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The Taliban are back. It is hard to believe but there are people in our country, some of them entrenched in those shadowy outfits that operate outside the law in the name of law, who see it not as the coming to life of a scourge that had all but died just six years ago, but as the dawn of an Islamic millennium: the Taliban’s Islam that is.

There is need, therefore, to revisit the Taliban and their Islam and to remind ourselves of what the Taliban did during the few years they were in power in Afghanistan. The Taliban took control of the city of Kabul on September 22 1996. They immediately issued edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a husband, father, brother or son. In public, women were ordered to cover themselves from head to toe in a burqa, with only a mesh opening to see and breathe through. They were forbidden to wear white socks or white shoes – as this was considered an insult to the Taliban flag, which was white – nor could they put on shoes that creaked when the wearer walked. Houses and buildings in public view were told to get their windows painted over if there were women present indoors.

In January 1997, the Taliban unveiled a policy that segregated men and women in separate hospitals. The policy was lightly implemented until September of that year, when the Ministry of Public Health ordered all hospitals in the capital to suspend medical services to the city’s half million women. The only hospital exempted from this draconian order was the poorly-equipped and even more poorly staffed hospital for women. All female hospital workers in the city’s 22 hospitals were told to stay home. The one hospital open to women had only 35 beds, but was lacking in clean running water, electricity, surgical equipment, X-ray machines, suction equipment and oxygen. After an international uproar and at the urging of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Taliban reluctantly agreed to reopen some but not all of the city’s hospitals for women. However, the gender restrictions clamped down by the Taliban permitted little relief to women. Women could not move freely nor could they work, which seriously interfered with efforts (what efforts there were) to provide them with health services and humanitarian assistance.

A 1998 report by Physicians for Human Rights said, “The Taliban’s edicts restricting women have had a disastrous impact on Afghan women and girls’ access to education, as well as health care. One of the first edicts issued by the regime when it rose to power was to prohibit girls and women from attending school. Humanitarian groups initiated projects to replace through philanthropy what prior governments had afforded as a right to both sexes. Hundreds of girls’ schools were established in private homes and thousands of women and girls were taught to sew and weave.” However, these skills, even where and when learnt, remained of little benefit to them as they were banned from working. In June 1998, the Taliban ordered the closing of more than 100 privately funded schools where thousands of young women were receiving training. The new edict said that only girls up to age eight could be educated, and the Quran was all they could be taught.

According to Physicians for Human Rights, the wearing of the burqa contributed to health problems. A female pediatrician said, “My activities are restricted. Walking with the burqa is difficult: it has many health hazards. You can’t see well and there is a risk of falling or getting hit by a car. Also for women with asthma or hypertension, wearing a burqa is very unhealthy.” The burqa, one doctor testified, may cause eye problems, poor hearing, skin rashes, headaches, increased cardiac problems and asthma, itching of the scalp, hair loss and depression. Those deluded people in Pakistan who consider the Taliban and their Islam, which was an insult to Islam and the distortion of its spirit and teachings, should really ask themselves if they want their country to become Talibanistan instead of remaining Pakistan, the liberal haven the Quaid dreamt of.

The religious police of the Taliban – what the MMA government tried to foist on NWFP – was particularly brutal with women. Public beatings of women after a summary “trial” were common. International members of Afghan NGOs were constantly threatened, harassed, beaten and thrown into prison. By 1998, Kabul had become a city of beggars. Women who had once been teachers, nurses and office workers were found moving in the streets “like ghosts under their enveloping burqas.” According to one report, they were made to sell every object they possessed and when they had nothing left to sell, they were forced to beg to feed their starving children. Men fared no better. They were arbitrarily picked up and jailed. Thousands were tortured and killed. Thousands simply disappeared. Those who were seen with beards of insufficient length (according to the Taliban’s shari’a interpretation) were beaten up, thrown in prison and subjected to particularly humiliating treatment. Some had their limbs chopped off. Some got stoned to death. Depending on their ethnicity, others were gang-raped. There was no such thing as “due process,” that being considered “un-Islamic.” The accused did not have the right to obtain legal help (assuming he even had the means to do so) and confessions were routinely obtained through torture.

Last year, there were reports that the fugitive “Emir of the Faithful,” Mullah Omar, had laid down 30 rules that he ordered every “Mujahid” to abide by strictly. Some of these rules were: A Mujahid who takes a foreign infidel as prisoner with the consent of a group leader may not exchange him for other prisoners or money. Weapons and equipment taken from infidels or their allies must be fairly distributed among the Mujahideen. Mujahideen are not allowed to take young boys with no facial hair onto the battlefield or into their private quarters. It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current “puppet” regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels. Anyone who works as a teacher for the current “puppet” regime must receive a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him. Those NGOs that come to the country under the rule of the infidels must be treated as the government is treated. They have come under the guise of helping people but in fact are part of the regime. Thus we tolerate none of their activities, whether it is building streets, bridges, clinics, schools, madrassas or other works. If a school fails to heed a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand.

Pass me the sick bag, Mickey.

It was sometime in the 1980s that I ran into the late Sardar Swaran Singh, Indian external affairs minister (1964-66 and 1970-74) at a conference in Vienna.

What, I asked him, had really taken place during the six rounds of Kashmir talks he had held with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto between December 1962 and May 1963? Why, despite American and British sponsorship and backing of these talks, had it not been possible to settle the dispute?

He asked me if I spoke Punjabi, which I told him I did. “So let me explain it to you in Punjabi,” he said. In his old village, he told me, during his early youth, there lived a pretty girl named Banto, with whom all the boys were quite taken, but she showed no interest in any of them.

However, from time to time, to make their hearts jump with joy (mumdyaan da ranjha razi karan layee), she would lift her laacha just a little and expose a bit of an ankle before disappearing from view. This kept the boys happy for some time. That is exactly, he explained, what we do to Pakistan on Kashmir. When it becomes insistent, we flash a bit of the Kashmir ankle which keeps it for some time.

I was reminded of this exchange by the presence in Washington this last week of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who spoke in some detail at an event organised by Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai.

But before I move on to what the young Hurriyet chairman said, let me quickly sum up the Bhutto-Swaran talks. The first round was confined to preliminaries, while in the next two, Pakistan proposed a plebiscite, which India rejected. In the fourth round, India offered to make adjustments to the Ceasefire Line by way of a final settlement, which Pakistan found unacceptable. At the fifth round, India kept protesting the just-signed Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement. At the sixth and final round, Pakistan proposed a plebiscite in the Valley to settle the dispute once for all. India rejected it. There was no seventh round. In any case, by now India was off the hook and it had also recovered from the military and political disaster suffered in its short war with China in 1962, thanks to generous outlays of American assistance to the leader of the “neutral” world.

That was 44 years ago. It is both fair and accurate to state that there really has been no change in India’s Kashmir position in these 44 years, despite two wars, a two-decade old uprising in the Valley and the ensuing death and destruction that the people of Kashmir have suffered at the hands of the Indian army and radical insurgents. Can anything be more depressing!

I was hoping that Mirwaiz would have brought some cheerful news to Washington, but one might as well have asked for the moon. He said India and Pakistan cannot resolve Kashmir unless they involve Kashmiris living on both sides of the Ceasefire Line. The “composite dialogue” between the two is welcome, he added, but where is it going? Past efforts, he stated, had failed because it was only two parties talking to each other. The Kashmiris had been kept away from the head table.

I would say they were also kept well out of the kitchen as well. He spoke of the “triangular” dialogue the Hurriyet had started but there had been complications and little progress. “Not much has happened on the ground,” he added.

There is, what the two countries call, a peace process in operation, but its pace is very slow. “The expectations of the Kashmiris have not been met. Four hundred and fifty thousand Indian troops remain deployed in Kashmir, over and above local state forces and police. Black laws that give unlimited power to the security forces remain in force. The security personnel move with impunity across the state. Thousands are in jail without trial. None of these issues has been addressed by India,” Mirwaiz said.

He explained that as part of its triangular dialogue strategy — separate meetings with Indian and Pakistani leaderships — the Hurriyet had held four rounds of talks with the Indian prime minister, Sardar Manmohan Singh but there was little that they had led to. There had not been much of an advancement. The Hurriyet had begun this process hoping India will understand that it is time to move forward, but things had remained more or less where they had always been. He had praise for Pervez Musharraf, who he said had declared that anything that is acceptable to the Kashmiris is acceptable to Pakistan. His offer had remained unrequited.

Much enthusiasm was generated in the Valley and wherever there are Kashmiris when the first bus left Srinagar for Muzaffarabad. But after two years, all the two countries have to show for this “breakthrough” is one bus a week from side A to side B. Thousands remain waiting to get on that bus and at this rate, they will continue to wait indefinitely. The bureaucracy and the procedural difficulties involved in securing a berth are enormous and although there has been much talk of making it simpler to go from one side to the other, there has been no change on the ground, just words.

There are thousands of divided families, Mirwaiz said, longing to go across and meet blood relations they have not seen for decades. He lives in Srinagar and being the dignified, sober, reasonable young leader he has proved to be, his word is to be taken seriously. If anything, he tends to understate things, such being his temperament.

I would add that the last six decades of India-Pakistan relations have proved the “step-by-step” approach to be a dismal failure. Whereas what is needed is a quantum jump, what New Delhi and Islamabad have opted for is a slow belly crawl. At the rate at which they are going, it will take a hundred years to get to where they say they want to be.

Ahmed Faraz wrote: Faraz sehn-e-chaman mein bahar ka mausum: Na Faiz dekh sakay thay, na hum hi daikhain gey (Faraz, the coming of spring in our little garden, Faiz did not live to see, nor will we).

For once, I hope and pray Ahmed Faraz is wrong.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

In these sad and bitter times when uncertainty hangs like a dark cloud over Pakistan, we may perhaps be able to sweeten our imagination by invoking the memory of the peerless Ahmed Shah Bokhari, alive forever in the hearts of his students and still remembered at the United Nations, whose corridors on a silent night echo with his wit and wisdom. But more than anything, he is alive in the pages of Patras ke Muzameen , unexcelled more than 75 years after publication for the lightness of its touch and its scintillating humour.

Bokhari, of whom a woman once said lights up the room he walks into, was the most brilliant intellect of his generation, which, let it be noted, was not short on intellect. Even an offhand list of his contemporaries reads like the who’s who of genius. Just consider: Dr M.D. Taseer, Maulana Abdul Majid Salik, Ghulam Rasul Mehr, Khalifa Abdul Hakim, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj, B.A. Hashmi, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabussum, Maulana Charagh Hasan Hasrat, Syed Abid Ali Abid, Pandit Hari Chand Akhtar, Maulana Salahuddin Ahmed, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, not to forget Faiz Ahmed Faiz, though he was younger by several years, yet a part of this select group. Perhaps one should not look around at what we have today because whichever direction you turn to, you will find pygmies who remain nameless here, though they should not be hard to identify.

Bokhari was not always easy to get along with, one is told by those who knew him, but if he had a touch of intellectual arrogance, he was more than entitled to it. Some of the things said about him may also spring from envy. He was the first Indian – and the first Muslim – to become director general of All India Radio, no small achievement at a time when the British did not trust Indians in positions of high sensitivity. He was, of course, the first Muslim to be principal of Government College. It is good he is not alive to hear it called by the absurd name of Government College University. And he was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations. He was also the first Pakistani to be appointed assistant secretary general of the United Nations, where he headed the entire information network. Prof. Ashfaq Ali Khan once said that in British times the second most important person in Punjab after the Governor was the Government College principal. These days, I would say, it is neither.

Everyone has heard the story where Bokhari in his principal’s office, bent over his papers, hears someone enter his room and without looking up asks the person to take a chair but is told that the one entering is one of the twice born, being a member of the Indian Civil Service, so he asks him to take two chairs. When he was at the UN, someone asked him what Pakistan’s foreign policy was. “Pakistan has no foreign policy,” he replied, “only foreign affairs, most of them illegitimate.” Some years ago, a collection of Bokhari’s letters was published in Lahore (like all good things the book is no longer available in the republic of the gun-slinging faithful). The letters are as delightful as his essays. I always make a wordless apology to the great man’s shade before venturing to translate his Urdu into English. So here is some of Bokhari to his friends.

To Alys Faiz, who had sent him a letter beginning “Dear Bokhari,” he writes, “I am astonished that I should have simply become Bokhari to you. Not mister, not sahib, not even professor. Since when have you women been made equal of us men that such informality should be considered in order? Since when have children joined the company of adults, since when, pray? In any case, that is enough because I have always been a believer in the short dressing down, administered with aplomb and affection. It has been found to be more lasting. Of course, I have not the slightest doubt that you are already repentant and taken a solemn vow to exercise both care and obedience in future.”

To Begum Amna Majid Malik (wife of Col. Majid Malik), Bokhari writes, “What a galaxy of friends has the Almighty blessed me with! However, none of them is familiar with the simple skill of letter-writing. Once upon a time, for just such people, there used to be a book sold in Shah Alami and Chandani Chowk called Correspondence for Lovers. Many affairs reached fruition through this admirable piece of work. What a pity even that book is no longer to be had, such being the times!” The letter to Maulana Abdul Majid Salik, sent from the UN begins, “Cocktail parties! God alone knows what cruel genius invented them. When there were kings, half the business of state used to be done while breaking bread together. Mohammad Shah arranged a banquet guaranteed to soften the flint-hearted Nadir Shah. That was what politics was all about in those times. But here you are not even permitted to move your little finger without instructions from your government. And yet everybody seems to waste massive amounts of time and money on receptions and what have you. You know I never was a drinking man and yet here I am, made to stand with a glass in my hand to safeguard my vestal virginity, otherwise, after every two minutes, someone will surely come up and insist upon drowning me in hospitality. Saying, “No thank you, no thank you” all evening is deadly for the muscles that move the human mouth. In any case, the sheer thickness of the crowd at these cocktails is such that you can do no more than rub shoulders (at times into things other than shoulders). The hour chosen for these cocktails is such that you can neither eat dinner before the fray starts, nor, needless to day, after. However, those of us whom fate has ordained to become ministers and ambassadors are doomed to suffer this punishment at least two to three times a week. I look forward to cocktail parties about as much as I look forward to surgery.”

To Salik again, Bohari writes after having changed several apartments: “My brief stay within their walls has been enough to convince me that I was not cut out to be an apartment dweller. Imagine a mountain-like building with dozens of hen coops, the only difference being their size; with your next door neighbour permanently locked in and utterly inscrutable. I was on floor 15 and there was an automatic lift to carry me to it. It often occurred to me that if after duly pressing button No. 15, my soul were to leave my body, the lift will continue relentlessly on its way to floor 15. On arrival, it would slide open its doors without having the brains to realise that the man who had pushed it to floor 15 was now stone dead and no longer in a position to step out. This fantasy always gets me down. After all, it’s only human to expect that when you go, there would be some rumpus, with somebody trying to revive you, another making an effort to hold you, some crying, others screaming. But if these expectations are to remain unfulfilled, in that case we Asians see nothing ahead but creeping darkness.”

Bokhari died suddenly. He had turned just 60. Prince Aly Khan, Pakistan’s UN ambassador, told the General Assembly, “With his passing the corridors of the United Nations will be a lonelier place.” Bokhari lies in a New York cemetery. But his memory stays green.

Jihad is now an industry among scholars, including those who masquerade as scholars but are actually in the service of more shadowy outfits, and those who believe that by blowing up people praying in mosques or families out shopping, they will not only serve God but win a point-to-point ticket to the pastures of heaven where seventy-two swooning virgins await their arrival.

The tabloid approach to jihad in particular and Muslims in general, being easy, is often employed by the Western media. There is also an epidemic of books aimed at denigrating Islam and simply ignoring or distorting its spiritual majesty, the magnificence of its history and its contribution to civilisation.

The easiest thing to do today in America is to publish a book on Islam, but the book has to be negative and it has to reinforce existing prejudices. The basic idea is to equate Islam with violence and to prove that it is not a religion of peace at all, as it advocates the establishment of a khilafat where the infidels will either be liquidated, or converted or reduced to the status of serfs.

Unfortunately, it is not the work of the serious scholar that now defines Islam in the West but the words and deeds of the lost tribe of jihadis. Islam has been hijacked by the prototype represented by Osama bin Laden and his like. They have become its image-makers and they are the ones viewed by the non-Islamic world as its real representatives. That is the fight, and it is a fight that Muslims first have to win from among their own ranks.

But to maintain that there is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark is to ignore reality. How can a remedy be found without first recognising that there exists a condition that needs a remedy?

One serious and scholarly publication that has come up with incisive analyses of the phenomenon of terrorism and what ails many Muslim societies is brought out by the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, the famous US military academy.

Its monthly publication, CTC Sentinel, declares on its masthead that it is “objective, relevant and rigorous.” Tall though the claim may sound, the Sentinel does make an earnest effort to be all three. The current issue carries two worthy articles, one on the “return of the Arabs” to Afghanistan and the other on Salafi jihad as a religious ideology.

Brian Glyn Williams, an American university professor who studied at SOAS, London, makes what he calls a preliminary effort to sift through vague rumours in order to gain a clear picture of Al Qaeda’s actual role in a Taliban guerrilla war that has, to all outward appearances, morphed into an Iraqi-style terrorist insurgency.

He concludes that while it is difficult to estimate the number of Arab fighters in the region, it seems obvious that Al Qaeda central is determined to play a key role as a fundraiser, recruiter and direct contributor to the military efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Moreover, unlike the earlier generation of “gucci jihadists” who made little if any real contribution to the jihad against the Soviets, the current generation seems determined to remind the West that the “Lions of Islam” have not forgotten.

According to Williams, since 2002, one of Al Qaeda’s main roles has been diverting wealth from the Arab Gulf States to funding the struggling Taliban. One recently killed Saudi shaykh named Asadullah was described as “the moneybags in the entire tribal belt.” Men like Asadullah have paid bounties for Taliban attacks on coalition troops, provided money to Taliban commanders such as Baitullah Mehsud to encourage them to attack Pakistani troops and launch a suicide bombing campaign in that country, and used their funds to re-arm the Taliban. Local Pashtuns in Waziristan and in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province have claimed that the Arab fighters pay well for lodging and food and provide money for the families of those who are “martyred” in suicide operations.

But there are also tensions between the Arabs and the Afghans, to ease which, Mustafa Abu’l-Yazid, the Egyptian head of Al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan, has proclaimed that he recognises the authority of Mullah Omar.

Assaf Moghadam, an Islamic scholar, in his analysis of “Salafi jihad” argues that it is more akin to an ideology than to a religion because like other ideologies it is a by-product of the industrialisation that swept through Europe, beginning in the 19th century and is hence an outgrowth of modernity. It is intimately linked to the dislocating and turbulent effects of globalisation, which introduced rapid changes in the social, political and economic realms of life.

The Salafi-jihad is an ideology because its functions are essentially congruent with those of other ideologies. Analogous to the first, explanatory function of ideology, the Salafi-jihadists’ goal is to raise awareness among Muslims that their religion has been on the wane. Whereas Islam used to be at its peak during the first centuries of its existence, Salafi-jihadists urge Muslims to understand that the tide has turned, and that Islam is in a constant state of decline in religious, political, military, economic and cultural terms. Salafi-jihad provides a new sense of self-definition and belonging in the form of membership to a supranational entity.

Finally, according to Moghadam, like all ideologies, Salafi-jihadists present a programme of action, namely jihad, which is understood in military terms. They assert that jihad will reverse the tide of history and redeem adherents and potential adherents of Salafi-jihadist ideology from their misery. Martyrdom is extolled as the ultimate way in which jihad can be waged — hence the proliferation of suicide attacks among Salafi-jihadist groups.

Westerners are commonly described as infidels, while moderate Muslims and Arabs are labelled apostates. To the most extreme Salafi-jihadists, Muslims who reject the tenets of Salafi-jihad are tantamount to infidels, thus deserving of death. They interpret their violence on other Muslims as religiously sanctioned, ignoring sections of Muslim holy texts that prohibit internecine fighting or the killing of civilians. They single-handedly blame the West for each and every misfortune that has befallen Muslims.

Moghadam urges the United States and its allies to understand that they are not facing the religion of Islam as their main enemy, but an ideology, namely the Salafi-jihad.

It is equally a fact, he maintains, that leaders of Salafi-jihadist organisations hypocritically preach about the benefits of martyrdom, but rarely, if ever, conduct suicide operations themselves, or send their loved ones on such missions. It is a fact that Al Qaeda and associated groups offer no vision for Muslims other than perennial jihad, hardly an appealing prospect.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

India-Pakistan relations have obviously reached a dead end because, for quite some time now, neither country has expelled the other’s diplomats, nor have any of them been beaten up. No one has been caught stealing secrets (which are on the Internet anyway) or accepting sensitive documents in the back streets of Delhi or Islamabad. No diplomatic protest notes have been exchanged, nor has either government accused the other of blatant interference in its affairs. Kashmir, like the potter’s ass, has remained in the same spot where it has stood for the last six decades.

So what is going on? I am beginning to miss the old times when the two countries would not let much time pass without exchanging insults and accusing each other of the most unspeakable things. That was diplomacy, Subcontinental style. What we have now is some pale, watered down version of the Real McCoy. Gimme that old time protest-a-day relationship. What we have today is too tame, too boring and so dull that it makes one want to scream a lungful of diplomatic obscenities. If this is what good relations boil down to, let’s do without them. We want some action.

Let’s recall the way it used to be. Here is a note from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, South Block, New Delhi, addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Old Hotel Scheherzad, Islamabad.

“The Government of the Republic of India presents its compliments to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and has the honour to state as follows. The Government of India has reason to believe that in violation of established diplomatic practice and protocol, as enshrined in Articles V-A to XIII-L of the Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbids the keeping of seals, squirrels and salamanders on accredited mission premises, there is reason to believe that His Excellency the High Commissioner of Pakistan has established in a secret portion of the Chancery not only a sanctuary for stray squirrels, a dipping pool of sonar-sick seals and a secret seminary for sun-tanned salamanders for the purpose of eventually undermining the security of India and sabotaging its entirely peaceful nuclear programme that on birth was given the sacred name: “The Smiling Buddha.” The Government of India is in possession of incontrovertible electronic evidence, both auditory and in the form of video imagery, that it can produce, if called upon to do so, that clearly proves the truth of the charges made herein. This government is also satisfied that a member of the household of His Excellency the High Commissioner of Pakistan, a six-year-old boy who goes by the name of Bunti aka Babli, has been instructing the said rodent quadrupeds of active arboreal habits with bushy tails and pointed ears to practise walking while poised on their hind legs, the idea being to attack the annual Indian Republic Day parade from land and sea. The Government of India rejects the anticipated response from Islamabad that an attack from sea on the Republic Day parade in New Delhi is not possible because New Delhi is not a sea port. The Government of India would like to counter this argument by pointing out that the headquarters of the Pakistan Navy are situated in Islamabad, which is more than 1,000 nautical miles from the nearest sea. The Government of India is not unaware either of the High Commission having caused to be brought into the sovereign territories of the Indian Union an assortment of sophisticated implements meant to assist the said squirrels in walking on their hind legs and the seals to act as the second sea-borne line of attack.

“The Government of India would also like to place on record the deeply deplorable fact that when, as a gesture of goodwill, before the recording and dispatch of this note, an effort was made to bring this regrettable chain of events involving the said squirrels, seals and salamanders, to His Excellency the High Commissioner’s notice through a personal emissary of the Ministry to the High Commission, he was greeted at the High Commission gates by a pair of hush-puppies who attacked the emissary’s ankles causing the fabric of his trousers (one of two pairs in his wardrobe) to tear. The Government of India holds the Government of Pakistan responsible for this attack and would expect to be reimbursed in foreign exchange for the financial loss caused to the emissary, who was on state duty carrying out his assigned duties.

“In addition, the Government of India has reason to believe that the High Commission of Pakistan has illegally detained on its premises an Indian citizen cat who happened, quite by accident, to jump over the High Commission’s east wall (the site of an innocent RAW post). The Government of India rejects the Pakistani allegation that the said Indian citizen cat was equipped with a camera and had been smuggled into the High Commission’s premises to both picture and lure the six-year-old Bunti aka Babli, whose role in this regrettable affair is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Also to be deplored is the conduct of a third secretary of the High Commission, who informed a senior member of the Ministry on an open phone line (a recording of the said conversation is available with the Ministry) that he would be unable to disturb the High Commissioner over an issue that he went on to describe as “poppycock.” The Government of India deplores the third secretary’s unfortunate choice of words, although not much is to be expected of third secretaries.

“The Government of India also rejects a note verbale issued under the signatures of the High Commission of Pakistan wherein utterly false and baseless allegations have been made about the inmate of the long-tailed baboon and monkey section of the New Delhi Zoo. It has been alleged that one of the long-tailed baboons, identified as Zumbo Dumbo, made a pusillanimous effort, under instructions from the Government of India, to scratch the face of the aforementioned Bunti aka Babli, who was merely pelting Zumbo Dumbo with peanut shells. Such allegations can only harm and undermine the good relations that exist between our two neighbouring states. Such allegations also violate the spirit of the Simla Agreement, although the said Agreement may not have managed to move beyond Simla since 1972. The Government of India urges the Government of Pakistan to restrain the aforementioned Bunti aka Babli from disturbing the peace and tranquility of the Delhi Zoo, failing which the Government of India will accept no responsibility were Bunti aka Babli to be found divested of the sling that he is reputed to put to use to target perfectly innocent animals, bird and beasts, all law-abiding citizens of India in good standing. The Government of India avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the Government of Pakistan assurances of its highest regard and esteem.”

Urban legends are hard to kill. They may even be unkillable. One urban legend — for whose worldwide provenance we have to thank President Pervez Musharraf — is the threat held out to Pakistan by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage after the September 11 attacks, that unless Islamabad did America’s bidding, it would be bombed into the Stone Age.

Had the president said that in a newspaper interview, it would have been long forgotten because nobody reads yesterday’s newspaper and as the great Maulana Charagh Hasan Hasrat so sagely observed, the same evening the day’s newspaper is used to wrap fish in. And had the president quoted the remark in one of his TV interviews, of which he never tires, having once been told that he is “media savvy”, few would have remembered it even the next day. And certainly not in Pakistan where there are more media channels today than there are absconders being chased by police around the back streets of Gwalmandi, Lahore.

What happened was that the president put it in his book, or maybe his ghostwriter — who would fail to frighten even a three-year old were he to materialise as a ghost — did. The general, I don’t hold responsible for this confusion at all. It is not his fault. He merely reproduced what he had been told — and on an open phone line from Washington on September 12, 2001 — by the then chief of the Invisible Soldiers Inc., Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed.

That was not what Richard Armitage, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, the No 2 man at Foggy Bottom, had told him, though obviously that was what he told the president back in Islamabad. I suspect the conversation took place in Urdu and the chief Invisible Soldier provided what he thought was the “gist” of the exchange with Armitage. There were four others from the Pakistan side present at that meeting but since they were all officials, none of them felt the need to nail the myth that has grown around Pakistan being bombed into the Stone Age (which won’t be much of news to several areas in Balochistan and Sindh that have never emerged from the stone age in the first place, thanks to their munificent federal governments.)

We should all thank the young man attending a discussion on Pakistan last week at the Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s “mahan” think tanks, for standing up to ask Armitage, who looks like a bouncer but is sharp as a razor, if not sharper, why he had threatened to bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age if it did not do America’s bidding.

Armitage replied that he had said no such thing, nor was he authorised to say any such thing. He had asked for Pakistan’s cooperation after the attacks. The US, he had said, was calling on its friends for help and wished to know if they were on America’s side or not.

The conversation had remained civil and Armitage, one of those present at the meeting told me, had been frank but polite. I do realise that the Stone Age urban myth is too good to be laid to rest, so it will live on. Sorry Mr Armitage, but I tried.

As for the now retired Gen Mahmud Ahmed, what can I say? I am told he has a flowing white beard and has “gone fundo”. It is best to stay away from such new recruits to piety. It may also be prudent, since the old adage — once Invisible Soldiers Inc., always Invisible Soldiers Inc. — may well be true.

Another urban legend that also refuses to die — maybe we will have to hammer a silver cross through its heart on a dark night — is Henry Kissinger telling Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that if he did not dismantle Pakistan’s nuclear programme, “we’ll make a horrible example of you.”

What Kissinger said to Bhutto at Governor House, Lahore was that if Pakistan went down the nuclear bomb road, it may not benefit from it, nor may the prime minister.

That is a far cry from saying, “we’ll make a horrible example of you.” However, the latter is what everyone believes and anyone who suggests otherwise is sure to be denounced as CIA.

Another urban legend that has also refused to die is Bhutto declaring at Karachi in a throwaway line directed at Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, “Udhar tum, idhar hum.” For the tenth time, I make another attempt to nail this one. Bhutto never said those words. If anyone is guilty of what Bhutto’s enemies have called his saying goodbye to East Pakistan, it is Abbas Athar, who as the enterprising and inventive news editor of daily Azad, Lahore, slapped this colourful headline on a news report of Bhutto’s speech at Nishtar Park, Karachi.

The most powerful urban legend of all also involves Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: namely the Polish resolution, which its contenders insist would have saved Pakistan had Bhutto not torn it up and walked out of the UN Security Council in December 1971.

Now the facts. There was no Polish resolution. It was a draft, which was never put to vote. There were many drafts circulating at the Security Council in those days, including the Polish one. Poland, after all, was a member of the Warsaw Pact and a satellite of the Soviet Union, which was India’s principal ally and a declared backer of Pakistan’s dismemberment. How could the Soviet Union circulate a resolution through one of its stooges to save united Pakistan?

As for Bhutto physically tearing up the Polish resolution, what he tore up were his notes, which were mostly doodles — as my friend Iftikhar Ali of APP covering the session has told me. And how does he know? After Bhutto stormed out of the Security Council, Iftikhar Ali took a hurried look at what Bhutto had torn up before rushing out to file his report. The urban legends around Bhutto have continued to swirl thanks to those who continue to hate him. There is nothing that you, I or Charlie’s aunt, for that matter, can do about it. Urban Legends Live.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Some people write autobiographies, others attempt biographies. Then there are those who do neither. They are the collectors. The only person I know who has made it a lifetime literary pursuit to read autobiographies and write about them is Parvez Ahmed Perwazi, a professor of Urdu, who, starting out at Talim-ul-Islam College in Rabwah, went on to teach in Japan and Sweden.

Currently, he lives in Toronto but let me warn those in Pakistan who write autobiographies that they should not consider themselves safe from Perwazi’s sharp, critical, scrutinising eye and his long reach. I was impressed with his reach and his abiding interest in this genre when he called one day to say that he had found certain serious factual errors in Tajammul Hussain’s Jo Bachhay hain Sung (that I have just translated into English for publication in Lahore). That only confirmed my long-held suspicion that Perwazi maintains spies in Karachi and Lahore who keep him not only informed of newly published autobiographies but supplied with them as well. While conceding to the old Persian saying that to identify errors committed by your elders is in itself an error, Perwazi nonetheless did catch Tajammul Hussain, who had written that Justice Boota Singh (not Justice Teja Singh) was named on the Radcliffe Boundary Commission as the Sikh representative. Perwazi also pointed out that the author had failed to mention that the Congress nominee was Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan. The author, Perwazi went on to say, had erred when he had Bhola Bhai Desai presenting the Congress case, whereas it was Motilal Satloovad. The Sikh case was presented by Sardar Harnam Singh, a leading Lahore lawyer. In other words, Perwazi had Tajammul Hussain both caught and bowled.

Perwazi has just published a book (Pusnawisht aur Pus Pusnawisht, Naya Zamana Publications, Lahore) that will spare those who read it the arduous task of reading 151 autobiographies that the author examines and comments on. Writing about Quarratulain Hyder’s marathon Kar-e-Jahan Daraz Hai , Perwazi quotes Ijaz Hussain Batalvi, who in a review of her first book for Saqi , quipped, “After reading this book, it appears that before departing from India, Lady Mountbatten left the English language in the author’s custody for her short stories.” After Ghulam Muhammad’s death, she and Batalvi went to see Qudratullah Shahab at Governor House, Karachi and found him busy writing. “Ghulam Muhammad,” he told them, “was one of God’s chosen beings.” “That’s the problem,” Annie shot back. “We’ve all become God’s chosen beings.”

Perwazi faults Shahab’s Shahabnama on several counts, most of them factual, one being the author’s assertion that when on April 17 1959 he was asked to rush to Lahore by Brig. F.R. Khan (who had become the information czar of the new military government) for an “important assignment,” he did not know what it was. Perwazi proves that Shahab did know what he was going to Lahore for, namely the takeover of the Progressive Papers Ltd. One should add that Shahab does not admit that it was he who wrote that notorious Pakistan Times editorial “A new leaf” after the shameful annexation by Ayub of Pakistan’s only leftwing group of newspapers. In his assessment of Rashid Ahmed’s Siddiqi’s Aashufta Byani Meri, Perwazi quotes the famous Aligarh professor and writer as saying that when he went to call on Allama Iqbal for the first time in Lahore, he was “taken aback by his Urdu accent.” Then he adds, “How unauthentic the language sounds if it is spoken in an uneven accent!” This kind of snooty observation is typical of a certain class of “bearers of the language.” Even Iqbal, the supreme master of Urdu and Persian, is found wanting because he speaks Urdu with a Sialkoti accent. Faiz once said to me that there were those who did not even consider Iqbal a poet.

Hameed Naseem’s Namumkin ke Justaujoo comes in for praise, although Perwazi does feel irked by the author constantly reminding his readers of his master’s degree in English. The book, which is written in the third person, credits Dr M.D. Taseer with being the author’s true teacher and mentor. Hameed Naseem was his student at MAO College, Amritsar, where he also came to know Faiz, Rashid Jahan and Sahibzada Mahmoodul Zafar, her Marxist husband. Chaudhri Zafrulla Khan’s marathon Tehdis-e-Naimat deserves the attention that Perwazi accords it, summing up his tribute in these words: “It will remain a unique autobiography because it is peopled with the names of eminent world leaders whom the author came to know personally. No other Urdu book can claim that distinction.” One such eminent personage was the King of Bogonda, a Cambridge man whom Zafraulla met in his palace and found that no one could enter his presence unless he came crawling along the floor. The Cambridge-educated young king seemed to have no problem with that.

Assessing Kishwar Naheed’s Burri Aurat ki Katha , Perwazi writes, “This is not only Kishwar Naheed’s story but the story of all those unfulfilled and exploited women who suffer oppression at the hands of their men, their society and its tradition, but their lips remain sealed. But Kishwar Naheed is a woman who speaks out and when a woman decides to do that, no one can silence her.” Perwazi refers to the late Ahmed Bashir, though he does not name him, who wrote a scurrilous profile of Kishwar, but when he spotted her on Lahore’s Mall one day, he tried to slink away, pretending that he had not seen her. Kishwar, never one to let go, chased after him, grabbed him by the collar and said, “If all that you have written is truthful, why are you hiding your face now?” Perwazi writes, “Had Kishwar not written this autobiography, we would have been greatly disappointed, not only we, but all those who want to say that the king wears no clothes but are unable to do so. But they do want that someone else should say that. Also disappointed would have been those 13- and 14-year-old girls of East Pakistan whose young breasts (in Kishwar’s words) ‘had yet to begin breathing though their bellies contained eight month old babies, subjected as they had been to the animal brutality of government hoodlums.’ Also disappointed would have been those who listen to the ravings of mullahs but do not have the courage to speak up.”

Perwazi, writing about Gen. Atiq-ur-Rehman’s autobiography, Back to the Pavillion, narrates a delightful story. When the “Turk,” as he was known in the Pakistan army, was commanding the 15th Division at Sialkot, he stopped his car while driving home because a soldier had failed to salute him. He awarded the erring soldier the spot punishment of six baithak that involves a person going down on his haunches, rising to his full height only to go down again. After the soldier had obeyed the “Turk’s” command, he pointed out that the GOC’s car plate, bearing the stars of his rank, had been covered so he had no means of knowing who its occupant was. In that case, the “Turk” stated, both my driver and I would take the punishment that I earlier awarded to you, which was exactly what they did on the side of the road.

But generals like the “Turk” are gone. What we have in their place, I leave to the imagination of those who have read this far.

Benazir Bhutto had a premonition about death. Her sister Sanam has talked about the strange look she wore in the last days, a look it was hard to fathom. One thing she did know. She had never seen or experienced before what she was now experiencing.

Others have spoken of a strange glow on her face, while some report that while she seemed to be sometimes sitting and talking to you, you had a distinct feeling that she was elsewhere. She was happy in the last days. She also seemed to be very little in need of sleep. Sanam says her sister would not sleep for more than two or, at most, three hours.

Someone I know remembers a call from her from Karachi when it was still at least two hours from daybreak. She was in an expansive mood and sounded happy. The call lasted a long time. “You must take some rest now,” her friend suggested. She did not need it, Bibi replied. She felt just fine. It was about 3.30 in the morning in Karachi.

On her last visit to Washington, she drove straight from the airport not to where she was staying but to Sindhi politician Abdullah Shah’s home to condole a recent death in the family. As she sat there, she suddenly said to Akbar Khawaja, who had picked her up from the airport, “When I die, I want to be buried in Naudero. I don’t want to be buried anywhere else. Someone might say, ‘Let her lie in Nawabshah or Karachi’, but that should never be.” Then she said, “I pray to Allah that I do not die abroad but in my own country.” “Please, Bibi, what are you talking about! Please don’t talk like that, please,” Khawaja pleaded. “Well, everyone has to go one day,” she replied.

She wrote the will she left in her own beautiful running hand, all seventeen pages of it, leaving no detail out. This surprised her family. She was even asked why she was writing it. But she was happy about it, as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. She said to a friend that this could be her last visit to Washington. When he protested and said “Please, Bibi, your last visit to Washington of your exile years”, she said nothing, just smiled.

During her exile years, we saw a good deal of her in Washington because she would almost always come here if she was anywhere close. She was much sought after as a speaker because she spoke so well and with such simplicity. The agency that managed her lectures is one of the top ones in the business with clients like Bill Clinton. She travelled so much in the last few years that one wondered at her strength and stamina. She never looked bored or fatigued.

And yet so heavy was her burden. She tended a very ill mother, who, she once told me, hardly even recognised her any longer. She also took care of her three children and kept an eye on their schooling and even tutored them at times. She told a friend, “This tutoring has elevated my blood pressure.”

And of course, she supervised her party affairs. She phoned people, and she took most calls made to her. She answered emails almost immediately, even when she was travelling. Her Blackberry was always with her (which Asif now uses) and if you sent her an SMS, back came the reply within minutes.

There was so much that she did and I never ceased wondering how she found the time and the enthusiasm to do it all. She had her father’s memory for names, faces and dates. She did not forget anything but she was forgiving. If someone had crossed her, she did not let that hold her back; she just moved on. I never really met anyone who hated her, even those who were opposed to her politics. She had this gift of inspiring love and loyalty among her friends and even those who met her occasionally or knew her in passing.

I recall asking Mark Siegel, her long-term friend and lobbyist in Washington, a month or so before her death as to how long he would keep working for her cause. “As long as I live,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation.

Last weekend, some of us held a meeting in her memory here and relived times spent in her presence. We had just heard about the suggestion by President Musharraf in London to his followers to beat up those who in his opinion were “unpatriotic”. “But no matter how awkward or even rude a question you put to Bibi, she was never offended, but proceeded to answer it patiently, never losing her temper,” someone pointed out.

And that indeed is true. I have seen her being asked not only rude but silly questions, preceded by rambling and sometimes witless statements, but there never was a sign of impatience on her face. Nor did I ever hear her tell any such person to keep it short. She had this great capacity to just sit there, hour after hour, and listen to others.

I would like to close this remembrance of her with two poems by Adrian A Husain, the finest Pakistani poet writing in English. Here is the first: ‘Death of an Icon — In memory of Benazir Bhutto’: A seismic shudder/skewing of/our TV screens/followed by flames/sirens/and in the midst of trees/figures in random flight/In the aftermath/nothing remains/except the image of/a space/vacated/above a jeep’s/sun-roof/and a/casket/with a small glass/vent/gliding, levitating/as it is eased/into an ambulance/held aloft/on the shoulders of/mourners/yet somehow moving/on its own/There is a sense of/a volition/inside the box/something living/if not quite a life/impelling/the moment/as if in defiance of/the arm that rose/the hand/that dared/the nod and the/wink of hell’s initiates.

Adrian Husain’s second poem is called ‘Elegy for Benazir Bhutto’: Charmed back from exile/by fond hopes/blandishments/you alighted/to our/tributes./Heedless of/what lay/ahead/flags, garlands/roadside clamourings/and the vague promise/of a future/drew you on./We/should have known/the moment of/betrayal:/your head turned away/the insidious hand/risen/the macabre/festivity of/death./Today,/accomplices, we plot/your homecoming/in reverse./ December yawns like a grave./It is all/over.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Abul Hasan Naghmi used to be the famous Bhai Jan to Mohni Hamid’s Apa Shamim on the long-running children’s hour from Radio Pakistan’s Lahore station once upon a time. Although it seems like yesterday, it was many moons ago. Those who were then children will remember it fondly, and those who were older will recall it with nostalgia because (though they might not have confessed it then) the programme was not without its grown-up listeners. And who could have faulted them? Where else could they have heard the silvery tinkle of the voice of Mohni Hamid, whose worthy daughter, Kanwal, was Pakistan Television Lahore’s first woman announcer? I love Kanwal’s voice – as I love the rest of her – but as for her mother, she spoke only for children – or for the gods.

Naghmi, though not of Lahore (having come to the city as a refugee from Sitapur, the heart of UP, at the time of independence), became more of a Lahori than even those whose families had lived in the city for generations. To this day, 35 years after he left that city of cities in pursuit of a new life in America, Lahore remains Naghmi’s emotional home. Naghmi was taken out of Lahore in 1972, but it has not been possible to take Lahore out of Naghmi. Some years ago, he wrote a book about his days at Lahore Radio, which remains an evocative memoir of the early days of broadcasting in Pakistan. One of the great radio voices of those times, Akhlaq Ahmed Delhavi, was never to be seen without his solar hat, even at night, Naghmi recalled. When someone pointed out that this legacy of the British was to be donned as a precaution against sunstroke, Akhlaq Ahmed Delhavi replied, “I wear it against moonstroke.”

Naghmi was a staff artist, a category of employees who were the backbone of the service, though termination of their contracts always remained hanging over their heads like a sword. In Naghmi’s last days at Radio, the regional director, the be all and the end all of the station in those days – and I am sure even today, appeared keen for reasons not specified on showing him the door. Not only did Naghmi write scripts of all kinds, but he was also the station’s virtual language and pronunciation ombudsman. However, since the one department the Almighty keeps under His strict jurisdiction is the department of sustenance, Naghmi ended up getting kicked upstairs, namely all the way from Lahore to Washington, from Radio Pakistan to the Voice of America (VOA). He had applied some time earlier when a post was advertised by the VOA’s Urdu programme. Just when he thought he would be asked to quit or he would quit himself, he was told to pack up and leave for Washington. Naghmi gives credit for this happy and fateful turn of events to the beloved saint of Lahore, Data Sahib, to whose shrine he once felt himself drawn, as if in a trance. Data Sahib, always generous to his children, did the rest, believes Naghmi. The next he knew, he was on a PanAm clipper flying to America, overseen and cared for by light-eyed svelte air hostess with caps the color of the morning sky.

Naghmi writes in his American autobiography, Battis Baras Amreeka Mein, published last year, that when the PanAm plane was about to land at Dulles International Airport, the month being September and the year being 1972, he prayed to God to make the city on whose soil he was about to set foot auspicious for him, his children and all those close to him. He was not disappointed. Maybe it was that certain moment when prayers get answered. Had he known that, he might well have asked to be made the King of Zanzibar. Nagmi’s book is an entertaining account of how he made his way in a strange land where fate and a saint’s benediction had brought him. His first days in Washington were hilarious. Cockroach-infested though the room he sheltered in was, at least it had an attached bath, unlike the YMCA where he had first landed and where he had to walk through a corridor to get to a communal bathroom. Food was another problem. A young woman he asked for help on the street led him to a vegetarian restaurant where all the waiters were dressed in white from head to toe. They also wore long hair and turbans. On inquiry, they turned out to be American Sikhs belonging to some mysterious cult. When Naghmi asked why they did not shave or cut their hair, they told him, “Our Guru has taught us that every hair on the human body is actually an antenna, which receives signals from above. If we shave off our hair, we would snap all contact with the universe.”

Naghmi’s VOA days were not happy ones, thanks to the intrigue of those who were already there and who saw in him skills and experience they could not match. Over time they assured their g ora American chiefs that Naghmi lacked both language skills and a good broadcast voice, which was ironic because he had been gifted with such a musical voice that all he had to do in Lahore was speak a few words to a perfect stranger and be told, “You are Abul Hasan Naghmi, radio’s Bhai Jan.” One day he was informed that his contract would not be extended. Without work and with a family of six, he was on his own. As always, he opened the Quran for guidance and came upon the verse that says there are creatures that do not carry their food with them, but God feeds them for He alone is the provider. Naghmi flitted from job to job, from teaching Hindi (which he knows nearly as well as Urdu) and Urdu to interpreting for courts to selling a product called “magic cloth”(never got paid for the last bit). He had written after leaving VOA to every Muslim head of state asking for work. He had heard nothing but, one day, out of the blue, he received a reply from Sultan Qaboos of Oman’s secretary asking him to make contact with the Oman embassy in Washington. A few days later he was hired as the mission’s PRO. Everyone in the embassy spoke Urdu, Naghmi learnt to his astonishment and great relief. He worked there for several years but was told one day that, since he did not know Arabic (which he had told them on the first day he didn’t), he had to go. He was out of work for some time but he is one of nature’s optimists, and God feeds His creatures. In between he and his family received their Green Cards (which were never green, just as the Danube was never blue). For some time he also taught Urdu and Hindi at the US Foreign Service Institute.

But ultimately, it was in insurance that Naghmi found his most rewarding career. He, broadcaster and writer, had never dreamt that he would sell life insurance one day, especially since most people back home tended to avoid insurance agents like the plague. Today Bhai Jan Abul Hasan Naghmi is a gentleman of leisure. He spends his time reading, praying and writing books. But he still misses Lahore and would rather be at Lahore Radio, as it was in the 1960s, than be living in the comfort of suburban Washington.

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