• Home
• About
• IN MEMORIAM 1934-2009
• Columns
• > Postcard USA
• > Private View
• Longer Pieces
• Books
• Photos
• Contact

As I write this, the President and his men, the smallest delegation ever brought by a Pakistani head of state to the United States and, perhaps, anywhere else, are winging their way to California where the weather remains heavenly the year round, though marred by the occasional earthquakes, which, hopefully, will hold their peace till the road show has departed the state’s golden shores.

From General Musharraf’s point of view, it has been a good visit. He has been shown much cordiality and the high and the mighty of this administration have paid him court, including Powell, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, the true axis of something if there was one. The General has been in his element. He moves and speaks confidently, with overflowing self-assurance and his clipped military manner and his natural take-no-prisoners operational style impresses the Americans who have a long tradition of plain-speaking politicians, a category in which General Musharraf can now be safely placed.

All the time the General was here, he appeared to be walking on cloud nine and he had good reason to do so. Neither the chief custodian of the mother of democracies, nor any of his deputies and enforcers, did so much as say boo to the General on the return of the state and government of Pakistan to civilian control. No one asked him to make a reasonable compromise with the politicians so that the ongoing constitutional crisis were resolved. The General told one gathering (I reported so many of them for this newspaper that I have lost the ability to remember one from the other) that the protesting politicians notwithstanding, the government was functioning. The budget had been passed, what enactments were needed were going through, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. So there.

Several things became clear during the visit, one being that those who were hoping for a grand national reconciliation in Pakistan could go on hoping because there was going to be no such thing. The General has decided that as long as he is around, neither Mian Nawaz Sharif nor Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto are going to be accorded the right of return. He referred to them repeatedly and in language that remained harsh and unforgiving. To him they were no better than plunderers who had had two chances each and who were not going to get a third on his watch. As for the anti-LFO crowd back home, he told one meeting that even if he took off his uniform fifty times, they won’t be satisfied. If he fulfilled all seventeen of their demands, they would come up with more, and then some more.

In other words, he and they were never going to smoke the pipe of peace. The armed forces were under his undisputed command and control and here he was, out of the country on a three-week trip, confident that he would go back and those who have removed governments in Pakistan would be out there in strength to salute him and welcome him back. Most military rulers do not risk staying away from their posts for more than a day or two. Why put temptation in the way of the ambitious? Some eyebrows were being raised here over a recent statement by General Aziz but the few people I spoke to said, “Perish the thought. He is no Ayub Khan and this chief is no Iskander Mirza.”

There was an ‘unofficial’ press delegation too, the result of a long-abandoned Musharraf policy of not footing the bill for the fourth estate on his foreign visits. The Pakistan embassy had strict instructions that no hotel room picked up for the scribes was to cost upwards of $100 (which made sense since their daily was just $130, admittedly a good deal of money back home, but not much in the New World). They were, therefore, banished to a lack-lustre place called Day’s Inn, across the Potomac in Arlington (not too far from the cemetery). However, during the days following, some of them managed to slip into rooms in the Four Seasons hotel where the President was staying. How that came to pass, I did not go into, all of them being my good friends.

There was one gentleman in the unofficial entourage whom I could not place. Some discreet inquiries revealed that he was famous in Islamabad as ‘Dr Kukri’. “Ah!” I said, because the penny dropped, “he is the gent who once plastered Islamabad with colourful banners and buntings extolling the greatness of General Musharraf on behalf of a Poultry Association.”

That at least proves one thing: the General may not like chicken but he does like chicken farmers; so maybe I am going to get myself a rooster or two and a number of their lady companions and declare myself a follower of ‘Dr Kukri’. It is time to join the winners.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

General Musharraf chose Kohat to announce that he did not accept the MMA version of Islam. A number of foreign correspondents based in Islamabad were invited to come along so that their reports (which have only been carried perfunctorily, if at all) should clear the air for his two-week visit to the United States and Europe. Western governments may be this, that and the other, but they are not naïve. They have a pretty clear-headed understanding of what is going on in the NWFP and what is going on in Pakistan.

The dragon’s teeth that the military government sowed have borne fruit before the season ended. The MMA monster was midwifed by the political wing of the ISI, and since the ISI is not a state within a state, not yet anyway, it configured the October elections according to a duly cleared, carefully planned and cynically implemented “staff scenario.” One thing those who are now trying to distance themselves from the onward march of mullahdom in Pakistan must not do is to act like shocked virgins. It insults our intelligence and it fools no one outside Pakistan, least of all those the master tacticians of Rawalpindi are so keen to win over, cultivate and, all the while, double-cross.

Sometimes I am glad the Quaid-i-Azam did not live long enough to see what his Pakistan has come to. The country he wanted us to have was not to be a hellhole of obscurantism and religious bigotry. He wanted Pakistan to be a liberal, secular, parliamentary democracy where religion would be a private matter and no one would be discriminated against on the basis of creed or colour. It is ironic that those who have trampled under their boots every single principle that the Founder of Pakistan stood for, never forget to display his picture on the back wall as they lay down the law according to the particular whim of the day.

The passage of the Shariat bill and the promised passage of the Vice and Virtue act should have made us sit up, but what hope is there when not a single opposition member from the NWFP assembly had the decency or the courage to vote against the bill or even to abstain. Feeble attempts by one PPP representative to explain away this cowardly conduct are more regrettable than the conduct itself. General Musharraf can go to every NWFP town and city and denounce the MMA’s interpretation of Islam, but it will change nothing. The record of his government on issues of religious bigotry and humanism is not a record of which he can be proud. What liberalism can we expect from a government whose supremo is afraid of even being photographed with his dogs!

The Taliban, if anyone is looking for them, are alive and well in Pakistan and they are flourishing under the benign care of the very warriors who have declared themselves the front fighting line in the global war on terrorism. All the monsters who should be in the Mianwali jail or the Attock facility for those who fall foul of The Boys are as free in Pakistan as birds of the air. While birds of the air are often shot down, the hirsute brigades of these holy terrors are free to do what they wish. They are never caught. Who killed the dozen young police recruits in Quetta? Two gunmen on motorcycles. And where did they go? They disappeared. Yes, they disappeared, just as those who were sprung from Indian jails after the Khatmandu hijacking disappeared as soon as they entered Pakistan.

In case people have forgotten what lies in store for us, there has been a chilling reminder of it recently in My forbidden face, a book by a young Afghan woman who calls herself Lateefa. She lived with her parents in Kabul when the Taliban took over. Her book is the story of their life under Taliban rule and how they managed to ultimately get out of the inferno their country had become.

Lateefa writes, “Eleven o’clock news. Radio Sharia comes back on the air (we’re allowed to hear nothing from eight to nine except religious chanting, a reading of verses from the Quran, and prayers). The interim government which is composed of six mullahs has issued the following statement: From now on the country will be ruled by a completely Islamic system. All foreign ambassadors are relieved of their duties. The new decrees in accordance with Sharia are as follows: Women and girls are not permitted to work outside the home. All women who are obliged to leave their homes must be accompanied by a mahram: their father, brother or husband. Public transportation will provide buses reserved for men and buses reserved for women. Men must let their beards grow and trim their moustaches according to Sharia. Men must wear a white cap or turban on their heads. The wearing of suit and tie is forbidden. The wearing of traditional Afghan clothing is compulsory. Women and girls will wear the chadri (the Afghan word for those horrible blue tentlike burqas). Women and girls are forbidden to wear brightly coloured clothes beneath the chadri. It is forbidden to wear nail polish or lipstick or makeup. All Muslims must offer ritual prayers at the appointed times wherever they may be.

“More decrees follow in the next few days”, recalls Lateefa. “It is forbidden to display photographs of animals and human beings. A woman is not allowed to take a taxi unless accompanied by a mahram. No male physician may touch the body of a woman under the pretext of a medical examination. A woman is not allowed to go to a tailor for men. A girl is not allowed to converse with a young man. Infraction of this law will lead to the immediate marriage of the offenders. Muslim families are not allowed to photograph or videotape anything, even during a wedding. Women engaged to be married may not go to beauty salons, even in preparation for their weddings. Muslim families may not give non-Islamic names to their children. Merchants are forbidden to sell female undergarments. When the police punish an offender, no one is allowed to ask a question or complain. All those who break the laws of Sharia will be punished in the public square.”

I can go on and on, but it is sobering to remind ourselves that this was the government whose strongest supporter in the world was Pakistan. I once asked Aziz Khan, now high commissioner-designate to India, about the Taliban, he having been our man in Kabul. He said he had once asked a Taliban cabinet minister if the beard could be trimmed. “That would be a great sin,” he had replied, “You see with each hair of the beard hangs one angel. If you trim the beard, the angels will fall on the ground. Could there be a greater sin?”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once told one of his ministers, “You don’t have to answer every question you are asked.” I commend this priceless bit of wisdom to General Musharraf.

With bated breath we wait for the General who, unlike Godot, will arrive, to be precise, on the 23rd day of this month at the Andrews Air Force base near Washington, a fortress to which access is granted to none but the chosen, the choosing agency, though not in this case divine, but almost nearly so, being the Embassy of Pakistan, the authorised representative of the people and state of Pakistan. So help us God.

The Pakistani press, what there is of it in this city, is to be denied the pleasure of watching the General and his small entourage alight from the chartered plane that will bring them from Boston where he is spending quiet family time. After the rough and tumble of three hectic days in London, this is rest well deserved. The last time some of us were at the Andrews Air Force base was when Benazir Bhutto, looking both happy and resplendent, came for an official visit. But that was eight years ago and eight years is a long time, no matter how you work it out.

Taken straight to his hotel — the Four Seasons in Georgetown where single rooms go for up to $300 a night — the president and Begum Musharraf will later be driven to the residence of the ambassador, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, for dinner. Since journalists are bracketed under ‘others’ in the social register mentally and perhaps physically maintained by Pakistan’s bourgeois bureaucracy, none of us will have the pleasure of breaking bread with the exalted guest. Such apartheid disappeared during Maleeha Lodhi’s time but then she being a journalist had a certain empathy with members of the old tribe. Since she left, the trusted system based on the maxim ‘keep them at arm’s length’ has been restored.

It is difficult to understand why it is considered necessary by the movers and shakers of the Foreign and Information ministries to rush the president from one interview to the next. What good does it do in the end? Often it creates more problems than it resolves. Take two examples. Had Syed Anwar Mahmood, information czar at Agra and information czar today, reportedly not slipped the videotape of the president’s speech at his breakfast meeting with Indian editors to a commercial Indian channel, the Agra Summit had more than an even chance of success. Then there is the recent interview of President Musharraf on another Indian TV channel that is being denied left, right and centre. What one fails to understand is how can you be misquoted in a TV interview. What you say is there for all to see and hear. In any case, why give so many interviews? Half the problems of the Musharraf government have sprung from what it has said than from what it has not said. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto always got these things right. Once he told one of his ministers, “You don’t have to answer every question you are asked.” I commend this priceless bit of wisdom to General Musharraf.

The president will be meeting many people he needs to meet and many he need not meet. Among the latter, I would list Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline, Wolf Blitzer of CNN, and a miscellany of editorial writers at the Washington Times and the Washington Post, not to mention their counterparts on the West Coast. Why? Such meetings do little for the country or the leader for whose benefit they are ostensibly organised; though they certainly succeed in deepening the conviction of those received or called upon that they are so important that foreign heads of state need to pay court to them. Only Third World countries suffer from the insecurity that results in such encounters. Countries with more self-assurance do not waste their time on such frivolities.

Ironically, the first item on the list of those who designed President Musharraf’s programme should have been those Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans who live here and who have borne the brunt of 9/11. Hundreds have been detained, hundreds more interrogated, several hundred deported and only God or the Department of Homeland Security knows how many are being kept under surveillance. Thousands have fled the country; some of them having gone home, their life a tale of shattered dreams, others have sought refuge in third countries, most of which won’t have them. Those are the people General Musharraf should have met and heard from, not the Koppels and the Blitzers.

All right, there is a community dinner in Los Angeles but that is where the affluent Pakistanis live, not the salt of the earth to whom General Musharraf should have reached out and whose hand he should have held.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Fazal Mahmood could have spared himself his “second birth” some years ago when he turned his back on what the rest of us consider the good life. He did not need to do that because he had done enough of the Lord’s work with those leg cutters summer after summer on pitches of all variety and description, from the stoniest to the stickiest. Can anyone doubt that if the One up above were to field the Lord’s Own XI against Old Nick’s Crossbats, the attack of the heavenly host would be opened by Fazal Mahmood at his fieriest?

The good news is that in his 76th over, he is at peace with both God and cricket, as his book, From Dusk to Dawn, released in Lahore some weeks ago, indicates. To have seen Fazal bowl on a wicket which still shimmered with early morning dew was to see a miracle in the air, six times in about as many minutes. He could make the ball do extremely odd things. Just when you thought you were stepping forward to one that you would play in the middle of your bat, you discovered to your utter surprise that though your left foot was still in the correct forward position, your bat straight and held at the right height above your left toe, your leg stump was lying in the vicinity of third slip. Fazal had struck again. How he did that, remains a mystery and although he explains in an epilogue how to bowl a leg cutter, no one has been able to “bend it like Fazal”.

Fazal has written a splendid book and relived for us some of the most memorable moments of his cricketing life and, by virtue of that, Pakistan cricket’s. Assisted by Asif Sohail, whom I compliment on a work that is free of error (either of language or of print), and overseen by Cahudhri Mueen Afzal, who, I am happy to note, is doing things more useful than playing golf after his return to Lahore from the political and bureaucratic slaughterhouses of Islamabad.

Fazal writing about the first tour of India in 1952-53 recalls the players being garlanded by ordinary people on the streets and at railway stations. It is amazing there was such goodwill though the memories of the most savage killings in history that marked the partition of India were still very fresh. It was a team of singers, the lead singer being that inimitable master opener who scored the first test century for Pakistan, Nazar Mohammad. He would lead with songs such as “ Buch ja mundya mor toon, mein sadqay teri tor toon” (ironically sung by Nur Jehan who was to bring his career to a tragic and early end), with Waqar, Fazal and “Merry Max” Maqsood Ahmed forming the chorus.

Fazal brings back to us the 1954 Oval test which he practically won for Pakistan. Considering how patchy, even comical, Pakistan’s fielding used to be, bowling performances such as Fazal’s can only be called miraculous. He recounts how Wazir Mohammad dropped Dennis Compton, of all people, three times in the Oval Test. Once, the ball landed on his head instead of his hands, once at his feet and the third time he ran in the wrong direction. The Oval match was reported for The Pakistan Times by Arthur Gilligan, one of the great figures in English cricket who wrote, “It is perfectly true to say that Fazal never bowled one bad ball in the 60 overs he bowled”. I wish someone would read this to “loose canon” Shoaib Akhtar, the derailed Rawalpindi Express.

Thanks to Imran Khan, who was the first man to propose third country umpires, the umpiring in those days, especially in the subcontinent, was notorious. Fazal recalls clean bowling Nari Contractor in the Bombay test and Umpire Ganguli declaring the batsman not out and no-balling Fazal. When Fazal asked why he hadn’t called the no ball in time, Ganguli replied that he could not because “chewing gum got stuck in my throat”. At a banquet that night, A K Brohi, then the Pakistan high commissioner, told the assembled guests that while he knew nothing about cricket, he had been told that there was such a thing in the game as “benefit of doubt” and that it always went to the batsman. Then he added, “I am a lawyer by profession and these words are often used in courts. I did not know that the Indian batsmen were such great criminals that every time the benefit of doubt goes to them.”

Fazal was cheated out of the captaincy of the 1962 tour of England because of Gen W A Burki’s son Javed (currently in the clinker). Javed was made captain, as the general was one of the big tops in the Ayub government. It was the same tour on which Burki introduced his players to the Queen with choice Punjabi swear words. He also used some of them on Sir George Abel, who was Mountbatten’s secretary in 1947, Fazal writes. However, Burki was put in his place when Able, an old India hand, abused him right back in even purer Punjabi idiom. Fazal was flown to England after a public uproar about the disgraceful performance of the team which had lost all three tests. Fazal played the one at the Oval test and recalls, “If I failed at the Oval, it was because of the obdurate attitude of Burki during the match”. He would not let Fazal set his field and just tell him imperiously, “Keep on bowling”. The manager was one Brig Haider who only knew about horses. When one of the Pakistani bowlers bowled a bouncer, he screamed from the gallery, where he sat among a select crowd of cricket lovers, “O what a googly!” Things have gone from bad to worse. Now we have a general as head of Pakistan cricket who may know even less and who refuses to leave even after what amounts to a cricketing Titanic for Pakistan in the last World Cup.

Fazal also writes about some of the great cricketers he has known and admired, among them Mushtaq Ali, who facing Keith Miller during the Australian Services tour of India in 1945 started dancing down the wicket as the bowler began his run up. Thinking something was wrong, Miller stopped and could not believe his eyes when he saw Mushtaq Ali signalling to him to come on. He went on to score 108. Of the great Lahori Lala Amarnath, Fazal writes, “when in the Lucknow test Zulfiqar, probably the worst fielder in the side, dropped him at short leg, Lala turned to him and said, ‘Even my wife could have held that one’”. In Punjabi of course.

The only thing that mars this otherwise fine book is Fazal’s inability after all these years to make his peace with that prince of a man, Skipper Abdul Hafiz Kardar, who, he maintains, used unfair means to become captain of the Pakistan team. He writes that Kardar was a great disciplinarian when he was in charge but treated his seniors like Mian Mohammad Saeed, Pakistan’s first captain and Fazal’s father-in-law, and Nazar Mohammad, with disdain. Although he says he has no ill will against Kardar, he shows plenty of it; but then as Habib Jalib once said to me, “Everyone is permitted at least one major mistake in life”.

No matter how far into Pakistan’s history you go, not once will you come across an instance where a visit abroad by a head of state or government has not been hailed as a ‘great success’. Were all such descriptions, not merely enthusiastic but positively euphoric, true, would we be in the mess in which we are today, with half the country gone, and the rest ruled by a military elite aided by a smattering of compliant civilians?

However, since nothing ever changes in Pakistan, except for the worse, nothing is going to change in the month of June either when the warrior President will give the people of the United States another opportunity to welcome, at least technically, the President of Pakistan and Chief of Army Staff (until further orders) Gen. Pervez Musharraf. This will be his fourth time in the land of the brave and the home of the free since he overthrew the government of Nawaz Sharif just as the leaves were beginning to change colour in the hills around Islamabad.

Already, the visit is being hailed by the ‘usual suspects’. The Washington Post quotes a Pakistani embassy official ‘who requested anonymity’ as saying that ‘both the optics and the substance are better at Camp David’, which is where the Pakistani supremo is being received by his host, for a day at least (he will have to return to his hotel to sleep). In keeping with our glorious tradition of sycophancy, the anonymous official then declared (you can imagine him looking skywards as he spoke the words to get the Almighty involved as well), “This shows President Bush considers it a personal relationship.”

The Post says it was the American intelligence agencies that ‘strongly supported the Camp David treatment for Musharraf.’ And why? “Since Pakistan has been crucial as a recruiting ground and a staging area for operations in Afghanistan.” To hammer the nail home, a ‘senior administration official’, Washington’s favourite phantom, is next quoted as affirming that “Pakistan has been stalwart in working with us to fight terrorism, and Camp David is appropriate to the strength of the relationship.”

‘Khilonay dey kay behlaya gya hoon,’ wrote a poet whose name escapes me at the moment. ‘With toys have they kept me distracted’ was what he said and how well does it fit the event which the Pakistani embassy official considers as evidence of Bush bonding with Musharraf.

The General arrives Stateside on June 20 but it is to Boston he goes where his son, an up and coming actuary who works out death and life statistics for insurance companies and the like, resides. Washington Gen. Musharraf hits only three days later. Boston is going to be private time, at least so far, though I trust that Ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi (whom this paper should seriously think of appointing Daily Times correspondent in my place considering his penchant for filing exhaustive reports) will throw in an engagement or two to give it the required official touch.

Gen. Musharraf is not going to New York, but had he done so, there is no doubt he would have been taken to call on the New York Times. In Washington, he is being taken to meet both the Washington Post and the Washington Times. Why, I cannot understand, because it belittles him and it will make not the least difference to the worldview of either newspaper, the latter being an arch Pakistan critic, always spoiling to publish nasty stories leaked by intelligence agencies about Pakistan making illicit imports and exports of nuclear and other lethal materials.

I am reminded of what the late Iqbal Butt, who was with Gen. Ziaul Haq at St. Stephens College, Delhi, said when the General asked that the speech he was going to make at the United Nations on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Conference be shown to ‘Butt sahib’. Iqbal Butt, who was information minister at the Washington embassy, read through the draft, then took out his pencil and crossed out a paragraph. “Presidents do not quote the New York Times; it is the New York Times that quotes presidents,” he said.

However, Information Secretary Syed Anwar Mahmood and his tribe need not worry. Iqbal Butt is dead and I don’t see any Iqbal Butts around in the service of Pakistan today.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Lt Gen Arshad Mahmud of BMA, my friend Zafar Rathore’s brilliant acronym for Pakistan’s Bahadur Mussalah Afwaj, should soon be getting a letter addressed to him which I hope, using his still-remembered army training, he will slit open with a bayonet. In it he will find not a stink bomb or a dose of anthrax or even a free Caribbean holiday offer, but a crumpled, yellowing sheet of parchment that I have been carrying around with me from country to country for years and which, I feel, I should no longer keep.

It is my MA English degree. The Punjab University that awarded it to me is long dead. The demobbed men who now masquerade as its prime office holders, I wish to have nothing to do with. Sadly, I do not know anyone of consequence in GHQ, Rawalpindi and thus do not have the power to rid what was once one of the finest centres of academic excellence, of the boors and philistines under whose military occupation it now groans. Since its present lords and masters insist upon it retaining the name that once made it famous, the only gentlemanly choice before me is to return my degree. This is my protest, although I know it will make not the least difference to the demobbed general and his 2-i-C, the demobbed colonel who is camouflaged as the registrar. (May the ghost of S.P. Singha haunt him every night.)

To the everlasting shame of the university’s Fine Arts Department (oh how Anna Molka Ahmed must have turned in her grave!), they arranged a ceremony at which I gather Gen Mahmud was chief guest. He took the opportunity, not to apologise or to announce that he was jumping into the canal that runs next to the New Campus, but added insult to injury by making a boring speech. Said the general, “Learning is no longer prized in society”. How true! Were learning prized, would he be occupying the post once held by such men as Prof Hamid Ahmed Khan?

Dr Shahbaz Arif, the curriculum clean-up man at the Department of English, has made me a convert to the concept of the transmigration of souls because in him Bowdler lives again. However, if I could, I would hang him (at least for a few minutes) from Mr Woolmer’s statue or tie him to the business end of Kim’s gun. Thereafter, I will send him to school to learn English, starting with a primer that will help him construct such sentences as, “The cat sat on the mat”. That appears to be the most appropriate thing to do for a man who told Daily Times, “There is need to choose good literature replacing this bad one” and, again, “There are so many vulgar words….reflected in the current curriculum of BA and MA literature that can induce our students”. Induce?

My friend Muhammad Rafiq in England, who may also be returning his MA English degree soon, writes to say, “When T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, two nonentities then, came to Britain from America, they started by knocking the established icons in the country. Someone said at the time: Two dogs came from America and howled at the statue of Milton!”

Dr Arif is shocked by the word ‘rape’, as in Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. It reminds me of a fellow in Sialkot who used to give English tuition to a teenage girl. One day he sent her a note saying that he would be late that afternoon as he had something to do. When he arrived, he found the entire family up in arms, literally so. “Dear Samina,” the father screamed, “How dare you call my daughter‘pyari’?” Back in Sialkot, Rafiq recalls, a bearded man attracted a small crowd as he was seen stabbing a newspaper with his red pen. When asked if there was bad news in the paper and whether he would like a glass of water, he replied, “Look what is happening in Pakistan. Read this headline: Adulteration in wheat detected. I say these men should receive the most exemplary punishment because adultery is haram.”

A friend writes from Lahore, “This matter is not confined, I feel, to the English Department of the university. English as a subject is certainly being targeted and divided, the language being described as ‘functional’ and by implication ‘pure,’ and literature as ‘corrupting’ and, by implication, ‘dysfunctional’. There is an agenda which is being implemented by the Punjab University administration under the guise of curriculum revision. This is very much a part of the higher education ‘reform’ package – our equivalent of the New World Order.”

There is reason to believe that as part of this very sad business, the general and the colonel are acting in tandem, which makes the entire thing suspect. It turns out that the “clean up” campaign was launched under the orders of the colonel registrar who called in Dr Shahbaz “Bowdler” Aziz. (The university that awarded him a PhD deserves to be blown to high heaven by one of Mr Bush’s Daisy Cutters.) The colonel had received his attack orders earlier from…you can guess whom. Well, they could not have chosen a better man than Bowdler Aziz who genuinely believes that much of the literature being taught at Punjab University is objectionable and promotes vulgarity. His list ranges from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Bertrand Russell’s essays, Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock and the work of poets ranging from John Donne to W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. Dr Bowdler teaches English language as opposed to English literature. Only in the Pakistan of today could it happen that a man who can’t tell the difference between a verb and an adverb is actually teaching English and is on a commando mission to destroy and decimate English literature.

I also understand that one of the reasons the “reform” movement is underway at Punjab University is because mon general the vice chancellor seeketh an extension and if the clean up of “fahashi aur uryani” can endear him to the Bearded Brigade whose star is in the ascendant, well, he wins hands down and the rest of us lose.

There is one thing you have to admit about Pakistan. When you think the worst is over, something worse than worst hits you in the kisser.

The Foreign Secretary may not be able to outdress his Foreign Minister — and who can, come to think of it, including Sahibzada Yaqub Khan — but being an older hand at this game called diplomacy, he came to Washington last week for a day, did his stuff quietly and, one can assume, effectively, and went back without getting featured on the website of the Los Angeles Times as the Foreign Minister had done. And that makes Riaz H. Khokhar and Khurhshid Mahmood Kasuri a good team. What quiet hard work may not achieve, razzle-dazzle will.

When the Foreign Minister was here (Turnbull and Asser shirt, Sulka and Company neckwear, Yves St. Laurent suit and a light pink silk handkerchief to die for), short of George B, he pow-wowed everybody, including ‘lethal lady’ Condoleezza Rice, the President’s conscience keeper and now his pointwoman on the Middle East (May God protect the Palestinians). He also made the rounds of city newspapers which have always been snooty. After all, the Washington Post has not forgotten that it was almost singly responsible for the fall of Richard Nixon, the one friend Pakistan has had in this town since old Ike. One East Asian journalist who had heard Kasuri thundering away at the unbearably right-wing but money-loaded Heritage Foundation said to me later, “Hey this guy is OK but how come he is Foreign Minister?” “Why not?” I asked. “Hey, he tells it like it is. People in his line of work never talk straight.” Since my East Asian friend did not know the Roaring Lion of the Lahore Bar, Mian Mahmood Ali Kasuri, it was futile to explain to him why the son was the way he was. An American would have said, “That’s the way he wuz raised.”

But back to Riaz Khokhar who is no stranger to Washington, having served here as ambassador, though it is impolitic to remind him of that since he was finessed out of his full term of three years. And how did that happen? Tariq Fatimi, a fine officer in his own right but not necessarily inimical to his own interests, was at the time Additional Secretary in the Prime Minister’s secretariat. He was Foreign Office liaison of the Prime Minister, though he confided to his friends later that what he knew of Kargil was what he read in newspapers. Well, next thing one hears, Fatimi is going to Washington as plenipotentiary and ambassador extraordinary. Khokhar, who had settled into his job, having come here from New Delhi where he had served in the early 1980s as deputy head of mission, was never told why he was being moved, nor did he ask, being the good civil servant he is. But civil servants have long memories and the mysterious suddenness of those orders I am sure still rankles with him on an off day.

Khokhar was sent packing to Beijing but the gods who preside over postings and transfers soon got even with Fatimi. The new boys in Islamabad — the ones who climbed over that wrought iron gate of the Pakistan Television Corporation one October afternoon in 1999 — pulled him out pronto and after some unnerving OSD time, he was sent to Amman and told to be nice to the King and avoid the shortcut to the royal house marked Sarwat Road. Fatimi is now in Brussels and anytime you want to know what the European Union is up to, you can call him.

Khokhar, who arrived one morning last week and returned to New York the same evening, did find time to meet the local reptiles of the Pakistani press, one of whom was less keen to know about Gen. Musharraf’s visit and more about who was in the run for London as high commissioner. He finally had to settle for the Foreign Secretary’s reply that “Everybody who likes London is in the run.” I reminded him of a Shafiqur Rehman story. A man known as Abdul Jabbar Khan, A.J.K (London) is asked what his degree stands for. “Arzoo Janay Ki London,” he answers.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The news from Washington for our indestructible and forever-in-power feudal lords and masters is good: they are not alone. Their beloved institution of slavery is alive and well in the capital of the United States of America despite Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation over 140 years ago. What is more, it exists under the benign eye of the Department of State which oversees the diplomatic missions based here.

The slaves are the domestic servants that diplomats from Third World countries bring to America under host country agreements. Every condition that they have agreed to abide by as employers is violated with utter contempt for local laws and customs. The worst offenders are diplomats from Arab countries and India and Pakistan. Some years ago, Human Rights Watch issued a scathing report on treatment of domestic servants by diplomats, but what do those who have only contempt for people they consider no better than a sub-species, have for such reports! The abuse of domestic servants continues and there is little that the host country seems willing to do. Were it to expel some of these criminals, since that is what they are, for conduct unbecoming, it may perhaps improve the situation. However, the only time a diplomat gets thrown out is when he is caught spying. Spies, one should add, embedded in South Asian embassies spend the better part of their assignment spying on either their colleagues or their fellow countrymen. I base this observation on direct, first-hand experience stretched over many years.

More than 4,000 domestics enter the United States every year, brought in under a programme designed for the benefit of diplomats and those working for international organisations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The employers undertake to pay them the minimum wage – which is $5.15 an hour – as well as respect US labour laws and living standards. That means that a Pakistani working for the embassy, the Bank, the Fund or the UN whose servant is made to work 10 hours a day should pay him or her Rs. 91,000 a month. A servant who works 12 hours a day should be paid Rs 109,000 and a servant who works 14 hours a day Rs 127,000. The majority of servants are made to toil for between 12 and 14 hours. What they get in return from even the more generous of employers is actually no more than a couple of hundred dollars – paid in rupees in Pakistan to their families, though often not – and perhaps a couple of days off in the month.

But this would be the exception, not the norm. Most of the servants are not paid what they were promised. They also have to suffer tongue lashing from the Begum and ordering about by the children. They are the first to rise and the last to go to bed. They are made to scrub floors, cook, wash dishes, wash and iron clothes, cater for parties, dust the house, buff up the car and run errands. Their passport is kept by the employer and they have little money to spend on themselves. No wonder many of them run off, risking arrest by the police since once they leave the employment of the person who brought them in, they become illegals. This is how the dreams of most of these poor people end in a foreign land.

Last week, yet another story of the brutalisation of a domestic servant was brought to light in a letter written to the Washington Post by Len Lekflow, a former American diplomat. It is the story of Rita. She was brought here from India by an Asian diplomat (read Indian). She was made to work 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. “Madam” would scream at her and once she got beaten because she wanted to take two hours off to go to a church picnic. She was called names ( kutya), not allowed to use the phone, was once locked outside during winter and often threatened with deportation. Once when she fell ill, she was given no treatment and, in fact, told that she would be sent home (as you retire a work animal who goes lame or falls sick). For all her work, her family in India was paid just $100 and in the end the princely sum of $700. In other words, instead of being paid the US wage of $5.15 an hour, she received just 18 cents. Rita left and is now being helped by her church and some good people who took pity on her.

About twenty years ago in Washington, I met a Pathan woman at the late S.N. Qutb’s home who told me a story no different than Rita’s. She was brought over by a Pakistani diplomat – who had a great career subsequently – along with her 17-year old son, promised generous wages for herself and a job for her son at the embassy. Once here, the son was ordered to assist his mother. Their day began before sunrise and would not often end until midnight. There were no off days and they were paid $100 a month. The son’s airfare was deducted in installments from the salary, all $600 of it. There were tongue lashings and threats, especially from the “lady wife” (who also was to do very well for herself in later years).

Everyone has a breaking point and for the mother and son it came one night when after another tongue lashing from the Begum, they decided that they couldn’t take it any more. They were made to leave without the few possessions they had, which included, the woman told me between sobs, things she had bought for her daughter’s dowry. Their passports were also kept. They were taken in by a kind Pakistani, a working man himself who advised them to go to the police, but they did not do so because “that would have brought a bad name to our country.” I found it ironic that the poor, rootless woman had more respect for her country and its good name than her exalted employers. I do not know what happened to her or her son.

Perhaps the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would take a short break from running the world and set its own house in order first.

There are three things about Washington: think tanks, lobbyists and single women. While the last are best left to young men on the prowl, the other two it is impossible to get away from, especially if you are writing for newspapers or making the rounds of Capitol Hill for one reason or another, mostly another.

Since those of us who write for newspapers published in the subcontinent like to keep a tab on what is being said or thought about our neck of the woods, we try to catch up with as many dos on South Asia at the principal think tanks as we can. In that sense, we are as much part of what is called the South Asian mafia as those who hold forth every other day on what ails India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

The India-Pakistan crowd is the largest and we all know one another. There is no doubt that every time, we slip into one of these events, put a mark against our name on the printed list, get ourselves a cup of coffee, sit down and look around, we all have the same thought. “There they are again.” Those of us who are now seen as regulars have come to not only address each other by our first names, but also know more or less who will say what.

Not everyone one meets there is a journalist. There are the academics for instance, some of them among this town’s acknowledged South Asia experts, men and women who have written books, lived and worked in the region or visited it regularly.

There is, say, Ms Teresita Schaffer, the indefatigable head of the South Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies who served at the American embassy in Pakistan with her husband Howard Schaffer during the Bhutto and Zia years. The famous telephone conversation monitored by Pakistani intelligence about the “tea party” being “over” involved Howard Schaffer. Was it a signal that the Bhutto government was being overthrown with American blessings by Gen. Ziaul Haq, as is popularly believed? Howard Schaffer, whom I once asked, said it did not. It only meant that Bhutto had left the July 4 reception at the American embassy. That of course was the night the coup d’etat took place. I wonder if there is someone in the American embassy in Islamabad these days who likes to drink tea and knows when the party is going to be over.

Then there is Stephen Cohen whose work on the subcontinent is authoritative. He is currently writing a book on Pakistan. His book on the Pakistan army published a decade ago is one of the most astute studies of this entity with which our lives are so inextricably intertwined, too boot, against our will. Cohen does not think we are going to have a civilian-civilian government in Pakistan any time soon. Let’s hope he is wrong for once.

There is also Dennis Kux whose two books on US-Pakistan and US-India relations are now considered standard texts on the subject. He retired as US ambassador — as did Mrs Schaffer — having started out in Karachi back when Karachi was the capital. So he is an old Pakistan hand and a knowledgeable one too. Perhaps one of the reasons he has written two good books may be because he spends the summer months in the French countryside. Good French wine and good French cuisine do for the brain what spinach did for Popeye the Sailor’s muscle power.

Some people one runs into at these events are, I suspect, in the intelligence business. They sit there, hardly ever asking a question but taking down copious notes. What exactly their notes get fed into, we will only find out twenty or thirty years from now when records get declassified.

One of the regulars at these South Asian political séances and I always say to each other when we meet, “The usual suspects are here?”

And if you have forgotten who delivered that unforgettable phrase, it was police chief Claude Rains to his deputy in Casablanca, the greatest motion picture ever made, as Humphrey Bogart watches Ingrid Bergman with Paul Henreid walk out to that plane which will fly her out of Casablanca and out of his life. Play it again Sam, I say.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Comments