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

The other day in Washington, one of the finest radiomen of our time brought his broadcasting career of over half a century to a quiet end. Izhar Kazmi walked out of the Voice of America (VOA) studios on Independence Avenue without looking back. He did so in his calm, unhurried, understated style because the erosion of the radio service that the VOA once was in the last couple of years had made him feel more like a technician or some kind of a computer whiz than the broadcaster he had always been.

In exasperation bordering on disbelief, he had watched Voice of America’s Urdu service turn into a kind of a school jamboree before the start of summer holidays from a serious and respected broadcasting service.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors that runs the government-owned Voice of America has played havoc with the institution and its traditions. Ignorant or contemptuous of the history, culture and general sensibility of the Middle East and countries like Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, the Board has run amok since the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, 2001.

The cabal of wise guys that makes up the Board decided that the VOA’s long-established services in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu needed to be jazzed up. The only audience, the Board decided they needed to reach was constituted by the 15-39 age group. Had it been up to the Board, it would have liquidated everyone over the age of 39 in those countries.

The established services to the mainly Islamic region were revamped and Voice of America, as its millions of listeners had known it, was rubbed off as if it were some kind of a mistake in the copybook of American policy. The popular Urdu service of the VOA which Izhar Kazmi joined more than 20 years ago, was revamped overnight. The name of the new baby thought up by the ignoramuses who serve on the Board was now Radio Aap ki Dunya. If there were a prize going for the silliest name for a radio service anywhere in the world, it would have surely gone to Radio Aap ki Dunya.

It was also decided that the new service which would play pop music for the most part and burden the listener’s intellect and curiosity with no more than news bites would need to be run by young Desis recruited locally. A wit quipped that those assembled were the hello mummy/hello daddy type. Initially for Pakistan a contract was signed for an Islamabad-based company to broadcast Radio Aap ki Dunya fare from its FM 101 stations at night when nobody is listening. After some months, the contract was cancelled as mysteriously as it had been awarded.

Kazmi declined a send off he was offered on departure. However, the farewell he had missed at Radio Aap ki Dunya (a crude translation of the celebrated BBC world phone-in programme ‘This is Your World’), was more than made up by a surprise party arranged last weekend by his five children, friends and admirers. Akmal Aleemi, Kazmi’s long-time colleague at VOA, said it was a unique retirement party that was full of affection, sincerity and nostalgia.

Akmal said Kazmi lost interest in working after the Republican coup that turned VOA into Radio Aap Ki Dunya. Ambiance was put above content and American Desis were recruited from here and there to play second hand Urdu/Hindi rock music all night and broadcast whatever came to their heads in a language spoken by the offspring of immigrants.

The new format required all members of the staff to perform functions they were not trained for. For example, a man like Kazmi was expected to forget his creativeness and instead operate digital gadgets to produce sounds that the bosses erroneously believed would attract young listeners in Pakistan. The Urdu Kazmi had learnt as a student of Professor Ehtisham Hussain, Aale Ahmed Saroor and Prof Karrar Hussain at Lukhnow University was an encumbrance now in this new puppyland.

I asked Kazmi about his early days at Radio Pakistan. He said he had crossed into Pakistan via Khokhra Par with a dream. His first job was teaching in a school at Nau Dero, Sindh. He joined Radio Pakistan’s Lahore station in 1950 where his colleagues included Saleem Shahid, Nasimul Zafar, Rashid Akhtar, Lateef-ur-Rehman and men like Shaukat Thanvi. He also worked for several years at the Urdu Service of the BBC.

The highlight of the surprise party was a documentary that carried tributes from his friends including Ahmed Faraz, Abul Hasan Naghmi, Agha Nasir and Uzma Gilani. Kazmi met his wife of many years, Shahida, at the Rawalpindi station of Radio Pakistan where she was a regular ‘young voice’. They were married in an old haveli in Bagh Sardaran, Pindi.

Kazmi thanked everyone and said the event had given him more reasons to live. Asked about Radio Aap ki Dunya, he replied, “ People in our listening area want to hear what US leaders are saying about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the situation in the Middle East. And what they get is Haddiqa Kayani. It is no longer my world.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

For years I have been urging Kishwar Naheed to stop fighting the world, stop fuming against the security-cleared literary establishment, stop attacking the outposts of male chauvinism, stop organising conferences and instead write a book on cooking to be called Kishwar ka Dastarkhwan . Not only has she not done that, she has not even mailed me, despite earnest promises, even one of her magic recipes.

The inimitable Musarrat Nazir, who has chosen to retreat into anonymity and silence for reasons that remain unfathomable, is the other lady who holds in her hands the great art and mystery of cooking. To her too I used to suggest that she write a book so that others could get a shot at getting that dum pukht aloo gosht recipe right. I even offered to be her scribe. “Yes, one day,” she would say, a day on which the sun has so far not risen. She is an extraordinary cook. That is one thing she and Kishwar have in common. They can put a meal together in about the same time it takes the rest of us to slice a couple of onions. I once watched her prepare karela gosht . I had a notebook in my hand to capture in writing every single step that was to go into the making of a dish that beats all dishes on earth, when rightly done. I couldn’t keep pace, so rapid was Ms Nazir’s handiwork. At one point, when I asked her to please lift her foot off the cooking accelerator, she shot back in Punjabi, “ Toon keralay khanay na’in ke jutian khanian nai’n .” Who can argue with that! The bottom line is that she has not written the cookbook that would be a greater hit than ‘Mera Laung Gavacha.’

That having been my experience with these two ladies, I was therefore delighted the other day when I received through the mail a cookbook called South Asian Cooking by Amtul Hafeez, an amazing 85-year old lady who lives in Manitoba, Canada. Her book was published in New Delhi last year and I must say that having read more books than I can count on what makes a great Pakistani or Indian meal, this one lays out the methodology of cooking in simple, uncomplicated words without requiring you to first open a mini spice store in your kitchen that many cookbooks, including Madhur Jafri’s bestseller, require you to do. You take one look at the list of spices needed and your heart sinks. Amtul Hafeez’s book is simplicity itself. I must, however, confess that so far I have only been relishing its recipes on paper; I have not tried to prepare anything according to her instructions. Who knows what I might come up with when I do try.

Before I write more, Amtul Hafeez, who was born in Delhi, came to Pakistan with her husband Syed Habib Ahmed, then travelled around the world for the next thirty years that he spent in UN employ, before finally deciding to settle down in Canada when he retired over twenty years ago. He is now ninety and in excellent health. Two years ago, his autobiography, From South Asia to North America , was published by the Oxford University Press in Karachi. But I stop here because this column is about cooking.

The best cook – even better than Musarrat and Kishwar – that I was privileged to watch at work was the late Saleem Shahid, pater to the talented actor and director Salman Shahid, who, I should add, also speaks Russian or used to be able to speak Russian. I once drove from Vienna to London and from London to Birmingham to watch Saleem Shahid cook and to eat what his truly magical hands had produced, food for the gods made out of earthly commodities. I appeared at his flat on the 10th floor, within walking distance of Edgbaston, the great Warwickshire cricket ground. “Saleem Shahid,” I said, “I have come all the way from Vienna for your fabled mince with spring potatoes, otherwise known as aloo qeema . He agreed to prepare it on the condition that I would not “panic” him while he was casting his spell. Panic, he explained consisted of interjections like “Aren’t the onions quite done now,” or “Shouldn’t the flame be lower?” and the worst of them all, “When will the food be ready?” Saleem Shahid was a slow mover and his cooking was even slower. Therein, he would say, lies the secret. Musarrat and Kishwar are the Shahid Afridis of cooking; Saleem Shahid was the Hanif Muhammad. There I stood behind him that afternoon, watching the aloo gosht reach perfection. Just about the time I thought it was all done, Saleem Shahid peeled four tiny, ivory-green onions, making me wonder what the purpose of that exercise was. Before I could ask, he turned around: “These onions are going in not as onion but vegetable.” When I returned to Vienna, I was sure I had got it all from the maestro. Various attempts to follow in his footsteps produced near-disasters, the moral being that great cooks are magicians and mystics, not open to copycat attempts.

But to return to Amtul Hafeez’s book, let me quote just two bits from it. One relates to dum or maturation, the other to bhoon-na which she calls deep seasoning, but adds that there is no word in English that would explain what bhoon-na really means. A curry that is cooked without having been bhoon-oed or given dum is not fit for the discriminating palette. Here are Amtul Hafiz’s formulas as to how the two magical transformations can be achieved. Bhoon-na first. Fry chopped onions in oil, add composite masala – ginger, garlic, ground coriander, red pepper, turmeric, salt and a bit of yogurt – mix thoroughly, keep stirring, adding some water till the masala becomes lumpy. Add meat, which begins the main process of bhoon-na . Stir the meat in the pot round and round with sprinklings of water ( chatta in Punjabi) until the meat has released its moisture and assumed a clean, pinkish brown look. The oil will have separated from the meat by now, collecting around its edges. Eureka: the penetration of spices in the meat stands accomplished.

And here is how to administer dum . The idea is to bring out to the full the flavour and taste of the dish which is being prepared. In the past, the pot was lidded and placed over hot ashes of charcoal or wood, but since cooking is now done on a gas or electric stove, here is Amtul Hafeez’s method. She raises the burner to full red heat and then immediately shuts it off as she places the cooked curry, duly lidded, on the extinguished burner. As the heat generated by the burner cools off, the dum can be said to have taken place.

Everyone tells me Ustad Daman was a great cook but I never had the experience of sampling the Ustad’s delights, having remained content with his poetry.

Mindlessness has no religion, nor is it confined to a particular society. While no sensible person can have any illusions about the sanity of, say, Osama Bin Laden or his bearded cave-dwelling deputies (O where is James Bond now that he’s needed!), they have more than their matches in the good old USA.

As a matter of fact, the variety of homo sapien Americanus known as the neocon is no less frightening than his jihadi counterpart that everyone, including Charlie’s aunt, is chasing after these days. I present to readers of this column the darling of the American Right, a lady by the name of Ms Anne Coulter. Author of such classics How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism and High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. She continues to write despite a pie having been thrown at her some time ago. Onward Christian soldiers!

Ms Coulter authors a syndicated column — everybody seems to write a syndicated column in American journalism — which keeps the blood of such flag-waving Americans as adore her on the boil. And their numbers are large, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, down.

In order to get a taste of Ms Coulter’s approach to religion and international relations, let me quote what she wrote on September 12, 2001. “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” A few days later, the lady struck again. “Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave. We should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males.”

There is no dearth of admirers when it comes to Ms Coulter. For example, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute conferred its annual conservative leadership award on her “for her unfailing dedication to truth, freedom and conservative values and for being an exemplar, in word and deed, of what a true leader is.” Even before 9/11, Ms Coulter was out there with her flaming sword. In an interview on June 20, 2001 she said, “God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours’.” To a disabled Vietnam veteran she said, “People like you caused us to lose that war.”

Princess Diana may have been mourned by the whole world but Ms Coulter was not impressed. This is what she said, “Her children knew she’s sleeping with all these men. That just seems to me, it’s the definition of ‘not a good mother.’ … Is everyone just saying here that it’s okay to ostentatiously have premarital sex in front of your children?”… “(Diana is) ordinary and pathetic and confessional.”

Of President Clinton she once said, “If you don’t hate Clinton and the people who laboured to keep him in office, you don’t love your country.” She is a lady who likes rough justice. For instance, “I have to say I’m all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honour to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the ‘hood to be flogged publicly’.” And why does she like President Bush” “The thing I like about Bush is I think he hates liberals.” You don’t say!

But since this is an even-handed column — whenever possible that is — here are a number of entries from the diary of British jihadist Zeeshan Siddique, nabbed in Pakistan last April (surprise, surprise). The New York Times reported that there is talk of publishing his diary under the title Hello, Allah? It’s Me, Siddique.

When the Pope died, Siddique wrote, “Allah will throw him in hell.” He was also cheered by the death of Prince Rainer of Monaco. Why, I don’t know. One entry called Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari “the dog of the hell fire” and President Pervez Musharraf, he called, “Satan”.

And if you thought he loved life in Pakistan, it weren’t necessarily so. He wrote that he was “constantly laughed at and ridiculed.” One can only hope Siddique is provided with pen and paper wherever he is to produce more colourful stuff.

Meanwhile, Islam-bashing goes on without let or hindrance. The publishers of the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) claim that it is a bestseller. The repetition of sacrilege may not be sacrilege, as the saying goes, but I do not think either I or the readers of this newspaper will have the stomach for what that book contains. All one can ask for is “an ounce of civet” to sweeten the imagination. Kipling wrote that the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin. By the same token Ms Anne Coulter and Zeeshan Siddique are siblings.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Whenever anyone claims credit for something he has not done, I am reminded of this wit who assured a friend that his next door neighbours were truly and genuinely Syeds. “And how do you know that?” his friend asked. “Well, they turned into Syeds right in front of my eyes.” There are more false claimants in Pakistan than you can count even on the longest day of the year. The largest number is made up of “workers of the Pakistan Movement,” with “companions and lieutenants of the Quaid-e-Azam” not too far behind. As time has passed, the ranks of these dreamers and pretenders have thinned, but if you believe that Pakistan is entirely depopulated of them, you have another think coming.

The latest assault on history and truth comes from those who are claiming that the first man to announce the birth of Pakistan on the air was Mustafa Ali Hamdani and not Zahur Azar, the distinguished civil servant who, as head of Radio Pakistan in 1965, turned it into a weapon of war. I should add that he has neither claimed credit for that nor, as is our wont, has it been given to him. In his quiet, modest, understated way, Zahur Azar, who lives in retirement in Islamabad and has not been feeling all that well in recent days, has kept his profile low. He is one of the most well-read men I know but he does not wear his intellect on his sleeve; he keeps it well camouflaged. He is one of nature’s bachelors, never having married. He has lived his life surrounded by his books, his music about which his knowledge is as immense as it is sophisticated, and his very select friends. He has held some of the highest civil service positions in Pakistan but unlike most former civil servants, he does not brag about the power he once wielded. Azar would rather talk about the book he happens to be reading at the time.

It was Zahur Azar who planned, oversaw and executed the work and programmes that brought the nation to life in 1965, the only point in our history when we stood as one people – and that included East Pakistan. With PTV just a fledgling, having come on the air with three pilot stations only a year earlier, it was Radio Pakistan that became the one medium on which the nation depended for news and, more than that, for the maintenance of its morale.

Azar was not new to radio. He was one of those bright, talented young men like Altaf Gauhar, Hameed Naseem, Ijaz Batalvi, Saleem Shahid, Ansar Nasri and Zia Jullandhri who joined All India Radio as Independence drew close. Leading from the front, he threw himself and his staff of thousands of motivated men and women with limited resources, and against impossible deadlines, into what became Radio Pakistan’s – and the nation’s – finest hour. No one gave Zahur Azar a medal when it was all over; but there was no shortage of those who claimed credit for much of his work. He merely shrugged his shoulders and moved on. Before I come back to the hour of Independence and how Zahur Azar’s name is linked with it for all times to come, I would add that working with Altaf Gauhar, Secretary of the Ministry by then, he set up the first and only Broadcasting Committee in the history of Pakistan. It produced a report on the basis of which broadcasting was reorganised. The Committee was headed by Mumtaz Hasan and this scribbler was its secretary. Our report was never published because the government of the day wasn’t too thrilled with some of its findings. But that is another story for another day.

To come back to the myth now being spread by some as to who made the first announcement, the question we need to ask is: why should history be distorted and known and established facts misstated, not in error but knowingly? The record deserves to be put right, and that is what this column intends to do.

The first announcement that Pakistan was about to be born came in English from what was still the Lahore station of All India Radio. It went on the air exactly five seconds before midnight on August 13, or at 23 hours 59 minutes, 55 seconds. The announcement was made by Zahur Azar. “At the stroke of midnight, the independent and sovereign State of Pakistan will come into existence.” The text was written by Afzal Iqbal, later to become ambassador. He died in 1996. This was followed by twelve chimes of the studio clock. There was a hush and then Azar’s rich voice came on the air again: “This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service, Lahore. We now bring you a special programme on the dawn of Pakistan’s Independence.” The name, Pakistan Broadcasting Service, was thought up by that legendary broadcaster and cultural icon, Zulfiqar Ali Bokhari. The change of name to Radio Pakistan came several years later and to Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation in the 1960s.

The third announcement was made by Mustafa Ali Hamdani in Urdu. It was: “ Assalam-au-Alaikum. Ye Pakistan Broadcasting Service, Lahore, hai. Abb aap hamara khusoosi programme sunye. ” The Special Programme that followed began with the first two stanzas of Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s ‘ Saqi Nama’ sung by the duo of Fateh Ali Khan-Mubarak Ali Khan, the celebrated qawwals and scions of the gharana that was to give the world the incomparable Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A short news bulletin, prepared by Hamid Jalal, Saadat Hasan Manto’s favourite nephew and historian Ayesha Jalal’s father, followed the music. Hamid Jalal was assisted by Ghani Eirabie. The news bulletin was read by the legendary news reader Shakeel Ahmed. What a voice God had gifted him with! When he read the news in 1965, you felt as if you were fighting alongside Raja Aziz Bhatti or on a dangerous PAF mission with MM Alam or Cecil Chaudhri or Sarfraz Rafiqi.

All that I write above was put together in a special programme called Aghaz-e-Safar – - The Journey Begins – broadcast on the 50th anniversary of Pakistan’s Independence in 1997. Written, produced and presented by Safdar Hamdani, son of the celebrated announcer Mustafa Ali Hamdani, it was after an idea by Saleem Gilani, one of the most inventive and distinguished of Radio Pakistan’s broadcasters who, among the other things that he did, discovered Reshman at a religious festival in Sindh and recorded her for the radio. As for Zahur Azar, he recalled the memorable night of Pakistan’s birth in an article he wrote for Aahang , Radio Pakistan’s programme guide. Azar wrote: “In those days, very few people possessed radio sets. The transistor still lay in the womb of time. The homes and rooftops of families with a radio were thronged by excited listeners, all waiting for the magic moment of freedom at midnight. I often think of the talented men who were associated with radio in those days. Let me only name a few who are no longer among us. ZA Bokhari was not only our Controller but also our Director General. His voice still echoes in my ears. It was not a voice, it was a miracle. We shall never hear the like of it again. Then there was Mahmood Nizami. A more delightful and impish spirit I have not had the joy of knowing my entire life. He was one of a kind. Then there was Hamid Jalal, our News Editor, and Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, our Programme Executive. Our Chief Announcer was Mustafa Ali Hamdani. They are all gone, but they live on in my memory.”

“The past,” William Faulkner said, “is always with us. It is not even past.”

I am up to here reading soul- stultifying stuff in self-important journals like The Economist, the New York Review of Books, the Atlantic Monthly, what have you. It just taxes the brain and all you end up gathering is a bunch of information that can’t even buy you a hamburger. Most learning is utterly useless. It neither improves your brain nor does much for your golf handicap.

I know it is an odd thing for a newspaper person to say but if you do not read one for six weeks, do not watch the news on television, do not switch on the radio, you will have missed nothing. “Important news,” Faiz Ahmed Faiz once observed wisely, “you come to know of anyway.”

The magazine rack in a large American bookstore is a sobering sight. There are magazines on and about everything. You often wonder who reads them but some people must do so otherwise they would have long gone out of business. But there is one magazine that remains my favourite though I read it not as often as I should for the improvement of my general morale. It is called Weekly World News. What is refreshing about WWN is that unlike its so-called serious-minded rivals that claim to bring you facts but do nothing of the sort, it makes no such claim. Ten out of ten marks for honesty. WWN also carries the most helpful advice column offered by a lady named Dotty. One correspondent who wanted to get married in a witchy way at midnight in a forest glen in a circle of candles wanted to know what to do about her family which believed the couple would summon Satan and offer animal sacrifices.

Simple, Dotty replied, “If your family doesn’t want to attend your little freak show/wedding then forget them. I hope you and your new warlock are very happy together. Just try not to fall off the broomstick as you fly off on your honeymoon.” To another woman who complained about her husband always getting the wrong stuff from the food store, Dotty advised, “I know it’s always easier to have someone else do something and complain about it, but you know what? Unless the supermarket has taken out some sort of restraining order against you, get off your lazy butt and do it yourself.” Could some of our lazy-bone begums do the same? I wonder.

Weekly World News is not a great admirer of President Jimmy Carter I am afraid, considering how it refers to him, “Jumping Jiminy, that meddling do-gooder is a disgrace to Southern gentlemen everywhere! If Georgia needs to be embarrassed about anything, it’s giving America that loser to be our President for four years.”

And what does one of the magazine’s star writers think of evolution and intelligent design that President Bush wants to be taught together in American schools. “Folks,” he writes, “this whole evolution malarkey is the biggest hoax in scientific history. Anybody who could meet the Slocums, that clan of low-down moonshiners who live up in the mountains back home, and then say they descended from apes is insulting every monkey that ever walked God’s green Earth, by gum.”

The Weekly World News recently came up with some astounding findings about Dick Cheney as a child, though such a thing is hard to imagine if you look at him today. “Dick Cheney hasn’t changed much. As a child, he was a tough, clever manipulator who ran roughshod over his classmates and stopped at nothing to win. And other than growing taller and heavier, the 64-year-old politico looked pretty much the same as he does now — even when he was in a Casper, Wyoming elementary school, say sources. ‘It’s amazing how he hasn’t changed,’ recalls Jennifer Pereau, who was a classmate of the future corporate and political kingpin. ‘Then, he looked like a little old man, with wispy hair and thick glasses. Now, he’s finally grown into those looks.’”

We learn that Cheney was mired in an election scandal when he was only seven. He was accused of rigging class elections at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School. I don’t think that would surprise anyone. The Weekly World News is very much into Bigfoot stories. A recent one says that Bigfoot is no more, having been dispatched to Bigfoot heaven by a three-foot dwarf named Yarosky, who executed the coup de grace with a sling made out of a thong borrowed from a girl by the name of April. “He started swinging it overhead — then he let it rip. The rock beaned the Bigfoot and the thing keeled over,” April reported.

Bigfoot’s carcass has been carted away to an undisclosed research facility and tight-lipped wildlife officials refuse to confirm the incident on record. And since all good stories should have a happy ending, Yarosky is now dating April, while being hailed as a hero for slaying an ultra-rare Bigfoot.

I say let’s get Yarosky to Pakistan to solve our Bigfoot problem.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

As I watched Gen Pervez Musharraf going on and on – someone should tell him less is more – on July 21, thanks to satellite TV channels, about what an evil terrorism was and what a good Muslim he really was, having been admitted to the House of God as many as six times, I wondered what we had done in an earlier life to be buffeted around like this as a nation and a state. Of course, it wouldn’t have occurred to the General that he was admitted to the holy of holies half a dozen times not because of his piety or because the great Creator of the universe had decided to smile on him, but because he has declared himself the President of Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also admitted to the inner sanctum. I know because I was with him, right inside, but I never had any illusions that I had gained entrance to that sacred spot because of any of my own merit. I was there because I worked for Mr Bhutto.

But this is only a preamble. It is North Korea I want to write about. One frets about Pakistan all the time and for as long as I can remember, that is all one has done. Do other people fret about their countries? Not so much, I think, but that does not mean they like what they see. It is just that they are less mired in politics than we Pakistanis are. I could, of course, be wrong. Given repeated bouts of military rule, we should have become immune to it, but we refuse to give up the ghost, continuing to believe, as we do, that the elusive goddess called democracy will one day smile on us. Gen Musharraf, of course, believes – and he said that on 21 July again – that it is he who brought real democracy to Pakistan for the first time. Since one does not argue with a man who has a gun, even if he has been inside the House of God six times, I will let matters rest here.

About two years ago when I read a long, chilling article on North Korea in the New Yorker , I decided not to fret about Pakistan because compared with the North Koreans, we live in an earthly paradise. A friend says Pakistanis should compare themselves not with the Danes and the Swedes and the Swiss but with nations like Nigeria and North Korea so that they start counting their blessings instead of their sheep. While I refuse to buy into this philosophy, the man may have had a point.

Thank God, we are not North Korea, though if the nonproliferation lobby in the United States is to be believed, we have done business with them of the forbidden variety. Poor Dr AQ Khan, he is the Jesus Christ of Pakistan, having chosen to be crucified to wash away our sins. But were we North Korea, we would have been supplicating ourselves to the “Sun of the 21st Century,” Kim Jong Il, son and heir of the Great Leader who ascended skywards many moons ago but is still to be worshipped. We never do that in Pakistan. We welcome anyone who has managed to grab power and we stick our tongues out at him once he has been shown the door. The poor North Koreans can’t even do that. In North Korea, “Truth is a confection of outright lies, a form of unreality imposed with relentlessness and violence on a people hermetically sealed from any alternative sources of information,” wrote the New Yorker . A satellite image of North Korea at night shows an area of total darkness, while the South twinkles like the sky on a clear night. Until the early 1990s, there were 51 sub-classes of citizen in North Korea, based on party loyalty. The state maintains three separate security services which spy on all citizens and report to the leadership. Compared to those boys, the ISI is a band of winged angels.

No radio or TV in North Korea has the capability of receiving more than one signal. Citizens are constantly regaled with such messages as, “Today, the world’s people are consistently envious of our people, calling our people the people blessed with a Leader.” Fifty per cent of the food the North Korean people need has to come by way of foreign handouts. A generation of children has grown up stunted.

A report published on 3 July in the Los Angeles Times by Barbara Demick looks at life in the North Korean city of Chongjin, the country’s third largest. In the mid-1990s, around two million people died of starvation. Most of the factories in this industrial town are “rusting in ruin” and those that still run barely pay salaries, the average wage being no more than a dollar a month at the current exchange rate. People hustle to sell anything they can to eat. A retired school teacher gets a pension of about 30 cents, which is not enough to buy two pounds of rice. A family of four subsists on “substitute” food, mainly ground corn, a powder made from the entire plant, that is fried like pancakes which are dropped into water like noodles. They cause indigestion. Even bicycles are a luxury; most people walk, often with huge bundles on their backs. There are no taxis, only hand carts that also serve as beds at night for the homeless who ply them to earn something. Chongjin looks like a ghost town. The power plant runs at a quarter of its capacity. The city is pitch black at night. Only 275 miles from the capital, it takes three days by car and 27 hours by train to get there.

A 39-year old Chongjin miner lives with his family in a squat, drab house. The only piece of furniture they have is a wooden table with folding legs. They have one cooking pot, one knife and a couple of bowls, plus a large urn to store water drawn from a well. They have four pairs of chopsticks and four spoons. The children have no toys or books. Each member of the family owns only two pairs of clothes, one for summer, one for winter. Two portraits hang on the wall, that of the Great Leader and the Sun of the 21st Century. It is forbidden to hang or display family pictures. The man says half his fellow workers at the mine have died of starvation.

Chongjin residents have learnt to recognise the different stages of starvation. First the victims become listless and too weak to work. Their vision grows blurry; they become bone-thin; then, startlingly, their torsos bloat. While some people seem to fade away, others die in agony, their intestines blocked when they can’t digest substitute food, such as corn powder and oak leaves. Particularly lethal to children’s digestive systems are ersatz rice cakes, moulded out of paste made from the inner bark of pine trees. The miner told Barbara Demick, “In North Korea, I don’t remember a single day when I had a normal, happy life.”

Does this mean we should consider ourselves fortunate that we are not North Korea? No, not that, but next time there is a power outage in Lahore, maybe we should think of Chongjin and what that miner said.

When is Gen Pervez Musharraf going to realise that the great disadvantage of authoritarian rule is that the man in authority is held responsible for everything that goes wrong. What goes right is neither noticed nor acknowledged. The shattering case of the young Sindhi doctor Shazia Khalid and the manner in which she was dealt with has brought dishonour to Pakistan and a bad name to “Mr Pakistan”.

First, the facts: Shazia was raped. Who her assailant was has not been determined. The crude attempts by the local administration and the army to sweep the crime under the carpet failed. The stealthy manner in which Shazia was removed to Karachi, kept under confinement for two months and then put on a London-bound plane leaves no room for according the government the benefit of the doubt. Some heads should roll in Pakistan. Let “enlightened moderation” by demonstrated in deed not words. Especially contemptible have been attempts by certain agencies and agents to spread scandalous stories about Shazia. Even today, Mrs Anis Haroon from Karachi, who helped Shazia and remains in touch with her, is followed wherever she goes and harassed otherwise. Who are these people and on whose behalf are they acting, and why?

Shazia and her husband are in London. What a shame that they have had to leave their own country to find shelter in an alien one! She has been helped by the US-based group AANA, which is made up of Pakistani professionals, mostly doctors. The countrywide organisation of Pakistani doctors, APPNA, has yet to do anything to help. Nor has any gesture of sympathy come from any of those hundreds of Pakistani millionaires, whose generosity is mostly aimed at their own person and family. A fabulously rich Pakistani in Canada who is always going on about national honour and Islam sank into silence since I asked him to make a gift of money to Shazia.

Since the publication of the two Nicholas Kristof columns in the New York Times on Shazia, there has been an outpouring of sympathy and support for her from around the world. From Pakistan there has been just one message, from India none. People have written to President Musharraf and the Canadian government has been asked by many to grant Shazia the asylum that she seeks. Two Canadian immigration lawyers have offered to take up her case free of charge. Some money has also been sent by New York Times readers and more will surely follow. One American woman writes, “I am appalled at the way she was forced to leave her country and then left helpless and isolated in the United Kingdom. This crime and the cover-up have struck at the heart of humanity. I demand justice for female victims of violence in Pakistan.” One message says, “I am a poor man, but I will be happy to contribute a small sum. Fight the good fight Dr Shazia.”

One woman writes, “It must be so difficult for you right now, but try to think of how much good you are doing in the face of so much pain. You will heal, and you will fully realise that you have not lost any honour, only gained even more than you had before.” Another woman writes, “You are an inspiration, and a Godsend to other women who have been victims or who may become victims in the future.” An American student in London says, “I can’t offer much, but would be happy to bring over a home-cooked meal and be a friend.” A woman from Honolulu writes, “Aloha, I am glad to hear that you have gone public with this humiliation. No woman should be treated the way you were.” Another young London student says, “Let me know what I can do! Do you or your husband need groceries, medicine or anything? Take care!” A woman from St Louis writes to say that she was also a rape victim and asks Shazia to “stay strong so that you can help other women who suffer. You also bring me strength. May God be with you.”

Several letters have appeared in the New York Times. One rape victim tells Shazia, “Rape will hurt anyone it touches and will corrupt any society that condones it, ignores it or victimises the survivor. Rape is not about sex; it is about power.” One woman from New York writes, “Dr Shazia was forced to quit Pakistan with dire warnings. She did not seem to get any support from the intellectuals, human rights groups and news media in Pakistan for her refusal to cower in the face of blatant injustice.” A woman from California says, “The world must support truth tellers. To fail to support Dr Shazia is to side with her persecutors.” A woman writing from Tel Aviv tells Shazia, “I had tears in my eyes when I read Kristof’s column about the Pakistani rape victim. I, too, am a rape victim.”

I think it is incumbent on Pakistan and its people to reclaim their daughter and bring her home from her exile with honour and love.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The All Parties Hurriyet Conference delegation that spent fifteen days on this side of the Line of Control met everyone, including Charlie’s aunt, but one group of people it did not meet was the one made up of Kashmiri leaders in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan. One is, therefore, left wondering what the purpose of the visit really was. For the last ten if not fifteen years, Kashmiri leaders on our side of the dividing line have been demanding that they be allowed to meet their compatriots from the other side. The first to make this demand was Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan. He made several attempts to get key political figures from the two sides together but none proved successful because neither the government of Pakistan nor the one in New Delhi would encourage any such meeting. In Pakistan any official one spoke to, regardless of what government was in office, blamed India for placing impediments in the way of such a get-together. That was true, of course, but equally true it was that there was great reluctance in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, especially in the intelligence establishment, to have any such meeting take place.

The Indian conduct, though abominable, was at least consistent with the official position New Delhi has maintained through the years, namely that the Jammu and Kashmir state lawfully acceded to India in 1947 and, consequently, that makes all Kashmiris Indian citizens and subject to the laws of India and the Indian constitution. In other words, the Kashmiris, being Indian citizens, have no status other than that of Indian citizens. It is sobering to remember, though those pursuing the peace mirage in New Delhi and Islamabad have forgotten it, that there has been no change in the Indian position to this day.

Manmohan Singh could not have stated it in clearer words when he said that India represented the Kashmiris. The last meeting between Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries ended in a deadlock. The Indian official stated at the outset that there would be no transfer of territory, no new partition and no inclusion of the Kashmiris in the talks since they were Indian citizens who were duly represented by the government of India and its authorised representatives. Riaz H Khokhar, easily the ablest of Pakistan’s foreign secretaries in recent years, put it well when he told a Kashmir conference in Washington on 14 July that India had been always willing to talk about Kashmir, but never willing to negotiate.

But to return to the Hurriyet leaders, they came to Pakistan, but without Syed Ali Gilani who is now the lone man out, unwilling to give up a stand that we, its promoters, have all but given up. History is full of such ironies. Why did the Hurriyet leaders come here if not to sit down with their counterparts to become what Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan once described as a “bridge between India and Pakistan!” But what happened only came to light when Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, prime minister of Azad Kashmir, told members of the Policy Analysis Group in Washington on 14 July that neither he nor any other Kashmiri leader had had a chance to exchange more than extended pleasantries with the Hurriyet delegation. Although the bus from Srinagar was received by Sikander Hayat, after the ceremonies and garlanding were over, the men from Indian Kashmir were allowed a well-deserved rest and then whisked off to Pakistan. Once there, they were treated like rock stars and dined in and dined out. I have no doubt that by the time they returned to Srinagar two weeks later, they carried with them several pounds of fat and enough cholesterol to last them a lifetime. They were, after all, in the Land of the Cholesterati the world knows as Pakistan.

The Azad Kashmir prime minister said that when the Hurriyet leaders returned to Muzaffarabad, he and his colleagues were hoping that they would now have the opportunity for which they had waited so long. It was even agreed that the visitors would spend an entire day with their hosts discussing Kashmir and what they could collectively do that would bring this great human and political tragedy closer to a solution. But that was not to be. The Hurriyet men arrived in the Azad Kashmir capital, had breakfast, shook hands and were put into the bus that had brought them over. Asked who had drawn up the programme, Sikander Hayat replied that it had been drawn up by the government of Pakistan. He stated matter-of-factly that at no stage had the Azad Kashmir government been consulted. This cannot be an accident. After all, those who drew up the programme of the visit knew what they were doing, so why did they do it? I have a number of possible answers but I will refrain from offering them, leaving it to those who prevented the Kashmiri leaders from meeting, to step out of the shadows in which they always hide to tell us what is going on, for once at least.

Sikander Hayat is a neat, clean, upright politician who has spent his entire life in the service of the Kashmir cause. For some time now, he has been trying to exercise his constitutionally granted powers as prime minister despite being saddled with an ex-general imposed on Azad Kashmir days after his retirement from the army, having been superceded by a Maj General. Under the AK constitution, which has not been disfigured with a 17th-like amendment, the president of Azad Kashmir’s office is purely ceremonial. But not in this case. Sikander Hayat said it best, “Gen Anwar Khan refuses to understand that he is not the Gen Musharraf of Azad Kashmir.” The Azad Kashmir constitution lays down that the president shall act on the advice of the prime minister and that advice shall be binding on him. The retired general is not all that Azad Kashmir has to contend with. There is the commander of the 12th Division in Murree who is the supervisor-in-chief of the “base camp of Kashmiri freedom.”

Sikander Hayat said the bus service was welcome but of little use. It was also costing his government Rs 25 lakh every month, a sum it could ill afford. If the bus is really intended to “reunite families” then the families that need to be reunited live not in Muzaffarabad or Azad Kashmir but Sialkot, Gujranwala and Jehlum where around 20 lakh of the former refugees from Jammu province settled after partition.

While all this goes on, there is the so-called Track II Kashmir diplomacy underway without anyone knowing what is going on. It would give sleepless nights to many to know that the “Kissinger” representing us is none other than heavyweight Tariq Aziz, who may once have been at FC College, Lahore with “the real PM,” but whose only known expertise is confined to income-tax law. The Indian government’s Tariq Aziz is their former ambassador to Pakistan, SK Lambah. Riaz Khokhar, being the consummate and upright diplomat that he has been, put it very well in his address to the 5th Kashmir Conference in Washington: “If a solution is imposed on the people of Jammu and Kashmir, they should stand up and reject it. That’s their right.”

Comments