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All the Indian and Pakistani governments need to do to make a breakthrough in their relations is to abolish the visa. Having said that, I have absolutely no illusion that this will ever come to pass. The principal problem with India and Pakistan – and no doubt Bangladesh – is too much government. It is government everywhere and in everything. In a country like the United States or England, your only brush with government comes when you file your annual tax return; for the rest of the year, you live your life utterly unaware of there being such a thing as government. Not so in Pakistan and India. Here, government breathes down your neck day and night. There is more government in Pakistan and India than there was in the heyday of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The ideal thing, of course, would be to abolish government altogether, but since that is not going to happen, is there some way of having less and less of it? I suppose one can dream on because that is not going to happen either. So whatdo we do and where does that leave us?

News at the conclusion of the June meeting between Indian and Pakistani representatives about the easing of visa restrictions was more promise than performance. Nothing is really going to change and it will remain as difficult for an average Pakistani to travel to India as for an average Indian to come to Pakistan. What is one to make of the phrase that the two sides “agreed to work on the modalities of proposals identified by them?” Orwell said when people do not want to be honest, they use vague language, which is exactly what “work on the modalities of proposals” is. It is vague as hell, even vaguer. The leader of the Pakistan delegation, Jalil Abbas, said the two sides “moved forward in the area pertaining to visa policy for group tourism under a separate category.” What does “move forward” mean? And what on earth is “area pertaining to visa policy”? What area? What policy? This is official poppycock pure and simple. If I were to mark the English papers of those who drafted the joint statement, they wouldget one mark out of ten, the one mark being for the physical and mental labour involved in drafting the drivel from which I have quoted.

But despite the Jalil Abbases (not to forget his counterpart on the other side) of our country, off and on, some human beings do manage to slip into the other country. One such person this summer being Tariq Masood, who managed to travel to Jammu on 11 April with a Track II group exactly 58 years, 5 months and 5 days after he and his family had to flee the city where open season had been declared upon Jammu’s Muslim minority by the Maharaja’s forces, reinforced by those from the Sikh states of the Punjab, and armed operatives of fascist Hindu groups like the RSS. Why did it have to take Tariq, who was only 10 years old when his family fled to Pakistan (and only escaped death because of sheer luck), nearly six decades to visit the city where he was born? Being from Jammu myself, I can feel and experience the joy that Tariq Masud felt on entering the city. I also know the agony. My father Dr Noor Hussain and my two older brothers, Bashir and Saeed, died longing to visit Jammu. It simply was not possible; nor isit possible today – Tariq Masud is an exception – for those who come from Jammu to go there, or to Srinagar. The farcical Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service (there is none between Jammu and Sialkot, a distance of less than 30 miles), which is no more than a sorry symbol of an insufficiently and insincerely felt desire by the two governments for better relations.

In a conversation with The Kashmir Times , owned and edited by Ved Bhasin, a true ambassador of goodwill and an even truer Jammu-wala, Tariq Masood, who retired some years ago as a senior Azad Kashmir civil service official, recalled with great vividness the city and the people he remembered from his childhood. He went to the house in Mohalla Daroogaran, where he was born and he visited his first school, the Model Academy, whose principal is the son of the principal of Tariq’s time. The school produced the old admissions register and there it was, all the particulars of the eight-year old boy named Tariq, son of Dr Rehmatullah. He remembers the name of every one of his classmates. He said, “I’ve fallen in love with the city again. I did not know that Jammu with Tawi as the backdrop, had such a fascinating view.”

But there were things about the city that he remembered that no longer are there. Gone are the cobbled streets that the rainwater would wash clean and make them shimmer like glass. The old railway station is gone, as is the girder bridge over Tawi, the only one of its kind in the state, its steel beams having been brought over from Jamshedpur. He recalled summer evenings around the golden domed Raghunath Temple and the flower sellers who sat outside. The aroma of the Jammu motia is legendary. The Jammu people who sought refuge in Pakistan settled mostly in Sialkot because they were quite sure they would return to their homes, once the “troubles” were over. That day never was to come. Tariq recalled that though it is sixty years and the third generation of those refugees has reached adulthood, Jammu’s favourite food is still cooked in the homes of Jammu families living in Pakistan. The famous Urdu Bazaar, the women’s quarter from where the great ghazal and Pahari folk singer Malika Pukhraj sprang, has been renamed Rajendra Bazaar (a shame because no historic names should be changed, something of which Pakistan is more guilty than India).

Tariq remembered that it was at Uttam Talkies, one of Jammu’s two cinemas, which exists no more, that he saw the great musical hit of its time, Rattan , starring Swarnlata and Kiran Diwan. The man who composed the music, Naushad, died only recently and was mourned across the Subcontinent and wherever Indians and Pakistanis live. Tariq walked past the studio of Jammu’s most famous photographer, Datta, and could not help stepping in. Old Datta of course is gone but the studio is still in business and run by his son-in-law, so there you have, what is called, continuity.

Does Tariq Masud’s nostalgic trip have a moral? Yes, and it can be expressed in one line: abolish the visa between India and Pakistan. There are millions of Tariq Masoods waiting to return to their childhood homes, even if for a few fleeting moments. What India and Pakistan need to do is to humanise their relations. Politics has got them nowhere, nor will it get them anywhere. People come first; the rest is secondary.

When NADRA was established, the first thing that struck everybody was its name, the second example after NAB of the government having picked up a rather unfortunate set of acronyms. NAB has lived up to its name by nabbing those on the establishment’s hit list, rather than bringing to justice the fat cats who have been on the rampage in the Pakistani hencoop. As for NADRA, it is a name more appropriate to an abducted woman from the town of Pir Mahal in Faisalabad or a hoodlum in the back streets of the old city of Lahore than an agency assigned with the task of setting up a national database.

I do not know who the head honcho is but like most head honchos under this government, it must be a gentleman in uniform or one who was in uniform until recently. Whoever he is, he should know that something is very seriously the matter with his empire. Several of its computers are absent without leave. For instance, if you go to the NADRA website and click the link ‘Apply Online for NICOP/POC,’ the message thrown back at you says: ‘Apply Online Section is down for maintenance. Please visit later.” “Please visit later” is like being told by a person who owes you money, “The cheque is in the mail.”

Some years ago, it was announced that Pakistanis settled abroad, who had taken foreign citizenship, could apply for a Pakistan Origin Card by filling in a form and submitting it with $100 to the nearest Pakistani embassy, which would pass on the application to NADRA (not Lady Naipaul, I clarify), and a POC card — good for seven years — would follow. Great idea but is it working?

The experience of one Pakistani lady, whom I will only identify as Ms BJS, is illustrative of what happens to some who apply for a Pakistan Origin Card (POC). The applicant is assured that all that is required of him or her to establish a claim is “at least one proof of Pakistani origin”, no more. The form itself requires only those applicants furnishing information about a “living Pakistani relative” who are claiming Pakistan origin “only on relationship basis”.

Ms BJS, who was born inside Texali Gate, Lahore, and who has lived in the United States for the last 30 years, applied for a Pakistan Origin Card in December 2005. She fulfilled all requirements, including furnishing “at least one proof of Pakistani origin”, which she did in the form of a copy of her Pakistan passport. After several months, when she inquired when her POC would be issued, she was told informally — but not in writing — by the Pakistan embassy in Washington, where she had made the application, that her papers had been found “incomplete” by NADRA.

After some running around, she found that the “Facilitation Cell, SRC Directorate (NICOP Dept), NADRA headquarters, Islamabad” had objected that Ms BJS had not provided her NIC (National Identity Card) number. There is no such requirement laid down in the application form, and in any case, Ms BJS could not have provided an NIC number for the simple reason that she had never had an NIC. So this is the sort of shoddy work that NADRA is doing. Ms BJS is a graduate of the Punjab University and she took her MA from the University of Dhaka, studying under such teachers as Andleeb Shadani and Hanif Fauq. Her brothers and other members of her family, including her children, are all settled in the United States. She was asked to “send a copy of NIC herself (if held) along with Number of copy of CNIC/NIC of Father/Mother/Blood Relative so that her case may processed (sic) on priority (sic).” There is absolutely no such requirement listed on the application form, so may one ask NADRA: What on earth’s goin’ on?

My own inquires have shown that NADRA’s work, at least in its dealings with overseas Pakistanis, is poorly supervised. Mistakes in PIC or NICOP cards issued are rampant. Names are misspelt and dates got wrong. It is not uncommon to be issued a card, which shows American cities as being located in the United Kingdom and British cities as being located in the United States. The sort of objection which was placed on Ms BJS’s application is common. This is a crying shame and although I have no illusions that anything printed in the press changes anything in Pakistan, one writes about such things out of habit.

I have serious objections to the POC form devised by NADRA’s geniuses on several grounds. First of course is the column on religion and the Zia ul Haq-ordained declaration about who is a Muslim and who is not, a matter which lies in Allah’s domain alone. Column 22 states, “In case of a State Subject of Jammu and Kashmir (please shade the applicable box) AJK, Migrant from Kashmir Valley, Migrant from Jammu and others.” This is horrendous. It has been Pakistan’s position from day one, both at the United Nations and everywhere else that the former State of Jammu and Kashmir is a single indivisible entity whose future remains to be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of that State and in accordance with UN resolutions. Why has NADRA divided the State of Jammu and Kashmir into three parts and, with that, its people, the Kashmiris? I, for example, am a State Subject, having been born in Srinagar, but belonging to Jammu, and I consider myself and am considered by the Government of Pakistan as a person originating from the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which the United Nation has declared to be a disputed territory. Does the breakdown of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in three different segments indicate a change of policy on the part of the present Government of Pakistan? An immediate clarification is essential and the present NOC and similar forms have to be withdrawn immediately and rewritten. Period.

And, yes, another ridiculous question asked of the applicant is: “Has any of your parents/grandparents ever been a citizen/national of India or Israel?” Before 1947, everyone was a citizen of India, so what is this question meant to find out? Sixty years after independence, is this an attempt to differentiate between those who were or whose parents came to Pakistan as refugees? If Gen Pervez Musharraf was asked this question, he would turn out to have been an Indian citizen at birth and would probably be denied a POC, were he at some point to apply for one, not that he is going to.

What I find shocking is that this form, with its politically dangerous and highly improper implications, was approved by the government. Question: Who approved it and on what basis? Meanwhile, Ms BJS’s Pakistan Origin Card should be issued immediately. For reference, her application No is 840E2343, dated December 7, 2005, Receipt No 000027344, forwarded by the Embassy of Pakistan, Washington.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

President Pervez Musharraf may think he is media savvy, but he should some day watch one of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s old interviews to see a master at work. ZAB’s knowledge and understanding of international affairs, his grasp of world history and his command of English made him an interviewer’s delight. He was also unflappable, and since he always knew more than the interviewer, he could speak with authority, without being arrogant. He once told one of his ministers, who had made a particularly inappropriate response to a reporter’s question, “Remember one thing in this business, you don’t have to answer every question asked of you.”

I can say of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that given his photographic memory – he never forgot a name or a face and he could always match them – he personally knew most major Western newsmen, certainly everyone who had covered or was covering South Asia. As his press secretary, I would sit in on all interviews he accorded in the early days of his government. I would record them, prepare a transcript and release it. I do not remember ever having had to edit anything Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said because invariably, he delivered press-ready copy. That is a gift which most politicians do not have because they like to go on and on. But then ZAB was not just a politician: he was a statesman.

I recall an ABC television team that flew in to interview ZAB in early 1972. The producer asked me if there was some way of advising Mr Bhutto to keep his answers short. “The crisper, the better,” she said. I told ZAB what the ABC team had requested. So crisp and polished were his answers that after it was over, the producer said, “He is a pro.” I think of that and compare it with the present lot, which reminds me of Ahmed Faraz’s answer when asked to compare Pakistan as it was and as it is. “In 1947, the president of the Muslim League was Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah,” Faraz said, “Today the president of the Muslim League is Chaudhri Shujaat Hussain.”

But let me move from the ridiculous to the sublime. In 1973, when ZAB came to the United States on an official visit, his first here, he was interviewed on NBC’s Meet the Press . Among his three interviewers was Pauline Fredrick, who had conducted one of the famous Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates. My friend Iftikhar Ali, who was APP correspondent at the United Nations at the time, has found me a copy of the transcript. Frederick began by suggesting that given his country’s problems, including devastating floods, Mr Bhutto must have had compelling reasons to come to Washington at this time. Did he feel that he had accomplished the mission that had brought him over?

ZAB replied that since the creation of Pakistan, his country had had the most cordial relations with the United States and “I know we no longer use the words ‘special relationship,’ but the relations have indeed been most satisfactory.” He said the purpose of his visit was to “review the developments that have taken place in our part of the world, in the Subcontinent, in Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East, but with emphasis on the developments in the Subcontinent.” He listed the war, the aftermath of the war, the economic difficulties being faced by the people of Pakistan and the question of the POWs that had brought him to the US. Asked about the lifting of the US arms embargo that Pakistan wanted, ZAB replied, “This was not the principal object of my visit. Of course, there are treaties between the United States and Pakistan. There are the bilateral agreements of 1954 and 1959 and we are entitled to receive military assistance under these treaties.” Then he added, “However, in your superior wisdom, you chose not to fulfil the terms of this treaty and since 1965 we have not received any arms assistance from the United States.”

Fredrick asked ZAB that while President Nixon had called the independence and integrity of Pakistan the “cornerstone of American foreign policy,” how was the US going to implement “this cornerstone policy” when it was not willing to lift the arms embargo? ZAB’s answer was classic. “The independence and integrity of any country has to be met by the people themselves. The people must defend their independence and integrity. Outside assistance in whatever form it comes can only complement the efforts of the people. Our people are determined to safeguard their national sovereignty and independence. Since that is the essential responsibility of the people, we rely almost exclusively on the people’s efforts, but we are nevertheless thankful for the sentiments which the President of the United States expressed as an ally of Pakistan.”

She wanted to know if Pakistan would turn to China to get arms that the US was refusing to deliver. ZAB replied, “We do not conduct our foreign policy on that basis. . . we do not believe in resorting to expedience and manipulation.” Another interviewer asked ZAB if he was afraid that there might be a “return to the militarism that existed before” if the Pakistan military was not satisfied that its “arsenal was complete.” “Not at all, not at all,” ZAB answered – and his words were to prove prophetic – “The military can do any silly thing at any time. She does not need arms from abroad or the lack of arms. We have seen that that kind of adventurism is not stopped by external factors.” Asked why he had not implemented his extremely leftist policies, ZAB replied, “There is a complex way of looking at matters and a simplistic way of looking at matters. Capitalism and communism are not interpreted in the same way as they used to be in the past. Communism is looking more like capitalism and capitalism is looking more like communism.” He added that his outlook was not pragmatic – a word he did not like - but realistic but he had made “no compromises with egalitarian concepts.”

To a question about Big Powers, ZAB said, “Big Powers can do big things. That is why they are so big. And we are small powers, so all we can do is to remain vigilant.” As for the Big Powers carving out the world, he said, “We hope that the great ones at the summit now will not come to any such agreement because they should realise that finally the romance of revolution prevails over the machinations of great or small powers.” Fredrick asked the last question, wanting to know what Mr Bhutto had meant when he had told the UN General Assembly the day before that the Middle East conflict was an example of the “bankruptcy of power politics.” ZAB told her, “Miss Frederick, it is all very well to indulge in semantic expressions. We have burned our fingers badly in our own Subcontinent, and we are concentrating all our efforts on trying to find a new equilibrium in our part of the world. All I can tell you is that we would be extremely happy if some resolution is found of the impasse of the Middle East. It will lessen our burdens considerably and cause us great satisfaction.”

If there was one man who should have become Secretary General of the United Nations, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but, in the words of the late Malik Ghulam Jilani, the “Judge-Gernail Combine” sent him to the gallows.

Faryal Virk, my young friend from North Carolina, wants to know why it has taken the Higher Education Commission all this time to decide that “Dr” Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s BA degree is fake. She suggests that the “Government of Pakistan should hire some kid with an Internet connection as a consultant for a few thousand rupees a month (heaven knows they’re dishing out hundreds of thousands of rupees for people doing nothing, so this would just be a drop in the ocean) to check on the foreign academic credentials of our esteemed leaders.”

Since the government of Pakistan is not going to pay any attention to Ms Virk’s public-spirited suggestion, I decided to hit a few keys myself after watching Germany net that last-minute winner against Poland. The commission or its godfather, the chemist turned higher education czar, Dr Atta ur Rehman, should have exposed this mountebank after a number of smashing stories Shaheen Sehbai wrote for his online journal South Asia Tribune, proving conclusively that both “Dr” A Liaquat Hussain and his degrees were fake.

The official announcement made on June 13 says that the BA (Islamic studies) degree submitted to the Election Commission by Hussain has been issued by a “college” which is “not listed among the accredited/chartered institutions of the US”.

As Ms Virk said, all the learned registrar of the University of Karachi, who issued this amusing finding had to do was get a kid to go on the Internet. I am no kid but I did follow Ms Virk’s capital suggestion and here is what I found. The Trinity College has no physical existence. Like Aamir Liaquat Hussain, who sings and simpers on that Channel that cannot stop drilling its name into its poor viewers’ ears every five minutes, it is utterly insubstantial. It is an operation set up to sell degrees from the lowest to the highest to anyone who will remit the required fee.

Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s BA cost him $240 and his doctorate (I take it he obtained it from the same “university”) set him back by $575. Since he looks the type who dresses up, his academic robes, which are also on sale, would have cost him $540 (BA) and $720 (PhD). The joke of course is that a man whose BA is fake also brandishes a PhD. The one decent thing Shaukat Aziz can do is to sack him and have him charged with fraud and impersonation. AL Hussain should also stop broadcasting his mealy-mouthed exhortations to the citizens of the Islamic Republic to become good Muslims.

According to the website of Trinity College and University, of which the minister of state for religious affairs is an “alumni”, it is “an organisation, registered in Dover, Delaware, USA and runs its degree programme from Spain. There are no country residential requirements for the award of degrees from Trinity, yet any official body requiring confirmation of the awards made would be supplied with confirmation of awards made. Under present legislation these awards are perfectly legal.”

Since the world is full of Aamir Liaquat Hussains, the Trinity College notes that while “it is becoming increasingly common for job specifications to state that a Degree is also a requirement, it is also a fact that having a degree enhances the holder’s chance of attaining an interview. It is also common that people who have a working life, full of experience… have little or no formal qualifications. Many people have operated at a level of expertise far in excess of their paper qualifications but are unable to obtain an interview when seeking new positions because the right qualifications do not appear in their CVs. The arrival of ‘selection by computer’, where CVs are surveyed electronically and only those containing the acceptable ‘buzz words’ are passed through to the final human selection, are likely to be successful, the necessity of having the right qualifications is of increasing importance.”

Trinity College (clever name since it makes you think of Cambridge) under the sub-head “Don’t Get the Wrong Idea”, declares without blushing, “It should be said that no-one is trying to ‘degrade’ the efforts of those who have succeeded in completing a degree course, especially in an Engineering subject or indeed any other subject for that matter; rather many employers and agencies often fail to adequately answer that question as to why a degree qualification is preferable to a lifetime of experience in many subjects — clearly however there are subjects where a formal degree qualification is a precursor to the practice of a particular profession, the Medical profession is probably the immediate example and we don’t issue such degrees. If your chosen subject is not listed, please don’t despair, we will consider awarding degrees in any subject, given your experience.”

People, Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s alma mater states, want degrees for different reasons, such as prestige, addition to letterheads to enhance business, gain qualifications missed out earlier, win recognition for experience gained in a given field or to follow a particular interest. Is there an ethical question involved, the sponsors ask? Their answer: “Only in as much as there is no formal course or examination as the award is based on your previous experience.”

Here are the helpful hints Trinity College provides to the world’s Aamir Liaquat Hussains. “The pitfalls are that a potential employer must be sure that you know your subject, there is no point applying for a position in which you have no knowledge or experience of, yet why should you be precluded from having a chance at an interview on the basis of a paper qualification.” (I am not responsible for the Trinity College’s punctuation or lack thereof).

There is also a Correspondence Accreditation Association, which will “confirm your awards to any enquirer. Upon written request, we confirm the degree awarded, its date and subject, this is normally all that is required from any inquirer. We can also supply Transcript of Studies at a cost of £30 ($50) and Legal Declarations of the authenticity of your degree certificates at a cost of £30 ($50) each. Not everyone needs transcripts since most European institutions do not supply them, but we will supply them on the basis of your degree and your experience where required.”

The list of subjects in which degrees from BA to PhD can be bought is too long to be reproduced here. The only missing discipline is medicine, but engineering is included. I hope the next bridge in Karachi is not built by a Trinity engineering alumni. One subject in which no degree is unfortunately on offer is journalism, otherwise for a fee of $575, I would have got myself a nifty PhD.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

During one of his visits to Washington, I asked Humayun Akhtar Khan, minister of commerce and son of Gen Akhtar Abdul Rehman, who was with Gen Zia-ul-Haq on that ill-fated C-130 which crashed in Bahawalpur on 17 August, 1988, if the mystery of what caused that crash would ever be resolved and what he had done or was going to do to get at the truth. His answer left me with the impression that although he did not accept any of the “official” explanations of what had caused the plane to crash, there was not much he was going to do to discover the truth, assuming such a thing is ever possible in cases like these.

Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s son Ijaz-ul-Haq falls in the same category. Unlike Humayun Akhtar, he is on record as having declared more than once in the past that he is going to get to the bottom of the mystery and unearth the truth. He once said that he was going to take the company which manufactured the C-130 to court. For the past many years, he has remained silent on a subject which must haunt him and his other siblings in their private moments. His mother, Begum Shafiqa Zia-ul-Haq, died believing that her husband’s accident was an elaborate conspiracy. She is said to have implicated in her private conversations – as has one of her daughters in a rare newspaper interview some time ago – a certain official for having played a role in the tragedy. In practical terms, little if anything has been done, either by the government of Pakistan or the families of those who died, to arrive at the truth. Only Ijaz-ul-Haq and Humayun Akhtar, both ministers of some standing in the federal government where all the resources of the state are available to them, can explain the reason for their diffidence, reticence or perhaps lack of interest. We can only speculate.

The most detailed and best-investigated piece on the death of Gen Zia-ul-Haq was written Edward Jay Epstein in the American monthly Vanity Fair , in June, 1989. His conclusion after gathering all the details about the crash and talking to several people with direct knowledge of events was that if it was a “well-organised cover-up,” then the crash of Pak-1 “has to have been an inside job.” He argued that “only powerful elements inside Pakistan had the means to orchestrate what happened before and after the crash. But the eeriest aspect of this whole affair is the speed and effectiveness with which it was consigned to oblivion. No matter how well intentioned this cover-up might have been, the one uncounted casualty in the crash of Pak-1 was the truth.”

Sixteen years were to pass before another serious attempt was made by another writer of note to dig for the truth about the crash of Pak-1. Ironically, no Pakistani journalist or writer has attempted such a task, which must say something about us as a nation. The second attempt came from a much-respected journalist, the former New York Times South Asia and UN correspondent, Barbara Crossette. Her report appeared in the 2005 Fall issue of the journal, World Policy Journal , New York, a serious and respected publication. The venerable Yusuf Buch phoned me after reading the article to say that had it been written by anyone other than Barbara Crossette, he would have dismissed it as “one of those things,” but given the record and reputation of the writer, he could not ignore what she had come up with.

To recap, the first investigation was conducted by Pakistan with the participation of US experts. While it was supposed be a joint exercise, within two months, the Americans had begun attributing the crash to mechanical malfunction, compared with the Pakistani side, which called it “a criminal act or sabotage leading to the loss of aircraft control.” The Americans also leaked the malfunction story to the New York Times . The FBI was kept out of the investigation although the American ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold L Raphael and Brig Gen Herbert M Wasson, head of the US military mission to Pakistan, were among the dead. In the United States, Crossette writes “the story was as dead as Zia within a year.” However, former US ambassador to India in 1988, John Gunther Dean, believes there was an Israeli connection. He flew to Washington after the crash to personally explain to his superiors why he believed there was an Israeli hand in it.

Maj Gen Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador-designate to Washington, was commanding the Multan division responsible for the demonstration of the Abrams M-1/A tank that Gen Zia had come to witness. He told Crossette that there was no flight data recorded on the plane and so the report that the co-pilot was heard shouting to the pilot, “What are you doing” just before the crash is “garbage.” Durrani also told the American reporter that the passenger list for the return trip on the C-130 had been finalised on 13 August and Raphael and Wassom were on it. This takes care of the theory that Gen Zia had them ride with him by way of “insurance.” He also dismissed the popular “mango theory” saying that though he had sent two crates of mangoes to go on the plane, they were screened by the security. Some mangoes were loaded at Bahawalpur over which he had no control. However, there could have been no explosives in the crates, since there was no midair explosion, Durrani told Crossette. As for the C-130, in the past, nineteen to twenty C-130s had crashed due to rudder malfunction, which is what appears to have happened to Pak-1.

But to return to Dean, now 81, who was declared mentally incompetent by the State Department in 1988 – others disagree – and drummed out of the service. While he does not hold Israel singly responsible for the crash, he considers it a co-sharer in the plot with India, Afghanistan, the KGB and perhaps some Pakistani individuals. He credits Israel with the planning, which was perfect. According to Dean, Israel believed that Gen Zia was becoming very dangerous to the region. Gen Durrani told Crossette that the Israeli thesis is “far fetched.” He also told the American journalist that the C-130 was not an “infallible aircraft,” recalling, “I had travelled many times on it with the President and many times we had mechanical, electrical problems. On three, four occasions, we had to abandon the aircraft for one reason or another. This is what I regret very deeply, that a proper scientific investigation was not done.” In other words, Gen Durrani is “on board” with the mechanical failure theory which the Pakistan government of the time did not subscribe to.

Crossette suggests that “given prolonged American involvement with Pakistan, isn’t it time to look back with greater diligence and seriousness at this mystery? The longer the tragedy goes unexamined in any rigorous, if not conclusive, way, the more internally contradictory and bizarre this story becomes.”

I first met Arnold Zeitlin in Rawalpindi. He was the Associated Press (AP) correspondent in Pakistan and I was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s press secretary. One thing was clear: Zeitlin, who had been asked to leave Manila because of his less than friendly depiction of the Marcos government in the dispatches he filed from there, did not like Mr Bhutto. On the other hand, he seemed to be enamoured of Khan Abdul Wali Khan and his two-and-a-half tehsil strong National Awami Party. Muslehuddin, always a great wit, used to call Zeitlin, the AP’s National Awami Party correspondent.

Zeitlin was in Dhaka in March 1971 but did not get thrown out with the other foreign reporters because he was with friends on the evening of March 24, including Yahya Khan’s federal information secretary and today’s born-again democrat Roedad Khan, in a house in the plush residential area of Gulshan. He spent the night there, returned to the Hotel Intercontinental, the only decent watering hole in the city at the time, the next day and made a beeline for the Tejgaon airport to catch one of the last PIA flights to West Pakistan. He also filed the first report of the military crackdown, dictating it to the AP stringer in Colombo by phone.

Since no good turn is remembered, my good turn to Zeitlin, I realised was no exception either when I made an oblique reference to it on one of his visits to Washington. He had no recollection of it, although I remember it as if it were yesterday. Briefly, after Zeitlin had done yet another story that Mr Bhutto considered both negative and unfair — he called Zeitlin a serial offender — he ordered that the man should be expelled and AP headquarters informed. When I came to know of it, Mr Bhutto had already ordered the Information Ministry to do the necessary.

Unlike most of his ministers, I was never afraid of speaking my mind to him, so I pleaded with Mr Bhutto not to throw out Zeitlin. Once his mind was made up, he seldom changed it, but maybe he was in a generous mood that day, and he agreed. He also said, “All right but tell Zeitlin that next time, it is outs for him.” I told Zeitlin when he came to see me at my rented house on Peshawar Road. He thanked me and I said there was no need for that. This was in 1972. I remember it, but Zeitlin does not, but that is all right. They say: no good deed goes unpunished, so I should be grateful that Zeitlin has not punished me for mine.

Zeitlin, who spent many years in Hong Kong as head of the Freedom House office, now divides his time between China and the United States, interspersed with visits to Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. He teaches journalism at the Guandong University for Foreign Students in China and has held workshops for young journalists in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Periodically, he mails out a letter to his friends and contacts to keep them au courant. I am enlarging the readership of the one he sent recently from China after two weeks in Pakistan, where he held a workshop for journalists and made a bus trip to Bagh. Mushahid Hussain treated him to a “bran-flake breakfast” (which explains “Mushaadsaab’s trim waistline) and took him to the Senate where he heard KM “Blameworthy” insist that Pakistan is “not a patsy for the United States” and “to hell with those who believe that Pakistan is a base for Al Qaeda”. Zeitlin knew Mahmud Ali Kasuri and since all comparisons are odious, both he and I have refrained from making them.

Zeitlin was treated to dinner by Roedad Khan, whom he found to have “mellowed into a critic of the government so fierce that another friend, Ziauddin, editor of the Islamabad edition of Dawn, told me that no paper except The Nation in Lahore dares print his articles”. I would only add that other papers don’t print Roedad Khan because not only does he lack credibility but he also writes bad bureaucratese, full of learned quotations.

To that I would add that after feasting on 900 mice, no cat can turn to vegetarianism and expect to be taken seriously. Zeitlin also met Agha Shahi — once called “Begum Shahi” by Gen Yahya Khan — who believes that the United States will use Israeli air force to attack Iran. He also met former ambassador Maqbul Bhatti, one of Islamabad’s great morning walkers, who had the impossible task of selling Pakistan to the world on behalf of the Foreign Office in 1971. “These fellows”, observed Zeitlin, “see all life through the prism of relations with India”.

Adds our inveterate correspondent, “I also had dinner with another former foreign secretary, Riaz Khokhar, who retired last year. Riaz now is a special envoy for the prime minister, junketing around the world promoting the establishment of a think tank to focus on Islam and the rest of the world. He says he will try to bring Israel into the project.” Khokhar was once a hawk, but he won’t be the only hawk to have turned into a dove in the end.

Zeitlin writes, “Of course, there were those at the workshop who believe Bin Laden is an American agent and the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN are under the dictates of the State Department (as if anyone listens these days to the State Department, adds Zeitlin)”. He had lunch with Adnan Aurengzeb, “whose dad Mian Gul was more or less the last Wali of Swat”. Adnan, who was swept out by the Mullahs in the last election, is now trying to win back his National Assembly seat.

Zeitlin points out that “although he ostensibly supports the government of the day, he is bitterly anti-Mush”. Zeitlin also spent time with his old friend G Moeenuddin’s son, Taimur, who works for UNICEF and was a tremendous help to his country after the October earthquake.

Zeitlin concludes his Pakistan diary with what can only be described as a kick in the seat of the pants, “All in all, fun time for me. Islamabad is thriving, with a population of one million, about ten times what Ayub Khan had hoped. It is running out of water, so people talk about Fatehpur Sikri the fabulous complex Emperor Akbar built near Agra, only to discover (that there was) no water. It sits there, abandoned today. If it were not for its strategic location and its possession of nuclear weapons, I guess Pakistan would be a comic opera backwater.”

Comic opera backwater? Come on Arnie, don’t you want a Pakistan visa next year to sup with the world’s greatest living reborn democrat, Roedad Khan?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It is a sign of these times of “enlightened moderation” that in this country of 150 million people, there is only one, just one, truly liberal magazine, a small monthly published in Urdu from Lahore without any advertising support whatever, its sole backers being its loyal readers, at home and abroad.

This brave little venture, the monthly Naya Zamana , was started seven years ago by Muhammad Shoaib Adil, whom I have never met but whose heroic commitment to liberal values in our increasingly Deobandi, mullah-infested land I greatly admire. One would have thought that a journal like this would derive its readership from the larger cities, but that is not the case at all, which does not say much for Pakistan’s larger cities. Almost all its contributors reside in small, often far-flung towns. Its correspondents, who, there can be little doubt, work for it out of love not money (since it has none), are mostly based in places like Gilgit, Dera Ghazi Khan, Rahim Yar Khan, Khanpur, Laiyah, Dinga Gujrat, Mianwali, Pattoki, Loralai, Sargodha, Rajanpur, Kharan and Qila Saifullah. Recently, the editor circulated a letter saying he had been unable to interest advertisers and in order to survive, he would need either a sizeable number of his readers to become life members by making a one-time payment of Rs 10,000 or to use their influence to get the struggling publication some advertising.

In its May issue, an analysis of mullah-propelled extremism by Amir Hussaini recalls that early on in Zia-ul-Haq’s draconian rule, an organised movement led by Ehsan Ali Zaheer against the Shia community and the followers of the moderate Barelvi school was launched with official connivance. Poisonous literature, much of it produced in Saudi Arabia, was circulated all over Pakistan. After Zaheer was killed by a bomb in a public meeting he was addressing, his place was taken by an unknown mullah by the name of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a diehard Deobandi who founded the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. His sole target was the Shia community and within a month there was hardly a wall in the country that did not carry the slogan ‘ Kafir kafir Shia kafir, jo na manay wo bhi kafir ’ (All Shias are infidels, as are those who do not believe it). The movement’s wrath was directed in equal measure at the Barelvis who were declared to be outside the pale of Islam because of the reverence they paid to saints and the fact that they celebrated Eid-i-Milad and were given to devotional music. The Sipah was also active in the so-called Afghanistan “jihad.” Once the war was over, its armed cadres descended on Pakistan, spreading their poisonous message from end to end. These forces operated with the connivance, if not the support and encouragement, of the regime. This is the dragon harvest that now infests Pakistan’s soil and which the state is unwilling, if not unable, to cut down.

It is difficult to believe and depressing to think that the Pakistan of today is the same country where in 1954, a great declaration of liberal and secular thought was produced by two distinguished judges in the aftermath of the first organised assault on the state’s secular structure by the mullahs. The document was the Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953. It is something everyone needs to read today. Gen Musharraf, instead of harping on the empty slogan of “enlightened moderation” every third day, should have the Munir Report, as it has come to be called over the years, become part of school and college courses, as well as made compulsory reading in every madrassa from Peshawar to Karachi. Between Justice Muhammad Munir, the president, and Justice MR Kayani, member, the two man-Court produced a document of such brilliant reasoning and intellectual clarity that it needs to be circulated in all Islamic lands which are dogged by bigotry and ignorance and where hostages are slaughtered and innocent people bombed in the name of Islam.

The mullahs, barring some exceptions, were dead set against Pakistan, since they considered a nation state un-Islamic. They made their first attempt to take over the new country when they set Punjab on fire by inciting riots against the Ahmediyya community. The two judges, discussing the question of the establishment of a state based on religion wrote, “No one who has given serious thought to the introduction of a religious state in Pakistan has failed to notice the tremendous difficulties with which any such scheme must be confronted.” They quoted from Allama Iqbal’s 1930 address to the Muslim League: “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines in not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism.”

Munir and Kayani – the report was drafted by Kayani – argued that since a demand is being made to declare all Ahmedis non-Muslims, those who are making this demand must know who a Muslim is. They wrote, “What is Islam and who is a momin or a Muslim? We put this question to the ulema. . . but we cannot refrain from saying here that it was a matter of infinite regret to us that the ulema whose first duty should be to have settled views on this subject, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves.” The Court asked the leading Islamic scholars and theologians of the day to “give the irreducible minimum conditions which a person must satisfy to be entitled to be called a Muslim.” No two divines agreed as to who a Muslim is, leading the Court to observe, “Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulema, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam, and if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulema, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of everyone else.”

Munir and Kayani also condemned the authors of the Objectives Resolution for having “misused the words sovereign and democracy when they recited that the Constitution to be framed was for a sovereign state in which principles of democracy as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed.” The two judges observed, “An Islamic state, however, cannot in this sense be sovereign because it will not be competent to abrogate, repeal or do away with any law in the Quran and Sunnah. Absolute restriction on the legislative power of a state is a restriction on the sovereignty of the people of that state and if the origin of this restriction lies elsewhere than in the will of the people, then to the extent of that restriction the sovereignty of the states and its people is necessarily taken away.”

The Court asked Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, “Will you permit Hindus to base their Constitution on the basis of their own religion?” Maudoodi replied, “Certainly. I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated as shudras and malishes and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the government and the rights of a citizen.” The two judges wrote, “Nothing but a bold reorientation of Islam to separate the vital from the lifeless can preserve it as a world idea and convert the Musalman into a citizen of the present and the future world from the archaic incongruity that he is today.”

That was 1954. Is there a judge in the Pakistan of 2006 who even dares whisper what his illustrious predecessors declared in open court for the world to hear?

Of all the people I have seen, heard or run into in Washington, no one has impressed me more than Charles W Freeman Jr, a former US diplomat and a man of utter brilliance and tremendous good humour.

Do we’ve men like him in our foreign service? I can’t think of anyone quite like him. I will concede though that we are not without a few like Munir Akram at the United Nations who have courage and conviction and who work hard to keep the flag flying even when those who have taken it upon themselves to fly that flag, often look like putting it away in the basement in mothballs.

Charles Freeman (no one calls him Chuck, be assured) is the president of one think-tank in this city of Washington, which has been trying to change the stereotyped image of Arabs and the Arab world that is common, be it newspaper cartoonists or policymakers. His is also one think-tank, which despite Freeman’s excellent contacts in the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, where he was ambassador during the first Gulf War, is woefully short of funds. In fact, last year he told a meeting of his Middle East Policy Institute that this could well be the last time it was meeting as it had all but run out of money. Happily, that prediction has not come true.

Freeman speaks Chinese, French and Spanish and has a working knowledge of Portuguese and Italian. “I’ve always made a practice of trying to learn the language wherever I’ve been,” he explains. “I didn’t do as well as I would like to have done with Tamil, in South India, but I did learn Mandarin at the interpreter level, Taiwanese, and Thai, although I’ve lost much of it, and I’ve worked hard at Arabic,” he once said. He interpreted for President Nixon on his historic visit to China.

Freeman is also one of the five sponsors of the Committee for the Republic, which has called for an “examination of the nation’s rush to empire”. I don’t suppose that has exactly earned him an invitation to a White House dinner. I think it is important for people in Pakistan to know that Washington is not entirely peopled by the replicas and clones of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. There are also men like Charles Freeman, though their number is small. But they matter and what they think and write and speak is received with respect. Sometimes they also manage to change things.

Recently, Freeman spoke in California on Arab-Chinese relations. He began his speech by informing his audience, “I want to speak with you this morning about foreign affairs, by which, of course, I mean failing marriages, extramarital relationships, and instances of bigamy, maybe even polygamy. It’s pretty racy stuff compared to most diplomacy. Those of you who may be offended should leave now. I will be brief. Therefore, I will be superficial. But this doesn’t bother me at all. Decades ago, a wise man from the East told me that, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing superficially. I have always heeded his advice. He was, of course, from the East Coast of the United States.”

Freeman called US-China relations a “failing marriage” and recalled how Chinese President Hu Jintao had been insulted by Bush and his people when he visited Washington in April. He was denied a state dinner, the Chinese national anthem was announced as that of the Republic of China, a known Falun Gang agitator was permitted to join journalists on the White House grounds where she shouted at the Chinese president for three minutes before being removed.

Protesters just outside Blair House, where the president was staying, were allowed to protest late into the night and when Hu’s staff complained, it was referred to DC police, which had knocked off work an hour before, unless it were paid overtime.

From Washington, Hu flew to Riyadh “where there was no confusion at all about how to treat him”. Freeman said, “Basically, the Arabs give us oil and we give them back little green portraits of dead American presidents. Until recently, they ploughed the money we paid them back into the American economy — about $800 billion in private Arab investment by the turn of this century. And everyone benefited. Then came 9/11. A few bad actors determined to wreck this happy partnership managed to do so.”

American business in the Arab Gulf crashed from first to fifth place. “Mutual affection between Arabs and Americans has, in short, been succeeded by mutual fear and loathing, punctuated by occasional self-righteous American demands for major Arab behaviour modification — demands that they embrace an American reform agenda of elections, women’s liberation, religious pluralism. You know the list,” he added. Consequently, the Americans lost the Arabs: the Arabs found the Chinese, or the Chinese found the Arabs.

Freeman said in the Chinese, the Arabs see a partner who will buy their oil without demanding that they accept a foreign ideology, abandon their way of life, or make other choices they’d rather avoid. They see a major civilisation that seems determined to build a partnership with them, does not insult their religion or their way of life, values its reputation as a reliable supplier too much to engage in the promiscuous application of sanctions or other coercive measures, and has no habit of bombing or invading other countries to whose policies it objects.

The Arabs, he said, are Muslims “and they don’t have to divorce us to take a second wife. Hence their romances with China and India”. He predicted that soon there would be more Saudi students in China than in America.

No marriage, Freeman pointed out, turns out the way it is expected to, but the one between the Saudis and the Chinese, given the solid foundation on the addictive behaviour of the oil consumer, shows every sign of being destined to last. At the moment, it is suffused with the joy of mutual discovery, even infatuation, if not something close enough to love, he said.

And therein lies a lesson that the Americans are determined not to learn.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The last formal interview given to a journalist by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took place on 10th August, 1977, just over a month after his overthrow and 33 days before his arrest, imprisonment, trial and execution on 4th April, 1979.

The journalist was Inam Aziz, who with Habibur Rehman, had been invited from London to meet Zia-ul-Haq. Inam Aziz, one of Pakistan’s great campaigning editors, was a known admirer of ZAB, which should have made him a persona non grata in the military government’s book, but those were early days and the regime was still trying to find its feet. On 8th August, Inam was in Lahore, the day ZAB landed to a welcome whose like the city had not accorded to anyone since Liu Shao-chi. While milling crowds were escorting Bhutto, who had just been released from “protective custody,” to Nawab Sadiq Hussain’s residence, Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani, who was on his way to the airport, was waylaid, pulled out of his car, roughed up and made to shout ‘Jiye Bhutto’ by exuberant PPP workers.

Inam Aziz recounted his meeting with ZAB in Stop Press , a little-noticed but fascinating autobiography. During the Zia years, it was only his London-based Urdu daily Millat that continued to denounce military rule. It is another matter that when the PPP came to power, men like Inam Aziz found themselves banished from the camp of victory, but that is another story for another day. What follows is Inam Aziz’s recollection of ZAB’s last recorded interview.

He was taken to see Bhutto by Maulana Kausar Niazi. Bhutto with his photographic memory recognised Inam, greeting him by name, though he had only met him a couple of times. Inam presented Bhutto with a box of Havana cigars, one of which Bhutto lit up. The interview had barely begun when there was a phone call for Bhutto in the next room. When he returned fifteen minutes later, he was fuming. When Inam asked who had called, Bhutto said, “It was Zia and he threatened to kill me. I have told him that if I survive, I will have him and 35 of his generals hanged for treason.” After some time Bhutto said, “He held me responsible for the manhandling of Noorani. This is the first time he has been impertinent with me. When he came to see me in Murree, he could not stop ‘sirring’ me. Today there was arrogance in his voice.” When Inam remarked that Zia’s threat should be taken seriously, Bhutto drew at his cigar and said, “I am not afraid of death. I am a man of history and you cannot silence history.”

When Inam quoted Zia as saying that he would hold elections in 90 days and transfer power, Bhutto smiled, “You expect these people to hold elections! Don’t expect liars to speak the truth.” When Inam told him that Zia had cited God as a witness to his pledge to hold free and fair elections, Bhutto remarked, “That’s another of his lies. I have just told you about my conversation with him, so you can decide for yourself if there will ever be elections in this country.” When Inam asked him about his fall, Bhutto smiled and said, “To tell you the truth, I chose the wrong advisers. I have come to hate members of this pseudo-intellegensia who received favours from me but have now joined hands with the army.” On the rigging charge, he said he had not ordered it and only seven constituencies may have been involved.

Bhutto told Inam about the inquiry he had ordered into the rigging and the resulting 10-page report of which the army had a copy. The investigation had found that the American government was heavily involved in the post-election unrest. Hundreds of millions in PL-480 funds were spent to fuel the protest movement. In some mosques mullahs had been found with dollars. During the agitation, as soon as someone was injured, opposition parties would arrive on the scene and begin doling out money. The American embassy was orchestrating the effort. He added that the US embassy had been told that the government had evidence of American meddling and would like a meeting on the issue with the Secretary of State. Some days later, the US embassy replied that Secretary of State William Rogers would be in Paris for a NATO meeting and a representative could be sent to meet him.

The cabinet chose Aziz Ahmed, who arrived in Paris with the evidence. The meeting with Rogers took place at the American embassy, but whenever Aziz Ahmed would try to raise the issue of American interference, Rogers would tell him that the US and Pakistan being old friends, what had happened in the past should not impede the resumption of good relations. Whenever Aziz Ahmed would try to open his briefcase to reach for the documents he was carrying, Rogers would stop him and assure him that Pakistan would have no further cause for complaint. After the meeting, Aziz Ahmed left his briefcase with Ambassador Muzaffar Ali Qizalbash for safekeeping. When he returned to his hotel after attending a reception, he found his room vandalised. He called the manager who expressed shock and astonishment. Since Aziz Ahmed knew who his “visitors” had been, he decided against approaching the police. “Do you realise now what a clash with a big power can involve?” Bhutto asked Inam.

When Inam asked Bhutto what would happen if elections were held in 90 days, he replied that all the waderas and zamidars would be wiped out and even he would be finished as a wadera , but if the people felt that he would meet their aspirations, they would not reject him. When Inam asked him why the army was only able to stage coups in Pakistan and not in India, Bhutto replied that 85 per cent of the army comes from the Punjab, as does the bureaucracy. When the two join hands, political forces become helpless. He conceded that political forces, in order to protect their interests, often become tools in the hands of this army-civil combine. When Inam rose to take his leave, Bhutto said, “If you learn when you return to London that I am still alive, come back and we will meet.” When Inam replied that if Bhutto returned to power, people like him would not be able to get to see him, Bhutto replied, “I don’t think this time things are going to be like that.”

Bhutto, of course, never regained power and Inam Aziz died in London in 1993.

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