countries that are run by more thoughtful people working in accordance with thoughtfully conceived and executed systems. Why should we aspire to such things when we wake up one morning and find a moustached gentleman in a crisp khaki uniform and bemedalled chest with a picture of the poor Quaid behind him, saying, “Hi, folks, I am your new Strongman. Geddit?”

In any case, the new man in Washington is someone of whom it can be said in Urdu that “uss nein ghat ghat ka paaney piya hai.” The last “ghat” Ashraf Jehangir Qazi drank from was declared unwelcome waters by his perfidious hosts, the Indians. By way of a return compliment, the ISI in Islamabad beat up a couple of Indian embassy clerks, besides giving the second degree to all those passing within thirty feet of the Indian chancery. Is it any wonder then that the whole world laughs at our two countries behind our backs!

The new ambassador has landed in Washington only weeks before the impending arrival of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Presidential visits are perilous affairs. While granted that they are less risk-prone now than they used to be when parties the size of the Nepalese army used to alight on a capital where the poor ambassador had the assistance of no more than a stripling second secretary and a cypher assistant (and, of course, the intelligence sleuth masquerading as a consular official). Gen. Musharraf travels with far fewer people. For instance, he comes to the United States on 7 September with a party of only 16, which is 13 fewer than the amendments he has made to the Constitution of Pakistan. The General says all he has done is for the good of Pakistan, which reminds me of what a British historian said of Czar Alexander of Russia, “He always has such excellent motives for doing himself a good turn.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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