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The other day, my friend Akmal Aleemi at Voice of America phoned to say that he was doing a phone-in show on land bought by overseas Pakistanis and grabbed by enterprising locals. He asked if I would join the panel. Being neither a land-grabber nor a land-owner, I nevertheless agreed because I had recently finished reading Saeed Malik’s book detailing his 30-year struggle against a land mafia in Lahore. Till last reports came in, he was still at it.

The phone-in roundtable was lively, the man at the Pakistan end fielding all the cannonballs being hurled in his direction being Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for overseas Pakistanis, who is also PR sidekick to Mushahid Hussain, who is sidekick to you know who.

The minister being young, “London-pallat” and keen to make his mark in the political GHQ of Pakistan, made several earnest promises to “have it all looked into and sorted out”. Since he has been away from the Islamic Republic for many years in favour of Blighty, it will take him some time to realise that the boys he plans to take on are in the big league and they ain’t easy to lick. They have connections, baby, in places where angels fear to tread.

Tariq Azim Khan reminded me of a fielder who begins to run from long on to grab a skier in the vicinity of third man. Verdict: well tried but gravity is gravity. The ball will not wait for his arrival.

The complainants on the programme were going on and on about the great Qabza Groups of our land who would divest even a saint of his land without the least compunction, but I was glad they were getting it all off their chests. The truth is that in Pakistan, the papers may be fake, the land revenue record may be forged, the grab may have taken place in bright sunshine in front of a hundred people, but the Qabza Groups are simply not to be held back.

They have friends where it matters: the police, the lower courts, the higher courts, the bureaucracy, the military, the politicians. You name it, they have got it. Inqilab Zindabad.

Two of those who called were Pakistanis who are by no means without influence back home or money abroad. They were wailing that their lands in Lahore had been grabbed and they were unable to do anything about it. As to what made them think announcing it on the radio will do the trick, I am unable to explain.

One, a former Lahore lawyer, claimed that a plot of land in Defence Society where a house now stands is his, but the house is somebody else’s. Every two or three years, he goes home, runs from lawyer to judge to official, all of whom promise him justice, and after six months or so, he comes back empty-handed to sulk in Florida for the next few years before doing exactly the same thing again. Why does he do it?

I suppose there are people who believe in the existence of an elusive bird called justice. They also believe that the said bird lives in Pakistan. It will break their heart if I tell them that the bird has been extinct for as long as I can remember, so I will say nothing.

The other party on the programme was three brothers who have a flourishing carpet business in New York. Their father was the eminent radioman, the late Ayub Romani. The boys have done well and they have a showroom on New York’s pricey Fifth Avenue. Their mistake No 1 was to buy a piece of land in Lahore from a politician. The land stayed with them, but even a child could have told them that like a faithless mistress, it would not stay with them for long. And that is exactly what happened.

A bunch of goons came one day and took back what had been signed, sealed and delivered to the brothers. That they have now come to seek help from a well-intentioned international radio programme shows how desperate their situation is. While one wishes them luck, it is well known that in Pakistan that fickle lady only smiles on the unjust and the powerful.

There are no Qabza Groups in America because there is something out here whose existence can only be suspected in Pakistan: a thing called law. Property dealers are trained and licensed. Mortgages are easy to get and title insurance guarantees title of the property to the buyer. The final purchase deal takes place in a lawyer’s office and the deed is duly registered with the local authority. Property rights are sacred and no one can deprive you of what is legally yours.

In Pakistan, all these things exist on paper but not on the ground. If Shaukat “Shortcut” Aziz does nothing except make Qabza Groups a thing of the past, I am prepared to write his name in letters of gold on the wall in front of his house. I also promise to leave “Shortcut” out.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

My friend Saeed Malik in Lahore, indefatigable writer of newspaper articles and easily Pakistan’s leading musicologist, has just published a book with his own money since no publisher appeared to feel much excited about a work that tries to explain why it is no longer possible in Pakistan to obtain justice. No longer possible, I must clarify, for the ordinary Joe. The Big Boys have no problem. In fact, nobody takes them to court either, unless he wants his ribs smashed in.

A lawyer once swore to me that a colleague of his who was forcibly arguing a case on behalf of a client who had been deprived of what was legitimately his by a powerful group was asked by the high court judge to come closer. When the surprised lawyer did so, the judge whispered to him, “Look, I am not an English judge and this is not an English court. I have a family to support and a living to earn. I cannot give you justice, so don’t waste your breath.”

Saeed Malik’s book In Search of Justice could be the story of millions of Pakistanis who start their day by knocking at the doors of different government offices and running around a succession of corrupt and unresponsive bureaucrats to seek what should have come to them without their having had to make an effort. Few get what they want, unless they are willing or able – most are not able, though they are willing – to pay their way through. Even those who succeed have to endure years of physical fatigue and mental humiliation, not to mention the financial costs they are made to bear.

It has taken Saeed Malik around thirty years – and I am not sure if he has been entirely successful – to regain possession of a piece of land in Lahore belonging to his Canada-based sister. The piece of land had been grabbed by a Qabza group, a term I need not translate because so rampant is land-grabbing gangsterism in Mumlikat-i-Khudadad that the term has gone into the language. The inside flap of the book by Malik bears a “soliloquy” that goes like this. Why has no concrete action yet been taken by the government against Qabza groups? Because a number of influential politicians patronise these criminals. Why aren’t members of Qabza groups treated as terrorists? Because they work for the benefit of their patrons, who have always remained near the corridors of power. Why shouldn’t land grabbers be tried in anti-terrorist courts? Because doing so will expose the crafty politicians who support them. Why can’t special courts by set up to decide the cases of “disputed” properties? I leave out the answer because it is evident what it is.

The entire system is so massively corrupt that it is difficult to decide where the process of reform should begin. According to Malik, it could start with abrogating the law of preemption. He writes, “Purely artificial in nature, the law of preemption is in conflict with the fundamental rights of a citizen as enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan. It acts as a clog in the settlement of an individual in a place of his choice, including the right to hold property in that area. It also constitutes a drawback on the principles of freedom of contract and security of title. In a number of judgments by the superior courts, preemption was declared to be a weak right of a piratical and burdensome nature.”

There can be no question that the entire land revenue system, which goes back to Mughal times, needs to be scrapped and recreated It is so thoroughly corrupt from top to bottom that to quote my favourite poet, Munir Niazi: Iss sheher-e-sangdil to jalla daina chahye: Phir iss ki khaak kau bhi urra daina chahye . [Or this stone-hearted city should be burnt to the ground and its ashes scattered to the wind.] The lynchpin of this pyramid of corruption, Malik argues by citing example after example, is the Patwari. There is not a single Patwari in the service of the state who lives on what he earns legally, though admittedly very little. Malik writes, “The employees of the Revenue Department, from the low-paid but powerful Patwaris to Tehsildars, with rare exceptions, have become corrupt to the core … They have been fleecing mostly the ill-informed litigants and ordinary citizens on one pretext or the other and by deliberately wrong interpretations of rules of the Revenue Department and by manipulating entries in its records.”

According to Malik, it is impossible to obtain a copy of any document, be it with the Revenue Department of any of the courts, including the higher courts, without paying bribes down the line. A friend of mine, I can also testify, has been trying for the last ten years to have the title to his land certified by the Patwari of his area but since the man has been demanding a sum of money my friend does not have, he remains without title to what is his. I should add that even the concerned Punjab minister’s help was sought by my friend but without benefit. A Patwari’s post, by the way, has to be bought, the price depending upon the fleece-potential of the position. This is shameful and what is even more shameful is that nobody has been able to bring down this massive system of corruption since the inception of Pakistan.

The shocking part of Saeed Malik’s book is the role of certain Christian Qabza groups in Lahore, aided and abetted by a certain foreign Christian mission. He writes, “The handful of scheming Christian ‘leaders’ of Lahore and their goons are blatantly degrading Christian values while carrying on with their illegal and immoral pursuits by pressing bogus claims of ownership.” His sister’s plot of land was a victim of the doings of one such group, something that he lays out in great and convincing detail. Saeed Malik wrote to everyone who was everyone, urging them to have laws enacted and measures taken to put a stop to the rampage unleashed by the land-grab mafia. None of them did anything or, barring some, even acknowledged his letters. I am not surprised because the culture of answering letters has just disappeared in Pakistan. But I am disappointed to see in the list Malik provides the names of Iqbal Haider, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Mushahid Hussain and Mian Muhammad Azhar. When Malik ran into Mian Azhar somewhere and reminded him of the letter he had sent him, the reply the pride of Syeda Abida Hussain and Syed Fakhre Imam’s group gave was classic, “God will help you and Pakistan.”

Saeed Malik has had the courage to make public his harrowing experiences with the land mafia and the Kafkaesque bureaucratic machine that runs – in fact runs down – Pakistan. Is there any among us who will do what Munir Niazi suggested?

Saadat Hasan Manto, had he been alive, would have chuckled with satisfaction to see that yet again his classic observation that “Hakoomat himaqat ka doosra naam hai” had come true. Government, he wrote, is but another name for folly.

Much has been written about the case of Mukhtar Mai and more will be written about what has become another chapter of shame in our national life. I never had any illusions about “Enlightened Moderation”, the official credo of the regime, but the Mukhtar Mai case has proved that it is no more than a couple of pretty words.

Governments, like people, are to be judged, not by what they say, but what they do. The fact is that every time the Musharraf regime has faced a situation where its liberal professions were on test, it has failed abjectly. Never once has it stood its ground or shown the courage of the convictions it claims to have, be it the hated Hudood laws, the religion column in the passport, the mixed marathon or the Mukhtar Mai case. What hope can there be when the General is afraid even to be seen holding the dogs of whom he is said to be exceedingly fond.

Mukhtar Mai gave the regime an opportunity to redeem itself. It failed to do so, in the bargain earning universal condemnation for both itself and the country. Under the president’s orders, vast sums of money are being spent to sell a “softer image” of Pakistan abroad, but ironically when an opportunity came the government’s way to show that Pakistan is both enlightened and moderate, it was blown. Isn’t it obvious that the regime lacks conviction, except the conviction to stay in power as long as it can, regardless of what it takes!

The tremendous wave of international sympathy for Mukhtar Mai and the courage with which she has stood up for the persecuted and violated women of Pakistan, sadly enough, has brought the government of her country and the country itself much ridicule and contempt. Pakistan’s name, as it was, was mud anyway; but the mud is now even muddier. And while this sad drama has been in progress, the General is somewhere down under, though only he can tell what he is doing there.

However, I compliment him on having had the courage to say that it was he who decided that Mukhtar Mai should not go abroad. It is nice to see the buck stop where it never stops in our country.

I know the group of Pakistani doctors behind the invitation to Mukhtar Mai to speak at a symposium in Texas next month on violence against women. She was not the only one invited, Dr Nuzhat Ahmad of the Asian American Network against Abuse of Women said on Friday. Invitations had also gone out to Abid Hasan Manto, Anis Haroon of Aurat Foundation and even Liaquat Baloch. Mushahid Hussain was invited too, but in a rare show of modesty, he declined, saying it was not his area of expertise.

Dr Nuzhat Ahmad said she first spoke to Mukhtar Mai two months ago and found her simple, soft-spoken, committed, brave and clear-headed. She said it was regrettable that their network was being maligned as being intent on embarrassing Pakistan and giving it a bad name. “We are no less Pakistani than those who are trying to sit in judgment on us,” she said. “In fact, had Mukhtar Mai been permitted to come, it would have helped Pakistan stand tall,” she added.

Dr Ahmad said the group’s repeated attempts to get in touch with the ambassador in Washington had proved fruitless. She asked, “Why is it being presumed that we are not on the same side as the country’s official representatives? We are distressed by the present situation, but it is not of our making.”

She said inquiries were beginning to be made about those who organised the Mukhtar Mai visit. There had been calls made in an effort to ferret out information about the network’s members and their families back in Pakistan. She did not wish to say who was making the calls and on behalf of whom. However, it is not difficult to guess either the source of the calls or the reason they are being made. After all, it will be in keeping with the strategy adopted against Mukhtar Mai. If Ambassador Jehangir Karamat knows anything about this, it is not for me to spell out what he should do.

Meanwhile, the ambassador has vehemently denied that it was he or anyone from his embassy who advised Islamabad that Mukhtar Mai should be debarred from travel. I have no reason to doubt his word. A Pakistani who desired anonymity said, “First we make fools of ourselves. Having done that, we then turn on ourselves to wriggle out of the situation by starting a blame game. No one is taking charge and being bold. Mukhtar Mai’s passport should be returned to her and she should be allowed to travel.”

I asked my friend Shujaullah in Islamabad, who has been doing volunteer human rights work for the last 10 years, how he saw the situation. His answer: “The High Court lets off the rapists for want of adequate evidence; the government detains them under emergency laws; the Court refuses to extend their detention; and in cynical exploitation of an illiterate woman celebrity’s tragedy, lobbies at home and abroad move into action, playing on her paranoia. She is invited to ‘address’ seminars in London and the United States. The Establishment deals with the problem in a most ham-fisted way. It tightens Mukhtar Mai’s security (against the released rapists, it claims), puts her on the Exit Control List, while ministers run up and down reassuring the poor woman that she is not on the List. In the meanwhile, propagandists have a field day — to hell with the country!”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Daud Rehbar left Pakistan nearly fifty years ago. He has returned home only for brief visits and with decreasing frequency, yet when you talk to him or read what he has written, it will never occur to you that he could have set foot beyond Lahore. Much, if not all of his Lahore is old Lahore, the city as it used to be, with people who are no longer there. When Ijaz Batalvi died, much of Daud Rehbar’s Lahore died with him because they were the closest of friends since their student days. They would phone each other regularly and write letters. Letters are Daud Rehbar’s forte and he even published a book containing some of them. He must know that he is one of the great letter writers of his day because he always keeps a copy of those he sends.

Daud and Zia Mohyeddin are cousins and the talented Naveed Riaz is Zia’s nephew, which makes him – at one remove – Daud’s nephew too. Daud’s father was the great Persian scholar Prof Muhammad Iqbal of the Oriental College, Lahore, whose biography he is writing these days from his Florida retreat where he settled after his retirement as professor of comparative religions at Boston. He has also recently published a collection of random writings that have appeared over the years in various Urdu journals, and for that we are in his debt: not only does he carry us back to the way things once were, but we also get a guided tour of Daud Rehbar’s world and become acquainted with his astounding range of learning. The book is dedicated to his friend Ijaz Batalavi, underscored by a verse from Mir Taqi Mir that says: “Relationships are not to be measured by day-to-day contact: one meeting can bridge a lifetime.”

Daud writes about the three weeks he spent in Pakistan in 1993. An accomplished classical singer of the Agra Gharana, he has not only managed to find time to continue to polish his voice but has even written a book on music. (Roshan Ara Begum’s voice, he wrote, always reminds him of a cat, but I will let that pass, since no one is perfect). On 1st December 1993, Daud performed at the Alhamra auditorium in Lahore and the next day delivered the Professor CA Qadir Memorial Lecture entitled “Certain emotional aspects of Prof Toynbee’s philosophy of history.” If you are looking for a renaissance man, you don’t have to look far. Daud Rehbar is the bird you seek. He wears his learning, which includes his scholarly knowledge of Persian, Urdu and Arabic, with a humility that is rare among men who know so much.

He came to Lahore again in 1996 and was invited to deliver a series of lectures on comparative religion, which he wisely declined on the grounds that it may not be possible to engage in free debate on religions in an atmosphere that was lacking in intellectual tolerance. He should have known that, because as far back as 1958, he burnt his fingers by reading a paper at an international Islamic colloquium in Lahore. Half a century later, the sensitivity of that controversy remains intact, so I will not go beyond the reference already made.

Daud grew up in Lahore and lived in Model Town, but the Model Town of his day had changed beyond recognition. With Ijaz in tow, the two went looking for 137-G where Daud used to live. This is what he found: “Where our two-storey house once stood, all that remained there now were patches of dry grass. I said to the Colonel (who now owned it) that once I had buried a date tree pit at the back of the house and it had grown into a full-fledged tree when I last saw it in 1975. ‘What happened to it?’ I asked. He replied it had been chopped down. I looked around and recognised an old jaman tree, standing all by itself. I asked where the ten or twelve of its companions that had grown here were. The Colonel said that actually, there were fourteen of them but only one was left.” Is there no law in Pakistan for those who murder trees?

Daud came to Government College, Lahore, when Prof AS Bokhari had already gone off to All India Radio. However, he was still a presence there. He returned in 1946 as principal but it was not to be the College’s good fortune to retain him. Ironically, it was petty intrigue that drove him out of the institution to which he had given so much of himself. All kinds of malicious stories were spread about him. It was said that to please Sardar Patel, who was the minister of information in the Interim Government of India, Bokhari – as head of All India Radio – had begun to wear homespun cotton; as if wearing homespun cotton were some kind of a crime. Bokhari left because he was unhappy and disillusioned, but there were great things in store for him at the United Nations, which still remembers him.

Daud writes, “Bokhari missed the Lahore of his youth. The city, as it was then, existed no longer. The Mall was not closed to tongas then and there were just four stores in Anarkali that were owned by Muslims. Two of them – Karnal Shop and Chief Boot House – sold shoes, and two sold general merchandise such as soap, hair oil, perfumes, handkerchiefs, towels etc. These two stores were the property of Shah Shuja and Sheikh Inayatullah. There was another general store in Neela Gumbad called Khawaja Brothers. Sheikh Mohkam Din’s confectionary shop was also to be found in Neela Gumbad. The Nagina Bakery stood in Old Anarkali where the literati gathered to drink tea. That was all there was to it. The British ruled but the sight of an Englishman was rare. The Muslims of Lahore were used to the presence of Hindus and Sikhs among them, and they to that of the Muslims. It is still that way in India, but not in Pakistan.”

Daud Rehbar lives in a small Florida town, listens to music and sings for his visitors, but only if they understand music. He spends his time reading, writing and thinking. In one of the pieces included in his book, he says that all the English books he owns he has now put in storage, because the house he shares with his wife could no longer hold them. The Urdu books that he has been collecting all his life, he has kept. One of his occasional companions is Shamim Ahmed Mirza, the ebullient Lahore lawyer who moved to Florida several years ago. Visitors are always welcome as long as they know that there once used to stand in Lahore’s Old Anarkali a tea place called Nagina Bakery.

The 2005 Trafficking in Persons report issued by the State Department last week should have made every one of our leaders, turbaned divines, retired crusading generals like Hamid Gul “Ribbbentrop” and some of the more preachy Urdu newspaper columnists to sit up. It failed to do any such thing. Since most of these gentlemen rarely read anything except what they have themselves written, chances are they did not read what brief reports of its contents appeared here and there.

The MMA bearded brigade, whose great nemesis Ahmed Bashir is sadly no longer alive to give them the tongue lashing they deserve, one does not expect to do anything about the report’s findings either. In the MMA’s book, anything that comes from the House of the Great Satan is to be dismissed as yet another attack on Islam. Be that as it may, here is a bit of what is really going on in the land of Enlightened Moderation-to-be, the Islamic Republic, little of which is either Islamic or Republican.

The entry on Pakistan begins thus, “Pakistan is a source, transit, and destination country for victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons. Women and girls from Bangladesh, India, Burma, Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are trafficked to Pakistan for commercial sexual exploitation and bonded labour. Girls and women from rural areas are trafficked within the country to urban centres for commercial and sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude. Women trafficked from East Asian countries and Bangladesh to the Middle East often transit through Pakistan for bonded labour and domestic servitude. Boys are trafficked to Persian Gulf states for use as camel jockeys. Children are trafficked internally for forced begging and bonded labour.”

The review says the Government of Pakistan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making “significant efforts” to do so. Certain steps have been taken and an anti-trafficking unit has been formed as part of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). For those who have forgotten, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who set it up. Several public awareness campaigns have also been run.

Religious parties which keep screaming about uryani and fahashi and disfiguring billboards that show women, have done nothing about this scandalous and shameful situation. Their ire is directed at Indian TV channels and movie houses running those so-called blue movies, one of which, some years ago, was called The Nurses of Faisalabad. It was reassuring to know that Faisalabad not only had nurses, but nurses whose talents went beyond administering to the medical needs of patients.

Some steps have been taken by the government, such as the establishment of 267 detention centres but much, much more needs to be done. What the effort needs is an Edhi but in the person of Ansar Burney, chairman of the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, there is a worthy second. The State Department review lists him among 11 of the world’s “Heroes acting to end modern-day slavery”. I think we should all be proud of this man.

This is how the report takes note of him: “A noted Pakistani human rights activist, Ansar Burney has worked relentlessly to bring to light the plight of thousands of South Asian and African children trafficked to Arabian Gulf countries for exploitation as camel jockeys. These abused children, some as young as two years of age, are purposely malnourished to keep them lightweight and denied education. As a result of Mr Burney’s efforts, the Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) established its first-ever shelter for rescued children and repatriated 43 through the shelter. He is quick to point out, however, that much more needs to be done to rescue, rehabilitate and repatriate thousands of trafficked children throughout the Gulf region.”

While what efforts the Government of Pakistan has made have been given credit by the annual review, it also needs to be stressed what the Government of Pakistan has not done. It has not signed the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. It has signed but not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. Again, it has signed but not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Armed Conflict, neither has it signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Isn’t it time for our elected representatives to stop thumping desks and staging walkouts to do the right thing, even if such not be their habit or inclination!

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It was the summer Wasim Bari brought Pakistan to England and the drubbing the team received was so thorough and so humiliating that someone from the crowd during a match at Trent Bridge suggested that Bari and his boys should be renamed the PNA First XI. It was the same summer that Fazal Mahmood came to England. I ran into him at Lord’s and as the conversation turned to what Pakistan cricket had come to, he took me by the arm and led me to the gallery where great moments from the past are preserved in contemporary photographs. And there among the game’s greats was Fazal Mahmood, handsome as a Greek god and lethal off the pitch. “That was the way we played our cricket,” he said. Late in the evening or the next, we met at the BBC Club where Athar Ali had brought him, having interviewed him on air earlier. Almost everyone in that great London watering hole knew whom we were all gathered around, listening mesmerized. It felt great to be one of Fazal Mahmood’s countrymen because he had brought honour to the country and glory to the game, whose classic values he represented in his person and in his brief but scintillating playing career.

Back in the 1950s, Fazal Mahmood was the toast of Pakistan. He had just single-handedly, as it were, won the Oval test and made every Pakistani who followed cricket, and most did, walk a few inches taller. He was also a very handsome man and it was said that he made women swoon. When he returned, he was given a hero’s welcome and wherever he went, he would create minor traffic jams (there wasn’t much traffic in the Lahore of those days and it was a clean and spare city with trees and flowers to die for). But Lahore being Lahore and Lahoris being Lahoris, in a couple of local matches – the standard of club cricket was very high – Fazal bowled long spells without getting more than a wicket or two. As was to be expected, some wag coined the slogan, “Oval ka Hero, Lahore ka Zero.” But of course it was all in good humour. Cricketers from those days would recall that two brothers who played for Chauburji Gymkhana, Khawar and Hamid Butt (Khawar opened also for the Government College and the University of the Punjab) were big hitters and in one match at their ground which had a short square long boundary, the two hit Fazal all over the place. Later someone heard Fazal say, “I got Hutton, Compton, Edrich and the rest of them, but these two square-jawed Butts are a breed apart.”

There was also a book out at the time called Fazal Mahmood aur Cricket and it was a hot seller. Some years later, Fazal Mahmood “saw the light” and published a book called Talaash-e-Haq. It sold, but not as many copies as its predecessor, which only shows that people would rather read about cricket than save their souls. Fazal remained religious all his life and in 1992, when Farooq Mazhar and I launched our book on the 1992 World Cup called Pakistan Rules the World at Lahore, it was Fazal whom Farooq requested to recite from the Quran, which he did with Surat Fatihah. Many of the old cricketers were there, among them Nazar Muhammad, a more stylish opener than whom has not gone out to bat for Pakistan.

When Fazal published his book From Dawn to Dusk – for which all credit to Moeen Afzal – I wrote (I apologise for quoting myself), “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.’”

My friend Iftikhar Ali in New York recalls that Fazal always ran up to the wicket with his bowling hand behind his back so that the batsman would not see his grip. Another friend Omer bin Abdullah, with whom I mourned Fazal’s passing in Washington, said: “He was a bowler whose presence in the team always gave the prospect of success.He fulfilled this promise in spades for Pakistan many times, notably in England at the Oval in 1954 and in Pakistan at Karachi in 1957.Both victories came against teams that were then considered the best in the world.”

My friend Donny Joshua in Toronto, a cricket lover without parallel, said, “Fazal was an unusual bowler.Termed medium-fast, his stock ball was the ‘cutter.’To the spectator, the cutter was a fastleg-break; to the batsmen, the cutter was a nightmare, with the ball nipping off the pitch and clipping the off-stump or forcing a snick to the wicketkeeper. Fazal perfected this ball on the mattting wickets he grew up on, but such was his skill and technique that he was equally effective on English turf.A number of his victims were caught behind by Imtiaz Ahmed.Cynics might say that Fazal would not have been so effective if Imtiaz Ahmed had not been so efficient.And they would be half-right.The truth is that it was not Imtiaz who made Fazal a great bowler but Fazal who made it appear that Imtiaz wasa great keeper.”

Donny recalls that in 1954, when the team returned to Pakistan after its victorious tour of England, he went to hear Fazal speak at a reception.Denis Compton, Fazal said, was the most difficult batsman he had bowled to because of Compton’s great footwork, which enabled him to play the ball on the bounce.As for the 2nd Test at Nottingham, where Pakistan lost by an innings and Compton scored a double hundred, Fazal said that the team was in the field so long and so hard was the going that had the players started running towards Lahore, they would have been half-way home by the time they were done with Compton.To which I might add that it was not I, but the other Khalid Hasan who finally got Compton’s wicket, though I do not admit that when asked, especially by cricket-minded ladies.

Donny recalls another incident. In 1948 at the Lahore test against the West Indies (in which Pakistan suffered a massive defeat), it began to rain one day and everyone, including the players, scampered for cover; except a lady in a wheelchair. Fazal noticed this and came running out in the rain, accompanied by Everton Weekes and together, theytook the lady into the pavilion.The lady’s name was Mrs Barnes and her husband worked at the telegraph office. He had left her to watch the match, promising to return at the end of play.

Well, Fazal Mahmood’s innings are over, the stumps have been drawn for the day but his memory lives on.

Watergate, which everyone had buried six feet under and put to rest, returned from the grave last week, bringing back with it the living dead who hated Nixon and, yelping at their heels, those who hated those who hated Nixon. Tricky Dick, as some called Pakistan’s first and last friend in Washington (one reason the Indians hated him) is not there to fight back, so they are free to kick him about.

It is a pity Nixon is not alive otherwise he would have got himself a pick axe, jumped into the first cab he saw on the street, rushed to that California town where 91-year-old Mark Felt lives and dealt with him personally. His memory, they say, is gone, but Nixon you can be sure, would have reminded him who he was and who Nixon was. As for Bob Woodward — a millionaire thanks to Watergate — Post editor Benjamin Bradlee and others who ratted on Nixon, I leave it to the imagination of the readers what end they would have met. The newspaper’s publisher Katie Graham is already where Nixon is, though I am not sure in which of the two facilities that are said to exist there, so I would leave the matter to the two of them. Nixon was a believer in there being no synonyms in the English language and she would be well advised to stuff her ears with cotton wool, in case this item is available at the local pharmacy, because the president was no Pope when it came to swearing.

What I am enjoying the most is that Washington Post has been left looking rather silly, after having been scooped by a monthly magazine, Vanity Fair, which has more advertisements for lingerie than reading matter. All these years, the newspaper had carried Nixon’s head as a war trophy and missed no opportunity of reminding others of how it had chased a president out of the White House. On Thursday, a bit red in the face but cocky nevertheless, it ran the Deep Throat story under the self-congratulatory headline ‘How Mark Felt became Deep Throat’ with side-by-side pictures of an elegantly dressed Mark Felt in a jaunty hat and Bob Woodward in a plaid shirt. As always, short shrift was given to Woodward’s partner Carl Bernstein, on the front page at least, which I suppose is why he left the Post many years ago.

On the inside pages, generous space had been devoted to a chapter of the book that Woodward had already written, complete with pictures (Bernstein in this time). The one difference that the unexpected disclosure by the Felt family will make to Woodward is that his book — reportedly out next month — will not sell many copies. Who wants to buy stale bread!

While the Post has taken — as it always does, even on the bad causes like the Iraq war that it backs — high moral ground by claiming that it kept its part of the bargain with Felt, namely that the identity of Deep Throat will not be disclosed till after his death, other accounts do not show that its actions were that high minded.

According to New York Times — the most reliable newspaper in America — Woodward, “a one-man media machine (who) had long soared high above normal journalistic rivalries” had been facing “months, and even years, of competitive pressure from an unlikely source, the Felt family itself.” The family had sought payment in vain for the Deep Throat story and failed to reach a collaborative arrangement with Woodward. “They are apparently still determined to claim their share of the story that helped make Mr Woodward a famous millionaire,” the NYT report said.

Mark Felt who was number two at the FBI at the time of Watergate was frustrated because he was passed over by Nixon when J Edgar Hoover died. His motives, some accounts suggest, were thus far from principled; he just wanted to get even. Letters columns of newspapers and TV and radio talk shows have been debating Deep Throat since the story broke. While some think that Mark Felt acted patriotically by exposing Nixon, others argue that he broke his oath of office as a civil servant and that the information he had should have been passed on to the authorities for action rather than to a reporter in dark garages. James Dean, one of the Watergate figures, has pooh-poohed the bit in the story which says that Felt had asked Woodward to place a flower pot on his balcony whenever he wanted a meeting. Dean has quite rightly wondered how the number two man at the FBI had the time to pass in front of Woodward’s apartment that overlooked a downtown street every day to check if the flower part was there.

As for Watergate itself where the break-in took place, it is mainly expensive apartments — Condoleezza Rice lives there — and also the site of a classy hotel. I wonder if “Shortcut” Shaukat Aziz knows that last time the personable Humayun Akhtar was in town, that is where he stayed. What that adds up to, I will leave to our beloved prime minister’s computing brain.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

There is and can be no question that since 9/11, discrimination on the basis of race, religion and national origin has been practiced as a matter of policy in the United States by security and surveillance agencies. The powers that they now enjoy are so extensive as to be reminiscent of our own Frontier Crimes Regulations (still alive and well in Pakistan, or aren’t they?). The Department of Homeland Security and the supra intelligence agency created by the President has abridged civil liberties and basic rights. We are in Osama Bin Laden’s debt for having made the world unsafe for Muslims. A greater disservice to Islam could not have been devised by all its past, present and future enemies put together.

Since all 9/11 hijackers were Muslims, it is natural that Muslims as a group should have come under suspicion. While the initial caution was understandable, its systematic expansion is not. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is to be complimented for having produced a booklet called Stereotypes and Civil Liberties: the status of Muslim civil rights in the United States . When an updated volume is produced – this one covers parts of 2001-02 – it will undoubtedly run into several hundred pages compared to the current publication’s fifty. If ten people undergo the humiliation of being profiled, hardly one is likely to report it to CAIR or an organisation like it. What follows is “a handful from a sackful.”

According to CAIR, the US has had an “extensive passenger profiling programme at the nation’s airports since 1996.” During the period reported on, passengers with Muslim or Arab appearance were not just pulled out of passenger lines, adds CAIR, but they were rudely treated. A woman is asked to remove her hijab before boarding the plane and is intimidated by guards who hold guns. She obeys. Another woman is pulled aside and her luggage is searched in public. She misses her flight. A Pakistani with a beard is questioned and not allowed to board his flight. A Bangladeshi lady reports being singled out and put through a long screening process, during which she is ridiculed. A passenger is asked repeatedly while checking-in whether he is carrying any knives or scissors. When he says he isn’t, he is told that if he is lying, he will be caught. Three Arabs are not allowed to board their flight. They are told that the captain and the crew will feel uncomfortable with them on board. Another three Arabs, all American citizens, are not permitted to board their flight either. When they ask why, they are told the passengers are not comfortable travelling with “Middle Eastern men.”

American airlines make passengers on US-bound flights undergo extensive pre-boarding security at European airports. One man is detained, arrested and strip-searched at Paris by United Airlines staff. He is forced to stay in Paris for three days but the airline refuses to offer him accommodation. A woman and her two-year old child are taken off the plane before departure and questioned by FBI agents. They are searched thoroughly, even the two-year old child, before being cleared. In Virginia, a man is taken off the plane and questioned by the FBI and other officials. When he is let go, the captain and crew refuse to take him, so he is kicked out and asked to wait for the next flight. A woman wearing a hijab is searched in front of other passengers and poked in the stomach. She cries out in pain because she is in her eighth month of pregnancy. Another woman, a US citizen, is searched several times over, while guards keep tugging at her scarf. They also ask her, an American citizen, if she is planning to stay in the United States. Another woman is asked to take off her scarf and when she refuses, she is taken into a dirty kitchen and made to take off her clothes so that she can be patted down and searched.

One woman has her pen taken away. When she asks why, she is told that she could use it to stab someone. A passenger who is praying, having earlier informed a flight attendant of it, is interrogated by the captain because of his “suspicious behaviour.” Profiling is not confined to points of entry into the United States. It can be everywhere and anywhere. CAIR reports that a man was pulled over for speeding and given a ticket. The policeman asked him where he was from. He replied that he was an American, but the policeman wanted to know what his ancestry was. When the man said he was originally from Pakistan, the policeman wanted to know whether Pakistan was a Middle Eastern country. He said that it wasn’t and inquired whether the policeman was profiling him, to which he was told, “Yes.”

This is one side of the picture. There is another side. At a CAIR conference that I attended on 14 May here in Washington, I found that nine out of ten Muslim women there were wearing the hijab. Many of them were also clad in long shapeless gowns. Apart from the havoc this attire plays with a woman’s appearance, the fact is that at a time when Muslims living in the West should be trying to assimilate with the larger community – and that does not translate into losing their religion or their culture – they are withdrawing into a kind of religiosity-soaked cocoon. They live in the West, derive every advantage that this society offers and yet their attitude is rejectionist. In the words of Prof MA Muqtedar Khan, the Islam that they follow is “highly legalistic and Shariah-obsessed.” He writes: “Islam in the mind of many Muslims is nothing but Shariah – what it really means in operational terms is that the beauty, the virtues and the meaning of Islam is confined to the rather mundane domain of medieval Islamic legalist discourse – Fiqh – which lacks the intellectual depth of Islamic philosophy, the aesthetics and the mystery of Islamic theology and the spirituality and charisma of Islamic mysticism.”

According to Dr Khan, “This peculiar legalism, which has colonised Islam and the Muslim conscience, is a product of the vulnerabilities of the Muslim man who has tried to cope with his own insecurities in a world dominated by other men. Muslim men today are not sovereign beings. Other men dominate their world. The only area where they exercise absolute sovereignty is over the tiny domain called Islamic law. Here they realise their manhood. They glorify themselves, grant themselves exotic privileges and assure themselves of their power by exercising it on their women.”

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