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The army that my brother Bashir, who died in Lahore on January 21 this year, joined and served is not the army that holds the country in its vice-like grip today under the command of a man who wants to be chief of staff, president and the supreme power-wielder for life.

The old army now only exists in the memories of those who once proudly wore its uniform. These men were content with very little: their salaries were meagre and their work hard. They did not question orders nor paddle influence to get comfortable postings. When they were asked to go to far-flung places, where even clean drinking water was a luxury, they did not grumble. They went willingly, leaving their young families behind. Many spent a lifetime in service without ever having the good fortune of being posted in a large city where they would have had the good life.

You joined the army for old-fashioned reasons such as service to the country and the defence of its borders. Today when you hear those words you flinch because of the values the army has come to be associated with. In those days you wore your uniform with pride and it was enough for you to be known as a gentleman and an officer, in that order. Honour came first – the honour of your regiment, of the larger family of men in uniform, of which you were a part, and the honour of your country and nation.

You were taught to respect your seniors no less than those who were your equals and your juniors. The army looked after your basic needs and gave you a sense of security. You knew that if you needed help, it would be provided. If you required support, it would be forthcoming. You did not need a word put in on your behalf. Your rights, your obligations and your entitlements were clearly laid down, clearly understood and accepted.

When you joined the army, you willingly turned your back on money and a life of luxury that you could perhaps have had, or at the very least hoped for, had you chosen another profession. You hoped that if you worked hard enough, passed your courses and sailed through your promotion examinations, you would one day – perhaps, and with luck – be sent out on a foreign course. It was assumed that merit alone would determine who would move ahead and who would remain behind. If you deserved it, the odd hard luck case notwithstanding, you came by it.

You made your way up slowly. Some who got cast aside, as sometimes happens in life, either chose to keep serving or put in their papers. When they came out on Civvy Street, they struggled. The pensions that came to them were token sums. If their children were still in school or college, it was only through backbreaking work that they managed to see them through. Not everyone managed, but they did not complain. Their years in the army had given them the strength to rough it out and to survive, their chin always up, head held high. I am sure there are many officers in the army of today who serve in the old tradition and share the old values but the general culture of this most honourable of professions has changed. And it has not changed for the better.

My brother Bashir Ahmad passed out from the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, in the First Graduate Course. Everyone on the course had at least a bachelor’s degree. Bashir had a master’s in political science, having come to Lahore after attending Amar Singh College, Srinagar.

Bashir lived in Ewing Hall as did his lifelong friend, Ejaz Azim, who joined the PMA with him. Bashir wanted to become a journalist and after his MA obtained a diploma in journalism from the Punjab University. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a friend of the family, wanted him to join the newly founded Pakistan Times but Bashir first wished to return home to Srinagar. The partition of India overturned everything and disrupted the lives of millions of families that had to move from one country to another. Our family found itself in Sialkot as refugees.

Pakistan was just months old and everyone was full of idealism and a sense of hope despite the devastation of division and the murder and mayhem it had let loose. In those heady days, Bashir decided to join the army. It was only years later that he felt a sense of disillusionment creep over him because of the moral decay he saw overtake the institution he had loved and fought under.

He sought early retirement as a brigadier in the middle seventies, having done more than his bit. Always proud of being a Punjab Regiment officer, he was one of the first to be seconded to the ISI, which was not the notorious agency then that it has since become. He also served in Military Intelligence and was based in Sialkot during the 1965 war where he was instrumental in picking up crucial intelligence relating to the Indian plan to launch the massive armour attack in Chowinda, a battle which, if lost, would have spelt disaster for Pakistan.

The hero of that battle was Brigadier Abdul Ali Malik, brother of the great General Akhtar Hussain Malik. Bashir also served as Brigadier Malik’s brigade major when he was commanding the 104 Brigade. These men were simple soldiers, men like Brigadier Muhammad Usman, another Punjab Regiment officer, of whom Bashir used to say, “You couldn’t pull rank on Usman. He wasn’t impressed. What impressed him was your character.”

Like Usman and General Malik and so many officers of his time, Bashir never built properties, or accumulated land or ran after money-spinning civilian jobs. He worked for several years with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and supervised the building of its offices in Garden Town, Lahore. The commission repaid him by declaring him redundant after it had no more use of him. When he died, except for one person, nobody from the commission turned up to condole. I suppose they were busy with their human rights work.

Bashir left just a few simple instructions. He wanted his old unit to bury him (that it did with exemplary efficiency and devotion) and he did not want his face to be shown to those who would come to mourn. I suppose he wanted them to remember him as he was before illness and the march of years overtook him. He now lies in a simple army graveyard in Lahore, along with many of his old comrades who, like him, lived to mourn the loss of a way of life they had loved.

Bush has said that though the US would look for a second resolution from the world body, as far as he is concerned it is neither necessary nor required. The massive worldwide anti-war protests have been pushed aside as expressive of a point of view different from that of the President who has said that he “respectfully disagrees” with those who came out to express their opposition to war

Washington is still trying to dig itself out of the snowstorm that is now being called the mother of all snowstorms. They may not like Saddam Hussein over here but it should at least be acknowledged that he has given the language a phrase that just about expresses it every time it is used. It was during the first Gulf war — it is to be assumed that there would soon be a second — that Saddam Hussein promised the United States “the mother of battles.”

As it turned out, it was not to be. The Iraqi army, including the “elite” Republican Guard threw in the towel without much of a fight. This time, the Iraqi leader hasn’t promised America the mother of battles, so one can only wonder what he has in mind. Increasingly, it is being speculated that since he has to go down, he would go down fighting.

What a shame that this country is being inexorably and against its will being led into war by a gaggle of leaders whose logic, sense of history, hold on sanity and regard for what the rest of the world thinks are frightening. There is no question now that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and put a government of Bush’s choice in Baghdad was taken long before the world had any inkling of it. Bush apologists have been claiming that the President took America’s case against Saddam Hussein to the United Nations, quite conveniently forgetting that he did so only after domestic and international pressure to go to the world body mounted. However, all along, the administration and its spokesmen, led by the Big Chief himself, have been dismissive of the United Nations.

No one has been left in any doubt that UN or no UN, second Security Council resolution or no second Security Council resolution authorising war, the invasion of Iraq flouting every rule in the book, defying all internationally observed conventions and proclaiming brute military force as is own justification will go through. Anyone who disagrees with Bush and his cabal of advisers is ridiculed. The amount of invective heaped on France for speaking its mind in the Security Council has few precedents in recent diplomatic history.

Bush has said that though the US would look for a second resolution from the world body, as far as he is concerned it is neither necessary nor required. The massive worldwide anti-war protests have been pushed aside as expressive of a point of view different from that of the President who has said that he “respectfully disagrees” with those who came out to express their opposition to war.

A letter from one Jim Bristow in San Francisco that appeared in the New York Times on February 20 said, “I for one am dismayed at President Bush’s dismissal of the protest marches around the world. According to your report, Mr. Bush said, ‘Size of protest — it’s like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.’ As a very narrowly elected president, he should be listening carefully to this country’s voters. If he did, he might consider that the unilateral action he is threatening in Iraq is likely to expand anti-American sentiment that will facilitate terrorist actions and impede American foreign policy for decades to come. As the leader of the world’s only remaining superpower, Mr. Bush should stop, look and listen to what the rest of the world is saying, too. Only then will he be able to bring the United Nations and the world to consensus on military action in Iraq.”

Another correspondent found it astounding that the President should call the millions who had gathered to protest as a “focus group” and no more, adding, “We are not deciding on a name for a toothpaste but on a policy that will change the world forever. Mr. Bush, as the president, elected by the people of this country, could at least feign interest in what we have to say.”

However, as Iqbal wrote, “Mard-e-nadaan par kalam-e-naram au nazuk bey-assar” or lost on the ignorant is advice, both soft and hard.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

No longer does anyone seem to have time or patience for the constant bickering between Pakistan and India that drones on like a worn-out gramophone record, needle stuck in the same groove. Fifty-three years, three wars and a lot of ill will later one would think that the two neighbours would be able to put aside their differences and call truce not only for the benefit of the billion-strong population of the Subcontinent but the four billion others around the globe.

The fault for the sorry state of Subcontinental affairs rests squarely with Pakistani and Indian governments, past and present. Quaid-i-Azam, a man of logic and cold reason, believed that once the contentious issue of who would rule whom after the British departed could be settled with the creation of two independent states. This, he held, would foster peace and goodwill between Muslims and Hindus. This did not happen and Jinnah died of a broken heart.

The partition of colonial India was accompanied by some of the bloodiest religious rioting in recorded history. And it is the ghosts from 1947 that continue to scare off healthy relations in the present day, post-Ayodhya and post-Gujarat. Why did the killings take place and on such a scale?

Explanations depend on which side one listens to. Saadat Hasan Manto got it right when he wrote: “I found it impossible to decide which of the two countries was now my homeland - India or Pakistan. Who was responsible for the blood that was being so mercilessly shed every day? (Every) question had different answers - the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer - but when you tried to look for truth, they were no help India was free. Pakistan was free. But man was slave in both countries to prejudice, religious fanaticism, bestiality and cruelty.”

In Simla in 1972, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said to Indira Gandhi that the world was tired of “our quarrels”. How long, he asked, were the two countries going to go knocking at the doors of foreign chancelleries complaining about each other? Mrs Gandhi, to her credit, saw the point and despite tremendous pressure from the opposition and her own party opted for a negotiated peace.

It is a great pity that the two countries moved not an inch forward after putting their signatures down on the Simla Accord. Simla met the same fate as the earlier Tashkent Accord behind which the then powerful Soviet Union had thrown all its authority. Another missed opportunity was 1962. Those who argue Pakistan should have taken advantage of India’s “helplessness” and annexed Kashmir are wrong. Even if this had happened the gains would have been short lived.

One need only go to the Wagah-Atari border to witness firsthand the hatred and ugliness that lie at the heart of official Pakistan-India relations. The end-of-the-day black opera that soldiers of both countries stage while hundreds of civilians on either side watch with the same fascination they would a nest of cobras in full venomous fury puts out a clear message: the hatred is mutual and deep seated. The exaggerated gestures, overdone drill, flaunting of weapons, thumping of jackboots, banging of gates, arrogant lowering and folding of flags make one’s skin crawl. If His Heaviness wants to be taken seriously, perhaps he should consider immediately banning the ceremony on the Pakistan side. India will have no option but to follow suit.

And this brings me to the current expulsions of Pakistani diplomats by India and Indian diplomats by Pakistan. It is pathetic that things should have come to a point where the two governments are unable to even tolerate each other’s diplomats who, everyone knows, are like garden variety snakes, fearsome in appearance but quite harmless.

A former American diplomat of my acquaintance who has served in the subcontinent for many years and speaks the language told me on his return from Islamabad and New Delhi a month ago that Indo-Pakistan relations have never been worse. The Indian position remains unchanged-unless Pakistan ends all cross-border activity into Kashmir, there can be no talks. Pakistan says it has done so when in reality it has not done so.

Not quite. With satellites going over our skies every 90 minutes, don’t we realise that those to whom we lie with a straight face have the capability of photographing objects as small as four inches in diameter from the stratosphere. India and Pakistan must abandon the step-by-step approach they have followed since 1947. It simply does not work. They must also take the conduct of mutual relations out of the hands of bureaucrats at their home ministries, intelligence agencies and foreign offices. What we need are quantum jumps that only politicians can order. It is time for them to act.

Here is His Heaviness’s chance to leave his imprint on history by making friendship with India his only task. He should draw inspiration from the late Prime Minister Junejo who signed the Geneva peace accords that ended the war in Afghanistan despite General Zia-ul-Haq’s bitter opposition. As a first step, no Indian should need a visa to come to Pakistan and no Pakistani should need a visa to go to India. Were that to happen, the basic chemistry of India-Pakistan relations would undergo a change overnight. The people of the two countries want friendship. Why are the governments standing in their way?

This is a regular weekly column filed from Washington DC.

The great irony of the predicament in which the world’s Muslims find themselves today is that those who speak in their name are, in the words of the late Eqbal Ahmed, an “armed minority.” The face of Islam that the west sees is not its true face. The fierce hate-laden invective that this minority and its implacable followers inflict on the world’s “infidels”, and those whom Osama bin Laden calls the “crusaders”, is foreign both to Islam’s spirit and the vast majority of its followers around the world. A small number of militants has hijacked Islam and pressed it into the service of a convoluted worldview.

It is this version of militant Islam that is projected on the world’s television screens and splashed across its newspapers. It is no wonder then that to the ordinary person in a western country, this brand of Islam appears as the only Islam there is.

When you point this out to an average American, Englishman or Italian, he feels justified in asking what prevents the majority of Muslims who are tolerant of other faiths from speaking up. Why have they abandoned the stage in favour of a militant and reactionary minority of religious zealots who not only advocate but practise violence, they ask. And that is a fair question. Increasingly, Muslims living in the west, no less than those living here, have come to realise that it is time they stood up and spoke with courage and conviction. If they allow themselves to remain confined to the corner to which the zealots have driven them, they will do irreparable damage to their religion and themselves.

Starting with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic “revolution” in Iran, the journey of militant Islam has taken us through the slaughterhouses of the FIS in Algeria and the medieval tyranny of Taliban Afghanistan. With the blowing up of the US embassies in East Africa and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the clock can be said to have come full circle. Because of a small number of misguided, ignorant men and their distorted understanding of Islam, which has a timeless message of peace and love, today the world’s one billion Muslims find themselves the object of hostility and distrust. I doubt if all the ill-wishers, enemies and detractors of Islam, both past and present, could have hit upon a better plan to isolate Muslims and turn the rest of the world against them than what Osama bin Laden, and those sharing his morbid thinking, have managed to do. It is time for the true and reasonable voice of the Muslims to be raised and heard.

There are enough Muslim scholars working and writing both here and in the west who have begun to do just that. One such person is our own Dr Riffat Hasan from Lahore who has been teaching at the University of Kentucky for several years. Recently, she seems to have had a run in with Dr Farhat Hashmi, she of the richly-endowed Al-Huda Centres and Asma Jehangir. What angered Dr Hashmi and those who share her retrogressive thinking was Riffat Hasan’s fresh and rational approach to Islam and its holy book.

In a recent interview, Riffat Hasan made a number of telling points on the present situation in which the Muslims of the world find themselves. She said the Muslim reluctance to start a debate had to do with the intellectual decadence that had set in over the years. The tradition of intellectual critique of Islam’s first 300 years had been lost. She said the middle of the Islamic community was occupied by a silent majority, adding, “This is where the moderates are; this is where the progressives are, and the place from where the answers are going to eventually come. Right now, this silent majority is in a state of paralysis and dormancy.”

Riffat Hasan’s position on the Holy Quran is worthy of note and answers many questions that people are often afraid to ask. She said her position on the Holy Quran was that it is a sacred text of divine origin but being a text it is made up of words and each word has a root and multiple meanings. “Theoretically it means that everything in the Quran is capable of being interpreted in many ways.” This, she explained, “involves a methodology called hermeneutics … In order to know the meaning of a word, we have to see what it meant in 7th century Hijaz, not what it means today.” She spoke of an “ethical criterion” which means that no Quranic text can be used as a means to perpetuate injustice in any way, since the God of Islam and the Holy Quran is a just God.

Riffat Hasan had some enlightening comments on the recent “epidemic” spread of the practice or fashion of women donning hijab. She said, “The word hijab means curtain. The law of hijab laid down in Surah Nur applies equally to men and women. ‘Lower your gaze and guard your modesty.’ The Quran puts a lot of emphasis on dignity, elevating human beings, calling them the children of Adam and putting them above the rest of Allah’s creations. (The Quranic injunction) is not restricted to the dress code, it includes the way you talk, walk and how you conduct yourself in public space. The message is to be mindful of your human dignity.”

Riffat Hasan explained that a major part of the Quran refers to the conflicts of that time, which are basically references and not principles. “They have to be read in a certain way and are meant for our instruction,” she added. One particular verse which has been put to increasing use recently to paint the Muslims as intolerant of the followers of other religions was explained thus by Dr Hasan, “Where it says in the Quran ‘Take not the unbelievers as your friends,’ today this has been turned into a principle. It is not a principle and was revealed in a certain context. How can such a principle be for all times? In several verses, Allah has referred to the Ahlal Kitab – people of the Book – and given them a lot of importance. People who pick Quranic verses out of context have twisted the verse. In any case, Jews and Christians are not unbelievers.” She went on to add that the Quranic reference to ‘ kafirin’ and ‘ munafiqin’ did not translate into Jews and Christians, a translation that has been superimposed upon these two words by the ignorant and the bigoted.

One can only wish more power to Riffat Hasan’s pen because hers is the kind of voice that the west, no less than Muslim peoples, needs to hear.

This is a regular weekly column filed from Washington DC.

The United States believes that Pakistan has a long and consistent record of failing to tell the truth on basic issues. All through the 1970s and the 1980s, successive governments in Islamabad lied about the country’s nuclear programme. Other countries perhaps would have done the same in similar circumstances

Many people in Pakistan wonder what it is that ails the United States as far as Pakistan is concerned. All kinds of theories and explanations are on offer. It is the Grand Global Jewish conspiracy at work. America hates all Muslims and has decided to liquidate their economic and military power. Because Pakistan is a “nuclear power” (as if the possession of a few devices can turn a poor country into a nuclear “power”), the American-Jewish lobby is determined to destroy it. India has convinced America that Pakistan must be neutralised.

All these explanations have a grain of truth in them but none of them is entirely true, something their adherents simply refuse to accept. The finality with which one or more of these explanations or theories are offered admits of no debate. Those who proclaim these views often cite “inside” information. On occasions, even divine explanations are offered. The facts, as often happens, do not lie in the black and white area that most of us inhabit and according to which we judge the world.

The United States believes that Pakistan has a long and consistent record of failing to tell the truth on basic issues. All through the 1970s and the 1980s, successive governments in Islamabad lied about the country’s nuclear programme. Other countries perhaps would have done the same in similar circumstances. Pakistani officials lied because they felt it was necessary to do so in the national interest. And looking back, they may have been right. However, that set a certain tradition. The Americans have believed since then that nothing the Pakistanis say on a given subject can be taken at its face value.

The late Lt. Gen. Ejaz Azim who was our US ambassador during the Reagan years told me that on one of his visits to Washington, Foreign Minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan and he were shown a detailed model of the Kahuta facilities after they had both denied in an earlier meeting that Pakistan was making a bomb. The Sahibzada, always the suave diplomat, said without batting an eye that these were technical matters and only the experts knew about things. As they were getting into their car, he said to the ambassador, “Ejaz, paseena aa gya.”

Pakistan consistently underplayed or denied its role in the formation, training and equipping of the Taliban militia. It continued to insist that it had very little influence with the movement and could only offer its leaders advice. Pakistan’s envoys lost no opportunity to sell the Taliban regime to the West as made up of simple Muslims who had brought peace and security to Afghanistan. I recall Abdul Sattar, General Pervez Musharraf’s foreign minister, lecturing the Americans and the Canadians to “engage with the Taliban” who were good people. The Pakistan army and its agencies in the meanwhile continued to help the Taliban as they became more and more radical. There was no resistance in Islamabad to the rise of Osama bin Laden’s influence and the intensification of his “jihadi” actions. We looked the other way as our misled youth crossed the border to “fight the infidels.”

When the crunch came after 9/11. General Musharraf took no more than five minutes to keel over. This instantaneous conversion pleased the Americans but in no way did it increase their trust of Pakistan. After the attack on the Indian parliament, General Musharraf promised once and for all to end cross-border activity into Kashmir. The US is convinced that he has not done so, either because he does not really wish to or because there are powerful elements around him that would not let him. Similarly, Islamabad’s velvet glove handling of radical leaders and their organisations does not go unnoticed in Washington. The strong emergence of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal is also attributed to the General’s ambivalent policies. Neither is Washington satisfied with Pakistan’s nuclear command and control structure and has serious misgivings about the credentials of some in its nuclear establishment. Pakistan’s deal with North Korea involving nukes for nuclear know-how is taken for granted in Washington. Islamabad’s assurance that there would be no more of it is met with scepticism.

It is time Pakistan came to realise that it cannot play both sides of the street, nor does the world owe it a living.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

 (Daily Times)

The registration issue was blown out of all proportion in Pakistan, with the Urdu press, as usual, going to town with it. I sometimes wonder if it is possible to write about anything in Urdu except in the most emotional terms

No one should blame Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri for having failed to get Pakistan off the hook insofar as the registration of those of its citizens who fall into certain categories is concerned. No doubt the temptation to do so would be strong as was evident from a cartoon in an Urdu newspaper that showed a tree with an onlooker describing it as devoid of fruit, much like the foreign minister of Pakistan in the United States.

It is enough that unlike the establishment he heads, Kasuri made no bones about how he and his countrymen felt about the registration requirement. He also stressed to his American hosts that regardless of the conditions Pakistanis were now obliged to fulfil, they must be treated with dignity. Another point that he made emphatically was that there should be no large-scale deportations of those declared unwelcome as any such action would have damaging implications for the US-Pakistan alliance.

The registration issue was blown out of all proportion in Pakistan, with the Urdu press, as usual, going to town with it. I sometimes wonder if it is possible to write about anything in Urdu except in the most emotional terms. One has to admit that Urdu is a language that lends itself easily to hyperbole and exaggeration. Understatement is not one of its strengths as it is of English. Since there are more columnists in our country than is good for anyone’s health (and I include myself without hesitation as one of the tribe), almost every one of them took a shot at the registration issue. For one thing, it was easy to deal with, since all one had to do was to denounce the perfidious, ungrateful, faithless Americans who could not tell a frontline state from Bill Clinton’s late lamented dog Buddy.

Why is it that when we write about the United States and its relations with Pakistan, we choose to employ language that would be more appropriate to a love affair gone sour? America is portrayed as a bewafa mahboob, and the story of US-Pakistan relations as one of a love betrayed. The same kind of thinking has been at work over the registration issue. To past betrayals has now been added this spanking new one. Statement after statement, column after column, comment after comment has lamented that Pakistan, the old faithful and a “frontline” state and ally to boot in the war on Al Qaeda, has once again been left waiting at the altar.

We should be clear as to what the registration issue is and what it is not. Illegal Pakistanis living in the United States, namely those who entered the country through non-conventional routes or means and without a visa, are not covered by the registration requirement. At least not so far. Only those Pakistani males over the age of 16 who entered the country on a visa before October 2002 and would be here beyond March are required to present themselves at the nearest immigration office within certain given dates. A large number of these men has been waiting for a decision on their change-of-status applications. The Pakistan government has been assured that they would not be deported unless their cases are finalised. Those ordered deported would have the option to appeal the decision, something that would take some time. In other words, it is not that there are American C-130s waiting outside the Department of Justice to load Pakistani deportees for a non-stop flight to Islamabad.

Those who finally end up being deported would have had sufficient time and opportunity to make their case.

In effect, there should be no panic, either here or in Pakistan. When you enter a country illegally or stay beyond your visa limit, you are taking a chance. If you are lucky, you may never be found out, or you may become legal, say, by marrying an American citizen or finding a sponsor-employer. Or you may find yourself not two steps ahead of the law but right into its hands like a lofted hit over midwicket that falls safely into those of a fielder. In other words, let’s not blame Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri though his name, if translated, reads Mr Blameworthy.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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