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Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was here for barely 48 hours but it was long enough for him to have met everyone, except Charlie’s aunt, whom he would have met as well, were she not out of town. You see it is that time of year. Birds answering to the description of Charlie’s aunt fly away to Florida.

Many were left wondering how much more the prime minister would have got under his belt had he come to Washington in summertime. Bad weather, it was obvious, had failed to ground the man from Islamabad. Since fair is fair, I will concede that what we have in him is a class act. The man is cool, unhurried, laid back, unruffled. A sharp dresser, who does not cross his legs when sitting, he speaks in an even, carefully cultivated voice, answering questions without looking at the ceiling or for the teleprompter.

Had Shaukat Aziz been at that meeting in New York last year where our General nearly came to blows with this woman who had asked him what he meant by his get-raped-if-you-want-a-western-visa remark, he would have smiled, thanked her for the question and gone on a charm offensive, ending it with an invitation to the rather emotional lady to visit Pakistan as his personal guest so that she could see for herself what wonderful things were happening there.

The man, in short, is a smoothie. If anyone has ever seen him angry or heard him raise his voice, all he or she has to do to win a free lunch at this new chic place in Islamabad’s Kohsar Market is to call me.

And now for the bad news. Why Shaukat Aziz had to bring with him 80 others, he should explain in his honeydew voice now that he has returned home. While he does not have to emulate General Musharraf, since he is neither military nor the victim of a botched hijacking, it should be said that when it comes to foreign travel, he should follow the General’s example. Since the Boys took control of Pakistan six years ago, General Musharraf has come to the United States at least five times and every time he has taken a regular PIA flight.

The size of his delegation has been invariably small. He has rarely, if ever, brought anyone with him who did not have a contribution to make to the visit. In the beginning, General Musharraf used to bring only those members of the media whose organisations were willing to pay for them. But since no good thing ever lasts long, this one did not last either. It was Sam, a name given to the former information secretary, Syed Anwar Mahmood, by an official I can only identify as ‘Bekhabar’, who had the practice discontinued — and it has remained discontinued since.

The prime minister commandeered a regular PIA aircraft to ferry his party of largely do-nothing types to America. How much revenue the airline lost during the seven days the aircraft sat idle on a tarmac at JFK, New York and the Andrews Air Force base in Washington, only the airline can say, but it must run into at least a million dollars. At a time when Pakistan has been raising money through international donations to rebuild what the October earthquake destroyed and rehabilitate the millions who were rendered homeless, it is indecent to waste public funds in such a profligate manner.

This is doubly regrettable because the prime minister is a finance and money man. I wish he had met the late Mumtaz Hasan, who as joint secretary at the Ministry of Finance in the early years of Pakistan, once turned down a request from Khan Liaquat Ali Khan himself for an increase in his sumptuary allowance. The prime minister, the Quaid-i-Azam’s first lieutenant and among Pakistan’s makers, accepted the finance ministry’s refusal with good grace. It is that example Shaukat Aziz, who holds the same job as the Nawabzada once did, should follow. His role model should not be Shahzada Salim.

Except for a handful of people who had been brought over as part of his official delegation, none of the others had any purpose or relevance. They were at best joy riders. What contribution, one should ask, did Sharifuddin Pirzada, the “Jadoogar of Jedda” or the Interior minister or the three ministers of state make?

There were three federal secretaries on board as well, unless my count is wrong. One is not sure what their inputs were. And what good to man, bird or beast did the three senators and the three MNAs, two of them being women, do? There were also 10 businessmen, who, one was told, paid for their hotel and meals but the air journey was on the house. A couple of the prime minister’s personal staff also brought their wives. And last but not least, there were more than 20 members of the media, both official and private.

One example of the profligate operating style of the visit’s planners was the inclusion of two APP reporters, when there already are two highly experienced, APP reporters based here, one in Washington, the other in New York. Three of the prime minister’s press aides were also on this trip, including the young lady, reportedly once of the BBC, about whom the BBC appears to know little. So it goes.

Next time, Shortcut travels abroad, let him trim his entourage. Didn’t anyone tell him at Citibank that less is more and small is beautiful?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Nowadays, when all kinds of Kashmir “solutions” are being tossed up in the air like a conjurer’s balls, it is time to remove some of the confusion that has been caused about the true nature of the issue. Those who have come up with nebulous formulas such as the “united states of Kashmir,” which they have failed to spell out, should in good conscience refrain from distorting facts and creating illusions. At whose behest they are doing this, one should leave unsaid with the request that if they do not have any respect for the intelligence of their audience, they should show some to the thousands of young Kashmiris who lie under tons of earth in what was once heaven on earth but is now the valley of death.

Those who are advocating the “united states of Kashmir” will probably want to carve out a state for Kashmiri pandits as well, while they are at it. As it is, there is a movement called Panun Kashmir – an autonomous pandit enclave in Kashmir – which was thought up to counterbalance the uprising in the Valley, which started peacefully but turned militant in face of the savagery with which the Indian state tried to crush it. The exodus of the Kashmiri pandits from the Valley has been blamed on the 1989-90 uprising, but it was essentially the then State Governor Jagmohan who drove the pandits out of the Valley. The eventual radicalisation of the movement is a direct outcome of the cynical policy of turning what was neither a Muslim nor a communal upsurge, into one exclusive to Kashmiri Muslims. It is being argued today that the problem of Kashmir is multinational and multiethnic in nature and must be seen and dealt with on that basis. The exodus of the pandits from the Valley is cited as evidence of the multiple nature of the issue.

About ten years ago, M Yusuf Buch, by any measure the most informed and fair-minded authority on the Kashmir issue, drafted an open letter to Kashmiri pandits, which they were never able to see because no major Indian newspaper was prepared to publish it even as a paid advertisement. It will be instructive for all those involved in or concerned with Kashmir to read Buch’s wise words and his dispassionate analysis of the Kashmiri pandit dilemma and how it may best be resolved.

Buch wrote that his letter was addressed to those among the pandits who were willing to think calmly about Kashmir and the future of the pandit community. “To those others who are obsessed with hate against the Muslims, we have nothing to say.” He asked the pandits to “stop fighting the truth,” which is that the integrity of their community, indeed its survival, is indissolubly bound with Kashmir; that Kashmir is not a part of India, which can only occupy it militarily. India, he added, had opted out of Kashmir morally and politically, but it was an open question whether it would quit Kashmir as France quit Algeria or South Africa left Namibia. “It follows that the time has come for you to mentally extricate yourselves from India’s fatal grip and reattach yourselves to Kashmir because in Kashmir, you have the same future as your compatriots; in India, you have no future at all.”

Buch pointed out that India could only provide the pandits with asylum, not make it possible for them to live as a community, but as a mass of dispersed individuals and families, speaking alien tongues, coping with inhospitable climate and walking on unfamiliar soil. The privileged members of the community would manage, “but what about the others?” he asked. “Who has disinherited them from what is theirs? Whose siren call are they made to follow?” he wrote. He asked the pandits if they could be rehabilitated by the “marauding Indian army” which only seems “capable of turning habitations into graveyards.” It was only the goodwill of their Muslim compatriots that could bring them back, he argued. The resistance in Kashmir, Buch emphasised, is not communal: it is against “alien occupation.” Kashmir’s history and the demands of its future forbid religious conflict. He reminded them that they had had “hideous proof” since 1990 of what their exile in India means. “You are being kept in Delhi and Jammu in conditionsof insult and injury so that you can be used as concocted evidence towards your rehabilitation with honour.” Bush dismissed Panun Kashmir as the demand for a “ghetto within Kashmir.”

Buch wrote that it was wrong that the pandits had been let down by their Muslim compatriots, reminding them that they let themselves be “swayed by a chronic mistrust” of Muslims on two crucial occasions in history: first in 1947, when “you connived at that fraud and conspiracy which brought about India’s entry into Kashmir,” whose first victim was the distinguished Kashmiri pandit, Chief Minister RC Kak. Two sons of Kashmir, Prem Nath Bazaz and Hirday Nath Wanchoo, had counselled their pandit brothers not to fall in with the Indian plot. The pandits, instead, chose to support “the bunch of opportunists among Kashmiri Muslims who sold their people down the river.” The second time the pandits chose to take the wrong road was in 1990 when Kashmir’s resistance of Indian occupation took a decisive turn. “The brutal forces of Indian occupation wanted you out of Kashmir in order to misrepresent – indeed to disfigure – the Resistance as an anti-Hindu campaign and also to clear the field for acts of mass slaughter andrape and arson. They made you flee and desert Kashmir at its hour of trial,” he stated.

These blunders, Buch assured the pandits, are reversible. But for that to happen, they would have to release themselves from the “dark mental confinement,” which bars from them the sight of their own future. He asked them to unfetter themselves from Hindu extremism in India. He urged them not to rely on India’s military power, arguing that “it is India’s armed strength that contributes to India’s political weakness. . . India may have acquired the power to destroy, but it has little capability to build.” Urging an intra-Kashmiri dialogue, Buch wrote that Kashmiris should not read their history wrong because it was one of coexistence, amity and tolerance.

Buch implored the pandits to establish contacts with the leading elements of the Kashmiri Resistance and with Pakistan and Azad Kashmir because Pakistan had not deviated from its stand that the Kashmir problem should be solved according to the wishes of the people of Kashmir, who include the pandits. He asked that the pandits send accredited delegations to initiate a dialogue with all the parties that will play a significant rule in Kashmir’s future. “You have a stake in that future which India does not have. You have to take charge of your destiny,” he urged. In a meritocracy that an India-free Kashmir would be, Buch argued, the pandits would have a stimulating role to play beyond their numbers and size.

The road which Yusuf Buch asked the pandits to take a decade ago, still awaits their footsteps.

“The Eagle has landed”, a friend phones from New York, breathless with excitement. It is always nice to come home because this is the city which was home to our beloved leader before a certain bird that everyone thought had never existed in the first place, or become extinct, appeared from a deep blue sky on a lovely summer morning and made a perfect nimble-footed landing on the well-coiffured head of the man who would one day be our prime minister.

It was a bird with perfect manners since it left nothing behind except the good fortune it had brought. I am sure if it had landed on my head, mistaking it for the assigned site, it would have left something else behind.

I am unable to bring to this space all the exciting things that must be happening in New York, what with the brilliant cast of 75 that the prime minister has brought with him, including 21 of my own tribe. I am unable to do that because I have not gone to New York, having been asked to wait for the great man’s arrival in Washington, which takes place exactly on the day this column appears.

New York is high finance and commerce and there simply could have been nobody better equipped than Mr Shaukat Aziz to sell to the Americans the socks and sweaters and T-shirts that they have refused to buy in the quantities that our sweatshops in Gujranwala and Faisalabad produce. But the hot button issue among Pakistanis here is not textiles but the Bajaur bombing that killed women and children and “four foreigners”, if our own spy spiders are to be believed. This at least is what some of them have been telling American newspapers and news agencies.

What has everyone confused is that if there were indeed four foreigners felled by those 10 missiles that a mysterious, unidentified flying object (could it be a flying saucer?) lobbed at that mud-walled compound, where are the bodies? Have the angels come and taken them to Neverland? One Pakistani source – O how we love to try our English on foreigners! – said that the bodies had been taken for DNA tests. He wouldn’t say who had taken them or where they had been taken.

The finger of suspicion has naturally been pointed at Auntie CIA (rhymes with PIA), but Auntie says it never comments on such matters. And, frankly, we should all have a lot of sympathy and understanding for Auntie’s reticence. The real reason Auntie never talks about such things is because it would frighten the children. And if there is one thing Auntie CIA loves, it is children. So there.

The prime minister was asked – I want that reporter arrested under Defence of Pakistan Rules and the Frontier Crimes Regulations – why he was even going to the United States when 18 innocent Pakistanis had been slaughtered. His reply should be framed and hung outside every mud house in Pakistan. He said, “My trip to the US is there on schedule because we want to engage on many issues, including how we fight terrorism, and this incident will also be discussed. Our relationship with the United States is very important and growing, but such actions cannot be condoned.”

I love his use of “also”. That is not all, because he added, “Pakistan is committed to fighting terrorism but naturally we cannot accept any action within our country which results in what happened over the weekend.” Anyone interested in learning how to write antiseptic English that would say little and cause no offence, needs to read this sentence a hundred times a day on an empty stomach before daybreak.

A friend in Canada has sent me a piece by David Corn from the online publication Slate. According to him, “Some legal scholars say the missile strikes in Pakistan are clearly against the law since Pakistan never attacked the United States. Others argue that the rules of war need to be updated, since terrorist groups, like states, can engage in major armed conflict. By that logic, the recent attacks on Pakistan are similar to the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan; i.e., both were legitimate acts of self-defence against Al Qaeda.”

But, writes Corn, “This dispute is irrelevant if the Pakistani government gave the United States permission to carry out the missile strikes. If so, that could make the attack legal whether or not the US had a valid claim to self-defence. Few nations in Pakistan’s position would admit that they had struck such a deal, so it’s possible that the formal diplomatic protests are for show.”

I want it noted by The Boys that it is not I who said that the “diplomatic protests are for show”. It is Slate. Frankly, Uncle Sam and Auntie CIA should send a drone or two to take care of Slate whenever those birds can be spared from bombing women and children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

I am told of a recent discussion on the breakup of Pakistan in 1971 and that blasted Polish resolution on the brassiest of our TV channels that keeps tagging on its name to everything it puts out. It seems the channel is not quite sure it exists and, by repeating its name every three minutes, it wants to be reassured that it does exist. Such a state of mind is beyond repair, as is the reincarnated Howard Hughes who owns it all. Is it only a matter of time before he stops clipping his nails and trimming his hair?

One of the participants, Begum Akhtar Suleman, who has brought no credit to the great man whose daughter she is, kept accusing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of having divided the country so that he could become Prime Minister. Then, as was to be expected of such martial law mushrooms, she said that had Bhutto not rejected the resolution moved in the Security Council on 15 December, 1971, by Poland, a Soviet satellite and a member of the Warsaw Pact, Pakistan would not have been dismembered and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman would have become Prime Minister of a united Pakistan

I have just about had it with that Polish resolution, having lost count of the times I have written about it, but this urban myth refuses to die. And then there are always Akhtar Sulemans to keep such ignorance in circulation. The Polish resolution has been used to malign Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; added to which is that other urban legend: the Idhar hum Udhar tum , words never uttered by Bhutto, but words that keep getting attributed to him so that he can be held responsible for the dismemberment of Pakistan. While I have no illusions that my writing one more time on this will make the two myths disappear, it is still something that needs to be done every now and then so that ZAB is at least not attacked for things he did not do.

I am reminded of the Tunisian receptionist at a hotel in Cannes where I once stayed in 1988. The receptionist said that to him, Pakistan only meant Ali Bhutto. What, he said, was indelibly imprinted on his mind was Ali Bhutto tearing up a bunch of papers and storming out of the Security Council. That was ‘un moment inoubliable’ – an unforgettable moment – he added, quite emotionally. If you ask anyone in Pakistan, what Bhutto tore up, you would be told, “Why, the Polish resolution.” Actually, what ZAB tore up were his notes and some papers on which he had been doodling (Iftikhar Ali, then the APP correspondent at the UN picked them up, examined them carefully and put them back before rushing out after ZAB).

Now the facts. On 15 December, 1971, the UN Security Council met at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s request. Two draft resolutions had been submitted to it on the same day, an Anglo-French resolution that called for cessation of hostilities, the urgent conclusion of a comprehensive political settlement and the appointment by the Secretary General of a Special Representative to “lend its good offices, in particular, for the solution of the humanitarian problems.”

And then there was the Polish resolution, which laid down that in the eastern theatre of conflict, power will be “peacefully transferred to the representatives of the people, lawfully elected in December 1970” – namely the Awami League. It also called for the immediate beginning of the process of power transfer, the cessation of military actions in all the areas with an initial ceasefire starting for a period of 72 hours. It went on to demand that after the immediate commencement of the initial period of ceasefire, the Pakistan armed forces should “start withdrawal to the pre-set locations” in East Pakistan “with a view to evacuation from the eastern theatre of conflict.” It went on to call for the entire West Pakistan civilian personnel and other persons willing to return to West Pakistan, as well as the entire East Pakistan civilian personnel and other persons in West Pakistan willing to return home, to be given an opportunity to do so under the supervision of the United Nations, with guarantees by all appropriate authorities concerned that nobody would be subjected to repression. It said, “As soon as within the period of 72 hours the withdrawal of the Pakistan troops and their concentration for that purpose will have started, the ceasefire will become permanent. The Indian armed forces will be withdrawn from East Pakistan. Such withdrawal of troops will begin upon consultations with newly established authorities organised as a result of the transfer of power to the lawfully elected representatives of the people.” Thereafter, India and Pakistan were to begin negotiations for the “speediest possible implementation of this principle in the Western theatre of military operations.”

If any resolution should have been accepted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it should have been the one moved by Britain and France. By 15 December, in any case, no resolution had any bearing on the ground situation. The decision to surrender had already been taken by Yahya and under Indian bayonets and Soviet blessings, East Pakistan had become Bangladesh. ZAB’s move was brilliant. It was the only way for a defeated and humiliated Pakistan to retrieve what it could of its national honour. The Polish resolution was an unvarnished demand form the Soviet Union, tabled through its satellite, Poland, for the immediate transfer of power to the Awami League. The next day, Gen Niazi surrendered with great aplomb at the Paltan Maidan, as if he were inspecting a guard of honour. While the Polish resolution required civilian personnel in East Pakistan and their counterparts in the West to be repatriated, it said nothing about the Pakistan army, which was required to lay down its arms and withdraw to “pre-set locations with a view to evacuation from the eastern theatre of conflict.” It was not clear where it was going to be evacuated to. How could Bhutto accept this resolution?

On 15 December, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, looking grim, entered the Security Council to make his unforgettable speech, “I have not come here to accept abject surrender. If the Security Council wants me to be a party to the legalisation of abject surrender, then I say that under no circumstances shall it be so. The United Nations resembles those fashion houses which hide ugly realities by draping ungainly figures in alluring apparel. The Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union talked about realities. Mr Permanent Representative, look at this reality. I know that you are the representative of a great country. You behave like one. The way you throw out your chest, the way you thump the table, you do not talk like Comrade Malik, you talk like Czar Malik. I see that you are smiling, well, I am not because my heart is bleeding. I am leaving your Security Council. I find it disgraceful to my person and to my country to remain here a moment longer than necessary. I am not boycotting. Impose any decision, have a treaty worse than the Treaty of Versailles, legalise aggression, legalise occupation, legalise everything that has been illegal up to 15 December, 1971. I will not be a party to it. We will fight; we will go back and fight. My country beckons me. Why should I be a party to the ignominious surrender of a part of my country? You can take your Security Council. Here you are! I am going.”

That was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: poet, revolutionary, patriot.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz arrives in this winter-weary capital at the head of a mini-battalion sized entourage — that being the fashionable word for delegation — on Sunday of all days, one week from the day of this column’s appearance.

Since love, whooping cough, perfume and visits such as Mr Aziz’s are hard to keep under wraps, it is not surprising that word of the Prime Minister’s arrival has been out several days prior to its formal official announcement. The Pakistani Prime Minister is nothing if not a charmer and though he stays no more than a night or two in the capital, he is bound to woo quite a few. He has a headstart in his ardent admirer, one of the principal architects of the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz. The once-upon-a-time academic and former deputy secretary of defence now presides over the World Bank, though this time around, he only wants to invade poverty. Will he leave the Bank with the poor of the world even poorer, or will he leave a chicken in the pot of every Third World kitchen remains to be seen.

I recall Wolfowitz — whom one journalist at a press conference I was at addressed as Lord Wolfowitz of Baghdad — making an appearance at the new Pakistan embassy with the fake Shish Mahal entrance and heaping so much praise on his friend Shaukat Aziz that had he been present, his feet would have surely left the ground and he would have soared as high as our unbegotten F16s. Wolfowitz spoke about his friend’s rise through the ranks of the Citibank and how he could have had any job in the corporate world he wanted. The Citibank’s loss was Pakistan’s gain. Shaukat Aziz had not yet taken his shortcut to prime ministership, an office once held by Khan Liaquat Ali Khan and Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, but what of it! So, if nothing else, a warm welcome and a cup of black coffee await the Prime Minister at the Bank that beats all banks.

The Prime Minister was to have come much earlier but was upstaged by the President who beat him to it. Quite wisely, it was thought — by whom, is not quite clear — that it may be prudent to leave the visit to a latter date. The Prime Minister will arrive in full glory at the head of a delegation numbering by the present count 75. This being the cricket season with India playing Pakistan in Pakistan, it is only natural to wonder if the Prime Minister would get his retinue into three figures. I would encourage him to do so; after all, what is 25 between friends, as they say. Will he stay in Blair House, the official residence of those invited officially, or will it be some five star bhatyar-khana such as the Four Seasons where a cup of tea costs the equivalent of what a day labourer in Pakistan earns in three days. And last but not least, he is meeting Mr Bush, which is what is really bringing him to Washington.

Quite rightly have some people wondered if there is a race between President Musharraf and his chosen number two as to who will make more foreign visits. Given the Shahid Afridi pace at which Mr Aziz has been going, my money is on him. I hope when he jets past the President, there would be no hard feelings on the General’s part. As a soldier, he should know that you can’t win every battle. One area in which the Prime Minister has already left the President sleeping at his post is entourage size. While the President brings with him no more than a dozen or so, the Prime Minister, being the numbers man he is, carries several dozen. And mind you, these are baker’s dozens, which means more than 12.

But why take it out on Shaukat Aziz? Look at that perennial traveller, Chairman of the Senate Muhammadmian Soomro. The other day, an enterprising Islamabad reporter fished out the numbers. He found that the Chairman had gone on 23 trips lasting 225 days — which is exactly seven and a half months — between March 2003 and August 2005, a period of two years and a half. Inspired by him, his deputy, members of the Senate and sundry officials had gone on 46 foreign trips during the same period at a cost of Rs 67.29 million to the taxpayer. Next time, any reader of this column should run into the Chairman during one of his visits to Pakistan, he should be asked what he and his wife were doing for 10 days on the island of Cozmul, Mexico. The conference, which was the apparent reason for the exotic trip, lasted three days. The Chairman, his wife and his delegation of three stayed 10 days. He may also be asked about a 16-day trip, accompanied by the lady wife, to the UK, US and Egypt that cost Rs 3.42 million. Then there was the 19-day trip to Canada — yes along with the lady wife or as Munir Attaullah would say, gnadige Frau — nine of which were spent on official business and 10 on God knows what.

I would close this with an apology to Benazir Bhutto on whom I conferred the title ‘The Lady Sinbad’ when she was prime minister. Her journeys look no more than footnotes compared to the itineraries of our present kings and queens.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

As I write this on a rainy Christmas Day, on which 129 years ago, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born in the city of Karachi. And as I put this down, the words of the late Eqbal Ahmed, written on the same day in the closing years of the last century, ring in my ears: “If he were to appear in my dream, how shall I convey my shame to the lean old man whose life and work we celebrate today?” Do we have an answer to Eqbal Ahmed’s question?

When Gen Musharraf took power from the only ground-based “hijacker” in aviation history, he expressed his admiration for Mustafa Kamal. He also spoke of the Quaid with much conviction. That was six years ago. Kamal has not been mentioned since and the references to the Quaid-i-Azam are now in the nature of a ritual. ‘Enlightened moderation’ is no more than a pair of words flung at us every day, but we see little evidence of it on the ground.

One thinks of what the Quaid said barely six months after the establishment of Pakistan. On 19 February, 1948, he said: “But make no mistake, Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it. Islam demands from us the tolerance of other creeds and we welcome in closest association with us all those who of whatever creed are themselves willing and ready to play their part as true and loyal citizens of Pakistan.” A few days later, he said, “In any case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims – Hindus, Christians and Parsis. They are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.”

The Quaid must have foreseen the day when those sworn to uphold the Constitution would be the very ones to break that oath. Why would he otherwise have told military officers at Staff College, Quetta, on 14 June, 1948, that, “During my talks with one or two very high-ranking officers, I discovered that they did not know the implications of the oath taken by the troops of Pakistan. Of course, an oath is only a matter of form; what is more important is the true spirit and the heart. But it is an important form and I would like to take the opportunity of refreshing your memory by reading the prescribed oath [then the Quaid read out the entire text of the oath]. As I have said just now, the spirit is what really matters. I should like you to study the Constitution, which is in force in Pakistan at present and understand its true constitutional and legal implications when you say that you will be faithful to the Constitution of the Dominion [which Pakistan was at the time]. I want you to remember and if you have time enough you should study the Government of India Act, as adapted for use in Pakistan, which is our present Constitution, that the executive authority flows from the head of the Government of Pakistan, who is the Governor General, and, therefore, any command or orders that may come to you cannot come without the sanction of the executive head. This is the legal position.” Those who followed the Quaid, took the oath, broke it without compunction, with one such ruling for eleven years and declaring that the Constitution was just a sheaf of papers that he could tear up at will.

And how have we treated the Quaid’s memory? The ultimate insult to him was done by the movie Jinnah to which state funds were contributed. Sharifuddin Pirzada, the Cardinal Richlieu of Pakistan, claimed some years ago that Miss Fatima Jinnah had been murdered, a monstrous allegation with no basis in fact. Stories continue to be circulated about the Quaid’s last hours and how he died by the roadside when his ambulance broke down. Over ten years ago, one of his former ADCs, Noor A Hussain, wrote the definitive, eyewitness account of the Quaid’s last journey and it is important for us to read it because he recorded the truth.

Hussain wrote that in July 1948, the Quaid caught a chill and developed a cough and a fever. It was characteristic of the man that he had left his personal physician, Col Rehman, in Karachi to “attend to the public.” The civil surgeon of Quetta who examined him advised consultation with a chest specialist, which was how Col Elahi Bakhsh and Dr Riaz Ali Shah were flown to Quetta. They put the Quaid on a diet, prescribed medicines and he began to improve. They even allowed him to smoke his favourite Craven A cigarettes, but sparingly and without inhaling. Khan Liaquat Ali Khan came to visit him and when he suggested over lunch to Miss Jinnah that the Quaid should have the best medical attention from abroad, she replied that the Quaid, who was present but did not speak, wished to have nothing to do with foreign doctors. The same answer was given to MAH Isphahani, Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan and Khawaja Shahabuddin. Even when he was dying, he wasn’t thinking of himself but of Pakistan.

The Quaid insisted upon being driven to Quetta to record his August 14 message for Radio Pakistan. Ziarat had electric power for just three hours in the evening. He was dressed in a suit with a waistcoat and sat upright during the two-hour drive. That was the last time the nation heard his voice. In the first week of September, his condition deteriorated and Col Ilahi Bakhsh recommended that he should be taken to Karachi. Hussain, his ADC on duty on 10 September, along with Lt Mazhar, phoned Col Knowles, his military secretary in Karachi, and conveyed to him the Quaid’s and Miss Jinnah’s strict instructions that the departure and arrival should be kept private. On 11 September, the Governor General’s Viking, flown by Squadron Leader Jim Harrison, touched down at the World War II Samungli airstrip at 11 o’clock to pick him up. After lunch and some rest, the Quaid was placed on a stretcher, which was carried by his two ADCs, with Miss Jinnah, Sister Dunham, his nurse, and the doctors walking behind. As the two ADCs were taking the stretcher out of the bedroom, the Quaid asked, “Where are we going?” Lt Mazhar replied, “Quaid-i-Azam, we are taking you to Karachi. You will get well there.” “No, I won’t,” said the Quaid. As the stretcher was carried to the aircraft, a gust of wind blew a corner of the sheet he lay upon on his face. He slowly lifted one arm and moved it away. Tail winds brought the Viking to Karachi’s Mauripur base ahead of schedule, where Col Knowles was present with two cars and an ambulance. The Quaid’s stretcher was placed in an ambulance and Miss Jinnah, Sister Dunham and one of the ADCs got in with him. A traffic sergeant on a motorcycle led the three-car convoy.

Near Lyari, the ambulance broke down and would not start. Col Knowles dashed off to get another and the journey was resumed. Hussain did not say how long it took the other ambulance to arrive, but it must have taken an hour. Hussain wrote, “In this age of Mercedes, Pajeros and BMWs, it is difficult to imagine what. . . the Karachi of 1947-48 offered by way of cars, ambulances and public transport even after becoming overnight the capital . . . of Pakistan. The Quaid died that night at 10:30 in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the Governor General’s house. He lay in state in the main entrance hall as people filed past him, sobbing.”

That is the truth. But were that grand old man one day to return, how shall we face him after what we have done to his Pakistan!

So dear Dorothy, there is not only a Santa Clause and a Wicked Witch of the West, there is also something even more mysterious. It is called a change of heart. If you don’t believe it, call Congressman Dan Burton’s office, who until the other day was Pakistan’s pal No 1 in this town called Washington (no, sorry, it is not in Kansas). Rep Burton of Indiana has had a change of heart and, bingo, he is now a “lover of India”. I wonder who among our friends is headed Dan’s way next.

According to my count, there were about four people on Capitol Hill who fell into the category called ‘All-weather friends of Pakistan’. Alas! Rep Burton was one of them. What he used to say about India, Kashmir and Khalistan at congressional hearings would make every Indian squirm, and it should have, because Rep Burton was not one to mince words, and he pulled no punches.

Had the Indian embassy not been mindful of restrictions that host governments place on foreign missions, it might have considered approaching Don Corleone to place a horse’s head without the horse outside the congressman’s office.

As I said, we have about four “All-weather friends” in this town and every time anyone has come to Washington from Pakistan — be it our waistcoated foreign minister or the toothsome Kashmala Tariq — it is the self-same four on whom the embassy has arranged for the visitors to call. But come to think of it, I am not surprised that Dan Burton has bolted our camp. After all, he is only human, so he must have had about enough with every Pakistani visitor asking him, “When are you going to get us Kashmir?”

Burton has said that he remains a friend of Pakistan, but I have yet to run into a Pakistani who believes that there is such a thing as being a friend to both Pakistan and India. I am not saying they are right, only that this is the prevailing national mindset.

The Pakistani philosophy was best summed up by the late Sheikh Aftab Ahmed in Lahore once. When assured by a visitor that he, the visitor, was a friend both to the Sheikh and his sworn enemy, the Sheikh twirled his moustache and said in Punjabi, “Yaan sir dai dai, yaan sir lai lai.” (Either give me your head or take mine.)

I am not sure if the Embassy of Pakistan is still recovering from the New Year, or whether it is licking its wounds. I haven’t called because it is too early in the year to hear a recorded voice instructing me which button to press for what or whom.

Anyway, now that the world’s greatest diplomat and most renowned deputy chief of mission in Washington, Muhammad Sadiq, is on his way home, it may be possible to resume communication with the mission whose next-door neighbour is our soon-to-be-friend, Israel. I must say that those who chose the site for the new Pakistani embassy must have been men gifted with second sight.

Will Dan Burton be the first domino? Who knows. If he is, it will be a pity because it won’t take long for the remaining few to lick the floor. Say, about the same time it takes to say “Kalabagh”. It may even be a good idea to divest ourselves, one by one, of what friends we have here, in line with what Abdullah Butt, the great wit and raconteur of Lahore, once suggested as the best answer to Pakistan’s problems.

“Actually, there is only one problem”, he declaimed as we sat listening to him in the Lord’s Restaurant on The Mall. “The problem is education. What is required is De-Education. All schools, colleges and universities should be closed down and new institutions opened to which everyone with any kind of education, from primary to doctorate, should be sent for de-education. Total illiteracy bringing ignorance will be a bliss.” Then in his booming voice Butt declared, “Since we would be mentally akin to cattle, we simply would not care who or what rules Pakistan. A quiet corner to relax and masticate would be our only goal in life.”

But to return to Dan Burton, he was asked by Aziz Haniffa of India Abroad before he set out as the head of a joint congressional delegation for the subcontinent, “Over the years, you have from the floor of the House strongly advocated for a separate state of Khalistan, urged the US government to support the call for a plebiscite in Kashmir and even advocated for independence in places like Nagaland and Assam. You have repeatedly argued that people in these areas are being persecuted, their human rights and religious freedoms and other rights being violated, by the government of India. Given your current change of heart, do you still advocate a separate state of Khalistan in Punjab and a plebiscite in Kashmir?”

Burton, being the politician he is, gave a goody goody answer. Haniffa, not one to give up, came back with, “Would it be wrong to suggest that there has been a significant dissipation of your concern on issues like Kashmir, Punjab, Nagaland, etc in recent times, and that you today don’t hold such strong views that essentially advocate separatism?” Burton’s answer was, what they call, strictly for the birds.

Be that as it may, I hope our winsome Foreign Office spokeswoman does not demand next Monday that Dan Burton should return the medals Pakistan once pinned on him.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Amtul Hafeez is a remarkable woman. Now in her middle eighties, her vision severely limited, her physical state frail – especially after a horrendous car accident from which it took her a long time to recover – she still cooks, reads large print books, takes care of her large, split-level house.

Amtul Hafeez, I should add, has also written what I consider the best and most “doable” book on our cooking. Even a dummy, if he follows her instructions which are short and simple, can produce results that might induce a god or two to slip down from Mount Olympus to sample those delights. I have read umpteen books on Indian-Pakistani cooking, including my friend Saeed Jaffrey’s former wife Madhur Jaffrey’s international bestseller. Amtul Hafeez’s book, published in India, is obviously not a bestseller – some of the best books are not – but it is the genuine article. Married to Syed Habib Ahmed in pre-Pakistan Delhi, she moved with him to Pakistan and in 1949 to New York. He spent his entire life in the service of the United Nations and on retirement settled, in Canada. He is just ten short of his century and 2005 comes to a close, I wish the two of them many, many more summers and winters of health and happiness. Also, perhaps another cookbook, a companion volume to the first one, from Amtul Hafeez.

Her new book, a paperback – An Asian Woman in the West – has been brought out by a small Canadian publishing house. It has a subtitle which I hope will be eliminated from the next edition since it is more appropriate to a book by the late Arnold Toynbee. The subtitle reads ‘the future of North American civilisation.’ This can’t be the author’s idea because Amtul Hafeez is a lady with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Such people are not into airy fairy things. But I make this point only in passing. Much of the first part of her book does not interest me since it is made up of her observations about what she calls North America. But North America is not a monolith. It is the most diversified part of the world and it also includes Canada, which is quite different in many ways.

What interests me about Amtul Hafeez’s book are her reminiscences of her early years. She was born in Ajmer, daughter of a police officer, eighty-four years ago. Young Muslim women at the time were considered “literate enough” if they could read and write some Urdu and count. They were kept well away from franagi education. Even the most enlightened Muslims thought that a Western education was morally injurious for women. Akbar Allahbadi has reams of verse making fun of women with an education. Even the great Sir Syed was opposed to women’s education. It is therefore a matter of credit to Amtul’s parents that they not only sent her to a Convent in Ajmer but to one of the best women’s colleges in India, the Inderprastha College in Delhi. She spent four years there as a resident student.

She married Syed Habib Ahmed, who was working for Tata’s at Jamshedpur, which is where she moved with him. She recalls that she was always fascinated by movies when growing up in Ajmer. She writes that sixty-five years later, she can still hum songs that have a “permanent place in my soul.” She remembers Saigal and Uma’s great hit of those times Ik bangla banay nyara , KC Day’s Mun ki aankhain khol and Pankej Malik’s Aayi bahar . She realised after she was married that her husband had no interest in movies. He would drop her at a cinema in Jamshedpur, go home and return to pick her up. Like a dutiful wife – which is what is wrong with our marriages – she gave up watching movies. In the last thirty years, she writes, she has seen just two or three Indian movies. She has no DVD player even today because Syed Habib Ahmed has not developed a taste for movies in the last sixty years.

Amtul Hafeez speaks of her sacrifices in a muted voice, which is what I found quite touching in her book. Her mother, who bore ten children, though by the fifth child she was unwell with an undiagnosed stomach ailment that killed her at the early age of fifty-five, was a remarkable woman. She saw Amtul, who besides going to school, sewed and washed for the entire family, as her “pillar of strength.” Boys were never asked to do anything except play, eat and sleep. It must have been very hard for her to let her daughter go to college in Delhi but, though not educated herself, she knew the value of education. After her marriage, Amtul writes, she made only short visits to Ajmer, being in distant Jamshedpur. On what turned out to be her last visit, she found her mother very ill but was forced to return to her husband who sent her a frantic telegram. A few days later, her mother died. Writes Amtul, “I regret to this day that I was not at my mother’s bedside at the last moments of her life and have always rebuked my husband for urging me to return.”

Amtul writes that she realised early on that she and her husband had “two different ways of thinking, different temperaments and different values on almost all aspects of life.” She says she had imbibed the Rajput values of discipline and standing up for what she believed was right. But her husband had a “rather ambivalent” attitude towards discipline. He was more taken with literary and intellectual pursuits than with housekeeping matters, which Amtul saw as vital. She was a stickler for orderliness and things being neat and tidy: he wasn’t into that. Another trait of his that she says “troubled” her was his extraordinary sensitivity to any criticism “coming from me” to his way of doing things around the house. When others criticised him, he responded by saying that he appreciated their advice or opinion; but from her, he was not willing to take anything. She writes, “Married life is never a perpetual bed of roses for any woman and especially for an Asian woman and I had my share of it.” She believes that men find it hard to deal with educated women, which was why women were kept uneducated in the past.

Having had the honesty to write what she has found irksome about her husband, Amtul adds, “Throughout our married life, he has been a loving and kind husband and I too, despite our occasional disagreements, have loved him, ever trying my best to see that he was happy and comfortable with me.” After having written these lines, she recalls that once when she was offered a job by the Voice of America, something she very much wanted to take, she was discouraged from accepting it. Her husband told her that on his return from work, he liked to see her at home with the children. He offered to take a second evening job if it was extra income she wanted. What he did not understand was that it was not extra income that she wanted but the freedom to be able to do something on her own.

All that is now in the past. If longevity is the test of a good marriage, then sixty years of togetherness fall in Habib’s and Amtul’s favour. How does she view the future? She writes, “I have concluded that whatever life is left to me, I would like to make the most of it and above all to do whatever I can to maintain my independent life in my own home.” Well, some girl Amtul Hafeez is!

Between Christmas and New Year, life in Washington, as elsewhere, slows down. Roads are suddenly free of the traffic that keeps them clogged otherwise. Although it is sales time all the year round in America, pre- and post-Christmas sales remain special. Why people buy so much what they do not need is hard to understand. Some buy not because the thing bought is required but because it was going at a great price. If one looks around one’s home, one would find scores of eagerly acquired objects that were never quite needed, and have seldom been put to use. My brother Bashir used to say that it is quite amazing how much utterly unnecessary junk a human being manages to collect in a very short time. You realise this when you are moving house, for instance. It can be a bewildering experience. Actually, a human being’s basic needs are simple and few, but we are all members of a consumer and a consuming society and we buy because others sell — and others sell because we buy.

With the advent of plastic money, buying is so easy and nowhere else in the world is it easier than in the United States. Hardly anyone carries cash any longer in any sizeable quantity. Once I paid for a large purchase in cash and realised that the sales clerk was eyeing me with great suspicion. Had this man robbed a bank, he appeared to be wondering, and who could blame him! Everyone’s wallet is full of credit cards, and then some more. The plastic money epidemic has also hit Pakistan but mercifully remains confined to the affluent few, the chattering classes, in cities. It is of course only a matter of time before it invades the entire country. However, when one has to pay cold, hard cash for a purchase, one thinks twice. With a card, there is no hesitation. All it needs is a signature, with the cashier not even looking to see if the signatures on the receipt match those at the back of the card. This is how stolen credit cards get honoured. No one really looks at them: they are just run through the cash register mechanically and handed back to the thief with a thank you.

Cash is cash and plastic money is plastic money. I remember the late ambassador, Iftikhar Ali, always Ifti to his friends, paying for a meal with an American Express card in an Ottawa restaurant and assuring those who wanted to have the honour instead, “Meain kairray paisa dainn laggaan.” (What makes you think I am parting with money!) There is hardly a day here when you open your mailbox and do not find one or two credit card offers. You are informed in breathless language that you have been chosen for the issue of such and such credit card and all you have to do is fill a simple form, which asks you to reconfirm information already available plus a few additional details such as your annual income or what other cards you hold (this country runs on competition). Some offers come with the invitation to shift the balance you owe to your current card company at zero percent to the new one for the first six months or a year. I know of many people who never pay any interest because they are always hopping around like a frog from one company to another. In the end, of course, the bad news about credit card debt is that it has to be paid, unless you either disappear or move out of the country or declare bankruptcy. Major credit card companies lose hundreds of millions in bad debt but so enormous are their profits that they still make a killing.

With so much now being purchased on the Internet, credit card fraud has flourished. Some of the world’s leading vendors like Amazon will not accept credit cards issued in Pakistan. Did our scam artists do a number on them? If they did, it must be small potatoes compared with what takes place in this country by way of credit card theft. All a thief needs are credit card numbers, nothing else. Most of these numbers have been purchased or stolen. Say, if 50,000 card numbers have been stolen and on each card, the thief puts a small charge which won’t be noticed — say $19.95 — he or the racket he is working with will have made $997,500 in one go. Not bad, is it! Not all websites on which people post their credit card information are secure. There are some people, however, who simply would not buy anything on the Internet, but they are the kind who are by nature extremely careful. The majority does not bother because it is so easy to buy whatever you need and never having to leave home for it. Great con artists are nimble footed and always a step or two ahead of the competition. They also get caught sometimes, do jail if unlucky, only to come out and get back to the same old work on the cardinal principle that you should only do what you do best.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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