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Harold Pinter said at a recent peace rally in London that the United States was a “monster out of control.” To which I add, “but a kind-hearted and well-meaning monster”

Since the September 11 attacks, the American media, spearheaded by television news networks, and aided and abetted by politicians, church leaders and other influential groups, has managed to convince the average Joe in this country that “they hate us.” The “they” refers to the world’s Muslims. That this is not true does not, of course, matter because truth has little to do with what people believe or what they are made to believe. People believe what they think happened, not what actually happened.

Thanks to this massive disinformation onslaught, the average American today believes that Muslims hate Americans. And why do they hate Americans? “Because they are resentful of our democracy and our power,” one is told. This is stuff and nonsense because apart from being untrue, it is malicious. Not only Muslims but people from all over the world, especially its less affluent parts, like Americans dream of having the choices and opportunities available to them. They admire American democracy and its great institutions. At the same time, they have learnt from experience that American democracy, despite claims to the contrary, is one commodity that the United States has not considered worthy of export to developing countries. I need not labour the point by listing all the unlovely regimes, including several of our own — and let’s not forget the present one — that have been kept in harness by one US administration after another.

There is something simplistic about Americans. They wear their patriotism on their sleeve and they brandish that sleeve in the world’s face, often in the form of a clenched fist, without realising that it is not the most effective way of gaining popularity or making a point. Every human being has an ego and so has every country. However, no country in the world proclaims its greatness and its divinely ordained destiny with the frequency and the stridency of the United States. From President George W Bush down, everyone here declaims that America is “the greatest country in the world.” America indeed is great but the insensitivity, the lack of good taste, the arrogance and the unself-consciousness with which this declaration is made morning, noon and night most non-Americans find sickening.

Guter Wein lobt sich selbst, says a German proverb — “good wine praises itself” — and that should be that. But not in America. Some of the resentment the world feels sometimes when dealing with America and Americans is this very characteristic of theirs. And it is not new. Rudyard Kipling lived in America for a few years at the end of the 19th century. While there was much about the country and the people that he loved, he was irritated by “the relentless assurances that Americans seemed to require about their country’s incomparable virtue,” Simon Schama wrote in the New Yorker last week. The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun who lived in America in the 1880s was troubled by this as well. As Schama puts it, “Something ominous seemed to be hatching in America; a strapping child monster whose runaway physical growth would never be matched by moral or cultural maturity.”

Hamsun wrote, “It is incredible how naively cocksure Americans are in their belief that they can whip any enemy whatsoever. There is no end to their patriotism; it is a patriotism that never flinches, and it is just as loudmouthed as it is vehement.” Schama notes that “too often, the moral rhetoric of American diplomacy has seemed to Europe a cover for self-interest.” He hits the nail on the head when he observes that “in the present crisis, American democracy has let itself be represented as American despotism.” Harold Pinter said at a recent peace rally in London that the United States was a “monster out of control.” To which I add, “but a kind-hearted and well-meaning monster.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Looking for news in an Urdu newspaper is like chasing a black cat in a dark jungle in the middle of the night or, if you prefer daylight, like looking for a needle in a haystack. It goes without saying that the chances of finding that black cat, that lost needle are somewhat higher than catching the continuation of a page one story on the inside pages.

Elsewhere in the world, newspaper editors decide each evening what the most important stories of the day are. They then decide which ones, in terms of significance or public interest, deserve to be on the front page and which ones should go on the inside pages. They also determine what display and placement each story deserves.

These are time-tested, universally observed practices, learnt out of experience and based on common sense. For some reason that one is unable to fathom, our Urdu newspapers decided some years ago to do away with these practices and go in for what someone recently described as “ khabroon ka Juma bazaar” (a thrift-market melee of news). What happened?

Those who began to read Urdu newspapers in the last two decades would find it hard to believe that there was once a time when the front page of the morning daily did not leap out at them like a bat out of hell. There used to be five to six stories on the front page, more than half of them beginning and ending either on the front page or on the front and back pages. Others were continued on one of the inside pages. Finding your way through a newspaper was easy.

All that has changed. It was the newspaper that claims the largest circulation that started this. Since no one has offered an explanation for this new theory of layout so far, one can only hazard a guess as to the reasons that led to it. Was it the view of the initiators of this practice that the average reader wants to know at one glance what the previous day’s important and unimportant developments have been, something that could best be achieved by placing everything out front?

The average size of a newspaper page is around 23 inches by 16.5 inches. Now if you are trying to put thirty to forty stories on the front and back pages, obviously you are not going to be able to print any of them in full. The result being that barring the headline and sub-headlines the main body of the story has had to be taken inside. The number of stories placed on the front and back pages has become so large that it has forced newspapers to put numbers on them.

Another practice that has since been adopted by every Urdu newspaper is the use of several sub-headlines or decks, the idea being that the salient points of a story should be conveyed to the reader through these multi-tiered captions. Consequently, the average reader now looks at the headlines and sub-heads alone and does not bother looking for the rest of the story buried somewhere on an inside page. If one of the duties of a newspaper is to inform and educate its readers, then it needs to be pointed out that the average Urdu newspaper reader today only sees the world in headlines, unaware of details. And it is the details that count.

Initially, Urdu newspapers elsewhere in the country ignored the new “jungle layout” but since the real design and layout editors of our newspapers are the hawkers, before long they persuaded editors that for the sake of sales, they had to do what the “first” newspaper had done.

The readers were never surveyed which is small wonder because they have always been treated as captives with serious deficiencies in the brain department. Had a serious, scientific effort been made to ask the readers what they wanted, they would surely have voted against this mindless and ungainly technique of communicating news.

Things have reached a point where every time you pick up an Urdu newspaper, you get a headache. After a few minutes of trying to decipher what the day’s issue contains, you become convinced that you need to upgrade your reading glasses. It is a strain on the eye and given all the other strains that we have to put up with, this one we could well do without.

Another practice that Urdu newspapers favour is the headline printed in reverse – that is white type on a black background, not black type on white. It is a known and established fact that reading white on black is difficult and strains the eye. Research done by advertising agencies has shown that if you print the same text side-by-side, one in reverse and one normal, the preponderant majority of readers would opt for the latter. Unless the Urdu press has some kind of an arrangement with Pakistan’s eye doctors and opticians, headlines in reverse make no sense.

Another specialty of the Urdu press has been printing scissor-ed and pasted-together pictures. Mr A, for instance, is shown addressing a meeting. We see him from the front and the audience he is addressing is also seen from the front. The two pictures have been pasted together and printed as one. In other words, you are being shown a physical impossibility.

Another favourite is the printing of tiny talking heads in one long, horizontal row. If a conference has been addressed by twenty people, the newspaper considers it obligatory to show us the severed heads of all twenty, their mouths open. This Urdu original has now taken root in the English press as well.

Here I am looking at an Urdu newspaper. It carries thirty-three stories on page one, not one of which begins and ends there. There are nineteen stories on the back page, not one of which ends where it started. By way of comparison, here is the Washington Post. It has only six stories on the front page, and only one on the back page. The ones out front are on Iraq and, because of their length, have had to be carried inside. The one on the back page begins and ends on that page.

Could this be a conspiracy by America’s spymasters?

Dr Javed Iqbal, whose recently published autobiography has come in for a good deal of praise, complains that he has never been seen in Pakistan as someone in his own right while outside the country he has been judged on the merit of his own legal and scholarly work.

In Pakistan, Dr Iqbal has not been allowed to move out of his father, Allama Iqbal’s great shadow. And this is something that has bothered him all his life, as it should. In that sense, his autobiography is like a coming out, a declaration of independence.

It is not easy being the son of the Allama whose colossal presence hangs over Pakistan spiritually, politically, and above all, poetically. The temptation to judge the son against the father is understandable though unfair. Javed Iqbal’s attempts to break out have not been viewed kindly even by those to whom he has been personally close.

Dr Iqbal recalls a ceremony to honour journalist Majid Nizami in Lahore last year. When it came his turn to speak he declared himself a liberal and Mr Nizami a conservative and said the line was increasingly blurred between the two camps. Mr Nizami’s response was pungent: “I am no more a conservative than Javed Iqbal is a liberal. The truth is that Javed Iqbal is angry at having been born into the Iqbal household. What is more, he has never stopped trying to outshine his father.”

Dr Iqbal reserved his retort for the book. He writes, “I am not angry at having been born into the Iqbal household nor to have been born as his son. However, I am angry (with) those of Iqbal’s admirers who, while disagreeing with his ideas, want to slot me as the ‘son of Iqbal’. They resent my attempts to step out of this “frame”. When I go abroad, I am recognised as Javed Iqbal but I consider it my misfortune that in my own country, I am nothing more than ‘Iqbal’s son’. When in 1977, the federal government purchased my home Javed Manzil to set up an Iqbal Museum, my two young sons asked me what was going to become of them now. I told them, ‘you will be put into two separate bottles and placed here as decoration pieces.’ They wanted to know what would become of me. ‘Children, I am already in a bottle,’ I replied.”

Autobiographies are seldom written in Pakistan. Honest autobiographies almost never. And this is what makes Javed Iqbal’s book – Apna Giraibaan Chawk – a welcome rarity. It takes a great deal of self-confidence and honesty to write about one’s youthful escapades and to furnish pictorial evidence thereof. Why the mullahs are quiet so far and have not called for proceedings to be initiated against the author under Hudood laws is hard to understand. I suppose, given time, they will come up with something. (After all, a suit has already been filed already against cricket star Wasim Akram for plugging liquor on Indian television.)

The book concludes on a letter from the son to the father, his second – the first being one he wrote in 1932 at age seven asking the Allama to bring home a gramophone from England. (The child was instead gifted the famous verses: Mera tareeq ameeri nahin gharibi hai …) Adult Javed Iqbal’s questions to his father are at the heart of Pakistan’s dilemma as an Islamic nation-state. He asks his father to reconcile his opposition to territorial nationalism and his acceptance of Islam and nationalism in a Muslim majority state with the obligations of a Muslim minority in a non-Muslim majority state. He also questions the Allama’s concept of an Islamic state. An Islamic state, Dr Iqbal maintains, has never existed, though it could be an ideal to strive for.

Gen Zia-ul-Haq and his “Islamisation” drive are subjected to withering criticism in the book. Dr Iqbal writes, “On his way out, Bhutto left us with certain ‘gifts’ that damaged the Quaid’s liberal Islamic welfare state. Reactionary religious elements imprisoned inside a bottle by the grand personality of the Quaid were let loose and what was left of Pakistan became a nursery for localism, religious hatred and sectarian prejudice.

“The fact is that collectively we have been unable to comprehend the real meaning of such terms as ‘modern’, ‘liberal’, ‘Islamic’, ‘welfare’ and ‘democratic’. While we claim to be modern, in our heart of hearts we are conservative. We pretend to be liberal but we are actually caught up in the quicksand of conformism, retrogression and sectarianism, unable to free ourselves of these shackles. In reality, we are neither liberal, nor democratic nor welfare-minded. I would say that we are not even Islam’s true followers. That is why Pakistani Islam has failed to cement national unity. We do not deserve to qualify as the Millat-i-Islamia. We are nothing more than a rabble of Muslims made up of different groups, nationalities and tribes.”

Dr Iqbal laments the fact that Zia’s “Islamisation” failed to have any effect on Pakistan spiritually or morally. In fact, in its wake, heinous crimes multiplied especially those against women, some of them without precedent. For instance, in the Punjab there were two cases where women’s bodies were dug up from their graves and dishonoured. The Sharia Court was at a loss to decide if the offence committed was adultery or not. Women and young girls were stripped naked and paraded through the streets while the men danced the bhangra around them. The only thing that the “Islamic” reforms of Zia emphasised was brutal physical punishment. The real issues, such as abject poverty, were never addressed, he points out.

In his letter to his father, Javed Iqbal writes, “How I wish I were one of those young men who could have helped bring into being the “Islamic” state you dreamed about. But my generation that saw Pakistan’s birth, its break-up and its difficult journey is the generation of the disappointed. I am aware of my shortcomings. I failed to become a good painter, a good writer, a good politician, a good lawyer, a good judge, a good husband and a good father. The comfortable life that I have lived is due not to my efforts but those of my wife. I could not even manage to shower the affection upon my children that they deserved.

“You will recall that on the night you died, when I entered your room, you did not recognise me and asked, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Javed,’ I replied. You said, ‘Let’s us see you become Javed.’ I regret that I failed you as I was unable to become the ‘Javed’ you wanted to see me become. And how could I have, because hadn’t you yourself written that you tremble when you think of the times in which our generation was born.”

Only a great man could have written this. So let me assure Javed Iqbal that he did not disappoint his father or the countless others who admire him. As for Mr Nizami, let me hold my peace. Discretion is the better part of valour.

The US press and media are independent but since the campaign against Iraq began, this independence has been little more than a licence to be unapologetically partisan and one-sided. Seen from this perspective, the American media has failed the test of being fair, balanced and accurate

After the guns have fallen silent and the world has begun to recover from the maelstrom into which it has been thrown by President Bush’s decision to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein, it will be time for a stock-taking. When that moment comes, the mainstream American media will be found to have made a major contribution to the creation of the hysteria that enabled the President and his close advisers, all un-elected, hand-picked men with a certain worldview, to defy the will of the international community and destroy one of the pillars of the international order though the exercise of pre-emption.

As the admirable Edward Said — whose writings are unacceptable to any major national newspaper in this country — pointed out in a recent piece published in Al Ahram, Cairo, and reproduced in an earlier issue of this newspaper, “The media has simply become a branch of the war effort. What has entirely disappeared from television is anything remotely resembling a consistently dissenting voice. Every major news channel how employs retired generals, former CIA agents, terrorism experts and known neo-conservatives as ‘consultants’ who speak a revolting jargon designed to sound authoritative but in effect supporting everything done by the US form the UN to the sands of Arabia. There are no anti-war voices to read or hear in any of the major medias of this country, no Arabs or Muslims who have been consigned en masse to the ranks of the fanatics and terrorists of the world, no critics of Israel, not in public broadcasting, not in the New York Times, the New Yorker, US News and World Report, CNN and the rest. When these organisations mention Iraq’s flouting of 17 UN resolutions as a pretext for war, the 64 resolutions flouted by Israel with US support are never mentioned … This makes a total mockery of taunts by Bush and others that the UN should abide by its own resolutions.”

An independent group which monitors the mainstream US media has pointed out that network newscasts, dominated by current and former US officials, largely exclude Americans who are sceptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq. Between January 30 and February 12, out of the 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories about Iraq on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, more than two-thirds or 267 were Americans, of which 75 per cent were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official US sources expressed scepticism or opposition to the war, but in very vague terms. He said, “Once we get in there how are we going to get out, what’s the loss for American troops are going to be, how long we’re going to be stationed there, what’s the cost is going to be?”

When both US and non-US guests were included, 76 per cent were either current or retired officials. “Such a predominance of official sources virtually assures that independent and grassroots perspectives will be underrepresented. Of all official sources, 75 percent were associated with either the US or with governments that support the Bush administration’s position on Iraq; only four out of those 222, or 2 percent, of these sources were sceptics or opponents of war.” Half of the non-official US sceptics were interviewed on the street, with five of them not even identified by name. Only one source represented an anti-war organisation. Of all 393 sources, only three, which is less than one per cent, were identified with organised protests or anti-war groups.

The US press and media are independent but since the campaign against Iraq began, this independence has been little more than a licence to be unapologetically partisan and one-sided. Seen from this perspective, the American media has failed the test of being fair, balanced and accurate. As for the major newspapers, the only exception has been the New York Times, while the Washington Post, once the flag-bearer of liberalism, has belittled itself by calling for war against Iraq every other day. Singly, it has spread more venom against Iraq and the UN than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice put together.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The other day I asked an old friend how life was treating him. “I am doing fine, thanks to my three Ms,” he replied. “Three Ms?” I asked. “Yes, memories, music and martinis.” I consider that an answer equivalent of game, set, and match.

In the same area falls Abul Hasan Naghmi’s book Ye Lahore Hai (This is Lahore), published a few weeks ago by Sang-e-Meel, an evocative account of Lahore and life at Radio Pakistan as it once was. Naghmi, who has lived in America for over thirty years, physically that is, because his heart is still in Lahore which he invariably calls “that beloved city of mine”, made his name when sound radio was king as Bhai Jan Naghmi, co-host of the Sunday morning children’s programme with Apa Shamim, in real life the silver-voiced Mohni Hamid, mother of Kanwal Naseer (nee Hamid).

Naghmi spent nearly seventeen years at the Lahore station of Radio Pakistan and wrote hundreds of scripts for plays, talk, and feature programmes. His voice was at one time recognised by every child who religiously listened to the Sunday morning show. The programme, like most programmes in those days, used to go live, a high-risk enterprise when there was a roomful of children, all wanting to read a poem, tell a story or share a joke. Once, recalls Naghmi, at the height of the electoral fight between Ayub Khan and Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, two children read out a poem but before moving away from the microphone, shouted “Maadar-e-Millat Fatima Jinnah zindabad”.

The young Naghmi crossed over into Pakistan, all by himself, from his native Lucknow, carrying nothing much besides a letter from Mirza Jaffar Ali Khan Asar Lukhnawi in the name of Shaukat Thanwi asking him to help the lad get going. Shaukat, whose programme Qazi Ji had once counted even Mahatma Gandhi among its listeners, was just a staff artist, people on a contract without any benefits. How could he help the starry-eyed youngster who was confident of his literary abilities? But Naghmi was determined to get into radio, and he did.

The Lahore station of All India Radio was established in 1937 and the venue chosen was Sir Fazle Hussain’s house near Simla Pahari. That was where it stayed well into the 1960s when it moved to a new location, close to the old site. But to Naghmi the old station that no longer exists is still there. He writes, “People say that the old Lahore radio station is no longer around. Perhaps they are right, but as long as I am alive and as long as memory doesn’t forsake me, every brick of that structure will remain whole and in existence. The old place where it was once housed will never die.”

He adds: “Lahore may be just a city, but to me it is the never-ending story of feelings, events and traditions that are part of my being, circulating in my veins with my blood. Lahore is my heartbeat and when I say, ‘Ye Lahore Hai,’ I am really referring to myself because I am Lahore. Lahore is my home and the heart of that home is that piece of earth (near) Simla Pahari that the world once knew as the radio station. That piece of land will always remain green.”

Naghmi brings to life some of the great radio voices of our time. Here is Akhlaq Ahmed Delhavi, the legendary announcer. He is leaving for the day, having signed off, and he is wearing a solar hat. “Akhlaq sahib, this hat is worn as protection against sunstroke,” someone says. “Yes, but I am afraid of moon stroke.” Another person asks, “Akhlaq sahib, done your day’s duty?” “No, my duty begins now. So far, it was all entertainment. Now I will do the day’s shopping, then go home to answer my wife’s questions. My son Ainee would be asleep and I would have to induce myself to do the same.”

And here is the great Mahmood Nizami, the Lahore station’s regional director. Naghmi, in order to make ends meet – he was already married and had young children – worked for Zamindar which paid off and on and what it paid, well, it better remain unmentioned. It was Nizami who hired him as a staff artist and assured him that he would be able to make at least a couple of hundred a month. Naghmi was on cloud nine. He had arrived. Once Nizami decided to put a number on everything that the station owned so that it would be easier to do the yearly inventory. When ZA Bokhari, the director general, visited the station, he remarked that wherever he looked he found a serial number. “That is right,” Nizami replied, rubbing his bald head, “the painters, mistaking me also for radio property were about to paint a number on my scalp but I jumped out of my chair in time and ran off.”

Everyone worked for Radio Pakistan –Saadat Hasan Manto, Shaukat Thanwi, Mirza Adeeb, Sufi Tabbusum, Ashfaq Ahmed, A Hamid, Nasir Kazmi, Syed Razi Tirmazi, etc – and they were all underpaid staff artists. And then there was Lala Hafiz Javed who had lost his job at the All India Radio, Lucknow, because so mesmerised was he by a ghazal Akhtari Bai Faizabadi had just done singing that he announced on a live microphone, “Allah be praised. Your voice is like pure light. I cancel the next programme. Sing another ghazal.” Professor Ahmed Shah Bokhari, the director general, wasn’t amused. (I’d have given Lala, with whom I had the pleasure of working at the Pakistan Times in 1967-68, a double promotion.)

Naghmi writes movingly about Ustaad Amanat Ali Khan, one of his close friends. Here is a strange story that Amanat once told Naghmi. “I have seen Bageshwari with these two open eyes of mine and I have spoken to her,” he told Naghmi one day. “Bageshwari who?” Naghmi asked. “Look, all the ragas and ragnis also exist in human form, though you may or not may not see them. One night I was riding in a Tonga on my way to a concert when I noticed that an extremely beautiful woman, enticingly perfumed, ravishingly made-up, wearing gold and priceless diamonds, walking behind me. My Tonga was on a trot and it was not possible for any human being to keep pace with it but that lovely woman was walking right behind me in measured steps. ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘I am Bageshwari,’ she replied, ‘Tonight I have decided to smile on you. Sing Bageshwari tonight and your audience will be bewitched,’ she told me. And that’s exactly what happened. I sang Bageshwari and had them swooning in the aisles,” Amanat said.

As I write this, I have an old tape I have had for thirty years, with Amanat singing Bageshwari and I assure you, only a man on whom Bageshwari has smiled could have sung it with such breathless beauty. Times, of course, have changed.

Amanat Ali Khan died young but somewhere in another dimension, there is no question he is one with the goddess Bageshwari who had once smiled on him on the streets of Lahore.

I attended the annual convention of Pakistani doctors in New York where Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz made an impassioned appeal for funds. The auditorium was full and the ovation deafening. When those present were asked to raise hands and announce their pledges, there was a long silence

The expectations of Pakistanis settled abroad are often excessive from the country they have left behind. They demand things from the government that it may not be capable of delivering. They are the first to complain and the last to look at themselves uncritically. Ask any Pakistani living abroad what he thinks of the situation back home and he will deliver himself of the most negative thoughts.

I have lived abroad and in various parts of the world for over 30 years and few have been the occasions when I have heard anything good said about the country regardless of which government was then in office. This is, of course, not to say that our governments have not been bad and our management of our affairs not poor, if not downright incompetent. Governments and leaders of whom much was expected have often let us down. Graft has been the rule rather than the exception and merit has not always been its own reward as we were taught at school. Our defence and foreign policies, both the exclusive preserve of the Pakistan Army have led us into disaster more often than into the promised land. And yet, after all that is wrong and all that is negative is tabulated, there remains a large area that is robust and full of promise and possibility, something the average non-resident Pakistani often refuses to see or recognise.

The most prosperous community of Pakistanis is settled in the United States, and here I speak mainly of its legally admitted members who form the majority. There are thousands upon thousands of Pakistani engineers, technology experts, bankers, investment consultants and businessmen, each one of whom is worth several million dollars. They are spread across the length and breadth of the country and many of them move in exalted circles where they rub shoulders with senators and congressmen. The walls of their living rooms are lined with photographs which show them and their wives standing next to people whose faces we know only because of the television screen and the newspaper page. They are members of exclusive country clubs where they keep themselves trim by playing 18 holes at the weekend.

It was this rich community some years ago that a Pakistani ambassador approached in vain for a good cause. This is what happened. When the present foreign secretary Riaz H. Khokhar was ambassador to Washington, the US government informed all foreign embassies and missions that a new diplomatic enclave was being built in another part of the district where they would eventually have to move by constructing their own buildings. Pakistan’s embassy and the ambassador’s residence are located in the exclusive embassy row area. Both buildings though in a state of disrepair because of the tight-fisted policies of the finance ministry, are heritage properties worth millions. Their purchase by Pakistan’s first envoy M.A. H. Ishphahani was personally approved by the Quaid-i-Azam.

The government told Khokhar to sell one building to pay for the construction of the new chancery, but the ambassador was reluctant to do so because as he said, “We would never be able to buy such properties again. They would be beyond our reach.” He, therefore, decided to travel across the country in a bid to ask the community to contribute to the purchase of one of the buildings for the construction of a Pakistan House. He told me some years ago that there was no door on which he did not knock but while there was no shortage of emotion and good sentiment, they did not show him the colour of their money. In the end he gave up. Pakistani generosity is more evident when it comes to building mosques.

Those I do not include in the list of non-resident Pakistani Americans are those who work with their hands. They who have the least to give are the most generous. A few years ago when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appealed to overseas Pakistanis to contribute to the reduction of the foreign debt, in America at least most of the money came from poor Pakistanis who sell groceries, drive cabs and work in construction. I attended the annual convention of thousands of Pakistani doctors in New York where the then Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz made an impassioned appeal for funds. The late Dr Mahbubul Haq was also there to lend support. The auditorium was full and the ovation deafening. When those present were asked to raise hands and announce their pledges, there was a long silence. The few who raised their hands promised no more than a thousand or two thousand dollars. Sartaj Aziz retuned home in disappointment.

So next time you hear a rich Pakistani-American lecturing you on what you should do, remember what you read here.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

My friend recalled that when Mohammad Khan Junejo came to Washington, Gen. Ziaul Haq was top of the pops in Pakistan and his writ ran from one end of it to the other. He did not think there was any harm in letting the man everyone called “Jo-na-Janay” behind his back have a “chakkar” of Amreeka

Even the worst calamity is not without its bright spots, something that may once again come to pass if President Bush orders Iraq invaded. The devastation in the Middle East aside, it will mean that the forthcoming visit to Washington of His Heaviness the Prime Minister of Pakistan Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali will stand cancelled.

I wonder if anyone has told Mr Jamali that Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri — Mr Blameworthy in idiomatic English translation — is going to be a hard act to follow. Not only will the prime minister not be able to match the Kasuri visit in terms of duration, but those he meets will keep comparing his truncated sound bites with the Churchillian exuberance of his foreign minister.

As the foreign minister’s stay in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave went from one extension to the next, through no fault of his, it should be added, the ambassador A J Qazi is reported to have told an underling before collapsing into a chair, “Did you ever see a movie called ‘The Never Ending Story’?” “Yes sir,” replied the underling. “Well, lad, this is the Never Ending Visit.”

Kasuri set a record which like Wasim Akram’s 500 wickets is going to be hard to beat. He was interviewed 76 times by 76 different outfits and individuals, ranging from newspaper reporters, entire editorial boards, television networks, talk show hosts to freelancers looking for a good story that would buy them their groceries for the month. No woman, wrote the Bard, ever heard Mark Antony say the word no. No American interviewer, may it be added, watched Mr Blameworthy curl his lips and utter that two-letter word.

From what little we have seen or heard of the prime minister so far, he is a man of few words. As for his thoughts on the great issues of our time, were they to be written at the back of a postage stamp, there would still be space to jot down Miss Resham or Cousin Reema’s phone numbers. Should he take a lesson or two from his foreign minister on how to dazzle people? Will the lessons work? Fat chance they would, a disembodied voice tells me.

Someone who remembered the Junejo visit to Washington in July 1986 said to me Thursday afternoon as we sat in Dunkin Donuts drinking tea and munching one of their coconut-laced weight bombs, “Don’t underrate the prime minister. Remember he is a pol and pols may appear clueless but they are not. That is their camouflage.”

My friend recalled that when Mohammad Khan Junejo came to Washington, Gen. Ziaul Haq was top of the pops in Pakistan and his writ ran from one end of it to the other. He did not think there was any harm in letting the man everyone called “Jo-na-Janay” behind his back have a “chakkar” of Amreeka. But what happened? When Junejo returned, his entire chemistry had undergone a change. The first thing he did on return was to fire the indestructible Sahibzada Yaqub Khan who could tell the time in 18 languages and the truth in none. Zia couldn’t believe it.

He then went on to sack Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rehman as head of ISI, making him chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Zia protested, Junejo told him that he, Zia, could only appoint service chiefs, not others, which was correct. Zia found that hard to swallow but he did. It was Junejo who appointed Gen. Hamid Gul as ISI chief (big “mishtake” that). He also went on to put Generals from Mercs into Suzukis.

So what is the moral of the story? His Heaviness may not be able to outshine his foreign minister in the art of speaking or match his Sulka silk ties, Turnbull and Asser shirts and YSL suits, but if my name were Gen. Pervez Musharraf, I would be worried.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Since one of the most critical items in the Pakistan Survival Kit is the ability to get through to those who go around in chauffeur-driven cars paid for by the state, I am mean enough to confess that I am not displeased by a newspaper report that Mushahid Hussain (I hope he will drop the Syed after his name because‘sirraf naam hi kaafi hai’) is to be inducted into His Heaviness’s cabinet at the head of a division or ministry or department or whatever devoted to external publicity.

Mushahid, I have known since the late 1970s, when I had the great pleasure of paying him one hundred pound sterling in the form of a negotiable instrument in return for two articles written in long hand on the Polisario Front and what it was doing or not doing. Some time earlier, he had been eased out of his teaching post at the Punjab University since he was viewed as a dangerous libera. This was a bad reputation to have in the times of the General Amirul Momineen.

Mushahid had just returned from Morocco and Algeria and had waded through enough sand to last him a long time. I was at the time minding – thanks to the late Altaf Gauhar – the Third World Media feature service in London. We had one of the nicest addresses in town, being in the Haymarket off Piccadilly, Leicester Square and that pigeon-infested spot where Lord Nelson stands. I did not last long there, but that is another story.

My brother Bashir used to say that when you get into position in Pakistan, the first thing you do is become unavailable to your friends. Mushahid, I can state on the basis of experience, is an exception. In fact, once he is up there and close, he becomes more available than he was earlier, even to those who merely waste his time, drink his tea and make on-the-house long-distance phone calls from his office. I would also like to say that contrary to Admiral Cowasjee’s assertion, Mushahid Hussain is a dignified person, not a “ darbari.”

What I am at a loss to understand, however, assuming the newspaper report is correct, is why he would choose to head something called “external publicity.” When I met him in Islamabad in early February and asked him about newspaper reports that he would soon be returning to his old ministry of information, he touched his ears and said, “not in a hundred years. It is a crown of thorns I have no wish to wear again.”

Whosoever persuaded His Heaviness to set up a division or some such of external publicity was basing his or her recommendation on one of Pakistan’s oldest and most enduring myths, the myth being that our problems with the world are due to our poor publicity abroad. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Pakistan’s press officers and its missions work harder than those of most countries at selling their country. However, as the late David Ogilvey said, “You can’t sell a bad product no matter how good the packaging.” In our case, even the packaging is poor.

There is nothing wrong with Pakistan’s external publicity. It is Pakistan that things are wrong with. We have a bad image not because the world hates us and is keen to wipe us off the map but because we are bad ourselves. If you improve Pakistan, your image will improve correspondingly and so will, what His Heaviness has been told as, “external publicity.” Those who are sent out to sell Pakistan are so poorly equipped with the tools they need that they would be lucky to be told the time were they to ask for it on the street.

But first things first, as says the Bible and as said the motto of my old Sialkot college. A country’s image is a reflection of that country itself. If Pakistan has a bad image abroad today, that is because there are many, many bad things happening in Pakistan. First, we have had a military junta running us since 1999. In October last year, after emasculating the constitution without any legal or moral authority, the head of that junta declared himself President for five years. (I will always wonder why he did not say ‘forever’, because the way he carries himself about, he obviously thinks he is going be there forever). We have a civilian government and an assembly that are powerless when it comes to fundamentals like defence and foreign relations. We are viewed as the hotbed of Islamic extremism and two of our provinces are ruled by parties which are medieval. We are seen as one of the world’s main sponsors of terrorism and most people elsewhere believe that not only are Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar hiding in Pakistan but they are there because our permanent establishment has a soft corner for them. We are viewed as one of the most lawless states in Asia where there is little law and even less order.

Terrorists like Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Ramzi Yousuf were caught in Pakistan. Why there? Why not elsewhere? We also send a shiver down many a Western spine because it is generally believed that not only is our nuclear establishment infiltrated by death-wish jihadis but that the security of our nuclear assets is by no means foolproof. It is also believed that we have traded nuclear technology for nukes with that demented regime in North Korea. That is why we have a bad image which even a thousand diplomats and a hundred thousand press officers and Mushahid Hussain himself cannot change. The change has to come from within. The psychic has first to heal himself.

I have seen Pakistani missions and press officers operating abroad for many years and in many parts of the world and without exception they are poorly paid and poorly equipped. In 1976-77 when I myself served as press counsellor in London at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s direct orders, my “entertainment allowance” was $130 per month. You couldn’t even take anyone to lunch at a decent restaurant with that piddly sum. Ambassador Iftikhar Ali, a wise man and a wit, used to say, “if our wives did not know how to cook, that would be the end of our official entertainment.”

There is no need to set up a new division or department of external publicity as it would be naïve in the extreme. The problem, someone should tell His Heaviness, lies not outside but right inside Pakistan. As for Mushahid Hussain, despite the crown of thorns he does not wish to wear, it is the same crown of thorns that he should once again pick up and place on his head. I am sure the Farzand-e-Rawalpindi would be much happier at the Ministry of Culture with all those “film ishtars” including Cousin Reema just a phone call away.

Last week, in order to get my State Department press accreditation renewed, I had to go through a drill that did not exist earlier. I was fingerprinted and asked to sign a form or two I did not quite read, one of which I think sought authorisation to have my credit rating checked. Millions of others, no doubt, are being put through the same sort of thing

I no longer believe as I used to that a people get the government they deserve. The American people do not deserve George W Bush. They deserve a wiser, more humane leader of vision who, unlike the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, does not lead them into a war they do not want, a war that will bring about the destruction of Iraq and the destabilisation of the Middle East. It will snuff out the lives of many young, innocent Americans and it will end up damaging the United Nations beyond repair. It will also establish the principle of arbitrary preemption, emboldening any powerful state to militarily move against a smaller one it does not like or has a score to settle with.

Never in America’s history has the President of the republic been surrounded by such a blind, ill-advised, arrogant, insensitive and ignorant cabal of advisers as George Bush has picked up to be his eyes and ears. What an assortment we have here under one roof: from vice president Dick Cheney — a name more appropriate to a dick from a Raymond Chandler novel — to the warmonger defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice who may be able to play Chopin on the piano but is otherwise full of contempt for two-thirds of mankind.

Official America has gone paranoid. Not the America of the people who, as always, remain friendly, full of life, cheerful, ready to go out of their way to help, decent and God-fearing, but the cold humourless America that is being increasingly taken over by security agencies and men who put the handcuffs on you first and ask questions later. They may not be everywhere but most people that I know believe they are everywhere.

The world’s most relaxed society with its easygoing ways, its openness, its tolerance and its generousness to strangers is in danger of being changed because of a paranoid administration. The new Department of Homeland Security is a huge mistake because of its titanic size and the vast powers it has been invested with. Headed by a man with a tunnel vision and a humourless face, it will soon be running out of control, rough-riding over civil liberties and the great American freedoms that made this country unique.

These days all those with a foreign face and a foreign name are potential suspects. The other week ago, a friend of mine, a Pakistani-American, took a flight out of Washington. One look at the unfamiliar name on his American passport and he was asked to step aside for special scrutiny. When he returned, he was asked to move to one side and then made to go through a customs search, not because he had anything on him but because he had the wrong face and the wrong name. He had also come back from the wrong country, Pakistan. People are full of many such stories since 9/11.

Last week, in order to get my State Department press accreditation renewed, I had to go through a drill that did not exist earlier. I was fingerprinted and asked to sign a form or two I did not quite read, one of which I think sought authorisation to have my credit rating checked. Millions of others, no doubt, are being put through the same sort of thing. Security agencies should never be allowed to run with the bit in their mouth, because where an inch would do, they take a foot.

Just look at the road in front of the White House. It resembles a war zone with its concrete barriers and other obstacles manned by hawk-eyes agents and tough uniformed men. The same thing has happened to C Street that runs in front of the State Department.

One shudders to think what the war against Iraq will bring in its aftermath, not from outsiders but from snoops, sleuths and unsmiling men in black uniforms with listening devices tucked into their ears.

Come back Bill Clinton, all is forgiven.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Despite our repeated requests that we should be informed of any important visitors from Pakistan, no such information is ever shared. When a delegation comes for talks, for instance, we are not provided an opportunity to meet its members or be briefed by them. Instead an inane press release is e-mailed to us with phrases like “matters of mutual interest were discussed”

I only realised how low down in the Pakistani social register the profession of journalism and those who choose it as a means of making a living were placed, when after ignoring both good advice and wise counsel, I resigned from a civil service post to become a newspaper reporter. Those who said it was the right thing to do could be counted on the fingers of one hand. All others looked at me with great sympathy, said, “Tut, tut” and assured me that they had seldom heard of a more reckless act. Many of them were quite sure — one could see it in their eyes — that I wasn’t quite right in the head. Perhaps they were right, but right for the wrong reason.

I state this because every now and then one is reminded of the near contempt in which our elite holds journalists. And who among the elite are more elite than civil servants, a misnomer if ever there was one, since they are seldom civil and most certainly nobody’s servants, least of all the public’s which without being asked has been making it possible for them to strut about with their noses up in the stratosphere.

I bring this up because in recent months right here in Washington there have been enough reminders from the Embassy of Pakistan of how inconsequential our work is and how little we who write for newspapers matter. It is not a question of ego because when you go running around all day asking questions as reporters do, you do not have much of an ego left anyway as half the time your questions are not unanswered.

There is a small corps of correspondents writing for Pakistani publications in this city. With previous ambassadors, we were kept informed of what was going on. We were given background briefings and ambassadors welcomed calls even at the most inconvenient hour. If there were things they thought it would be impolitic to print, they would indicate what they were but ask us not to use the information. Not even once did anyone betray their confidence.

Since Mr Ashraf Jehangir Qazi came to Washington, it has been clear that not only have limitations been placed on any meaningful access to information, which it is the journalist’s legitimate right to have and the embassy’s prime obligation to provide, but that the orders to keep the shutters down are to be followed strictly. Despite our repeated requests that we should be informed of any important visitors from Pakistan, no such information is ever shared. When a delegation comes for talks, for instance, we are not provided an opportunity to meet its members or be briefed by them. Instead an inane press release is e-mailed to us with phrases like “matters of mutual interest were discussed.”

In the last six months, Ambassador Qazi has held just one or two briefings, the first when he arrived, when, in fact, he should have asked us to brief him because we had been here longer and unlike him knew our way around. Two recent instances of the embassy’s indifference are its failure to inform us of the visit here of the deputy chief of army staff Gen. Mohammad Yousuf and Christina Rocca’s visit to Pakistan last week. These instances are illustrative and by no means account for the times the embassy has kept us “out of the loop.”

Nine out of 10 times when you phone, especially in the mornings, it is not possible to speak to anyone in a responsible position. You are told, in the event the phone is picked up, that the saheb is in a meeting or not yet in. We are constantly struggling against a 10-hour time disadvantage in the mornings, that being the difference between US East Coast and Pakistan Standard Time. I think such studied indifference is pathetic and there can be no excuse for it. It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine how the average Jo looking for a consular service is dealt with by the embassy. The stories of the arrogance and misbehaviour with Pakistanis of the embassy’s Counsel General in San Francisco are too numerous to be reproduced here. New York is not much better.

The more one thinks about it, the more one is reminded of what the late Ambassador Iftikhar Ali used to say, “This is no way to run a railroad.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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