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Will Rogers, that legendary American cowboy, actor and wit once said, “We’ll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.”

That may be how the present governing arrangement in Islamabad will be remembered in the days to come. Few of us understand the intricacies of high finance or economic management, but anyone who knows how to count and do simple sums he learnt at school would know that the big movers and shakers in Islamabad are in no great hurry to save the taxpayer any money. One would have thought that with a prime minister who made his mark in international banking and rose to positions of much eminence in one of the world’s great banking institutions would be a tad more stringent when sanctioning vast outlays, especially freebies.

The size of his cabinet would have been impressive if someone else was paying its salaries and upkeep. That not being the case, one wonders what accounts for this dry port Titanic. The prime minister, someone with a foothold in Islamabad’s inner sanctums told me, confided to close friends that had it been for him, he would have got himself a lean and mean cabinet. I believe him because in almost thirty years of banking he must have learnt that less is often more and money doesn’t grow on trees.

I bring this up not because I want to spoil the prime minister’s Sunday breakfast — I am told he reads the papers with some interest — but because of what has been going on in New York at the United Nations since the current session of the General Assembly got underway. Time was when a small delegation of eminent, educated, experienced and sophisticated men and women would be chosen to form the Pakistan delegation to the annual session of the Assembly. The delegation would arrive in New York a couple of days before the session got underway around the third week of September and it would stay till the committees had done their work and completed their assignments. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after his return to Pakistan from studies abroad came as a delegate a number of times, to quote just one example.

All that changed when Gen Zia-ul-Haq took over Pakistan on that ill-fated July night in 1977. In order to bribe and cultivate as many people as he could, the annual visits to New York for the General Assembly began to be treated as some kind of pay-off for support of his rule and his ‘Islamic’ martial law. The device he hit upon was simple. Groups of those chosen would be sent by turn through the duration of the Assembly session. A group would come, spend a few weeks and then return home, to be followed by another group and so on. Since the evil that men do liveth after them, according to the Bard, the practice has continued government after government after government. That means that while the original blame may be Zia-ul-Haq’s, the governments that followed his could have reverted to the earlier system, namely send ten or so people to stay for the entire session.

The other day a 40-member delegation made up entirely of MNAs — men and women, including at least one husband and wife team — arrived in New York. The present session of the General Assembly began in September and is ending early in December. No other country has sent such a large delegation as Pakistan has. India sends around a dozen and they stay for the entire session. Most of those who have come have nothing to do. Some even have difficulty with English (so much for the graduation clause). But the delegation does have at least one honest man who said at a reception hosted by Consul General Shaukat Haroon, “We have really nothing to do here. Our trip is just a waste of time and money.”

However, all is not lost. The best place to shop in the world is New York and the Christmas buying spree is well underway. I have yet to meet a Pakistani who passed a good bargain.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s recent invitation to his countrymen to debate possible Kashmir solutions and his call to India to move from its fixed position, though well-intentioned and indicative of his goodwill, may have failed to take into account India’s consistent stand on the Kashmir issue, namely that it will never negotiate with Pakistan unless it were done on Indian terms. As for the Kashmiris, the Indian position has always been that the Kashmiris are not party to the Kashmir dispute because they have already acceded to India, and being Indian citizens, they are represented by the Government of India. Even Inder Kumar Gujral, who was recently paraded through the streets of Lahore like a returning hero, said exactly that a day or two after his arrival in Pakistan. It is another matter that nobody paid any attention to his clear and unambiguous reiteration of India’s viewpoint on Kashmir.

That being so, there is never going to be any give on the part of India on Kashmir, unless Pakistan is able to negotiate from a position of strength. The farthest that India is prepared to go is to perhaps swallow the bitter pill of relinquishing its claim on Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas and accepting the Line of Control as the permanent international frontier with Pakistan. But to get to that point, it will first seek several guarantees and undertakings from Pakistan, some of which are likely to be harsh. The recent calls for softening the Line of Control, which Altaf Hussain, the exiled ally of the ruling order, has also backed from New Delhi, amount to a cop out. The argument about “reuniting families” is false, since there are no longer any families to be reunited, the move being 57 years too late. No more than a few thousand people in Azad Kashmir speak what is only a dialect of Kashmiri. As for the rest, they will be total strangers to the Indian part. None of the present Kashmiri leaders, including Sardar Abdul Qayyum or the ruling General in Muzaffarabad or the Barrister or the Prime Minister has ever set foot in Kashmir. To the Kashmiri living in the Valley, their names mean nothing. As for the Northern Areas, despite the judgment of the AJK Supreme Court, they have been prevented from becoming a part of Azad Kashmir. So what are we talking about, it should be asked?

Isn’t it time for the removal of all illusions on Kashmir? We have all believed that Jawaharlal Nehru was committed to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir as envisaged by the UN Security Council resolutions and it was only later, much later, that he changed his mind and went back on his pledge. While it is true that on numerous occasions, he did make such declarations, the fact is that never at any point had he any such intentions. The credit for unearthing this bombshell goes to the Bombay lawyer and writer AG Noorani, who, I should add, is no admirer of Pakistan.

But let me first quote Nehru’s exact words, On 27 October 1947, in a telegram to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, he said, “Our view which we have repeatedly made public is that the question of accession in any disputed territory or state must be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people, and we adhere to this view.” A day later, he sent a message to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan that said, among other things, that “in regard to accession… it has been made clear that this is subject to a reference to the people of the State and their decision.” Four days later, he wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan again, saying, “The people of Kashmir would decide the question of accession. It is open to them to accede to either Dominion then.” Four years later, on 6 July 1951, Nehru said, “People seem to forget that Kashmir is not a commodity for sale or to be bartered. It has an individual existence and its people must be the final arbiters of their future.” Earlier, on 12 February 1951, he had told the Lok Sabha,“We had given our pledge to the people of Kashmir, and subsequently, to the United Nations; we stood by it and we stand by it today. Let the people of Kashmir decide.”

Even the so-called Instrument of Accession that India uses to justify its annexation of the State said that “the question of accession should be settled by a reference to the people.” Nehru called it the “proviso” to the document. According to Noorani, “There is ample evidence also to prove that Nehru had decided to resile from pledges on a plebiscite as early as 1948. Irrefutable evidence of this appeared in 1996 in Volume 19 of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (page 322). It is a highly secret note he wrote at Sonamarg in Kashmir, dated August 25, 1952, addressed to its Prime Minister (as he was then called), Sheikh Abdullah. As a piece of cool analysis, it has no parallel in any of Nehru’s writings, still less in its frank cynicism. It virtually admitted that he had set his face against a plebiscite ‘towards the end of 1948.’ He accepted the UN’s plebiscite proposals on December 23, 1948 only in order to achieve a ceasefire. He was resolved to maintain ‘the status quo then existing’ by brute force.”

This is what Nehru wrote to Abdullah, “We are superior to Pakistan in military and industrial power. But that superiority is not so great as to produce results quickly in war or by fear of war. Therefore, our national interest demands that we should adopt a peaceful policy towards Pakistan and, at the same time, add to our strength. Strength ultimately comes not from defence forces, but the industrial and economic background behind them. As we grow in strength, and we are likely to do so, Pakistan will feel less and less inclined to threaten or harass us, and a time will come when, through sheer force of circumstances, it will be in a mood to accept a settlement which we consider fair, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere.”

Nehru continues, “Doubts in the minds of leaders percolate to their followers and to the people generally. The weakness of the situation in Kashmir is the constant discussions which go on between people holding different views. I do not know how many such groups there are, but obviously some people talk about a close association with India, yet others talk of an association with Pakistan, and yet others talk about independence. All this confusion in ideas and constant debate weakens the basic position. What is required is a firm and clear outlook, and no debate about basic issues. If we have that outlook, it just does not matter what the United Nations thinks or what Pakistan does.”

Two points need to be highlighted. Nehru believed that when India was stronger it would impose a solution “which we consider fair, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere.” He does not say that the settlement should be one that Pakistan also considers fair. Secondly, he rejected the right of the Kashmiris to have an opinion unless it was one favouring India. He also ruled out a debate on the “basic issue” which was India’s seizure of Kashmir in 1947. His contempt for both Pakistan and the United Nations is also obvious from his words.

Half a century later, India remains where it was on Kashmir. It seems only Pakistan in Nehru’s prophetic words is “in a mood to accept a settlement which we consider fair, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere.”

These days it is easier to get out of America than to get in, at least for some. Anyone who tells you there is no profiling at American airports or other points of entry either does not know or is being untruthful for one reason or the other. There can be no question that if you originally come from certain parts of the world, are not Caucasian, happen to have a Muslim name, then you should be prepared for the sort of welcome that I have experienced the last four times I have re-entered the country, twice from Europe and twice from neighbouring Canada. It is only to be expected that with Bush II firmly in the saddle, and acting as if not 52 percent but all 100 percent of Americans had voted for him, this sort of thing is going to get much worse.

The Bush administration has been successful in creating a siege mentality among a people who by temperament are friendly, trusting, welcoming and kind. During the Cold War, it was Reds under Beds; today it is a terrorist or a potential terrorist behind every bush. The officials who greet you at US points of entry — though greet is hardly the word — are generally brusque, often rude, insensitive and ignorant. More than the shiny brass signs of rank and power they wear and the deadly handguns that jut out of their holsters, they need to show basic good manners and treat anyone who arrives, be he foreigner or American, with courtesy. That, sadly, is not how it goes, which is a pity because such crass and boorish behaviour brings no credit to the United States or to its people, especially since it runs counter to their natural instincts and the way they were and, hopefully, still are.

And now on with the story. I travelled to Canada to see friends and a visiting family member who did not have an American visa. My flight back to Washington was from one of Toronto’s three or four airports at which I reported two hours before departure time. If you are flying into the US from Canada, US immigration and customs formalities have to be completed, for some reason, on Canadian soil. The lines were long and it took half an hour to get to a US immigration counter. ‘Where’ve you been?” the burly navy blue-uniformed inspector — or whatever they are called — asked. I told him of the two Canadian cities I had visited. He asked where I was going although my boarding pass clearly said where I was going. “Washington,” I replied. “Why?” he almost screamed. “Because I live there,” I replied. He did not seem too pleased. He kept plugging away at his keyboard, hitting key after key after key. I wondered what he was looking for. Then he drew a cross across my US immigration and customs declaration form and announced, “You have to come with me.” He gave no reason.

I followed him to a set of rooms outside one of which I was asked to wait. There were chairs to sit on. “You are lucky,” he told me. “Yesterday, there were 150 people out here waiting.” I wondered how many of them had missed their flights. It took half an hour before an officer stepped out of a room, called my name and asked me to follow him. “This interview is being video-recorded,” were his opening words. I did not ask why. “What makes you travel to Canada so often?” he wanted to know. In one year, it was my second visit which in his book was “too often.” “To see friends, take a break,” I replied. He didn’t look convinced and asked me again. “Is there a law against travelling to Canada?” I inquired. No reply. And why did I go to Pakistan, he wanted to know. I told him. “So you are a family man?” he asked because I had said that my sisters and brother lived there. He asked me if I had bought anything. I told him a couple of CDs and two DVDs. He wanted to know if I was going to sell them. I replied that I did not sell CDs and, further, that the DVDS featured cricket, a game he may not know about. It was back and forth like that for sometime. Finally, I was told I could go. I was also told by the first inspector as I went out that every time I entered the US, I would have to go through the same sort of examination. When I asked why, he replied that it was my name. “Perhaps I should rename myself John Doe,” I suggested.

He kept quiet. It is an idea worth considering.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

So Sialkot’s Murray College is going down the tubes? It is not alone. You only have to look around and you will find few things that are still whole, from the constitution to historical structures, to institutions like Murray College, where such men as Shamsul Ulema Maulvi Mir Hassan taught and students like Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz studied.

A recent newspaper report says the college is crumbling and simply unable to properly house or educate its more than 6,000 students, male and female, who are on its rolls. So deplorable is its condition that the college has been without a librarian for a year, maybe longer. I have little doubt that what was once one of the finest college libraries in the country is now without most of its books. Not that anybody cares, it seems, including those scores of multimillionaire businessmen of the city who can find the money to finance a dry port and even an airport, but are unable to fork out the roughly 10 million rupees that the principal of the college says he needs to put the premises back in a state of repair.

I went to Murray College and stayed there six years, the last two for an MA in English. We were among the last Pakistani students who had the privilege of being taught by foreigners, in our case selfless Scottish missionaries like Prof Arthur Mowat and the Rev David Leslie Scott. My friend and classmate Mohammad Rafiq, who settled in England to a teaching career many years ago, remains the most authentic historian of Murray College. He it was who wrote for The Times , London, Mr Scott’s obituary. Some years ago, he put into writing what a well-researched account of not only the college but also the city where it was founded in the twilight years of the 19th century.

Enjoying Rafiq’s sense of humour is an acquired taste. “Sialkot is singularly ridiculous,” he writes. “Occupying a dead-end corner of the backwaters of the country as it does, do what you will, you will not be able to make head or tail of it, or find any way of making anything of it or to make it add up to anything at the end of the day. It is a small town of about 160,000 odd (very odd) souls and its length and breadth would give someone trying to swing a cat the biggest cramp in the neck. Amidst all this squalor and anomalies, there is one thing and one thing alone which, above all else, has enriched the lives of those who have lived in Sialkot for the last 100 years. Murray College, established by the Church of Scotland Mission in 1889, has given to everyone born in the town since something which no earthly riches can match. There is hardly a family in Sialkot from which someone or the other has not been educated there. The cultural debt owed to the institution is incalculable. Although just a handful of men and women in each generation have been educated in this college, even those who never entered its portals also benefited in some subtle, imperceptible way. The cultural debt owed to the institution is incalculable; the depths to which all have been enriched by it are fathomless. Never have so many owed so much to so few.”

The Scottish missionaries who established what became Murray College were a breed apart: their calling induced “a small band of people born and bred in the comparative comfort of bonny Scotland, deeply moral and ordained to the Christian ministry, each one of them possessing intellect of the highest order and educated to the highest levels of excellence in one of the five ancient universities of their country, to leave their home and to live and work without recompense except for what will be barely essential to keep their and their families’ body and soul together, 7,000 miles away beyond seven seas in a strange land to educate people of a town very different from theirs and not for one day or one month or one year but for a hundred years.”

According to Rafiq’s research, the Church of Scotland came to Sialkot in January 1857 when the first Scottish missionary, the Rev Thomas Hunter, came to live with his wife Jane Scott and baby son Thomas at 75 The Mall near the Brigade Parade Ground, facing the Trinity Church whose first stone was laid on March 1, 1852. By a curious coincidence, 100 years later, another servant of the Church, NS Massey, headmaster of the Scotch Mission School in the Cantonment, made his home in that house and his family lives in it to this day. The church was consecrated by the Bishop of Madras on January 30, 1857, Sialkot at the time being in the diocese of Calcutta. The oldest records of Sialkot are in the Holy Trinity Church in memory of Brig John Pennucuick, CB, KH, killed at the head of his brigade in the Battle of Chillianwala, January 18, 1849, and his son Alexander, 17 years of age, who also died defending his father’s body.

In 1972, writes Rafiq with bitter irony, “the independent nation of Pakistan dismissed the Scottish missionaries – who had nurtured the cause of education in Sialkot for so long – unceremoniously ‘from all further conduct’ of Murray College affairs without a word of thanks and, from what one can see of it now, our super-educationists have made a right old mess of it there.” The missionary institutions that were denationalised were returned to those who used to run them, were found in a state of shambles. In civilised countries, governments build things: in our country they destroy what was once whole. And what they build often does not even outlast them. Or they build such monstrosities as the Minar-i-Pakistan which is an ugly mark on the face of Lahore. What a pity that nothing short of a massive earthquake can now bring it down and Lahore does not lie along a geological faultline.

I haven’t been to see Murray College for some years but what I read of its condition in a newspaper story the other day tells me that it is no better than a ruin. That says a lot about the kind of people we are. Some years ago, my friend Akhtar Mirza wrote to me after a visit to Murray College, “Everything has changed. The hockey ground is covered with uncut grass, the tennis courts where Prof CW Tressler used to play every other afternoon is like a tropical jungle. The chapel (Mr Scott and Miss Mary Miller Poden got married there on October 18, 1947) wears a forlorn and abandoned look. I walked through the verandahs, touched the trees under whose shade on golden winter days birds with long red tails used to dance around and found only squirrels running about. Yes, what is that Punjabi proverb? Abandoned gardens beget squirrels as gardeners.”

More harm has come to Pakistan at the hands of some of its spokesmen than has been done to it by its enemies. Frightening is the frequency with which in recent years one has been reminded of that timeless slogan: With friends like these you need no enemies.

For instance, every time the Son of Rawalpindi opens his mouth as if to speak — and speaks despite prayers to the contrary — one takes a deep breath and waits. In a country of 150 million, and a country with a “bum” — surely one should have been able to do better. Or maybe the language of perfidious Albion deserves to be emasculated to avenge some of the wrongs done to us since the 18th century by its sons. That, at least, is one way of looking at it. It also has the additional benefit of being the Pakistani way of looking at things. All that needs to be added is the late Muslehuddin’s timeless observation about our distinguished information minister, “He speaks ungrammatical English with total fluency”.

The other day, at a conference on Pakistan at a local university, one way of keeping one’s blood pressure at an acceptable level was to rush out of the auditorium while the worthy representatives of the Islamic Republic were sharing their thoughts on democracy, terrorism and US-Pakistan relations with an audience that included this town’s principal experts on South Asia. That, need it be said, also makes them the principal experts on our region in the United States. Well, if one doesn’t think of one’s own people who are accustomed to hearing bombast and who somehow manage to keep their feet grounded in earth despite the hot air that blows across their land around the year, one should perhaps think of others who may deserve better. But in order to do that, one will need to think. And that is one tall order.

Although according to a German proverb, all beginnings are good, what happened in Washington may have been that certain exception which proves the rule, because the Germans are seldom wrong on facts. Mohammad Sadiq, allegedly one of the brighter stars in our diplomatic firmament and the gentleman who is minding the store till Ambassador Jehangir Karamat hits town — which some say is imminent — opened the innings in the unlikely role of the conference’s keynote speaker. In keeping with national character, he was both unprepared and cavalier with facts, making assertions that left some in the audience scratching their heads, several of them quite grey. In a short column, it is not possible to do justice to his thoughts, but he made some strange assertions, one being that Gen Musharraf had brought a “silent revolution” to Pakistan and now enjoyed “across the board” support.

However, the big jackpot without question should go to Umar Ahmad Ghumman whose name, if translated into English, should read UA Turner. Once of Pennsylvania and a proud citizen of this country where the oath of citizenship requires the renunciation of all previous loyalties, and now Minister of State for Investment and Privatisation, he sang the praises of military rule like a bird singing its heart out at springtime. He introduced himself as a politician but in order to quell any misgivings that might have arisen on that count, declared that Pakistan and its people had never had it so good as under military rule. He held politicians responsible for all that has gone wrong with Pakistan since its founding. Somebody later expressed surprise that Ghumman had not held civilian governments responsible for the periodic outbreaks of influenza and scarlet fever as well. But then his talents might lie in the direction of histrionics, because at one point, jutting out his chest, he thundered that economic disparities in Pakistan were the creation of politicians and “I stand guilty as charged”. It is another matter that nobody had charged him.

Jefferson’s ghost must have risen from his grave in rural Virginia when Ghumman declaimed that since democracy was the root of all evils, he would rather have a “dictator”. He also informed his flabbergasted audience that “democracy has not worked in Pakistan and it has failed over and over again”. The Minister is also either poor at counting or his history is about as strong as my quantum physics, because he went on to say that in the last two and a half centuries, nobody had dared to go into Pakistan’s tribal territories as Gen Musharraf had. “We now have a leader who wants to establish Rule of Law in that area.”

If what is happening in Waziristan is Rule of Law, then I am migrating to Darfur.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Uncle Sam may have many nephews but the only one we know in Pakistan is Saadat Hasan Manto, who between 1951 and 1954 wrote nine open letters to his “uncle”, the last one on April 26, 1954, barely nine months before his death. These letters, now more than half a century old, are quite remarkable in their insights into what motivates America. It is quite amazing how Manto, who never had much interest in politics and considered most politicians less than trustworthy, should have so correctly diagnosed what ailed America. Indeed, some of those ailments have grown worse since then. At the same time, these nine letters are exceedingly funny. They also tell us more about Manto than can be gathered from his other writings. In one letter, he complains to his uncle that Syed Sibte Hasan, a beetroot-red communist, is trying to recruit him to his cause and something should be done about him.

Few people know Syed Sibte Hasan had written a letter to Manto in reply. I found a copy of it among Manto’s manuscripts that his daughter Nuzhat Jalal keeps in safe custody. Some years ago, she made copies of some of Manto’s stories and his letters to Uncle Sam, all transcribed in Manto’s even and perfectly-formed hand. I had not realised till this week that among the papers she gave me was a copy of Sibte Hasan’s letter to Manto in Sibte’s own hand. ‘In the name of Uncle Sam’s nephew’, he called it.

Here are some titbits from it. “I hear that you have complained to your uncle that I am turning you into a communist. If that is true, then all I can say is that you neither understand your uncle’s mentality, nor do you know what he thinks of you. Since I know both, I am writing to you. But first, let me tell you what I think of you. When I was imprisoned in the Lahore Fort in the summer of 1951, I had written an article about you. I was there under Bengal Regulations and in connection with the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case. The average temperature in Lahore was around 116 degrees and we were kept locked up in a cemented cell all day…. I had written that piece in a single sitting but after six months when I was shifted to the Lahore Central Jail, the CID confiscated my letter and to this day I feel sorry for the loss of that “historic” document. Yaar, since your uncle has a lot of influence with our government these days, why don’t you ask him to have my letter returned to me. After all, it is no hydrogen bomb of which your uncle may have need.

“There are some who accuse you of writing about sex as if you were getting a kick out of it. Well, when the subject is such as to afford kicks, then why write about it in any other way? The inspiration for male-female relations is not procreation but to satisfy a certain finer need. It is another matter that this aesthetic search often results in procreation…. Now if someone writes about these intimate matters, what sin is he committing? But those who see procreation as the only reason for male-female intimacy, being devoid of all finer feelings, will certainly object to your stories since they would find only eroticism in them. Well, if that is the way they feel, there is little we can do about them!

“But I am getting carried away. This is not why I am writing to you. Let me begin by telling you that you have done no favour to Uncle Sam by writing to him. The poor fellow is very ill these days. His blood pressure has shot up and his nerves have all but packed up. He has become extremely short-tempered and suspicious. Doctors have advised him complete rest for a few days, but how can he rest when he carries the burdens on the world on his shoulders…. Perhaps I have not told you that before coming to Pakistan, I had met your uncle in America. He wasn’t so ill then, though signs of his current sickness were pretty evident even then. In the beginning, he met me very nicely, but he felt so displeased with me later that he saw to it that I ended up in jail. And let me tell you that he is not so pleased with you either. He had thought that like some of our journalists and writers with “nationalist thinking”, you too would join the Dollar Group. But what did you do! You began writing him letters, and letters that could only make uncle appear in a bad light. He wanted to help you with money but you made fun of even that. Now what do you expect him to do! Place garlands around your neck or get angry with you?

“My dear fellow, you should follow our leaders who have made living on charity a way of life. That will take care of you here and in the hereafter. After all, what is the difference between American democracy and the Islamic system of the Muslim League? … Saadat, get it out of your head that Uncle Sam will be fooled by what you write and forgive you on the ground that you are innocent. He knows you inside out and he wasn’t born yesterday. Now look at Dr Oppenheimer who risked his life by escaping from Germany from police custody during the war and landing in America through Denmark. He it was who spent fourteen years helping American scientists make the atomic bomb. Then he fell out with your uncle and today the same Oppenheimer is a communist, a traitor and a fit case for hanging. This only shows how profound your uncle’s knowledge about communism is. You can’t cheat him easily. He has marked you as a dangerous communist since the day you published a translation of Russian short stories. And that is not all.You have written such stories as Naya Qanoon , Khol Dau and God knows what else. And now you have taken him on with those letters of yours. So you tell me, who is a communist? You or I?

“But there is still time to recover lost ground. If you can write something in favour of the hydrogen bomb or praise the discrimination practised against American blacks or extol American actions in Tunis, Morocco, Iran and Egypt, you should be back in your uncle’s graces. Recently, our government signed a treaty with the Americans. Think about it with a “nationalist mind” and abuse the communists till they get buried under that barrage. Maybe, your sins could be forgiven. Tell me, are you ready to do that? And one last thing. Your uncle is chicken. He may look like an elephant but he is more timid than a rabbit. If you show fear, he will crush you but if you stand up to him, he will be grovelling. So my artist friend, stand up to him. Only that way lies salvation.”

‘Nice guys finish last’ once again turned out to be one of those clichés that are actually true. John Kerry did not make it. This is bad news for the world. Although President Bush in his victory speech spoke about being “humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens” and promised to “serve all Americans”, he is not going to be magnanimous in victory. The fact that 48 percent of American voters went against him is not going to restrain him from pursuing his ultra conservative agenda. After all, it is the same George Bush who promised the American people after being inducted into the White House, not by them, but by the Supreme Court, that he was going to be a “uniter”. If there is one thing his four abrasive years did not bring the people of this country it was unity. In his book, it is always “us against them”. He sees America as he sees the world — in black and white. If you are not with him, you are against him.

Bush may be a reborn Christian, who, when asked, if he had consulted his father before invading Iraq, replied without a moment’s hesitation, “I consulted a higher Father”. What can you do about that! You can argue with a man who consults mere mortals and is swayed by their opinion. How can you deal with a man who speaks to God alone and believes that God speaks right back to him.

Bush, like all those who believe that they are on a direct line with the Supreme Deity, will see his election victory, both popular and in terms of the electoral vote, as a vindication of his policies. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that he will continue his onslaught against the “enemies of God” who in his worldview are indistinguishable from the enemies of America. After he is done with Iraq — just watch the destruction of Fallujah as the next coming attraction on your nearest television screen — do not be surprised if he moves against the other components of the Axis of Evil. There can be little doubt that Iran’s insistence on uranium enrichment and North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship will soon have both of them facing the business end of American guns?

A man who has to think long and hard and then say he can’t think of an answer when asked to identify any mistakes he has made, as Bush was, is not a man the world can feel very safe with. It is obvious that he does not believe he has made any mistakes since taking an office that really belonged to the man who was declared the loser by the highest court of the land. All men make mistakes and great among them are those who have the courage and the character to admit they were wrong. Gamal Abdel Nasser was one such man, but the occupant of the White House for the next four years is no Nasser.

And how will Pakistan fare under Bush II, many must be wondering? Initially, the cosiness that the two administrations and their leaders have enjoyed will continue, but it will not last. After Afghanistan begins to stabilise and the operations against the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda thin out, the pressure on Pakistan to come clean on the nuclear Juma Bazaar will become intense and, eventually, unbearable. There will be little effort to veer the General towards more democratic ways, but it will be made clear to “all concerned” that they cannot play both sides of the street. The ease with which banned and defrocked holy warriors stutter around the towns and cities of Pakistan will not be permitted much longer. Pakistan will have to deliver. Verbal assurances may sound nice but they won’t be mistaken for the real McCoy. It will also be made clear to those who rule Pakistan that they cannot pray with the saints and sup with the devil all at the same time. In short, Pakistan will be made to put its money where its mouth is. There are any number of levers that can be used against the country and, make no mistake, they will all be used, if and when necessary.

Those in the catbird seat in Pakistan were praying for a Bush victory. I wish someone had told them of Saint Teresa’s immortal observation: More tears are shed for answered prayers than unanswered ones.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The Mangla Dam was built because of the obligations that Pakistan accepted by signing the Indus Basin Waters Treaty. This monstrous manmade wall that played havoc with the topography and environment of the area was built on territory over which Pakistan had no legal or constitutional right since it was a part of the old state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose future, Pakistan otherwise maintains, remains to be decided in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of its people.

As was to be expected and as has consistently been the case, the people over whose land this giant dam was built were the very ones never consulted. Mum’s the word when it comes to determining the extent to which the construction of Mangla has affected Pakistan’s case on Kashmir. After the transfer of some territory to China in Kashmir’s northern regions, again without consultation with the people of the state, this was the second major assault on the state’s territory. However, the saving grace of this treaty is a clause that in the event of a change of status, the treaty would be renegotiated with the controlling entity. The Northern Areas are to this day administered from Islamabad and the so-called Northern Areas Council has no powers. But that is a tale for another day.

Recently, there has been talk of raising the Mangla Dam, a decision that only Barrister Sultan Mahmood, following in the footsteps of his father Chaudhri Noor Hussain, to his great credit opposed on the ground it would bring vast tracts of Mirpur lands under water, do violence to the environment and uproot the people who still have not forgotten or recovered from their forcible eviction from their homes so that the monstrosity called Mangla could be built. Forty years later, there remain many Mangla affectees, their claims for due compensation unresolved. Many were settled in areas far from their homes, such as Thal. Few of them stayed there but there was nothing to come back to because what were once their homes were now under water. What benefits Mangla has brought to Pakistan, it is for its government to list, but it has done little for Azad Kashmir or its people. The royalties that they should have been paid have always been in dispute and always in arrears. Unfortunately, there was no Arundhati Roy in Pakistan when Mangla was being built. I wonder if our own Arundhati Roy, the admirable Asma Jehangir, can be persuaded to join those who are opposing the raising of the dam.

The people of Mirpur are settled in large numbers in Britain and it is their innate hardiness and their Spartan spirit that has enabled them to become one of the most prosperous and organised communities of expatriates in the West. They also remain the sole torchbearers for the Kashmir cause in that land, which seems now all but lost, given the recent declaration from Islamabad that the problem can be resolved in “one day”. Very little has been written about Mirpur as it was before the Mangla deluge and even less about its pre-1947 days. In 1995, one Mirpuri, Syed Sultan Ali Shah, published a book about Mirpur, containing his reminiscences of the city as it was before the partition of India, its people and its vanished landmarks. He had plans to produce a revised edition covering post-1947 Mirpur but, sadly, he did not live long to complete that labour of love.

During the maharaja’s time, Mirpur was the headquarter of the district, which was known by the same name, and which included the three tehsils of Niabat, Bhimbar and Kotli. The administration was headed by a state official called Wazir-e-Wazarat and the magistracy was independent of the administration. Sardar Ibrahim Khan, who was a barrister-at-law from London, served as public prosecutor at Mirpur for a time, so did M Yusuf Buch as a young member of the Kashmir Civil Service. The valleys that lay between the hills had different settlements, some of them dating back to pre-Mughal times and peopled by different tribal and ethnic groups. There were 64 villages in Mirpur that were classified as jagirs and 336 others, both with Muslim majorities. There was an uprising against the Maharaja in 1931 in Mirpur and British troops had to be called in to restore order. This became a turning point in the struggle of the Muslims for their rights and the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference was founded a year later by Chaudhri Ghulam Abbas and Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (who formed his own party later – an event that marks the beginning of Muslim misfortunes in the state). The most revolutionary of young Mirpuris was Ilahi Bux who physically stopped the area’s police chief from disturbing a meeting inside the Jamia Masjid. He was overpowered ultimately and jailed, but the people of Mirpur from that day on only knew him as Ghazi Ilahi Bux.

My journalist friend from London, Habibur Rehman, a true Mirpuri if there was one, remembers the city where he grew up and went to school, a city now under water. No Mirpuri can visit the graves of his forefathers because every graveyard is now buried in a larger graveyard called the Mangla lake. One of the most revered saints of the area, Ghazi Shah Pir Qalandar, also rests in that watery grave. The people of Mirpur may have been poor but they were always defiant and never took things lying down. There was no electricity in Mirpur for several years after the establishment of Pakistan and Habibur Rehman remembers that as a child, he and his classmates would go and stand in the evening on a hillock to watch the lights of the city of Jhelum twinkling like glow-worms in the dark. One of the promises made to the people of Mirpur was that since Mangla had been built on their homes and hearths, they would be provided with free electricity when it started generating power. That turned out to be another unfulfilled promise. If the government of Pakistan would only pay what it truly owes in royalties, the face of that part of Azad Kashmir can be transformed.

One blessing of Mangla to have come the way of the Mirpuris was that they were encouraged to go abroad. In those days, it was extremely difficult to obtain a passport. However, to induce the people to leave, the government issued thousands of passports in the 1960s and since immigration restrictions, as we know them today, did not quite exist then, the Mirpuris travelled to England where there already was a scattered population of Mirpuris, most of them having jumped ship. One such man was the later Chaudhri Zaman Ali, Sitara-e-Khidmat, the elder statesman of the Mirpuri people in Britain. When a huge demonstration was organised in London’s Hyde Park to protest the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Chaudhri Zaman, even though he was a very old man then, brought several busloads of people from the Midlands to join a huge crowd that included both Murtaza and Shahnawaz Bhutto. I recall Chaudhri Zaman Ali being lifted by the boys on top of a car from where he addressed the crowd. He always wore a turban with a Peshawari kullah and though he had lived in England for decades, he spoke no more than a couple of words of English. He was a great Mirpuri and was most helpful to early immigrants from his homeland.

Syed Sultan Shah never got over the destruction of his city. In his words: “With my own eyes, I have seen not the wrath of God but aggression committed by men erase what our ancestors had left behind to remind us of them. Our historical monuments, our mosques, our shrines, even our graveyards were obliterated. It was as if they never were. Our people were uprooted from their homes to wander the world. Many went into exile.” One can only hope that this sad history will not be repeated, although one fears that, once again, the last thing on the rulers’ agenda will be the people whose lands, no less than their lives, are to be inundated and consigned to oblivion.

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