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Ahmad Salim, one of our most assiduous research scholars, whose linguistic and poetic work is spread over more than four decades, put together an anthology four years ago which opens a window on Lahore as it was during the bloody and historic year of 1947. It is good this was done because we forget. In fact, we have already forgotten 1947. A Hamid brought back the city for us as it was in the early years of independence. My translation of this nostalgia-tinged writing, published 64 weeks running in the Daily Times , is currently under publication as a book by Vanguard.

In an introduction to Salim’s anthology, British historian Ian Talbot writes, “The arrival of refugees with tales of atrocities supported by the gruesome evidence of trainloads of corpses encouraged revenge attacks on minority communities. In the longer term, Lahore and more generally Punjab can be seen as a victim of political uncertainties and communal polarisation elsewhere in India.” He notes that relations between Hindus and Muslims had been correct but lacked warmth because of the social distance caused by high-caste Hindu concerns about pollution and inter-dining.

The writer Fikr Taunsavi wrote in his diary on August 14, 1947, “Death with all its horrors awaited the unwary on Lahore’s roads and bazaars, at street corners, on closed shop fronts. It peeped out of the eyes of Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs.” On August 15, he wrote, “Anarkali felt like a corpse, and lay there as if it was a lifeless body. One of the buildings was still smouldering.” Fikr did not want to leave Lahore. His entry for August 17 ran, “A huge stately temple near the Anarkali Chowk was on fire. Openly and shamelessly, and nobody had the nerve to stop it from burning itself. The cloud of smoke was thick and intense. Scores of gods and deities had been imprisoned in this temple – Krishna, Rama, Shivji, Parvati, Hanuman – all were consumed by the fire. So were the laws of Manu, the Rig Veda , the Ramayana and the Shastras . Their souls had left their bodies, and they were now free of the material world.” On August 29, he wrote, “I walked on, looking at everything and trying to reacquaint my eyes with the ways of my beloved Lahore. These buildings, of which city are they? From where have all these people infiltrated my city?”

The Lahore of 1947, though, still had places like the hotel and night place Metro, where WAPDA House now stands. Ibrahim Jalees, who came from Hyderabad, Deccan to Lahore, where his old friend from Bombay, Hamid Akhtar lived (and still lives), subsisted on sporadic work at Imroze. It was Ayub Ahmed Kirmani, who was also from Hyderabad, who took him there one evening. Jalees wrote, “Metro is a very romantic place. When you come out of Shahalmi Gate or from the narrow, twisting and stinking alleys of Abdullah Malik’s Koocha Chabuk Swaran and suddenly enter Metro, you feel as if you have emerged from the war-battered ruins of China’s Nanking city that you see in newsreels and have reached Rainbow Island in the company of Dorothy Lamour. In Metro Pakistan you see the women in colourful dresses dancing with their boyfriends, breast to breast, and even lips to lips, while in Shahalmi Pakistan, a frenzied Muslim may be out with a pair of scissors ready to snip off the plaits of young girls not in purdah .” That Metro and that Lahore have disappeared. There is action still, but it has gone indoors.

Gopal Mittal, another Lahoria, wrote, “Whether the riots were pre-planned or spontaneous, there were various conjectures. Some people averred that the killings began when the hooligans of Amritsar sent women’s bangles to the hooligans of Lahore to indicate their contempt for the latter’s inactivity. Another version was that the Muslim League leaders had themselves provoked them. But then there was also the story that Nawab Mamdot and some other Muslim Leaguers were going from mosque to mosque telling their fellow Muslims to abstain from violence.” One of the most ironic killings in Lahore was that of economist Professor Brij Narayan , who alone believed that Pakistan would survive economically.

Khushwant Singh wrote, “Suddenly riots broke out in Lahore. They were sparked off by the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh making a melodramatic gesture outside the Punjab Legislative Assembly building. Inside the chamber, the chief minister, Khizar Hayat Tiwana, had succumbed to pressure from the Muslim League and resigned. It was now clear that the Muslims of the Punjab had also opted for Pakistan. As soon as the session was over, Master Tara Singh drew his kirpan out of its sheath and yelled, ‘Pakistan Murdabad.’ It was like hurling a lighted matchstick into a room full of explosive gas. Communal riots broke out all over the province. Muslims had the upper hand in the killings. They were in a majority, better organised and better motivated than Hindus or Sikhs.” He recalled how Shahalmi, which was a purely Hindu and Sikh neighbourhood, was set on fire in June 1947. The exodus of Hindus and Sikhs had begun. The first to leave were able to take their belongings with them; those who left later were allowed to take nothing. Arson was followed by loot. And it has continued.

Parkash Tandon from Gujrat, author of Punjabi Century , recalled that until July 1947, few Hindus thought of leaving. The attacks on non-Muslims were sporadic and seen as signs of another riot. As things began to worsen, people started to leave but “the thought that this was a going away forever never crossed anybody’s mind. A calamity might cause temporary uprooting, but afterwards you came back to what had always been your home.” Then a trainload of Hindus and Sikhs was massacred at Gujrat station, and when it arrived at Amritsar with its deathly cargo, the Muslims of the city were made to pay the price. There were also great killings at Shikhupura and on the other side in Jullandhar. Ironically, neither the British nor the leaders of the two communities had foreseen what forces of murder and mayhem they had unleashed. Som Anand, who lived in Model Town, wrote 40 years after Partition, “Lahore’s name has been etched in the memory of all those Punjabis who have ever been part of the pulsating life of that many-splendoured city.”

Pran Neville, who still considers Lahore his home, wrote in 1997, “The spectre of Partition was there but we did not think of leaving Lahore even if it became part of Pakistan. 50 years have passed but the memories are still fresh in the mind and most of us consider ourselves rootless. We are still groping for our identity. We cannot help expressing our disgust with the political leaders of the time and their responsibility for the sufferings.”

Mian Amiruddin, mayor of Lahore, wrote in a memoir, “The Shahalmi area within the walled city was the stronghold of the Hindus. It was like an impregnable fortress. Countless weapons and great quantities of ammunition were stored there, and the Hindus were sure that nothing could happen to Shahalmi. But when we launched our Molotov cocktails, the Shahalmi fort cold not withstand the attack. As the locality burnt down, the Hindus lost heart and began to move towards Amritsar. At some distance from the rear of my house, there was a big Hindu mansion which served as a stockpile of arms and petrol. It was consumed in the flames of its own petrol.”

What I found chilling about this account is its utter lack or remorse. Such, I suppose, were the times.

Washington has more think tanks than Ethiopia has tanks. Some of them, like Ethiopian tanks, are rusted but they continue to creak along, providing employment to some and to others the opportunity to kill a few hours listening to what may sound like learned tomes but may be nothing of the sort, just waffle.

South Asia has been hot in this town for the last several years but since the eruption of the crisis, Pakistan has received the same kind of attention as it did in the dark days of 1971. Carnegie, Brookings and Heritage are three institutes of excellence in Washington with ably-run South Asia programmes, given the stature of scholars such as Stephen Cohen and Teresita Schaffer. Among the area universities, the best South Asia programme is conducted by Walter Andersen at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. This week, one of his graduate students, Joshua White, who spent a year in Peshawar researching the MMA and the situation in the province and the tribal areas made an enlightening presentation based on his investigation into what are now universally known as “Pakistan’s Badlands.” If the cowboy analogy were pursued, wouldn’t Gen. Pervez Musharraf be Billy the Kid?

White’s immersion in Pashtun culture and way of life can be gauged from the fact that Kheyal Muhammad, the Pashtu folk singer, is one of his favourites. White took a detached look at the MMA government in the Frontier and came to the conclusion that it had been highly accommodative of the international community and Western assistance agencies and groups. It had also managed to contain the “Islamic street”. Its most impressive accomplishment was the major push it made for the promotion of female education. It also diverted funds to the province’s least developed areas, which, in the past, had remained neglected. The MMA government was always accessible. All you had to do to meet a minister, White said, was to go to the Friday prayers and meet him in the mosque. Their doors were open; you entered and sat down on the floor with others (and get served with sweet qehva, I add).

That of course is a tribute to the Pashtun tradition of hospitality, human dignity and equality. You may be a Malik but your social inferiors will not genuflect to you as they do in Punjab or Sindh. The MMA negatives included charged rhetoric, inept governance, emphasis on single gender or separate education and a general apathy to NGOs.

White said people often lost sight of the fact that the MMA was not a single entity but an amalgam of six parties that differed in many respects. It was and will always remain an important player, even if marginally. When it came to power, it realised its limitations and with the passing of time, it moderated itself.

The people of the NWFP, White said, had developed a “healthy disillusionment” with religious governance. He said the MMA is not another name for the Taliban. It had also had to operate under federal and constitutional constraints. The Supreme Court had struck down the Hisba Bill three times. The MMA government was dependent on Islamabad, since 90 percent of its budget came from the federal exchequer.

White argued that the international community could play a major role in streamlining the MMA. He said the MMA is not just made up of those who believe in good Islamic values: its constituents are political actors. If externed from the body politic, it will be laid open to radicalisation, he pointed out.

White said the ground realities in the Frontier have changed, which had pushed the MMA from the right to the centre of the political spectrum, a shift the militants saw as a sell-out. Fidel Castro once said that the worst enemy of a revolutionary movement are the promises it makes before coming to power. The MMA realised that soon after taking power, a point White’s study brought out clearly. He said the MMA is anathema to the militants. MMA cadres at lower levels may have linkages to the Taliban but the higher levels of leadership have no truck with the militants who continue to threaten them. He also spoke about the rise of “entrepreneurial insurgency” — groups or individuals who operate on their own and who should not be equated with the MMA. He felt that if the MMA is liquidated or undermined, the federal authority may lose its “centrist Islamic interlocutors”.

Turning to Swat, White noted that the rise of militancy in these areas is not new. A weak Benazir Bhutto government in 1994 made a compromise with Mullah Radio’s father-in-law, now in jail. He said the present situation in Swat is not MMA’s fault. He also stressed that there is no deep support for the Tanzim Nifaz-e-Shariat-e Muhammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley and if free and fair elections are held, the PPP and the ANP will be make gains.

There is a long-standing jirga tradition in these areas, something that must not be lost sight of, he added. The people do not want the military breathing down their necks. Justice under the traditional system is slow and often unavailable. A system that provides quick justice will appeal to the people. He said the present situation in Swat developed over time and was repeatedly brought to the notice of the federal government that did nothing. When it moved, it brought in helicopter gunships.

White said the “blurring of the line” between the Frontier’s tribal and settled areas is a cause for concern. He also pointed out that the NWFP has been neglected by the government for the last few decades and warned that if the present situation is allowed to continue, it will threaten both Pakistan and the United States.

“Right now Swat is doable; it might not remain so later,” he warned. He poked fun at some of the US diplomats posted to Pakistan “who arrive there talking as if they had never left the United States”. They speak a language that ill-equips them for connecting with Pakistanis. He said it must be understood that religious movements are the major drivers of social change, but the US engagement with Pakistan has a narrow base. The US, he suggested, should engage with the MMA and parties like the PPP and the ANP. The “mainstreaming” of the Islamic movements will add to stability while not doing so will produce the opposite result. He was also critical of the present US policy of putting money only into the tribal areas. “The NWFP should be treated as an integrated whole,” he advised.

The pity of it all is that those who make decisions about Pakistan and our region in Washington will pay no attention to this young and enterprising scholar who had his ear to the ground and who in his year in Pakistan came to know the people and understand what they wanted. But those who bomb them from gunships and their local facilitators have no time for the Josh Whites of the world.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

There is a growing chasm between those who read Urdu and what is published in Urdu, be they newspapers or books, and those who read English and what is published in that language. This has resulted in a dichotomy where one entire segment of the population is unaware of what the other is thinking and reading. My esteemed friend Ardeshir Cowasjee, whose column I only miss when it relates to the amazing feats of the urban land mafia of Karachi, does not read Urdu and has absolutely no idea what appears in the Urdu press. I remember Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) once joking that he had two kinds of ministers in his cabinet: Urdu medium and English medium. Those who were ambidextrous were few in number, even then. The late Khurshid Hasan Mir was one, although his occasional English translations of Faiz Ahmed Faiz did not amuse ZAB, as he felt them to be comments on one or the other of his actions, which they actually were. Once, when there was a train accident, ZAB sent the report sent up to him of that mishap back to the minister with a one-liner: I suggest the minister write a poem about it. The minister was Khurshid Hasan Mir.

Off and on, I try to bring to English readers something by Abbas Athar or Munno Bhai, which they wouldn’t or cannot read. One of the most moving columns that I read recently was by Abbas Athar, written on the second anniversary of the October 2005 Azad Kashmir earthquake. What follows is his and as close an English rendering of his seamless Urdu as I could manage. He called it ‘A minute’s silence.’

“A minute’s silence has been observed to mark the second anniversary of the Azad Kashmir earthquake. Every minute counts in the lives of nations and states. Our tally of minutes that we observe has been mounting. One after one, things have happened that have demanded the offering of a minute’s silence from us. Were we to put these minutes of silence together, they will become an interminable chain of time in which our own voices will be lost.

“Our mourning begins with the sacrifice of millions of lives when Pakistan came to birth. We lost our way soon, caught up in the jungle of grabbing allotment of abandoned properties. The Quaid i Azam left us and the Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot dead in a public meeting. Politicians began to quarrel with one another and then came the first of our Martial Laws in 1958. Another Martial Law under Yayha Khan lost us half the country. The democracy that followed was swallowed up by another Martial Law, and the elected prime minister was hanged. This round of Martial Law lasted 11 years. Journalists, lawyers and political workers were lashed. Democracy returned to the country by dint of an air crash. That ten year period of democracy came to an end with first the jailing and then the exile by the military of the elected prime minister. This military government then gave birth to a new form of democracy where it was possible for an army chief to run for president. This historic event has been celebrated since by the winners with great fanfare. So let there be silence.

“A minute’s silence for every judicial decision that has justified the rape of the Constitution under the Doctrine of Necessity. A minute of silence for the historic decision of July 20, 2007, whose bitter taste has had to be smothered by icing our tongues. A minute’s silence for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s party, which committed suicide in the name of democracy and whose last remains will be laid to rest with full military honours. A minute’s silence for Mian Nawaz Sharif, who believed in his simplicity that the right to rule belonged to the people. A minute’s silence for the men of 9/11 who attacked New York and Washington and in the process, caused an injury to our cause that will not heal. A minute’s silence, subdivided into seconds, for those hundreds of thousands whose lives were taken for the cause of Kashmir. A minute’s silence for a nuclear programme for whose protection, a pointless war was fought in Afghanistan. A minute’s silence for those hundreds of Pakistanis who were grabbed and shipped to Guantanamo. A minute’s silence for the “disappeared” who have left no trace behind. A minute’s silence for those men, women and children whose blood has become one with the earths of Afghanistan and Waziristan. These were men, women and children who did not even know where America was, or what the Twin Towers were or what a computer looked like.

“A minute’s silence for that wave of prosperity which led the poor to take their lives, that pushed thousands of young men into a wasteland, on one side of which lay prison and on the other waited death. A minute’s silence for those orphans and widows whose only home representing their life-savings fell victim to ‘good governance.’ A minute’s silence for national hero Abdul Qadeer Khan who was sacrificed in “the national interest,” and today it seems as if he never even existed. A minute’s silence for the death of the Constitution, the last nail in whose coffin was hammered in by the MMA, the same men of piety who, under the benevolent shadow of Pervez Musharraf, came to power raising anti-American slogans.

Note: A minute’s silence is not enough for the martyrs of the earthquake for they deserve four minutes of our time. A minute’s silence then for them who number a hundred thousand or maybe two hundred thousand. Who knows! A minute’s silence for those 80,000 children who lie buried under the debris of their schools built by dishonest contractors. To this day, not even a single-line First Information Report (FIR) exists at any police station implicating those murderers. A minute’s silence for those millions of dollars in earthquake assistance that came but where they went no one knows. Perhaps they got lost in that website which was to be put up to establish transparency. Promises were made on TV but perhaps the promised website was hacked before it was set up. The practice of observing a minute’s silence comes from the West, the same West from which we have borrowed both good things and bad. Among the good things is this practice of marking occasions and remembering. When did this practice take birth? Did it take birth when the struggle against oppression was finally given up in anticipation of better times? We wait.”

It may have been the first time when members of the American Bar Association marched in front of the Supreme Court of the United States in solidarity with their Pakistani brothers and sisters in black. And that is not the only bar in this country to have taken a position because of what has been happening in Pakistan. The New York bar has passed a strong resolution in support of Pakistan’s lawyers, as has the Michigan bar and so have several other bars. Almost all major civil and human rights organisations have called for the return of constitutional government to Pakistan and an end to martial law, being called a state of emergency, which is a euphemism for the “jackboot in the face”, to quote Orwell.

Eminent lawyer Mohammad Akram Sheikh was in the rally outside the Supreme Court, having been a member in good standing of the American Bar Association for the last sixteen years. Later that day, he was on C-Span for an hour-long interview on the situation in Pakistan and the legal and constitutional implications of the crisis. He has met officials at the State Department and on Friday he testified on Pakistan before a congressional subcommittee. The Washington Policy Analysis Group invited Akram Sheikh to spend an evening with its members, as it does when interesting visitors from Pakistan are in town. The Group has no office bearers, which is why it has stayed alive for over fifteen years. There is no subscription, which means there are no fights over money. Everyone pays for his dinner except the guest.

Akram Sheikh was asked to speak freely, on or off the record. He spoke on the record, except for a bit here and a bit there. Could he shed some light on the mystery that still surrounds my friend Naeem Bokhari’s letter about the Chief Justice that started all the trouble? He could. Everything that Bokhari had written was true, he said, and it was also true that Bokhari had spoken to him before the letter became public.

“I was about to travel abroad,” Sheikh said, “my advice to Bokhari was: “‘Whatever you do, do it inside the court, not outside. And stay away from the agencies.’” This sensible advice was not followed. The results are known to the world.

It is true that the Chief Justice used to treat lawyers roughly. He was temperamental. He could be rude. “Sometimes we used to wonder what we had done to deserve this,” Sheikh said, then added, “All that is in the past. What we have today is a transformed Iftikhar Chaudhry because he has seen that what earns the people’s respect is the courage to take a stand for what is right.” Sheikh said he had condemned the assaults made on Naeeem Bokhari and he was on record as having done that.

Sheikh said in Pakistan, the relationship between the executive and the judiciary has always been tense. The executive has never wanted an independent judiciary because it can ask authority to account for its actions, something that has never been acceptable to any government in Pakistan’s history. The executive considers the judiciary an impediment and has always preferred it to remain semi-paralysed. He said the bar and the judiciary are two wheels of the carriage called law. Unfortunately, governments have failed to put men of proven integrity into higher seats of justice. There are no exceptions. Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh reminded his audience, suspended 42 judges. She placed incompetent, partisan and ill-qualified men in higher courts. She appointed Sajjad Ali Shah chief justice.

Asked why Gen Musharraf had imposed the emergency and dismissed so many judges, Sheikh disclosed that the General panicked because of bad advice from those whose opinion he obviously values. They assured him that the Supreme Court decision was going to go against him, when that was not the case. The court would have declared his election valid, asked him to shed his uniform, take the oath and obtain approval from the in-coming parliament.

Sheikh said it is a pity that the higher courts in the past have collaborated with the ruler of the day. But all that has changed. The ousted Chief Justice was received like a hero by the people because he was seen as having stood up to authority. And nothing is going to roll that back. Today, there is no Supreme Court, he declared. There is no constitution. The courts have no existence because they are there by virtue of the PCO. There is only one way out. The constitution will have to be reinstated and everything done since November 3 will have to be retracted. The kind of papering over being done now will never work.

Asked if the Doctrine of Necessity has been revived, Sheikh replied that when thirteen judges of the Supreme Court refuse to take the new oath, that means the Doctrine is dead. Was the Supreme Court misusing its suo moto powers? He replied that the Supreme Court had the authority to use its power in the higher public interest and for the protection of the constitution and the upholding of the law.

Sheikh said it is being rumoured that some drastic structural changes are going to be made to clip the wings of the Supreme Court. The suo moto powers of the Court are going to be withdrawn through a constitutional amendment. A new federal court is going to be created as a buffer between the high courts and the Supreme Court, which will reduce the latter into just an appellate court. The original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court will be ousted. The constitution, Sheikh said, is a contract between the citizen and the state. The state demands loyalty and adherence to the law from the citizen, in return guaranteeing his fundamental rights. If the articles of the constitution that guarantee fundamental rights are amended, the action would modify the contract that exists between the citizen and the state.

Asked about the amendment to the Army Act that will now make it possible for civilians to be tried under military law, Sheikh said the Sheikh Liaquat Hussain case had established the law, namely that civilians cannot be tried under military law. Making such basic changes to the constitution through ordinances by taking advantage of the emergency is short-sighted.

In answer to a question, he said the National Reconciliation Ordinance is discriminatory and, as such, a bad law. “Benazir is a brave woman, a fighter, the daughter of a fighter. She should have faith in the courts and if she is innocent, surly the courts will exonerate her. And that would earn the people’s respect.”

Better advice than that Ms Bhutto will not receive; but experience tells me that good advice is fated to be ignored.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It will be hard to decide if it is the people of the Valley of Kashmir who have suffered more devastation or the Valley’s storied environment. The conflict has taken a heavy toll on both the people and the land they live in, if it can be called living. I recall walking abound the streets of Srinagar two years ago and looking at people’s faces. But I saw no smiles on them. Armed soldiers who looked tense and ill at ease patrolled around in small groups, eyeing everyone with suspicion. No one looked them in the eye; but their presence hung like a dark cloud over the city. At night, the streets were deserted. It seemed as if the residents had abandoned the city. Only soldiers moved around. Srinagar is one of the saddest places in the world.

I think of Kashmir as it once was. Sir Walter Lawrence, author of the gazetteer on Kashmir and Jammu, a part of the Imperial Gazetteer of India series, wrote, “Looking at a map of Kashmir, one sees a white footprint set in a mass of black mountains. This is the celebrated Valley, perched securely among the Himalayas at an average height of 6,000 feet above the sea. It is approximately 84 miles in length and 20 to 25 in breadth. North, east and west, range after range of mountains guard the Valley from the outer world, while in the south, it is cut off from the Punjab by rocky barriers, 50 to 75 miles in breadth. The mountain snows feed the river and the streams, and it is calculated that the Jehlum in its course through the Valley has a catchment area of nearly 4,000 square miles. The mountains which surround Kashmir are infinitely rich in form and colour. To the north lies a veritable sea of mountains broken into white-crested waves, hastening away in wild confusion to the great promontory of Nanga Parbat (26,182 feet). To the east stands Haramukh (16,903 feet), the grim mountain which guards the Valley of the Sind.”

Lawrence’s description of Kashmir qualifies as poetry. “On the west, and wherever the mountain sides are sheltered from the hot breezes of the Punjab plains, which blow across the intervening mountains, there are grand forests of pines and firs. Down the tree-clad slopes dash mountain streams white with foam, passing in their course through pools of the purest cobalt. When the great dark forests cease and the brighter woodland begins, the banks of the streams are ablaze with clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine, and wild roses which remind one of azaleas. The green, smooth turf of the woodland glades is like a well-kept lawn, dotted with clumps of hawthorn and other beautiful trees and bushes.”

But his most beautiful passage is the one where he describes the quality of light and colour in Kashmir. “It would be difficult to describe the colours that are seen in the Kashmir mountains. In early morning, they are often a delicate semi-transparent violet relieved against a saffron sky, and with light vapours clinging around their crests. The rising sun deepens the shadows and produces sharp outlines and strong passages of purple and indigo in the deep ravines. Later on it is nearly all blue and lavender, with white snow peaks and ridges under a vertical sun; and as the afternoon wears on, these become richer violet and pale bronze, gradually changing to rose and pink with yellow or orange snow, till the last rays of the sun have gone, leaving the mountains dyed a ruddy crimson, with the snows showing a pale creamy green by contrast. Looking downward from the mountains, the Valley in the sunshine has the hues of the opal, the pale reds of the karewa, the vivid light greens of the young rice, and the darker shades of the groves of trees relieved by sunlight sheets, gleams of water and soft blue haze give a combination of tints reminding one irresistibly of the changing hues of that gem. It is impossible. . . to do justice to the beauty and grandeur of the mountains of Kashmir, or to enumerate the lovely glades and forests, visited by so few.”

Kashmir’s beauty has been raped, its women a close second. The world cares neither for one nor the other. Kashmir’s sympathisers have been generous with words, but with little else. A great deal in Kashmir has died; what is left will die also if the two contenders continue to bicker at the cost of the people of Kashmir. No one has paid a greater price for this conflict than the Kashmiris. Iqbal wanted the hand that does violence to Kashmir to be shaken off. He did not live to see that happen, nor have the generations that have followed him. Someone asked me the other day what solution I would suggest for Kashmir. “Any solution that puts a smile on the face of every Kashmiri,” I replied.

Dal Lake, which used to be like a blue jewel adorning the city of Srinagar, is now a cesspool. It has shrunk to half the size of what it used to be. Almost two-thirds of the remaining 4.6 square mile area has been overrun by vegetation. The waters are weed-ridden and polluted by untreated waste. Land continues to be reclaimed. Red algae has appeared because it thrives on waste and garbage. What I found moving was that when the red algae first appeared, the Kashmiris believed it to be the blood of their fallen. There appears to be no end in sight to the bloodletting. I think of Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Tujh ko kitnoon ka lahoo chahye aye arz-vatan: Jo teray aaraz-e-berung ko gulzar karain? Kitni aahoon se kaleja tera thanda ho ga? Kitnay aansoo teray sehraoon ko gulzar karain – How much blood do you need, O earth of my land, to make your sallow cheeks glow with life? How many sighs will cool your heart? How many tears’ll turn your deserts into gardens?

The news from Pakistan being what it is since the beginning of the month, you can spy a Pakistani by the look he wears on his face. Not everyone, of course, has taken it hard, the embassy of Pakistan for one. It nestles next to the Israeli embassy, which, thanks to our loud voices, now knows all the secrets that we were not too keen to keep anyway. By the time this appears, His Excellency, his staff and their assorted guests would have had themselves regaled and refreshed with a rollicking qawwali evening.

Music and enlightened moderation in Washington martial law at home.

But one shouldn’t complain because some of us enjoyed a far more exciting experience than an evening of Amir Khusro and Bulleh Shah. It came in the redoubtable form of Sahibzada Ahmed Raza Khan Kasuri, Nawab of Kasur, currently of E-7 Islamabad, counsel to the President and official delegate of the Islamic Republic to the United Nations General Assembly. After his triumphant performance at the gathering of world leaders in New York, it was suggested to him by the wise men who help keep the ship of state from hitting the rocks in American waters, that he should pay a visit to Washington. The embassy of Pakistan swung into motion — who says these people are somnambulant — assigned a winsome second secretary to assist the only man to have stormed out of a live TV debate in Pakistan not long ago and next we knew the venerable Middle East Institute had invited Kasuri to speak.

The Institute has a small room upstairs where it holds its meetings and it was full long before Kasuri arrived. There were television cameras and reporters, thanks to all the bad news which we have been generating since March of this year. There is great curiosity about Pakistan here. What is wrong with that place, they wonder, that it is always in trouble?

But we cut back to the Institute. Enter Kasuri, thirty-five minutes late. “Washington traffic”, Wendy Chamberlain, former American ambassador to Pakistan and now the Institute president, announced good-naturedly. I should add that when Kasuri was at Government College, he always came to class late. As he would enter, the entire class would hum in chorus, “Aa gya”. When he would sit down, the entire class would sing, “Baith gya”. His appearance at debates was always hilarious. But that was then. Middle East Institute was now.

President Musharraf could not ask for a better defender than Kasuri because he told the audience that the 2002 Referendum after which Musharraf declared himself president was not an election and calling it one was “legal fiction”. He said after getting elected, the General had made 28 amendments to the constitution and so all that he had done before and all that he was to do later was by that reason legal and constitutional. Had those present in the room not heard it with their own ears they would not have believed it, since there have been no more than a handful of amendments to the American constitution in the last 230 years. So there! Another first for Pakistan.

The question-answer session was quite delightful. Asked why so many lawyers were in jail, Kasuri said because of the “security perspective”, lawyers being stakeholders in the legal system. Some of those who were there that day are still spending sleepless nights in trying to understand the nuances of this mysterious answer.

He said if judicial activism had been allowed, everything would have “turned turtle”. The Supreme Court had to be brought in line because it was releasing terrorists. Kasuri, when asked about elections, gave it to the questioner right between his eyes. The last time, he said, we held free and fair elections, we lost half the country. While he had no illusions about free and fair elections, he assured the audience that Pakistan will soon return to democracy. Pakistan, he said, is not the United States. Pakistan is only a “sapling of democracy”.

One young man asked him if he felt any remorse for having collaborated with Zia and Musharraf. Kasuri hit back hard. “I am an educated man. I don’t come from the streets. I belong to a notable family. I am the founding father of the constitution of Pakistan. I played a ‘Jeffersonian role’ in its framing. [He did not say that he did not vote for it.] I could have been a minister, so what kind of a stupid man am I that I am not a minister. I am for Pakistan. If Pakistan is destabilised, the whole area would be engulfed in fire. I am the one who went to Dhaka to attend the National Assembly session in 1971 when Bhutto declared that anyone who goes to Dhaka will get his legs broken. I went to Dhaka on 3 March 1971 to open a dialogue to settle differences.” Ask a silly question!

Kasuri said in answer to another question that there is “free movement of terrorists from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Pakistan to Afghanistan”. If I were Kasuri, I would stay away from ISI headquarters. Those guys have little sense of humour when it comes to this sort of thing.

He also told his — by now cowed down — audience that there were “human missiles” who had spread into every nook and corner of Pakistan and “we are only trying to stabilise the state of Pakistan”. Asked why only lawyers were on the streets and not the people, he answered, “because the massive majority of people are with the government”.

He said “our laws are not made in GHQ”. It is courts, he added, not corps commanders. As for the US, Kasuri said, “We accept advice not dictation”. He added that in Pakistan when democrats come to power, they behave like dictators, but when the military comes to power it behaves democratically. He also reminded his audience that Hitler was an elected person, so elections were not what they were cracked out to be. Not always.

Asked about Asma Jahangir, he replied that she is in “protective custody”. He did not say who she was being protected from. After it was over, he told Wendy Chamberlain that the Pakistan People’s Party came to birth in his family home. “As for Bhutto, I made him. He was nothing but a Teddy boy”.

On that note, I thought it best to make my getaway.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Had George Orwell spent time in India rather than Burma, he would surely have produced a classic essay on English as she is written and spoken in these parts. In his famous essay, Politics and the English Language, which everyone who writes or speaks English must read for everlasting enlightenment, Orwell urged the reader to send “worn out and useless” phrases or “verbal refuse” to where they belonged, namely “the dustbin.” He cited examples, among which he listed phrases such as Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test and veritable inferno.

In tribute to the master, I would like to add to his list, each item added being a runaway Pakistani (and indeed Indian) favourite. If I am able to persuade even five men or women, good and true, to come no closer than a mile of these phrases, I am sure it will bring a smile to the lips of George Orwell, who is surely in heaven drinking a just rightly-made cup of tea. (May I also recommend his brief primer on how to make a good cup of tea.)

Now the list of zombie phrases, the English language’s living dead, who are alive and kicking in Pakistan: add insult to injury, all and sundry, snail’s pace, axe to grind, beat a dead horse, befitting manner, bite the bullet, bite the dust, blessing in disguise, bone of contention, bored to tears, brains and brawn, broad daylight, brown study, brook no delay, brute force, burn the midnight oil, by hook or by crook, chalk out (plans), coveted honour, crucial need, dire warning, each and every, easier said than done, eschew, espouse a cause, every nook and cranny, exemplary courage, exhort, fishing in troubled waters, flying colours, food for thought, foregone conclusion, foreseeable future, glorious past, golden opportunity, grind to a halt, goes without saying, guiding spirit, head over heels, hour of need, Herculean strength, in real fact, in respect of, in the nick of time, insofar as, last but not least (which always appears as last but not the least), by leaps and bounds, leave no stone unturned, miscreant, more than meets the eye, mouth watering, naked aggression, nip in the bud, out of the blue, Pandora’s box, pillar of strength, pioneer spirit, pioneering role, pluck up courage, rule of thumb, scribe (for writer or reporter), seriously consider, strongly condemn, selfless commitment, shining example, sincere tribute, sour grapes, strict adherence, sworn enemy, spouse, lion’s share, ball in the court of. . ., fact of the matter, question as to whether, thick as thieves, thick of battle, tireless efforts, tower of strength, utmost importance, war footing, win kudos, with respect to, Yeoman service and so on and so forth (which, by the way, is also a cliché).

Before I move further, let me reproduce George Orwell’s seven rules (I almost said golden): (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The maestro wrote, “I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought . . . If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy . . . Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin, where it belongs.”

My friend Mohammad Rafiq once said that every piece of English writing in Pakistan reads like every other piece. To that I add that phrases and idioms long dead are used without thinking. It is automatic writing, something executed while sleep-walking. It gives no delight, causes no surprise, does not make the reader sit up and almost never brings a smile to his the lips. It is heavy, laborious and boring. As if all that was not enough to slay the English language, the dime a dozen (I admit it is a cliché) TV channels have executed the coup de grace . In a single swoop, they have achieved the impossible: murdered both English and Urdu. Not one among those whose mugs we see and whose voices we suffer is a Zia Mohyeddin, that perfect speaker of both English and Urdu. The language they speak is an illegitimate amalgam of bad English and even poorer Urdu. It is clear that they are innocent of both.

I hold our newspapers equally guilty. On January 4, 2001, on the eve of a South Asian summit in Kathmandu, a report printed in an English language newspaper (not the Daily Times ) said that the Nepalese government had “officially sought pardon on arrest and release of a Pakistani diplomat in baseless case of possessing fake currency.” The diplomat, the report said, “reached home after performing duty in the embassy. However, staff members of the Pakistan’s Embassy foiled the well drawn plan under which India media had been informed well before the raid on the residence of Pakistani diplomat . . . When the diplomat was on his way back to home on his scooter after performing duties in the Embassy,” he was asked by two policemen to stop. “When he complied the orders and go down of his scooter, they whisked him to the police station. On this Siraj [that being the fellow’s name] started arguing and resisting his arrest but they did not hear him. In the police station, an inspector asked the police cops to get removed his jacket. On this a police constable claimed recovering fake Nepalese currency and fake dollars from one the pockets of his jacket.” Siraj was then marched home by the police “where his spouse on noticing police informed wife of a private assistant of the Pakistani ambassador about arrival of police. The wife of the private assistant phoned to Pakistan Embassy and apprised the staff of the incident. On this staff members of the Pakistan Embassy who were locked in preparatory work for the summit meeting immediately rushed to Siraj house where they demanded release of their colleague but police adopted hegemonic approach.”

This was six years ago. I am sure Siraj is now an ambassador, and I expect to see him posted to Washington next. As for the reporter, I better say nothing. He may have become an editor.

They roam around the United Nations like lost buffaloes in search of the nearest watering hole, which they appear to have found in the coffee lounge. There they all sit for much of the time that they spend at the headquarters of the only organisation in the world whose doors are open to all, be it the Axis of Evil or the Great Satan itself.

The lost buffaloes are the 13 members of Pakistan’s delegation to the 62nd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Three more are expected to arrive in the next couple of days, including Pakistan’s only provider of the cup that cheers, M P Bhandara. To his credit, I should add that when during his last visit to Washington, Gen Pervez Musharraf introduced him at a meeting with congressional leaders as a member of the National Assembly who comes from a minority community, like a jack in the box, Bhandara rose from his chair and said with a deadpan expression on his face, “I am not a minority; I am a citizen of Pakistan.” Although it will amount to the liquid equivalent of carrying coal to Newcastle, I am going buy Bhandara a drink next time I run into him.

Of the 13 members of what we have by way of a delegation, five are women, at least two of whom have their heads cocooned in a hijab, with the rest of their torsos protected from sinful, prying eyes by a shapeless gown. The thirteen — with the exception of former ambassador Khalid Mahmood — are never away from one another. They talk to no one except to one another and they move around like a herd. They stay away from other delegates and obviously cherish each other’s company though often their voices rise quite a few decibels above what would be considered a seemly level. But that can be forgiven because I have yet to hear a discussion on Pakistan’s political situation without the participants getting into a near-slanging match.

Why they are at the United Nations and what they are doing there only those who sent them can explain. They all arrived around the middle of the month when the General Assembly debate had ended and the six permanent committees had gone into session. Some of the delegates have been given pre-cooked speeches by Pakistan’s UN mission to read parrot-like. The delegation is among the largest any member state has sent. If the government must repeat this exercise every year to repay political debts or afford its favourites of the moment an opportunity to see New York and sample its delights, then it might consider sending someone like the great son of Rawalpindi, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who at least is amusing. I recall his telling a stripling second secretary trying to palm off a speech to him that he was required to deliver to one of the committees, “I am not here with a qawwal party. I will make my own speech.” And he did, though what he said no English teacher should have heard unless he was suicidal.

The present delegation includes Ahmed Raza Kasuri, who continues to provide exciting news. While no one has yet thrown any ink on him on the streets of New York — that being a serious offence — he has triggered quite a few fireworks elsewhere. He spoke on Kashmir the other day to one of the committees, delivering in his booming voice the factory-made Foreign Office speech he had been given. But he has been active outside the US as well. The other day, the Pakistan News Writers’ Forum invited him to speak at a gathering, held in a restaurant bearing the rather appropriate name of Ali Baba. Ahmed Raza Kasuri was in his element that evening, reminding some of his rib-cracking performances at Government College, Lahore, debates. He said Gen Zia had ruled Pakistan for eleven years in the name of his murdered father, whom Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had ordered killed. “He wasn’t murdered because the Sikhs wanted to avenge the hanging of Bhagat Singh,” he added. “On me alone, Bhutto launched seventeen attacks,” he disclosed. If true, that only shows that ZAB’s sharpshooters were all thumbs. Kasuri denied that he was on the side of the present government because he wanted a cabinet post. “I am a nawab, while sweepers, cobblers, barbers and weavers have become ministers. I did not choose to become one because I am a nawab, as was my father and as was my grandfather. I am also handsome and I am highly educated,” he declared.

Kasuri said journalists and TV people had spread disaffection and frustration in Pakistan. Those so-called intellectuals were working according to an agenda set by the political parties they supported. He said one TV talk show host whom he had exposed during a debate had apologised to him as many as ten times. It wasn’t clear if the host had been forgiven or if he continued to remain on Kasuri’s hit list. He was attending the UN session, he explained, at state expense because he was a representative of the people of Pakistan. Asked about Nawaz Sharif’s unceremonious expulsion from Pakistan, Kasuri said that the moment Sharif stepped into a PIA plane at London, the Supreme Court’s directions stood obeyed. He flew to Jeddhah, he added, of his own sweet free will. When asked if Gen Musharraf would impose martial law, he replied, “Ask Gen Musharraf or Durrani, his rep in America.” At one time, he declared that he was not an ass and the PPP was not one of his maternal uncles, remarks that brought the house down.

Ahmed Raza Kasuri has always been known for his memorable declarations and old Kasuri watchers like me he did not disappoint this time either. “I am a naked sword,” he thundered. One only hopes that he would sheath that sword when sauntering around the corridors of the United Nations.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Had America been Pakistan and Bush its president, Chas Freeman could well have been locked up. He continues to be almost the lone voice of sanity on the US-led war in Iraq and the never-to-be-concluded war on “global terrorism.” But fortunately for Freeman, a retired US ambassador, he lives in Washington, where despite Bush and the Department of Homeland Security, citizens still have their civil liberties and rights. Freeman, who was the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, heads the Middle East Policy Council, a shoestring operation, which is understandable, since it is the only group in Washington that takes an even-handed view of the Middle East, the Palestinian question and America’s relations with Muslim countries. There are no donors for such a cause here, including those millionaire Pakistanis who make contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns, not because they believe in any of the candidates, but because of one-upmanship. The more piety-ridden among them will happily give thousands of dollars for the building of yet another mosque, which will only intensify the already fierce clerical infighting, rather than contribute a red cent to an effort such as Chas Freeman’s.

The other day Chas Freeman (I take it Chas stands for Charles, but since he favours Chas, so be it) spoke to the American Academy of Diplomacy at Los Angeles on, among other things, the “war on terrorism,” which, he reminded his audience, was begun by Bill Clinton nine years ago. He said, “The terrorists who threaten us are a loose network of crazed fanatics inspired and sometimes directed by unkempt men living in caves in Waziristan. Remarkably, the cavemen think they’re winning. Even more remarkably, they may be right. For the United States and the American people, the world is now an increasingly dangerous place.”

Freeman said that while US enemies have a strategy, the US does not. He called American foreign policy towards the Middle East “diplomacy-free,” relying almost exclusively on military means. But that was demonstrably not working because worldwide, the production of anti-American fanatics was up. He said al Qaeda leaders understand that this is a war of wits, not brawn. They are fighting for the minds of the Muslim faithful. “Armed forces specialise in killing and capturing the enemy. But killing, incarcerating, or otherwise humiliating Arabs and other Muslims who sympathise with al Qaeda does not defeat the enemy; it aids him. Every instance of perceived injustice and humiliation creates a dozen new enemies, determined to kill Americans,” he stressed.

Freeman told his audience that when Bush was asked in Australia recently how the US was doing in the “global war on terrorism,” he replied with evident satisfaction, “We are kicking ass.” Cathartic as that act may be, the former envoy pointed out with deadpan humour, it is not a strategy. As for Afghanistan, Freeman observed, neither the Taliban nor the conservative Pashtuns from whom they draw their support took part in planning or executing the atrocities of 9/11. The original US objective was to punish them, not to ban them from a role in Afghan politics. The subsequent designation and pursuit of the Taliban as enemy has restored to them their international legitimacy as an Islamic and nationalist resistance movement, which it had forfeited by its pre-9/11 association with terrorists, he pointed out. US military intervention had failed to put an effective government in place in Kabul, but it had made the country “safe for poppy cultivation” and put al Qaeda and the Taliban into funds.

Freeman said – and it is just such things that the establishment finds unacceptable – that “we embraced Israel’s enemies as our own,” which led to Americans being equated with Israelis as enemies of the Muslims. The US, he noted, had abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoised Arab populations. “We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible.”

Freeman said there is now a strong American preference for solving problems by militaristic, unilateralist and scofflaw behaviour rather than diplomacy, cooperation with other nations, or the promotion of legal norms. He declared, “We condemn terrorism as criminal but reserve the right to respond to it with actions we ourselves previously considered criminal. This has dismayed our allies and friends in the industrial democracies and divided them from us even as it has greatly reduced the numbers of those in the Muslim world and elsewhere who view us as worthy of emulation. We are increasingly isolated and friendless. The restoration of faith in the United States and our commitment to international law and comity is among the most urgent tasks before us. As it is, when we are next struck (as we surely will be), we must be prepared for the likelihood that, this time, there will be more schadenfreude overseas than solidarity with our distress.”

According to Freeman, al Qaeda draws its strength and its recruits from the grievances of Arabs and other Muslims. Whether or not these grievances are justified, denial will not cure them. It is in American interest both to analyse them and to reduce them to the lowest possible level. This cannot be done without honest examination of how US actions appear to those they affect, unimpeded by prejudice, stereotypes, or the enforcement of political taboos. America needs to understand what it is up against as it is, not as it is politically expedient to explain. Only then can it hope to develop policies that reduce tensions and end the conflicts in the Holy Land, Iraq and Afghanistan, not aggravate or perpetuate them.

Freeman urged the US to make a serious effort to understand its enemies rather than simply caricature and malign them. Instead of examining them and their doctrine, they have been associated with convenient analogies with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Instead of addressing al Qaeda’s case against direct and indirect American interventions in the Arab and Islamic worlds, Washington has ascribed to it an ideology that does not exist.

“Islamofascism” is a word invented in America, he pointed out, “redolent with politically evocative overtones of the European holocaust, and totally disconnected from both Islam and Arab history.” Rather than analysing the aims that al Qaeda and its allies profess, namely freeing the realm of Islam of US presence, “we ascribe to them an objective of world conquest similar to that of our past Eurasian enemies. Ignorance, confusion, and self-indulgence have led us to impose unfounded stereotypes on Muslims and to mistake Arab friends for Arab enemies – and, no doubt, vice versa.”

The only question is: will Freeman’s sane voice prevail in Washington? Not today, of course, but for all our sakes, let’s hope it will do so tomorrow.

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