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I did not have the opportunity to have a one-to-one with President Pervez Musharraf (except at a UN press conference but the question I had in mind was asked by someone else). Had it come my way, I would have asked him to ship a few of his boxes to India so that someone out there could also do “out of box” thinking on Kashmir. So far, all the thinking and all the boxes have been found in Islamabad, more particularly, in the General’s backyard.

The UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir were all but kissed goodbye by Gen Musharraf at an iftar party held at the evergreen (and ever black-headed) Sheikh Rashid Ahmed’s farmhouse in Islamabad last year. I do not recall much of a reaction from the opposition, whose sole contribution to Pakistani parliamentary politics has been walking out every five minutes in protest so that the government can have a free run. Many of its members could do with the attentions of a barber and some of its women members are likely to be mistaken by the unwary for hooded bandits, since they keep themselves covered at all times. The leader of the opposition – why is there a stench of fumes in the air? – hunts with the hounds and runs with the hair, no small achievement for a man of his girth.

In his book In the Line of Fire, Gen Musharraf sets out his self-governance formula in some detail and those still interested in Kashmir will do well to look it up. Whether they beg, borrow or steal, the General’s maiden effort at writing (he is not to be held responsible for most of it), is their business. The reaction to Gen Musharraf’s “out of box” ideas in India has been no, no, no and then another no. His messages have either been ignored or dismissed. The Indian parrot – if I may be forgiven for flying into the realm of the winged ones – knows only two words when it comes to Kashmir: Atoot Ang . And that is all we have heard from New Delhi. Kashmir is an integral part of India and, therefore, it is not negotiable, “but we are always prepared to talk about Kashmir.” Alice would have asked: “if it is not negotiable, dear Mr Mad Hatter, then what are we going to talk about?” Unfortunately, we have no Alices in Islamabad, only a certain snake lady who hisses at all and sundry in the name of patriotism and scholarship. Angels and ministers of heaven, help us!

Indian rejections and contempt notwithstanding, voices continue to be raised from our side pushing self-governance as a “solution.” At the last conference held on Kashmir in Washington this July by the Kashmiri-American Council, an entire paper was devoted to self-governance by a gentleman based in Brussels for the ostensible purpose of selling the Kashmir cause to Europeans. What he is actually selling is a can of worms. He is Barrister Majid Tramboo, Executive Director, Kashmir Centre, Europe and leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. Mr Tramboo is as much a barrister as Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry is. Neither has ever practised law, but what of it; at least they have gained a nice, respectable suffix to their names. Barrister Tramboo’s operation is financed through sources unknown but I would advise that no one be so foolish as to go asking at the Invisible Soldiers Inc in Islamabad unless he wants to get himself a bloody nose.

Barrister Tramboo’s paper, which raised no more than a few heckles, was a barefaced effort to ditch the pivot on which the Kashmir issue has revolved since 1947, namely the right of self-determination, and replace it with “self-governance.” He argued that since 9/11 “organised crime” had found its way to “the realm of activists of self-determination, thus providing incentive for occupation authorities to embark on more restrictive – some would say repressive – policies against activists for freedom.” According to him, the world is not easily going to recognise a new state as it will bring instability to the region where such a state is established. It will also be a “dangerous precedent.” Hence the need for “new concepts.” He argued that self-determination had been “one of the most prevalent causes of international and inter-state crises” since the mid-19th century. Freedom struggles, he added, had caused “tremendous human suffering and destruction in. . . Jammu and Kashmir.” The “War on Terrorism” had only “hampered the possibilities for self-determination” and the “freedom fighter”of the past is now a “terrorist.”

Barrister Tramboo wrote that it was important to find a Kashmir solution that accepts the “national interest” of the “powers concerned” (for which, read India). In effect, the Kashmir struggle is now reduced to protecting the “national interest” of India. There had to be found, therefore, he wrote, “a feasible and acceptable alternative to full classical self-determination . . . in line with the emerging, globalised international system.” He said self-governance was “more positive, extensive, humane and forward looking than classical self-determination.” Self-governance, he added, was also “inherently democratic” and combined with regional integration it “ought to ascertain the cultural independence and human rights of any minority within” a community. He then went on to plug the theory of “multiple identities”, which amounts to saying that there is more to Kashmir than the Kashmiris of the Valley. The only people in the former State of Jammu and Kashmir who have consistently struggled for self-determination since 1928 are the Kashmiri-speaking people of the Valley.

Barrister Tramboo, speaking for those who sponsor him, wrote, “The introduction of multiple identities as part of ‘self-governance plus regional integration’ is supposedly on offer as a possible solution of the traditional Kashmir problem. Instead of making a decision on the territory and searching (for) a solution for redrawing external boundaries, self-governance plus regionalisation could be introduced to permit the Kashmiris and those on either side of the Ceasefire Line to keep their sovereign territories and (it) could spare India to give up completely what it considers within its borders. This possible solution is aimed to [ sic ] avoid a redrawing of international boundaries. No territorial change would take place and it could be considered to arrange [ sic ] for international assistance to monitor borders or help prevent influx on either side of criminal elements (for the last phrase, please read ‘freedom fighters’).”

Barrister Tramboo concluded his case with the assertion, “The concept of self-governance is absolute and ultimate in itself and (in) no way should be deemed as a step to self-determination. On the contrary, it is a substitution [ sic ] for self-determination.”

So there you have it. The cat is out of the bag. But has anyone in Pakistan even noticed?

Isn’t it ironic that the very Muslim women who see no harm in living in ‘sinful’ Europe and extracting every possible material benefit they can from what they denounce as “this shameless Western society”, should be insisting on dressing up like black mummies in the name of Islam and bringing humiliation and ridicule both on themselves and the religion they claim to follow? Wouldn’t it be logical therefore for an Englishman, an Italian, a German or a Swede to ask, “Why are you living here and why don’t you go back where your ‘modesty’ will be better protected?” A woman can walk down the street in any Western city, wearing the most outrageous clothes, and nobody will pay any attention to her. But ask any Western woman who has been to Pakistan, the ‘citadel of Islam’ and the first thing she will tell you is how lasciviously men kept staring at her.

What is being confused with Islam is neither Islamic injunction nor required Islamic practice. It is sad that Islam has been reduced by these foolish and unenlightened people to hijabs, niqabs and unkempt beards. No greater disservice could have been done to the religion in whose name this embarrassment is being brought upon us.

What Muslims need today is a political leader like Muhammad Ali Jinnah and a religious guide and teacher like Mahmoud Mohammad Taha of Sudan, who was executed in 1985 by the dictator Jaafar al-Nimeiri for sedition and apostasy, after Taha protested the imposition of Sharia in Sudan. Whereas it should be a Muslim country where the vision and memory of this great seer should have been invoked, it was left to the New Yorker magazine last week to do so and for that we are in the author George Packer’s debt.

Prof. Abdullahi an-Naim, one of Taha’s followers told Packer, “I studied Sharia and I knew what it said. I couldn’t see how Sudan could be viable without women being full citizens and without non-Muslims being full citizens. I’m a Muslim, but I couldn’t live with this view of Islam.” Taha said the Sudanese constitution needed to be reformed to reconcile “the individual’s need for absolute freedom with the community’s need for total social justice”. This could only be achieved, he argued, through Islam in its original, uncorrupted form, in which women and people of other faiths were accorded equal status. The real drama in Islam, Packer wrote, is the essential dilemma addressed by Taha: how to revive ancient sacred texts in a way that allows one to live in the modern world.

Taha, an engineer, who spent six years in a colonial British prison, entered a period of seclusion, prayer, and fasting in 1948, which lasted three years. It was during those years of prayer and contemplation that he developed his radically new vision of the meaning of the Quran. After emerging from seclusion, in 1951, he dedicated the rest of his life to teaching it. Packer writes, “For any Muslim who believes in universal human rights, tolerance, equality, freedom, and democracy, the Quran presents an apparently insoluble problem. Some of its verses carry commands that violate a modern person’s sense of morality… In confronting the troublesome verses head on, Taha showed more intellectual honesty than all the Islamic scholars, community leaders, and world statesmen who think that they have solved the problem by flatly declaring Islam to be a religion of peace.”

The Quran, Packer writes, was revealed to the Prophet (pbuh) in two phases — first in Makkah, where for thirteen years he and his followers were a besieged minority, and then in Madina, where he established Islamic rule in a city filled with Jews and pagans. The Makkan verses are addressed, through him, to humanity in general, and are suffused with a spirit of freedom and equality. According to Taha, they present Islam in its perfect form, as the Prophet lived it, through exhortation rather than threat. Taha wrote that the lives of the “early Muslims” in Makkah “were the supreme expression of their religion and consisted of sincere worship, kindness, and peaceful coexistence with all other people”.

Prof. an-Naim writes, “Islam, being the final and universal religion according to Muslim belief, was offered first in tolerant and egalitarian terms in Makkah, where the Prophet preached equality and individual responsibility between all men and women without distinction on grounds of race, sex, or social origin. As that message was rejected in practice, and the Prophet and his few followers were persecuted and forced to migrate to Madina, some aspects of the message changed.”

Taha argued that whereas the Prophet propagated “verses of peaceful persuasion” during his Makkan period, in Madina “the verses of compulsion by the sword prevailed”. The Madinan verses are full of rules, coercion, and threats, including the orders for jihad, and in Taha’s view, a historical adaptation to the reality of life in a seventh-century Islamic city-state, in which “there was no law except the sword”.

Consequently, the Madinan verses addressed to the community of early believers, became the basis for Sharia as it was developed by legal scholars over the next few centuries, what Taha called the “first message of Islam”. In Taha’s revisionist reading, the elevation of the Madinan verses was only a historical postponement — the Makkan verses, representing the ideal religion, would be revived when humanity had reached a stage of development capable of accepting them, ushering in a renewed Islam based on freedom and equality.

Taha quoted a hadith of the Prophet that declared, “Islam started as a stranger, and it shall return as a stranger in the same way it started”. This “second message of Islam” he saw as higher and better than the first, delivered by a messenger who came to seventh-century Arabia, in a sense, from the future. And, in the twentieth century, the time had come for Muslims finally to receive it. Taha offered a hermeneutical way out of the modern crisis of Islam, allowing Muslims to affirm their faith without having to live by an inhumane code.

So it is enlightened men like Mahmoud Muhammad Taha and our own Dr Fazlur Rehman who can lead the Muslims out of the quagmire in which they are stuck. In the concluding words of Packer, “The first years of the twenty-first century hardly seem hospitable to Mahmoud Muhammad Taha’s humane vision, but his words are there for young Muslims to discover once they get to the end of the street and need a way to turn around.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The rumpus being created in the West by exhibitionist and deluded Muslim women, whose conduct flies in the face of clear Quranic injunctions and who confuse tribal customs with divine commandments is creating even more difficulties for ordinary, God-fearing Muslims than they already were struggling against. The utterly uncalled for insistence on donning the hijab and, of late, wearing the niqab, an attire more suited to the profession of banditry than anything I can think of, belittles Islam in whose good name it is being done.

No sensible person can disagree with British politician Jack Straw who ended up putting his head into a hive of very angry bees when he said that he found it hard to communicate with a person whose face he could not see. Neither the hijab nor the niqab has anything to do with Islam, as anyone who has taken the trouble to read the right texts and who is not smitten by that arch priestess of ignorance Dr Farhat Hashmi and her ilk would know.

Dr Fazlur Rahman suggested that all Quranic passages, revealed as they were at a specific time in history and within certain general and particular circumstances, should be given expression relative to those circumstances. Another Muslim scholar, Dr Ibrahim Syed, has written that those who claim that Quranic verses are explicit about hijab, base that position on Surah Al-Ahzab (33:59). The operative words in Arabic on which this interpretation is based mean that women should ‘lower their garments’ or ‘draw their garments closer to their bodies.’ Nowhere does the verse say that the face should be covered. Actually, the verse makes no mention of the word ‘face’

Hijab advocates often quote Surah Al-Nur (24:31) to back their position. According to Dr Syed, “In the pre-Islamic period, women used to wear a cloth called khimar on their necks that was normally thrown towards the back, leaving the head and the chest exposed. The reference in Al-Nur apparently instructs that this piece of cloth, normally worn on the head and neck, should be made to cover the bosom. So it is erroneous to conclude that the Quran demands (of) Muslim women to cover their heads.” Another Islamic scholar, Dr Abou el Fadl, says, “From the gross liberties taken in translating the (Quranic) text, apparently the translators believe that God wishes women to be like house-broken dogs – loyal, sweet and obedient. One can only ponder what type of rotted and foul soul imagines that God wishes to imprison women in a sewer of squalid male egos, and suffer because men cannot control their libidos. What an ugly picture they have created of God’s compassion and mercy!”

A Western scholar of Islam, Daphne Grace , writes that the veiling of women is nowhere explicitly prescribed in the Quran. Another scholar, Fadwa El Guindi, has said that the original meaning of the Quranic verse was to “cover the cleavage of the breasts.” What the Quran forbade was the public flaunting of sexuality, with a parallel verse prescribing a modest dress code for men as well. According to El Guindi, the original use of the veil was to distinguish the status and identity of the wives of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) “so that they may be recognised and not molested.” (The Quran, 33:59). Fatima Mernissi, an Arab scholar, has written that the boundary between forbidden space, which is hidden by the hijab, and permitted space, became a key concept in the Islamic world, but “reducing or assimilating this concept to a scrap of cloth that men have imposed on women to veil them when they go out on the street is truly to impoverish this term, not to say drain it of its meaning.”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the well-known London-based Muslim journalist, wrote in Time magazine on 16 October that it is “time to speak out against this objectionable garment and face down the obscurantists who endlessly bait and intimidate the state by making demands that violate its fundamental principles. That they have brainwashed young women, born free, to seek self-subjugation breaks my heart. Trained creatures often choose to stay in their cages even when released. I don’t call that a choice. I would not propose that Muslim women should be stopped from wearing what they choose as they walk down the street, although, to be sure, there are practical problems with the niqab. I have seen Muslim women who had been appallingly beaten and forced to wear it to keep their wounds hidden. Veiled women cannot eat in restaurants, swim in the sea or smile at their babies in parks.”

The British-Muslim journalist supports the ban imposed by France on the hijab in public schools, noting that protests against the injunction soon died down and many Muslim French girls were happily released from a heritage that has no place in the modern world. Belgium, Denmark and Singapore have taken similar steps. Noting that Britain has been both more relaxed about cultural differences and over-anxious about challenging unacceptable practices, she points out that few Britons have realised that the hijab – now more widespread than ever – is, for Islamicist puritans, “the first step on a path leading to the burqa, where even the eyes are gauzed over.” She goes on to write, “I have interviewed young women who say they feel so wanton wearing only a headscarf that they will adopt the niqab. Now even 6-year-olds are put into hijabs.” She writes, “Western culture - it is true – is wildly sexualised and lacking in restraint. But there are ways to avoid falling into that pit without withdrawing into the darkness of a niqab. The robe is a physical manifestation of the pernicious idea of women as carriers of original sin; it assumes that the sight of a cheek or a lock of hair turns Muslim men into predators. The niqab rejects human commonalities. The women who wear it want to observe fellow citizens, but remain unseen, as if they were CCTV cameras.”

Alibhai-Brown writes that as a modern Muslim woman, she fasts and prays, but refuses to submit to the hijab or to an “opaque, black shroud.” A Saudi Arabian woman lawyer said to her, “The Quran does not ask us to bury ourselves. We must be modest. These fools who are taking niqab will one day suffocate like I did, but they will not be allowed to leave the coffin.”

Millions of progressive Muslims want to halt this Islamicist project to take us back to the Dark Ages, Alibhai-Brown warns.

Islamism is a negation of Islam and it must be resisted wherever one comes across it. It is being carried to ridiculous limits, for example, in Iraq’s Shia-controlled areas, where, according to a report in The Washington Post , long hair is banned because it makes men look feminine. Haircuts that are long on the sides and short on top, are forbidden because they are “Jewish” and Muslims are not allowed to “imitate Jews.” There is “hair police” on the prowl, one of whom said that if someone is judged to have an improper hairstyle, “we will take him to the barber and we’ll ask the barber to cut his hair according to our regulations. If he refuses, we would send for his father or elder brother and tell them, ‘Either you take this measure or we’ll take the measure for you’.”

I think Iqbal, being the seer he was, got it right: Ye Ummat khurafat mein kho gayee (The body of the faithful got lost in delusions).

By snakehead I do not mean the talking heads on the Fox news channel, but the dreaded fish who, like le belle dame sans merci, hath this town in thrall four years ago — and now. The Washington Post’s snakehead specialist David A Fahrenthold, whose chilling reports at the time about the invasion of this exotic creature that could walk on land and gobble up other fish without any fellow feeling, reported some scary news this week. Not surprising though, this being close to Halloween and Friday the 13th having just passed.

The inveterate correspondent, who must spend time scouting pools and mapping area rivers, led by the top suspect, the Potomac, has made all those who have an interest in fishy business sit up. His latest report appeared this week in the Post under the headline ‘Snakeheads appear in the Potomac’. We were told that though snakehead numbers are rising, the fish, which was once denounced as a ruthless predator, has not “driven out bass”, to which I would add, “not yet”.

Sometime in 2004, we learnt through the nimble-footed legwork of our correspondent that the snakeheads, which we had all hoped we had seen the last of in 2002, were back and no longer confined to one of the area ponds in which they had been found. They were out and about. The snakehead, we were told, could move on land. In other words, if there was a potential weapon of mass destruction, it was not in Iraq, it was right here, within sneezing distance of the Pentagon.

I recall greeting the snakehead’s return in the following words, “All those who are into horror movies — and who isn’t — know that the mummy will return, and so will Dracula’s bride, the monster from the deep, the living dead, the lady with the severed head and the creature from jeepers creepers, to name just a few of the perennials. However, this being Washington, we have our own favourites, and not necessarily from the Pentagon because the horrors who frequent its corridors never go anywhere, so there is no question of their making a comeback. The exciting news is that the 2002 summer’s runaway sensation, the snakehead fish, which can swim in the water and walk on the ground, is back. Those in Maryland who had hoped that Miss Snakehead would make her next appearance in the neighbouring redneck state of Virginia, are bound to be disappointed because she has reappeared in the same state where she had been supposedly liquidated.”

The snakehead’s return in 2004 was splashed across two-columns by the Post under the headline: ‘A creepy catch of the day: fisherman snags snakehead.’ Friend David A Fahrenthold had informed his readers, “The snakehead fish, a voracious Asian invader that’s been known to breathe out of water and scoot short distances over land, has reappeared in Maryland.” We were also told, “One fish was a worry. Two fish were a troubling trend. Now that the total is up to nine, some scientists say they’re close to conceding: the snakehead is in the Potomac river, and likely to stay.”

The man is a prophet, I would say, because his latest report in which he calls the snakehead a “toothy Asian transplant” (a characterisation I mind being both Asian and a transplant, though not toothy) sends out the disquieting message that the fish is expanding its territory in the Potomac river (when it’ll slink into the State Department, we don’t know) and has appeared in new places and at “higher concentrations” across the area. We are then told that “some of the most frightening concerns have been dispelled”, among them the concern that the snakehead walks on land. After the fright created about walking fish — imagine how you would feel if you came across a fish walking and whistling on the road — it turns out that the snakeheads are “well-nigh helpless on land” and “the creatures haven’t gobbled up or driven out the Potomac’s famous bass.”

When the first stories about the snakehead surfaced four years ago, its Asian origins were always emphasised. This Asianisation bit reached a point where I expected the Department of Homeland Security to declare all snakeheads to be illegal aliens whose presence on American soil was a national security risk. If someone tells me that a few snakeheads were caught and flown in a black CIA Chinook to Guantanamo, it would not surprise me. Who knows they may have been already tried for their links to Al Qaeda and put in a cell with no windows. So please do not be in the least surprised if the White House, which has a Fox News man for its spokesman now, announces that a snakehead with the code name Al Machhli had confessed — after it was waterboarded — to being Osama bin Laden’s third cousin as well as his adviser on underwater warfare.

With the Post now confirming that the snakeheads are swimming about in the Potomac, who can blame US security agencies for suggesting that the river be dredged so that the Al Qaeda-Snakehead threat is eliminated. But what will the CIA or the DIA (or even the PIA) do about Snakeheads on Land, a guerrilla outfit trained by the Taliban and the boys in a camp south of Kandahar? The battle against the Snakehead may have just begun. For the latest combat dispatches, watch this space.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The first time I set eyes on Savera was in the early years of Pakistan. I still remember the cover, which showed the sun as it is at the break of day, the red and gold of its rays bursting forth to light an uncaring world for yet another day. The rising sun and its red rays were also a thinly coded announcement that the Red Dawn had arrived. Who could have said then that the Red Dawn was going to prove to be the biggest letdown in history? But it was a nice thing to look forward to while it lasted.

The government, which was and which remains inspired to this day, in all essential respects, by the old colonial mindset, was quick to crack down not only on Savera but on anything that even remotely suggested less-than-blind obedience to every strangulating law, every arbitrary order, every whimsical regulation with which the officialdom of the day clobbered the people. Those who wrote for Savera and its other major literary sibling, Adab-e-Latif (which Siddiqa Begum continues bravely and against all odds to bring out now and then) were put on the list of suspects. Their mail was opened; they were tailed by men of the Special Branch (whose delightful Urdu name was Kar-e-Khas) and were denied any kind of benefit from organs of the state. Few people had a phone in those days, writers least of all, who were poorer than the proverbial church mouse, but as a rule those that did operate one, were bugged through primitive devices, just in case the owner was entertaining “communistic” ideas. If you were the unfortunate recipient of a publication from the Soviet embassy, then for the rest of your life, you were destined to remain a “security risk.” And yet, against such formidable disadvantages, Savera continued to remain in print.

Urdu literature will forever remain in the debt of men like Nazir Ahmed Chaudhri and his Naya Idara, which published Savera , his uncle Chaudhri Barkat Ali of Adab-e-Latif and Muhammad Tufail of Naqoosh but for whom much of progressive Urdu literature would have remained unpublished. These men, all of whom have since died, deserve the highest honour that the state of Pakistan can confer on them. I am of course dreaming because a state that has failed so far to acknowledge men like Saadat Hasan Manto and Faiz Ahmed Faiz is unlikely in the next few lifetimes to do anything civilised for literature. The awards its bureaucrats confer on writers are a travesty and often a joke. As a matter of fact, distinction lies not in receiving state awards, but in not receiving them.

Savera is now edited by Saleem ur Rehman and Riaz Ahmed and since it carries barely any advertising, which is a very sad comment on Pakistan’s industry and advertising trades, the fact that it continues to come out surely deserves to be saluted. The first issue of Savera appeared in 1945, published by Nazir Ahmed Chaudhri, who had earlier set up Naya Idara, his own publishing house. He had enough experience of publishing and handling a magazine, having worked for some years with his uncle Chaudhri Barkat Ali, owner of the publishing house Maktaba-i-Jadeed, which brought out Adab-i-Latif .

Nazir Ahmed was a man of many parts. In his youth, he was a sturdy farmer whose physical strength and farming prowess were the talk of the countryside around Lahore. In spite of his “un-literary” background, he had an innate sense of aesthetics and a sharp nose for locating literary talent. Not only could he spot a promising writer or poet right away, but he also loved to produce elegantly printed books. He advocated the use of the script naskh at a time when people in general cared little for such niceties. Some of the books he printed in naskh are now collectors’ items. Year after year, Naya Idara kept winning the annual prize for the best produced book in Pakistan.

When Nazir Ahmed Chaudhri launched Savera , the Progressive Writers’ Movement, closely aligned with the Left, was all the vogue. The movement, with which one can find fault today – times having changed – was like a breakthrough for Urdu literature, bringing it in less than a decade into the realm of social realism, revolutionary vigour and a sense of commitment to the common people. Two of the early editors of Savera , Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and Ahmed Rahi, were the day’s leading progressives and remained so all their lives. There was no major writer who was not published in Savera . In fact, if you were not published there, you were not a major writer. Among Savera ’s editors in the last 61 years have been such men as Sahir Ludhianvi, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Ahmed Rahi, Muhammad Hanif Ramay and Salahuddin Mahmood. Saleem ur Rehman and Riaz Ahmed currently hold the fort despite handicaps.

By the 1950s, the Progressive Movement had run out of steam and Nazir Ahmed Chaudhri decided it was time to change tack. Luckily, he could call upon the services of Hanif Ramay, one of his younger brothers, who had already earned much renown as a painter, designer and intellectual. So Savera marched on, coming in line with the new tendencies which were in the air, and discovering and enlisting writers from Pakistan and abroad. The magazine published new writers purely on merit, among them, Abbas Athar, Balraj Manra, Shehryar, Abdullah Hussain, Salahuddin Mahmood, Zafar Iqbal and Saleem ur Rehman. Because of the financial pressures under which the journal has always operated, its appearance in print has been erratic. It has little advertising and limited circulation. It would probably have been able to sell a few hundred copies in India, but bad relations between the two countries have prevented that from happening.

To that we can add high postal rates which have made it very difficult for publishers to bear the mailing costs of books and magazines. Myopic official policies have played havoc with the publishing industry. Instead of conferring newly-minted medals on newly-minted writers, the government should institute special concessionary rates for literary publications and books. Savera co-editor Riaz Ahmed told Saeed Malik in an interview some time ago that despite a lack of resources and patronage, he had tried to keep the magazine alive and it has continued to appear periodically, first as a monthly and now a bi-monthly. “I have not even once recovered its cost of production through its sale at bookstalls or from subscriptions. I have not been favoured by advertisements either from the public or the private sector, which could have helped reduce my losses. Nevertheless, as long as I can bear them, I’ll continue publication as regularly as possible.”

All that Savera needs to keep afloat and break even and then have something left for the publishers is just ten pages of advertising, just ten pages. Think about it. Now who will be those ten advertisers, because by stepping forward now, they would have ensured for themselves a place of honour in the literary hall of fame?

Everyone has his own disappointments with General Pervez Musharraf’s book, including, and especially those, who have not read it, but only read about it. When I suggested to a very emotional expat Pakistani that while it was perfectly his right to denounce Gen Musharraf’s maiden effort at autobiography, he might also, for a change read it, he roared: “Read that book! Not in a thousand years, you bet.”

Since I not only bought the book at its full cover price of $26.25 first thing on the morning of September 25 for filing its more interesting bits to this newspaper, I also had to read it. The injudicious language the author uses about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto left a bad taste in the mouth. Sitting heads of government are expected to maintain a certain decorum. Their words, which people tend to pay attention to, should be uttered with care, and even more care when they are reduced to writing. The book’s Islamabad “ghost” who is said to walk a foot or two above the ground since his association with the project became public knowledge is more likely responsible for the bitter references to Mr Bhutto. I am disappointed that Gen Musharraf allowed his shoulder to be used for those shots to be fired at a man whom the vast majority of the people of Pakistan consider both a martyr and a hero.

I can take issue with several things written in the book about Pakistan’s first popularly elected Prime Minister, but I will confine myself to the assertion that had Mr Bhutto not “rejected” the Polish resolution in 1971, East Pakistan may not have seceded. This absurd and baseless charge continues to be made against Mr Bhutto despite documented evidence to the contrary. I, for one, have written about this several times but to no avail it seems. Gen Musharraf should not have allowed this canard to appear under his name and, I hope, being a civilised person, he would acknowledge his mistake and express regrets for the injury caused to Mr Bhutto’s and Pakistan’s good name and reputation.

The Polish resolution was only circulated among Security Council members as a draft. It was never introduced, nor was it, of course, ever put to vote. Assuming it had been put to vote, its rejection or acceptance by Pakistan or India would not have affected its adoption. But more than that, had it been put to vote, it would not have escaped a Chinese veto. China had earlier vetoed a Russian resolution introduced on December 6. Poland was a Soviet satellite and the Polish draft resolution was a somewhat watered down version of the Soviet resolution vetoed by China. For a Pakistani head of state to show such ignorance is regrettable and says little for the kind of help he received in the writing of a book, which is lacking in both good taste and gravitas.

Sultan Muhammad Khan, who was Foreign Secretary in 1971, in his admirable account of his life and times — Memories and Reflections of a Pakistani Diplomat — demolished the charge that had Mr Bhutto not “torn up” the Polish resolution, Pakistan would not have been dismembered. He reproduced the text of the resolution, presented with the backing of the Soviet Union, which provided for transfer of power in East Pakistan to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and the evacuation of the Pakistani forces. Ironically, the withdrawal of the Indian forces was contingent upon consultations with the Mujib government. How could Pakistan accept that it withdraw its forces from its own territory and leave a foreign occupying force’s withdrawal subject to consultations? Those who float the Polish resolution myth have their reasons, but those who believe it have no reason to do so. Or is it that anything which sounds dark, conspiratorial and suspicious finds a quick and easy niche in the average Pakistani soul?

What Mr Bhutto “tore up” was no resolution, which had earlier been dismissed out of hand by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Agha Shahi, whom we lost recently. What Mr Bhutto tore up before storming out of the Security Council were some sheets of paper on which he had been doodling. Agha Shahi in his address to the Security Council said, “As for the Polish Resolution, it is a matter of deep regret that a country such as Poland, with a profoundly tragic history of dismemberment and partition, should present a formula or prescription for the dismemberment of Pakistan. It is strange, for example, that in one operative paragraph of the Polish draft, it is stated that after the Pakistani troops had begun their withdrawal, the Indian armed forces would withdraw. That means that the Pakistan forces should withdraw from their own territory, and then the foreign occupying forces would begin to withdraw.”

It was the Chinese representative Ambassador Huang who exposed the Polish draft for what it was. He said in his statement, “This is a draft resolution to involve the Security Council directly in the dismemberment of Pakistan. China firmly opposes this draft resolution. This draft resolution certainly cannot represent the Polish people, because they cannot possibly forget the sad history of their own motherland, which was partitioned on many occasions, nor can they forget the unpleasantness of Poland today. To put it bluntly, this is not a Polish draft resolution but a Soviet draft resolution.” He also told the Security Council, “In defiance of world opinion and in disregard of all the consequences, the Soviet leading clique is abetting, encouraging and supporting India in its aggression against Pakistan?”

Since all those who accuse Mr Bhutto of the breakup of Pakistan because of his “rejection” of the Polish Resolution have never read the Polish Resolution, let me reproduce the entire text of that Resolution No S/1045/Rev.1:

“ The Security Council, Gravely concerned over the military conflict on the Indian sub-continent, which constitutes an immediate threat to international peace and security, Having heard the statements by the Foreign Minister of India and the Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr Bhutto, Decides that: a) In the Eastern theatre of conflict, the power will be peacefully transferred to the lawfully elected representatives of the people headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who would immediately be released. b) Immediately after the beginning of the process of power transfer, the military actions in all the areas will be ceased and an initial ceasefire will start for a period of 72 hours. c) After the immediate commencement of the initial period of ceasefire, the Pakistan Armed Forces will start withdrawal to the pre-set positions in the Eastern theatre of conflict with a view to evacuation from the Eastern theatre of conflict. d) Similarly, the entire West Pakistan civilian personnel and other persons from West Pakistan willing to return home, will be given an opportunity to do so under the supervision of the United Nations, with the guarantees on the part of all appropriate authorities concerned that nobody will be subjected to suppressions. e) As soon as within a period of 72 hours the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops and their concentration for that purpose will have started, the ceasefire will become permanent. As soon as the evacuation of West Pakistan armed forces would have started, the Indian armed forces will start their withdrawal from the Eastern theatre of military operations. Such withdrawal of troops will begin actually upon consultations with the newly established authorities organised as a result of the transfer of power to the lawfully elected representatives of the people headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. f) Recognising the principle according to which territorial acquisitions made through the use of force will not be retained by either party to the conflict, the Governments of India and Pakistan will immediately begin negotiations through appropriate representatives of their armed forces with a view to the speediest possible implementation of this principle in the Western theatre of military operations.”

I rest my case.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Nawaz Sharif, always a man of few words and shy by temperament, has spoken, for which we have to thank Sohail Warraich, who has perfected the art of the political interview and carried on from where the pioneer in this field, Munir Ahmed Munir, left in the 1980s. Warraich disarms his subjects because of his genial manner, but he is fully armed with questions that he spends time and labour in preparing. He does not confront or challenge, nor is he insolent as some TV interviewers are these days. Warraich understands that an interview is not an interrogation, which is why he gets more out of those he interviews than anyone else in the business.

The conversations with Nawaz Sharif form the crux of this book (Ghaddar Kaun: Nawaz Sharif ki Kahani, unki Zubani). He has also interviewed other members of the family, who have nothing but the most flattering things to say about the former prime minister, which is understandable. But it is a pity he wasn’t able to persuade the family patriarch, Mian Muhammad Sharif, to talk to him. The two questions that everyone has wanted Nawaz Sharif to answer – Kargil and Musharraf’s dismissal – have been asked and answered, although on Kargil the questioning should have been more invasive. Sharif saying at one point that he would tell the entire true story of Kargil “when the time is ripe” does not wash. The time was ripe yesterday. Nawaz Sharif has maintained that he was kept in the dark about Kargil and what he had been told was misleading. His military secretary Brigadier Javed Mailk speaks of “two or three” meetings at ISI between the prime minister, the DG ISI and the army chief which he did not attend but “I was told that approval [of the Kargil operation] had been obtained from Nawaz Sharif and we were now not going to rest until there was some settlement of Kashmir and work was to be carried out towards that end.” Sharif does not mention those “two or three meetings”. Had he questioned his army chief closely about the Kargil operation, its political and military fallout and what effect it will have on relations with India, which were improving, he would not have given Musharraf the go ahead that he did. Benazir Bhutto told me that the army had brought the same plan to her but when she asked if it would “get us Kashmir,” the generals backed out. The Kargil plan, which the Sharif government crowed about as a military victory and the humbling of India, was always going to be a political disaster. It also turned out to be a military disaster, with Pakistan losing 2,700 men.

While Nawaz Sharif holds generals Musharraf, Aziz and Mahmood responsible for the Kargil misadventure, he also admits that he had decided to take no action against the three generals whose harebrained scheme had brought Pakistan to the brink of all-out war with India and earned the country international condemnation. It also sealed the fate of Kashmir. But what did the prime minister do? He gave Musharraf additional responsibilities instead of having him face a court martial. He decided to get rid of Musharraf only over the General Tariq Parvez affair. Musharraf wanted Parvez sacked because he had asked him pointblank in a meeting why the corps commanders had been kept in the dark about Kargil (as well as the air and naval chiefs). Sharif agreed to have Parvez sacked – which was wrong – and when the army refused to contradict a story it had obviously placed in the press about Parvez having lost his job because of his meeting with the prime minister without his chief’s permission, Sharif saw it as disobedienceand the undermining of his authority. That was when he decided to send Musharraf home, he says. Sharif does not appear to have appreciated that after Jehangir Karamat’s forced retirement, the army would bring Plan B into play if a similar thing were attempted again.

Sharif denies the entire hijacking story. On the contrary, he asserts, his instructions were that Musharraf should be received with due protocol and escorted to his Karachi residence. I am sure he would then have made him an ambassador. If what Sharif says is true, then the closure of the Karachi airport where Musharraf’s plane was to land must have been ordered by the army itself. Sharif’s military secretary has asked if the Karachi airport had indeed been made inoperational, why did the captain not land the plane at one of the two PAF airbases in Karachi which had no instructions of the kind allegedly given to Karachi? In short, we still do not quite know where the truth lies. This matter needs far more investigation before either of the two versions – Sharif’s and Musharraf’s – can be accepted. My own view is that if the new army chief, the luckless General Ziauddin, had not begun to call every corps commander immediately after being given his new rank – Musharraf’s plane was still in the air – what happened would not have happened.

There are questions Warraich did not ask. What exactly was the Kashmir settlement formula Sharif and Vajpayee were working on or had all but worked out? When Vajpayee came to Lahore, the Kargil operation was in progress and Sharif knew it. How did he reconcile the two things? You can’t be making war with one hand and peace with the other. Nor did the interviewer question Sharif except in passing about the deal under which he was let out of Pakistan by Musharraf. I have it from the American ambassador of the time in Islamabad that Sharif owes his release to Bill Clinton who was afraid of something extreme happening to the man he had developed a fondness for. It was Clinton who urged the Saudis to secure Sharif’s release by pressing Musharraf.

Warraich asked Sharif about the Shariat Bill that his government had steamrolled through the National Assembly and would have pushed through the Senate had it remained in office. Sharif said he did not wish to change the form of government but end sectarianism and extremism and provide speedy justice. Then he adds, “We ran into certain reservations with regard to the Shariat Bill and thereafter we decided not to push its passage.”

I don’t think that is true. The periodic Senate elections were due and it was expected that the ruling Muslim League would gain a majority in the upper house, after which the bill would be presented and rammed through. Can one imagine what would have happened to Pakistan where even the hated blasphemy law cannot be removed from the books had it been placed under Shariat? The interviewer let the former prime minister get off easy on that one. At that time, the word in Lahore was that it was Mian Muhammad Sharif who was behind the Shariat Bill and whom his sons dared not defy. The only benefit the Musharraf coup has brought Pakistan is that it has not come under Shariat, which would have turned us into the Taliban’s Afghanistan (for which the Sharif government had a soft corner).

Also deeply disturbing are the stories that the Sharif family told the interviewer about how its members were treated by the army after the coup. One moment, Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister, the next moment he was a prisoner, as was his family. The humiliating manner in which they were thereafter treated says something about the political culture of those who exercise authority in Pakistan. Could he not have been lodged in clean and decent surroundings, instead of being locked up in a small cell with no windows? The same treatment was meted out to his family. His son, Hussain, who had nothing to do with politics, was mistreated in the same way, as was Shahbaz Sharif. General Mahmood, one of the Kargil “mujahids” who, I am sure did not lose even a single night’s sleep over the 2,700 poor soldiers whom he and his co-planners had sent to an early and undeserved death. This extremely arrogant man, a reborn Islamist, was rude to the man who had been his prime minister until hours earlier. He also hit his military secretary, a fellow officer, in the stomach with his swagger stick. Later, no doubt, with such encouragement, an SSG man hit Brigadier Javed several times with the butt of his rifle.

No true soldier will hit or humiliate a man who cannot defend himself. So is that what we have come to?

The fifth anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks, the destruction of part of the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 over Philadelphia after passengers stormed the cabin of the hijacked aircraft has passed without incident, to everyone’s relief. It was a sad and sombre day — especially so, for the families of those who were lost. Although those left behind have been paid generous ‘compensation’ by the federal government, can a lost life ever be compensated for? Never again will the world be what it was before 9/11. It may not have been a very good world but it worked by and large on the basis of trust. That, it no longer does. Everyone is a potential suspect, especially if he is a Muslim.

Adil Najam, who has made his mark in this country, becoming an associate professor of negotiation and diplomacy at one of the finest institutions of learning in the world, the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Boston’s Tufts University, told an interviewer recently, “It’s like how women in Pakistan feel, they can’t let their guard down. While much of the evidence is circumstantial, somehow all fingers point to Pakistan. Words like madrassa and training camps intuitively point towards, nowhere else but, Pakistan.” There have been sporadic cases where people have been pulled off planes, or their workplaces vandalised for “looking” a certain way. He may have been his usual ebullient self when he said that “by and large, Pakistanis have been left alone”, it hasn’t been quite so, going by the experience of those who have suffered the humiliation of being singled out or ‘profiled’.

Ironically, one of the best reports on “being Muslim in America” has been done by Aseem Chabra of the New York-based weekly, India Abroad. Azam Nizamuddin, a 39-year-old Chicago lawyer was watching television with his son when Bush appeared on the screen with his infamous statement that America was at war with “Islamic fascists”. The boy turned to his father and asked, “Daddy, are we going to be targeted?” Taken aback, his father consoled him, “No, we are not going to be targeted. He is targeting terrorists who want to blow up and kill innocent people. We are Americans. Nothing will happen to us.” What else could he tell 11-year-old Nadeem?

Chabra writes, “Before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Muslims in the US would occasionally experience racist jokes about their names, or their appearance that would make them stand out; but most attributed it to ignorance in America and lack of knowledge of different cultures and faiths. ‘America is a very comfortable place’, says Shahla Ali, 33, an Assistant Attorney General in the New York State Attorney’s office. ‘You can be ignorant in bliss here. Anywhere else in the world it will cost you.’ Immediately after the terrorist attacks, there was a spate of hate crimes and racial profiling incidents against brown-skinned people. Indian-American Muslims, as well as Hindus, Sikhs and Arabs, were usually targeted. Innocent people were killed, and people who bore any resemblance to Arabs or Muslims were asked to disembark from planes.

“The incidents slowed down a few years after the 2001 attacks. In recent times, especially after last year’s London subway bombings, Muslims in the US are increasingly facing incidents of racial profiling and words of intolerance. On the surface, many things may seem normal in their day-to-day life, at work or home, but they are hounded on airplanes, at immigration and security checkpoints, stared at in the streets. And in general they are becoming defensive about their faith. But they all cling to the hope that America will change.”

The experience that Assistant Attorney General Shahla Ali underwent during an air journey is disturbing and though by no means common is not so uncommon either. People have been taken off aircrafts because of what they were wearing or how they looked or sometimes even because of what they were reading — an Arabic or Urdu book, for instance. Ms Ali, who is the founding member of the Muslim Bar Association of New York, told Chabra that she has been involved in arguments about Muslims and in the process, even lost some friends. She has been asked why Islam is “so violent” and even told, “These goddamn Muslim terrorists!” She has objected to such phrases as ‘Muslim terrorist’ arguing that they give the entire religion of Islam a bad name.

Earlier this year, Ms Ali was flying back to New York from another city and travelling first class, when in mid-flight a stewardess came up to her and told her to move from her first class seat to the back of the aircraft in the economy section. When she asked why, having bought a first class ticket, she was informed that she was sitting too close to the cockpit and the captain who had looked at a roster of the names of passengers on his flight has been struck by her Muslim name. He did not want her sitting so close to the cockpit. Ali told Chabra that she weighs around 90lbs, which hardly qualifies her to be taken for a charging gorilla. When she refused to move, she was given two choices. She would either have to move or the captain would make a landing at the nearest airport. “It was humiliating. The new rules say that if the flight crew feels threatened, you have to follow them. And if I file a lawsuit, it would be the death of my career. That is declaring yourself a troublemaker and a Muslim,” she told the India Abroad reporter.

Ms Ali moved to the back of the plane, as ordered. If all the ill-wishers of Muslims, past, present and those yet to be born, were to be brought together and asked to think of one single step that would do Islam and those who follow it the maximum harm, they would not be able to come up with a more immediate and effective way of achieving that objective than what Osama bin Laden did on September 11 five years ago. And yet there are still those among us who consider the Saudi fugitive a hero.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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