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Like bullfrogs out after heavy summer rains, Pakistani cyberspace and the realm of the printed word are full of the croaking of neocons who have convinced the already ignorant that the Security Council sanctions against Jama’at-ud Dawa and certain individuals only came because Pakistani officials were either sleeping at the post or had conspired with the 15-member Security Council to let the axe fall.

These people are not interested in facts. They only have opinions.

One cybercon who answers to the name Ahmed Quraishi writes on December 24, “We have a government with shady characters in key places, strongly backed by the Bush administration, acting and behaving as if they were representing a US occupation government in Pakistan.” Under “recommendation”, he proposes, “We need to start a witch-hunt in Pakistan to cleanse our academia and public life of such self-haters and defeatists who poison the minds of young Pakistanis about their homeland. Such academics and human rights activists should not be allowed to hide behind the freedom of expression.”

The two “traitors” he refers to are Pervaiz Hoodbhoy and Asma Jehangir.

Then there is the Ann Coulter of Pakistan, Shireen Mazari, who writes, “Thanks to the pusillanimity shown by our leaders ever since the Mumbai acts of terrorism, Pakistan is being squeezed by so-called friends and foe alike.” She goes on to predict, “However, let there be no doubt that India is going to carry out surgical strikes, probably beginning with AJK. After all, the extraordinary and unscheduled Envoys Conference can only have been called to contain the diplomatic fallout of such strikes.”

It is pointless to inform her that the envoys’ conference had been scheduled for some time and was not summoned because of Mumbai. Mazari also wrote that “in the Mumbai aftermath, we chose to prevent our allies from rallying around us in the UN Security Council.”

Ann Coulter, I should explain, is a neocon American figure who urged the bombing of Mecca and who wrote, “Liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.”

She is also an ardent admirer of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunts.

But to return to the Security Council sanctions, a statement issued by the Foreign Office in Islamabad laying out facts was lost in the din created by our croaking neocons. So let me quote that for the record:

“Action against the JuD and certain individuals was initiated following their designation by the UN Sanctions Committee established pursuant to the UN Security Council Resolution 1267, on the Consolidated List of individuals and entities associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The request for enlisting the JuD had been under consideration of the UN Sanctions Committee since 2006… Since this resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, it is obligatory on Pakistan to fully implement its provisions. Pakistan, as a responsible member of the United Nations, has fulfilled its international obligations.”

On December 9, a day before the resolution, Pakistan’s UN ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon said in a statement, “After the designation of Jama’at-ud Dawa (JuD) under (Security Council resolution) 1267, the Government, on receiving communication from the Security Council, shall proscribe the JuD and take other consequential actions, as required, including the freezing of assets.”

This shows that the sanctions were more than expected as was their imminence and the UN mission was not asleep as is being charged by the Ann Coulters and other neocons of Pakistan.

Those who are rising in defence of Lashkar-e Tayba and its mutation, the Jama’at-ud Dawa, perhaps neither know nor do they care to know what the Security Council’s terrorism sanctions committee is. And although these cybercons and super-patriots are beyond redemption and repair, let me nevertheless explain what this committee is and in the face of which Pakistan is accused of having acted pusillanimously.

The Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1267 (1999) on October 15, 1999, is also known as “the Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee”. The sanctions regime has been modified and strengthened by subsequent resolutions, including Resolutions 1333 (2000), 1390 (2002), 1455 (2003), 1526 (2004), 1617 (2005), 1735 (2006) and 1822 (2008) so that the sanctions measures now apply to designated individuals and entities associated with Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and/or the Taliban wherever located.

The names of the targeted individuals and entities are placed on the Consolidated List. The resolutions listed above have all been adopted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and require all states to take a number of specified measures in connection with any individual or entity associated with Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and/or the Taliban as designated by the Committee.

And what are those measures? Freeze without delay the funds and other financial assets or economic resources of designated individuals and entities; prevent the entry into or transit through their territories by designated individuals; and prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale and transfer from their territories or by their nationals outside their territories, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related materiel of all types, spare parts, and technical advice, assistance, or training related to military activities, to designated individuals and entities.

The Committee is one of three subsidiary bodies established by the Security Council that deal with terrorism-related issues. The other two committees are the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the 1540 Committee. The three Committees and their expert groups coordinate their work and cooperate closely and the Committees’ chairmen also brief the Security Council on the activities of the Committees in joint meetings, when possible.

No one can prevent the action of the committee; nor is anyone invited or told about its proceedings. Normally the first signal is a note circulated to all UN member states.

And now the unvarnished truth.

Since 2006, Pakistan, against better advice and reasons that have been blown sky-high by Mumbai, had kept the sanctions from being clamped with the help of China. However, after the Mumbai attacks, China informed Pakistan that it could no longer block the terrorist group and individuals from being sanctioned. The question the neocons and the super-patriots should ask, but don’t, is: Why was Pakistan blocking sanctions against a terrorist group?

And this takes me back to Pervez Musharraf’s first visit to the US after his coup. At a meeting with a group of journalists among whom I was present, my dear and much lamented friend Tahir Mirza, then the Dawn correspondent, asked Musharraf why he was not acting against Lashkar-e Tayba and Jaish-e Muhammad. Musharraf went red in the face and shot back, “They are not doing anything in Pakistan. They are doing jihad outside.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net

his is the centenary year for Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, British Agent 007, irresistible to women with names like Vesper Lynd, Domino Vitali, Kissy Suzuki, Mary Goodnight, Tiffany Case, Solitaire and Tatiana Romanova. For the baddies of the world, who in his day were mostly commies or crazy men like Dr No who planned to dominate the world through terror and blackmail, Bond was the nemesis. And despite his great partiality for hard liquour – scotch, vodka and martinis – shaken not stirred – and up to 70 specially blended cigarettes a day, Bond got the better of all he confronted, though in the process he often took some heavy punishment, the most painful being what the Russian spy Le Chiffre inflicted on him in Casino Royale , which practically knocked off his whatdoyoucallit.

In celebration of Fleming’s life and unique achievement, all 14 of his books have been reissued in paperback and nowhere else is there more absorbing reading to be experienced than in following James Bond as he brings death and destruction to the enemies of the British empire (or what was left of it) and the West. Fleming published his first book in 1953, when he was in his forties, the book being Casino Royale . Then one after the other came his thrillers, delighting the world and making James Bond and the man who first played him on the screen, Sean Connery, household names around the world, including the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain countries of Eastern Europe, though surely in smuggled editions.

Bond is a wish fulfillment. He is what most of us would like to be, but aren’t. He has no wife to nag him, no children whom he has to walk to school and no unpaid bills. He is answerable only to M, the head of MI6, and as M’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny, is in love with Bond (a love that remains unrequited), that gives him an additional advantage. After all, it is a given that having the boss’s secretary on your side guarantees you remaining in his good books, even after a botched operation. Bond lives in style when in London, his bachelor pad being off King’s Road, which was the area to be in. He does not have to suffer travel by bus and tube. He has his supercharged Bentley to take him places. He gets sent to the world’s most exotic spots to dispatch one baddy after another, and he always gets the girl.

Bond’s ethics are essentially English public school. He believes in queen and country and he is not exactly fond of foreigners. All the villains he deals with are from other countries and races: Asians, Russians and Eastern Europeans. Fleming’s books were written at a time when the Cold War was at its coldest. It was a world in which McCarthy could happen. It was a world in which the Rosenbergs could be executed for spying for Russia. That world may have vanished with the fall of communism, but as one watches the new Russia gain in wealth, power and influence, it seems only a matter of time before the return of the Bond world. But would there be another Ian Fleming to spin yarns about it? Not likely, for such storytellers are not born every day.

A great deal has been written this year, principally in Britain, about Fleming and the world he created. The Imperial War Museum has mounted an exhibition, featuring an array of material, most of it on public display for the first time. The exhibition explores the early life of Ian Fleming, his wartime career and work as a journalist and travel writer and how, as an author, he drew upon his own experiences to create James Bond. According to the actress Joanna Lumley, who played one of the Bond girls, Fleming was “a complicated personality: a ladies’ man with an amusing sardonic face, impeccable connections and lazy elegance. He had an upper-class drawl and was as fit as a flea, which is always very attractive. He was capable of great sweetness, which you see in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he wrote for his son Caspar. But the more I learnt about him, the more I found him to be a solitary man. His pastimes and pleasures were solitary: golf, cards, cars, writing … the things he loved most were lonely; and there is also a loneliness to James Bond, which is part of his allure.”

Roger Moore, who played Bond from 1973 to 1985, writes that he was an aficionado of James Bond – both the books and the films. “I have a vested interest in the character. I feel protective towards him. When I hear people say: ‘Oh, why don’t they call it a day and kill him off?’ I feel compelled to speak out, like a custodial father. It’s true that, like Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Fleming once toyed with killing off Bond. But his readers protested and he listened. They wouldn’t allow James Bond to die then, and I don’t believe we should any time soon either.” Moore concedes that Sean Connery was the first and probably the best Bond as he originated and defined the cinematic interpretation of the character. Bond, Moore adds, has survived not only Connery’s departure, but five other actors too, and he’s thrived. What’s more, he’s now more popular than ever, hardly breathing the last gasp of a dying man.

Michael Hewitt, in his tribute to Bond, wonders if Bond could afford his extravagant lifestyle today, earning in 1955 a modern-day equivalent of 43,000 pounds. In his first book, Bond was in his thirties, which would make him 90 plus today, a bit past it, wouldn’t you say! Hewitt notes that Bond’s eating habits are hardly guaranteed to make him the picture of health, since he “kicks off each day with an artery-hardening cooked breakfast, courtesy of his housekeeper, May. When travelling, he insists on his own-recipe scrambled eggs. The short story 007 in New York says this includes half a pack of butter and double cream. Otherwise, Bond subsists on ‘grilled soles, oeufs cocotte and cold roast beef with potato salad.’ He loathes fresh fruit and vegetables.” He also has a drinking problem, down as he does half a bottle of spirits a day when off duty. He smokes special Balkan and Turkish mixture cigarettes at the rate of 60 or 70 a day. An MI6 spokesman is supposed to have said, “Obviously, we can’t comment on exactly who we do employ, but I can say that the character described in the books would probably find great difficulty getting a job with us as a cleaner, let alone a field agent.”

The nameless MI6 spokesman is lucky that James Bond did not hear that, otherwise he would have met the same end the baddies do at 007’s hands.

Some well-heeled woman in Lahore took to the streets this week, daintily holding candles, while bright-eyed young men made up the rear — all in honour of the Iraqi journalist Muntazir al-Zaidi, who lobbed his shoes at President Bush. The NWFP assembly passed a resolution and a nation, already in denial as to direct or indirect responsibility for Mumbai, found one more reason to rejoice. There is no doubt that the pulpit-thumping clerics that day were proclaiming yet another victory for Islam and predicting that it was only a matter of time before Muslims ruled the world.

Welcome to Pakistan, the self-declared Fortress of Islam where the mosques may be full on Fridays but where everyone cheats everyone and for justice one is advised to return to the times of Haroon-ur-Rashid or Jahangir.

Praising the Iraqi journalist for hurling shoes at President Bush, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which the government says is banned, promised that the Taliban would take all possible steps for the release of al-Zaidi: “The TTP will do all it can to secure the release of Muntazir al-Zaidi and to get hold of the historic shoes.” Maulvi Omar told reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location that al-Zaidi has become the hero of the entire Muslim world.

As a journalist, I have reservations about the Iraqi journalist’s action. A working journalist is permitted close physical proximity to presidents and prime ministers in order for him to perform his professional duties. He must not misuse that privilege or employ it to push his personal or political agenda. Therefore, regardless of what al-Zaidi or the rest of us think of President Bush and his policies, what the man did was wrong.

He abused and betrayed the trust that had been placed in him. Journalists should use their pens and their cameras, not their shoes, to express themselves. Thanks to al-Zaidi, in future, all journalists on assignment will be subjected to far greater scrutiny and background checks than they face today. In other words, al-Zaidi performed a great disservice to the profession, violating its ethics. I have read thousands of words written on the incident by Pakistani journalists, but none has questioned the ethics of al-Zaidi’s action.

Need I add that I have opposed the Iraq War openly from the start, and in a meeting with the then Secretary of State Colin Powell, I clearly expressed my views about the war that was then in the offing without mincing my words. Anyone who wants confirmation only needs to ask Richard Boucher next time he is in Pakistan, which, given his record, should be any day after Christmas. Boucher was present at the meeting, being the Department spokesman.

A bright young Pakistani who came here to attend university and who recently returned to Pakistan to live and work has sent me a message that deserves to be shared. BQ, which is how I will identify him, writes:

“I had no idea the country had regressed so much. Everywhere you look, people are depressed, angry, cynical, and they all complain non-stop about the government, even when it is not justified. I am just so disappointed that I don’t have words to explain it. It seems that even divine intervention is not going to save us now! It is not impossible elsewhere in the world to find fair, middle of the road news being presented objectively when it comes to major sources of information. Regretfully, this is not true of Pakistan. If one leaves the English press aside, it is too painful to even read anything in the Urdu press. It seems there is a race on to see who can win at not being objective. Is the Urdu press only staffed by people who are unable to separate their own nationalist or religious feelings from their obligation to be neutral? This is not journalism.”

BQ goes on, “It is both tragic and comical that the Urdu press, political pundits, social, military, and other so-called analysts constantly appearing on every private TV channel are stuck in the past. It seems everyone is one-dimensional. Nobody seems to get above the most superficial and weirdest possible analysis, namely that India, Israel and America are conspiring to harm Pakistan. Apparently, these countries have nothing else to do.

“Every society has its conspiracy theorists. Every society has people who write and say things that are not only wrong, but that make the average citizen nervous, but they don’t get to appear on major TV channels and they definitely don’t get to write daily columns in major newspapers, except in Pakistan, where it seems that almost everyone associated with the Urdu press lacks the ability to be objective, fair or balanced.

“For example, these so-called super-patriotic experts have discovered that Pakistan is the ‘Fortress of Islam’ and that everyone, including Pakistan’s neighbours, are scared of Pakistan’s nuclear technology and are conspiring against us, and by extension, against Islam. In other words, everyone is against Pakistan, because Pakistan has the atomic bomb. But worry not, they proclaim, these forces of evil will never be able to do harm us because of our ‘bum’. The layers of conspiracy get thicker and thicker and the irony is that most people buy into it, conveniently forgetting that the Soviet Union had the most sophisticated nuclear arsenal and yet, despite being a superpower, it broke up.”

BQ, writing amid power breakdowns, is not done yet. “There is no question that there are forces working to destabilise Pakistan, but these forces are not external. These are people inside Pakistan: they are the Taliban and the Islamists that Pakistan itself created and funded and now, the monsters have gone rogue. Ironically, after every suicide bombing in Pakistan, the media start suggesting that terrorist it was the work of the CIA, Mossad and, of course, RAW. Instead of tackling the country’s dire internal problems of water, sewerage, electricity, gas, petrol, pollution, unemployment, fundamentalism and the ethnic divide, we huff and puff about India, Israel and America. Instead of fixing our own country, we criticise others. Instead of taking responsibility for our failures, we look for scapegoats.”

I hope BQ is feeling better having got all this off his chest.

As for Mumbai, not only the nation but the government is now in almost total denial.

President Zardari said on Wednesday that there is still no firm proof that the gunmen came from Pakistan. There is still no conclusive evidence to substantiate the claim that the attacks were orchestrated from Pakistani soil, he added. Foreign Minister Qureshi says the “charitable” activities of Jama’at-ud Dawa will not be banned. In other words, Pakistan will disregard Security Council sanctions. And Qureshi was supposed to be among the enlightened ones of this regime.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net

he other day, our man at the United Nations in a mystifying letter to the UN secretary-general warned him that if the hordes running around Khyber were not stopped, they would march down to Panipat. I wondered then if we were the same country once represented at the world body by Prof. AS Bokhari. It brought me close to tears.

I felt moved because it is 50 years since Bokhari passed away in New York, which is where he lies, gone but not forgotten. Earlier this year, his grandson Ayaz Bokhari pointed out that it was always Bokhari’s Patras ke Muzameen that got quoted, but hardly ever his scintillating addresses at the United Nations and elsewhere in America. That indeed is true, and I am going to make up for it, but not without first reproducing a passage from his classic Lahore ka Jugrafia. “All kinds of stories are told about Lahore’s climate. They are wrong for the most part. The fact is that recently the residents of Lahore expressed the desire that, like other cities, they too should be given a climate. After a good deal of debate, the municipality came to the conclusion that in this day and age when self-rule was being conferred on many countries and there was a general awakening among the people, the demand made by the residents of Lahore was not unreasonable and should, therefore, be given sympathetic consideration. Unfortunately, the municipality is short of climate and, consequently, it has had to ask the residents of the city not to make too wasteful a use of the air they breathe. They have been advised to practise the utmost frugality when it comes to the use of air. Day-to-day needs, therefore, are now met by breathing in not air but dust, and in some cases, smoke. The municipality has dotted the city with hundreds of dust and smoke-producing facilities at no-cost in the hope that this will produce the desired results.”

What Bokhari would have made of today’s Lahore, one dare not even speculate. Abe Rosenthal, who became editor of the New York Times, was its UN correspondent in March 1953 when Bokhari became, for that month, president of the Security Council. He called Bokhari a “diplomat’s diplomat” and “one of the ablest representatives of the Asian-Arab bloc to turn up in the United Nations’ seven years.” Once the British ambassador compared himself to a tortoise and Bokhari to a hare, adding sardonically that the British Commonwealth was large enough for all kinds of political animals. Bokhari answered, “That is probably true. But if in the British Commonwealth there are any ostriches they are not found in my country.” There was no disagreement that Bokhari was the best speaker the UN had ever heard and its greatest wit.

Speaking in May 1955 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Bokhari said therewas a vast amount of mutual ignorance between the part of the world he came from and the part where he had lived for the last five years. “It was not so long ago when it became a habit with me in lecturing on Asian problems to remind the audience that more than half the people of the world lived in that continent. I invariably received the somewhat disturbing reassurance the next day, from some telephone callers at least, that I was right because they had ‘looked it up.’ That was the first puzzling sign of the maladjustment in understanding that came my way.” His advice to the Americans given 53 years ago remains valid today. Bokhari said, “It will be a new experience for other countries but also for America itself, to submit itself and its art both in humility and in pride to the gaze of the world, and to open their hearts to the artists and the critics of other lands, which after all is the most creative and the most affectionate way in which human beings can seek to reach each other’s minds. And thus there is a great deal in this country which could carry inspiration abroad, and I think you have the resources and the will to provide the same facilities for people from abroad for the same kind of understanding.”

Gertrude Samuels of the New York Times once called Bokhari UN’s “cosmopolitan crusader.” Dag Hammerskjold, who picked Bokhari as head of UN information, regarded him as a genuine man of the world. Of Bokhari’s appointment, the correspondent wrote that the secretary general has “chosen an Asian who has dedicated his life to a better understanding between the Orient and the Occident, and who, perhaps more than anyone else at the UN, is a synthesis of the cultures of both worlds.” She recalled Bokhari’s words during the sharp debate on Tunisia and the colonial question when he told the Security Council that, by its refusal to discuss the issue, it was inviting the people of Asia to “go to hell.” He told Samuels, “The UN cannot be sold in the way that a commodity is sold. Internationalism is a tiny baby with, so to speak, 60 nationalistic nurses. The surprising thing is not that the darn thing is weak but that it is living at all.”

In 1957, a year before his sudden death, he addressed the US National Commission for UNESCO. While acknowledging that Asians had been mentioned in flattering terms earlier that morning, he said, “It is, however, not as an Asian that I should like to share my thoughts with you this morning. It is true that I cannot, even if I wished, which I do not - I cannot shut my eyes entirely to the light that I received from the skies, the rather distant skies, under which I was born. Much less, however, can I deny the many benedictions that have fallen upon me from other skies during the rest of my life when I strove and struggled for maturity. Besides, it would, I think, be perfectly in tune with the purpose of this conference as indeed with my own disposition, if I did not dwell too much on rooting myself in any particular land.” He continued, “Ours is the age of questioning. There are more questions to ask and more people asking them than in any previous age. If people do not get the right answers, they will work with the wrong ones and breed ignorance, bewilderment and unhappiness on a scale hitherto unknown to men.”

What Bokhari said next should become our guiding light today so that we do not lay to waste this beautiful world through hate, violence and religious bigotry. Bokhari said man lives in a colourful vibrant world which is “new and we have to understand it, for as we roam through it, questions raise their head at every turn. We see strange faces, strange ways, strange art, strange aspirations. We hear strange voices. We must give all this some meaning. That is our problem today: how to give meaning to God’s plenty which has increased so rapidly. We cannot continue to grope about in darkness. But our world is crowded and unless we open the windows of the mind we shall be suffocated and live blindly in a mental and spiritual night of our own making.”

I call it the Abdulla Malik formula for peace of mind and it has the virtue of being applicable to more than one situation, more than one circumstance. One day several years ago, as I walked into Abdulla Malik’s Garden Town house in Lahore, I found him sitting contentedly in a chair on his veranda, with pile of newspapers and books lying in no particular order on a side table. His mood, always sunny, was even sunnier that day.

Thinking that maybe word had just been brought to him that the Red Revolution had finally come and right now was drinking tea on McLeod Road, I asked him what the good news was. “I have discovered the ultimate formula for peace of mind,” he replied. “Which is?” I asked.

“I have stopped reading all columnists, each and every one of them, in each and every newspaper that gets delivered to the house every morning. I have never been happier. My mind is uncluttered no longer and I can think clearly.” As for newspapers, he added, “I glance at the headlines and if a particular story interests me, I read through it quickly.”

And that reminded us of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. After I complained to him that I was having to read far too many newspapers, Faiz took a long drag at his cigarette and observed, “Bhai akhbar kabhi kabhi dekh laina chahyay. Eham kabar tau patta chal hi jati hai.” (“One may glance at the newspaper once in a while: anything important one comes to know of anyway.”)

Out here in Washington, I have implemented the electronic version of the Abdulla Malik formula by getting all Pakistani TV channels unhooked from my satellite dish. Whereas most major Pakistani networks can now be viewed in North America and elsewhere, the programmes they put out bear no relevance to the viewing area or the people of Pakistani origin who live there. There is no effort to relate the programme fare to the communities of Pakistani immigrants who have settled in America, Canada, Britain or Australia. And that is understandable because the entire purpose is to make money and do so at the least cost.

The programmes beamed at us are made up of soap operas, music videos, so-called news bulletins and religious fare. All major Pakistani channels also intone the call to prayer 10 times a day, five for those living in Britain and five for those living in North America. The purpose is not to induce people to remember the Almighty but to save on programme time, which costs money. Ten azans mean roughly an hour for which the channels incur no expense. On one channel the kid sounding the call to prayer is said to be the youngest offspring of the czar who owns it all and then some more.

Those who pray five times a day, are not glued to their TVs. They know exactly the hour when a prayer is due. The hilarious thing is that as soon as the azan is done, the channel returns to whatever rubbish it was showing. Most Pakistanis measure spiritual merit in terms of monetary units, unaware that God’s system of measurement is different.

As for religious programmes, they consist of often abstruse theological discussion. In a country riven by sectarianism, the parading of so-called ulema representing different sects is nothing short of a crime, since the effort should be to unify, not divide. These programmes only widen the fratricidal divide that is destroying Pakistan’s peace and damaging its future.

Then there are the soap operas called dramas, which without exception have just one theme: marriage. It is either a marriage that is to take place and has not; or a marriage that has taken place but is not doing well because of the mother-in-law, a former lover, a money problem, a jealous sister-in-law or a husband who has taken to drink or gambling.

But worry not, without fail the drama ends either with wedding bells or on a note of happy reconciliation. In a country and a culture that has more social, political, spiritual, legal and psychological problems than anyone has the ability to count or list, it is reprehensible to reduce them to the single theme of marriage. In any case, marriage needs the least promotion in a grossly overpopulated country like Pakistan.

But what finally got my goat in terms of Pakistani TV channels was the Mumbai carnage. While the siege of that great city continued as ten terrorists went on their killing spree, mowing down men, women and children without pity or remorse, our television networks continued with their cooking shows, music videos, inane soap operas and religious lectures and azans.

For close to three days, CNN suspended all programming to devote itself exclusively to non-stop coverage of what was happening in Mumbai. The indifference with which our channels treated this huge and tragic event was hard to understand and even harder to accept. To this day, when piles of evidence have been produced to prove that all 10 attackers were Pakistanis, everyone in Pakistan, especially on TV, is in denial.

And what of the news that is put out? It is actually radio news packaged as television news. One is told what is being said by A, B or C. You see their mugs, their lips moving but you rarely hear them speak their own words. There is hardly ever any live footage and people’s own voices. It is mostly stock and the viewer is not even told that what he is watching on the screen is not actuality. This is dishonest and it is pathetic.

Television came to Pakistan, thanks to Altaf Gauhar, in 1964, which was 44 years ago; and to think that this is all the progress we have made. What our channels show as news is an insult to the viewer. Then there is the ticker, or the “feeta”, which should only bring important developments to the viewer’s notice but that is one thing it rarely does.

Then there are the talk shows with their self-proclaimed experts, few of whom can stake a claim to the title. And yet they go on yapping, rarely listening to one another but declaiming their views because they obviously love the sound of their own voice. Sometimes if there are four or five of them in a show, and they all talk at the same time, producing gibberish.

In short, you don’t have to watch Pakistani TV to know what is going on. In fact, if you want to know what is not going on, that is the switch you should flick.

Chris Fair has two visiting cards: one identifies her as a scholar working at Rand; the other introduces her as “writer and pest.” When she told me a couple of years ago that she was writing a book called, Cuisine of the Axis of Evil and other Irritating States: a dinner party approach to international relations , I was sure she was joking.

But she wasn’t. She actually has published a book bearing exactly that same title. Chris can only be crossed at one’s peril because having spent time in Lahore and Delhi (the latter a city under Punjabi occupation), she can out-swear any native when it comes to Punjab’s treasure house of choice abuse. I have little doubt that in an earlier life, Chris was a resident of Koocha Chabukswaran in the walled city of Lahore. Before she went to pot, Chris wrote on India and Pakistan’s strategic competition, religious education in Pakistan and militant and political Islam in Iran and the region, Bangladesh included. Anyone wishing to lock horns with her should know that she holds a PhD in South Asian languages and civilisations from the University of Chicago. But that is enough resume, so to the matter at hand.

This is the only cookbook that tells you all you will ever need to know about the history and politics of the countries she has short-listed, and more than you need to know about what food people out there eat and how it may be prepared. Most of the fare Chris dishes out, she has cooked herself – you only have to look at her hands for evidence thereof – and thus what we have in there is the real McCoy. In other words, if Chris can do it, so can you and I, as long as we follow her advice about being careful while boiling oil and playing with knives and spice blenders. Why has Chris brought the world to the reader’s lazy susan? Her answer: “Since 80 per cent of the American citizenry and 30 per cent of US Congresspersons don’t even have passports, it is unlikely Americans are going to get out and see for themselves the countries in the Axis of Evil or other irritating states. However, given our ever-expanding appetites and waistlines, we can bring the world to America’s dining table. Thus the time is right for a dinner party approach to foreign policy and international relations.”

Chris does not deny that she is a “grouchy, eccentric chick” using the excuse of the cookbook genre to say things she could not say in any other kind of book. During her travels, she “dined with soldiers in the Khyber Pass, sipped cardamom tea above Peshawar’s bustling thieves’ market, rummaged for savoury lunch packets of curried fish and rice from the bombed-out bazaars of Jaffna, and sampled local treats from fiery pickles to cold frog curry.” Yuck! However, there were two delicacies she chose to leave out: snake and dog. She has also wondered why it is all right to eat shrimp while making a face when it comes to fried insects. The charter members of the Axis of Evil are North Korea, Iran and Iraq, while the NPT wallas are Israel, India and Pakistan. The “dashers of democracy” are Cuba, Burma and China, while the US is in a league of one, offering the Great Satan barbecue.

Every Chris chapter on her chosen countries’ cuisine is topped by a bantering and often delightful description of what that country and its leaders are about. Here is Chris on North Korea, which in her shorthand is NoKo. “Kim Jong Il is reputed to drink the blood of virgins to stay young, throw drunken orgies, and import sultry Scandinavian hotties to sate his lusts. When he was a young letch, he created pleasure teams to service him and his dad.” The section on Iran informs us that while Khomeini was born in the Chinese Year of the Rat, Ahmadinejad was born in the Year of the Monkey. Her recipes are laid out under the subhead “plan of attack.” Here is Chris on Iraqi cuisine, “As relic-swapping archaeologists, Iraqi museum looters, and curators alike remind us, Iraq was the cradle of civilisation. As such, Iraqi food in its origins is biblical. In fact recipes from Babylon are among the first in recorded human history, having been imprinted on numerous cuneiform tablets that date back to 1600 BC.” Iraqis love okra and lamb stew, chicken stuffed with rice, fruit, nuts and coated in yogurt, and they have had their fill of US occupation.

The Israelis, Chris writes, are a people without a cuisine. What they call Israeli cuisine is actually Arab, which only shows that they have not only stolen Arab land but Arab food as well, claiming both to be theirs. As for India, I hope the Indian embassy does not read her chapter on India because if it does, Chris will have to make do with Pakistan next time she is in those parts because her name would be on the black list. She writes that after the 1998 nuclear tests, a Hindu nationalist outfit, the Sangh Parivar, wanted to distribute the radioactive sands of the Thar Desert as the symbolic prasad of India’s atomic goddess, Shakti. “Other crazies sought to gather up the radioactive grains, cocoon them in a suitably appointed and pious-looking vessel and schlep them around the country so that India’s citizenry could venerate the stuff.” Curiously, her Indian recipes are entirely made up of Kashmiri cuisine. She does not mention that what India has bandied around the world as Indian cuisine is actually North Subcontinental Muslim cuisine. Even today, more than 80 per cent of Indians do not touch meat. Babar writes in Tuzq-e-Babri that Indians have strange eating habits, eating food grain with food grain or anaj with anaj .

Chris must fancy Pashtun food because her list of Pakistani cuisine is entirely made up of NWFP food, including chapli kebab and Peshawari chickpeas. However, every member in good or bad standing of the Pakistani Bum brigade will be in nuclear heaven to read, “I am going on record to say that with respect to its nuclear programme, Pakistan had no options. Had India not plunged headlong into the pursuit of nukes, Pakistan probably would not have gone there either. Had India signed the NPT, as a non-nuclear weapon state, Pakistan probably would have done so as well.”

The book ends with the Great Satan Barbecue. Chris says she wants people to actually eat the food she provides recipes for, then wistfully adds, “I wish I could say I am sharing with you the recipes of the women of my family, lovingly handed down from generation to generation.” Not so, she confesses. When her mother came home after a long day of hard, physical work, she preferred things that cooked themselves. “This usually involved perpetrating various culinary crimes with cooking bags, canned mushroom soup, and cheez products. Mother had many talents – swearing, speeding, decking obnoxious husbands – but cooking was simply not her repertoire.”

But her daughter has more than made up for that.

Like a prophet from the pages of
the old scriptures, our UN ambassador, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, has been sounding warnings in quarters ranging from the UN secretary general to increasingly mystified diplomats, visitors and guests, and even a bewildered European minister, that if those now knocking at the gates of Khyber are not stopped, there will be nothing to stop them from storming their way to Panipat.

Since that old battlefield now lies in the Indian state of Haryana, I wonder if New Delhi, already reeling after the terrorist bloodbath in Mumbai, has taken note of our ambassador’s Cassandra-like words.

One can only admire the zeal with which the ambassador is trying to do his job, the first he has held, barring his brief stint as the Sindh Assembly speaker; but since every word that leaves a UN ambassador’s lips is pondered over and analysed, Ambassador Haroon’s dire prediction, backed he insists by history, is causing much anxiety, not to mention confusion.

History books have been consulted by some of the envoys and a wise one has even suggested that Romila Thapar, the eminent Indian historian, who happens to be in the States these days to receive an award, should be invited to brief a group of the more curious and mystified ambassadors as to the significance of the Pakistani permanent representative’s repeated references to Panipat. Thapar may be an authority on ancient India, she will surely be able satisfy the ambassadors’ curiosity about Panipat.

The first Battle of Panipat was fought between Babur and Ibrahim Lodhi in 1526; the second between Akbar and Adil Shah Suri in 1556 and the third between Ahmed Shah Abdali and the Marathas in 1761. Since Ambassador Haroon is obviously apprehensive of the hoards climbing over the gates of Khyber and riding over its dry hills into Pakistan, and then all the way to Panipat, shouldn’t we all be worried? The ambassador is obviously convinced that after laying Pakistan to waste, the marauding hoardes would do the same to India, and may even bring its government down, Panipat being just 80 miles north of Delhi.

Can one stretch this to conclude that had Ambassador Haroon been around in 1761, he would have sided with the Marathas, and in 1556 with Suri and 30 years earlier with Lodhi?

The ambassador wrote a long letter to the UN secretary general the other day (yes, he did not forget to warn him about Panipat) suggesting that Condoleezza Rice should rush to the Subcontinent in view of the Mumbai attacks. While the ambassador perhaps thinks that Rice takes her orders from Ban Ki-moon rather than the man we all thought she works for, it did leave everyone in a tizzy.

One later learnt that he sent a copy of his letter to every UN ambassador. When the secretary-general’s spokesperson Michele Montas was asked on Thursday if there had been any response to Haroon’s letter from the UN chief, she replied with an amused look, “It is a general letter addressed to the secretary-general and to all member states. No action was required in the letter.”

Standard UN practice and etiquette lays down that an ambassador only writes to the secretary-general on a substantive matter requiring his urgent personal attention. When someone said something on these lines to our ambassador, he replied that he was not a bureaucrat but a politician who would do his own thing. My request to my countrymen, therefore, is, “Tighten your seat belts; we have rough weather ahead.” But then it also occurs to me that Ambassador Haroon is following Mirza Ghalib: Khat likhain gai garchay matlab kuchh na ho. (letter one’ll write though it may have no meaning).

Ambassador Haroon is certainly following his own style. A week or so after the UN General Assembly went into session and President Zardari was come and gone, our man flew off to Karachi. Nobody knew why. He stayed there close to a month, thus setting a kind of precedence which no country is likely to follow, namely leaving your mission leaderless at a time when all ambassadors are hard at work following the UN standing committees’ work and pushing their country’s case on given items of that session’s agenda.

Inquiries made in Karachi revealed that much of Ambassador Haroon’s time had been taken up with Sindh Club elections where he was canvassing for a government heavy who was running for the vice president’s slot. He lost. In the event that it is decided to post an ambassador to the Sindh Club, one very much hopes that our worthy president will know who the most appropriate person for that most delicate of appointments is.

I am reminded of more poetry as I write this. Nasir Kazmi this time: Yoon-hi aabad rahay gi dunya: Hum na hoon gay koi hum-sa ho ga (The world will remain as it is: We won’t be around but there’ll be others like us).

And that brings me to Jam Amir Ali of blessed memory, who is remembered to this day for having delivered a classic speech to the General Assembly in 1981. After reading from the text that he had been given by the Pakistan Mission, he told the assembled diplomats: “Now sir, in conclusion, I humbly submit that the dilemma for the resolution of the conscious outlook is the only remedy. It is said that abhorrence for the learned in his infidelities and the inept in his devotions — our times are impatient of both and especially of the last. Let us not be pestered with assertions and half-truths, with emotions and scuffle. In the closing decades of the 20th century, these cannot conceivably solve any problem and indeed it is the source of positive danger to mankind — or words to that effect. It declares that this community of interest, in interests makes all men, otherwise differently interested partners in the great enterprise of replacing evil with good and good with better, so as to achieve the best possible. It is a proverb that to cut the cakes is never conducive to mankind. Also it is not humanitarian to be with farrago of twisted facts. God save us from the sprangles of cataclysm. And the scuttles of the ship should be repaired expeditiously by this august body. It is said that one man’s mickle is another man’s muckle. In conclusion, I greatly appreciate and express my warm gratitude to you by giving me the floor of this august house. Thank you.”

While I take a bow to the Jam for introducing the world to the sprangles of cataclysm and for proving that one man’s mickle can never be another man’s muckle, things being what they are, it is only a matter of time before we mickle our way to Panipat.

In the early years of the last century, William Strunk Jr taught English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His privately printed book The Elements of Style was to his classes what the Bible is to believing Christians. One of his ablest students was the writer EB White, who, in homage to his teacher, revised the original, which had become a collector’s item, added a chapter, enlarged upon some of the content and published it in 1959. As Fowler’s Modern English Usage is the ultimate guide for some in the matter of writing good and correct English, Strunk’s work is sacred to others, including several generations of American students.

Strunk’s edicts were imperial, one of the best known being, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” In an article in the New Yorker , which became the introduction to the book, White recalled that in 1919, when he was a student, Prof Strunk’s 43-page primer was known as “the little book, with the stress on little.” At the suggestion of a publisher, White reread the little masterpiece in 1957 and found it to “contain rich deposits of gold,” being his old teacher’s “attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin.” White found that more than half a century after it was written, the book’s “vigour is unimpaired, and for sheer pith I think it probably sets a record that is not likely to be broken.” Even the revised edition remains compact: 11 principles of composition; 7 rules of usage; and a list of words and expressions that are commonly misused. Strunk’s rules are in the nature of edicts, to be disobeyed only at one’s peril.

White called the book “Sergeant Strunk snapping orders to his platoon.” Here are some of those orders: Do not join independent clauses by a comma. Do not break sentences in two. Use the active voice. Omit needless words. Avoid a succession of loose sentences. In summaries, keep to one tense. No unnecessary words, thundered Strunk to his class. Thus “this is a subject that” became “this subject”; “used for fuel purposes” became “used for fuel,” “the question as to whether” becomes just “whether.” He detested the “vile expression” “the fact that.” He wrote that the expression should be “revised out of every sentence in which is occurs.” Strunk also forbade the dropping of the apostrophe “s” after a word that ends in “s”: thus “Charles’s friend,” not “Charles’ friend” as most of us write. According to White, “Will Strunk loved the clear, the brief, the bold and his book is clear, brief and bold. He scorned the vague, the tame, the colourless, the irresolute. He felt it was worse to be irresolute than to be wrong.”

There were no ifs and buts in the Strunk universe, only dos. On how dates should be written, he held: the logical way, day, month, year in that order. However, this sane advice has been lost on his countrymen, who write the month first, followed by the day and, finally, the year. Thus 24 April 2008 in the United States is April 24, 2008, which could well be read as two hundred and forty two thousand, zero eight. On some official forms, however, I have noticed dates required to be written as the Professor commanded. Where does one put a semi-colon? To separate independent clauses, rules Strunk. Thus: It is five; we cannot reach town. And what about the colon? After an independent clause to introduce a list of particulars. Thus: To play hockey you need: a hockey stick, a ball and a referee (preferably friendly). And here is Strunk’s golden rule: The number of the subject determines the number of the verb. This, I should add, is one rule that is being slaughtered today in American newspapers, no less than in common speech. Strunk would have been horrified. So, according to the maestro: Youth – its trials, joys, adventures, mistakes – is (not are) not easily forgotten.

Strunk riled against the passive voice (in German the passive voice is used all the time, but, mercifully we are not Germans). “I spanked the cat” is Strunkian but “The cat was spanked by me” is blasphemy. Stunk advised against writing such sentences as: He was not very often on time. Instead, he held, write: He usually came late. He believed in using “definite, specific, concrete language. Strunk’s example: “He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward.” Instead, one should write: “He grinned as he pocketed the coin.” He observed that the greatest writers were effective largely because they dealt in particulars and reported the details that mattered. Their words called up pictures. In the list of unnecessary words, Strunk provided the following examples, among others. Don’t write: “There is no doubt but that …” Write: No doubt (and be done with it). “He was a man who” should be just “he.”

And what about slang. Here is Strunk’s stark pronouncement on the subject: “If you use a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.” Other Strunkian edicts: It is “all right” not “alright.” Don’t confuse “elude” and “allude”. You allude to a book and you elude a pursuer. And “illusion” is not “allusion”, the first being a false impression, the second being an indirect reference. As for “among’ and “between”, it is the first when two persons are involved and the latter when more than two are being referred to. And here is an observation very Strunkianly funny. He wanted anybody to be written as a single word and not as two because “any body means any corpse or human form or group.” Also don’t say “as yet” but “yet”. And should infinitives be split? The maeastro said this was best avoided but they could be split, but only if the writer “wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb.” Strunk also denounced such qualifiers as “rather, very, little, pretty etc.” He called them “leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.”

Prof William Strunk Jr. managed to capture a river in a pitcher, so one column is not enough. For more Strunk, watch this space

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