This is no way to run a railroad, obviously, but given the ramshackle system which has been more off the tracks than on it in the past, perhaps that is only to be expected. Of such a situation in which we find ourselves, it may be alleged that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. I would add that lucky are those who have just two hands. In our case, we have maybe half a dozen hands, each one of which operates independently.

The current government continues to claim that it has everyone “on board”: the parliament, the army, the opposition and the state bureaucracy. Nice claim, reassuring words, except that they are not all true.

After all, only the other day, after General (retd) Mahmud Ahmed Durrani was summarily dismissed, he said in an interview that in the matter of Kasab, the prime minister was “not in the loop”. Durrani, it should be pointed out, bore the official designation of national security adviser to the prime minister.

That does not surprise me because I know something about Durrani’s appointment to his exalted post. Durrani told me himself that during the months when the Americans were trying to cobble together a deal which would keep Musharraf with somewhat truncated powers in place, and a berth would be found for Benazir Bhutto as prime minister. All cases against Asif Ali Zardari, which would have kept him running around national and international courts for years, would be withdrawn as part of the arrangement. During those delicate and sometimes not so delicate negotiations conducted principally under Dick Cheney’s auspices, two people acted as important intermediaries: Husain Haqqani, who represented Bhutto’s interests, and Durrani, the conduit for some of the messages emanating from Musharraf.

Durrani, of course, knew Benazir Bhutto, though not very well. There was no personal link. She also was unable to forget — she had an elephant’s memory, like her father’s, for such things — that Durrani had been Zia-ul Haq’s military secretary for over three years.

I have Durrani’s own version of how he was appointed. As my family and I have known him since he was a captain posted at Sialkot, there always has been a personal link and our relations remained cordial during the two-plus years he was Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington — and a good one at that. When Durrani’ appointment was announced, I asked him how it had come about. This is what he told me. He said during one of Benazir Bhutto’s visits to Washington, he thought it would be right and proper to call on her at her hotel. An appointment was arranged and he was received by a smiling Benazir Bhutto. One of the first things she said to him was, according to what he told me, “What are you doing here? You should be national security adviser.” Durrani says he was taken aback but he smiled and made the kind of appropriate noises that one makes on such occasions.

The scene changes. Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi in the most mysterious circumstances on December 27, 2008. Durrani is called in by Asif Ali Zardari for a meeting. Sitting to his right in that room is Husain Haqqani. When Durrani’s face shows signs of unease because he obviously expects the meeting to be significant and not just social chit-chat (he has no personal links with Zardari), Zardari tell him, “That’s all right. He can remain with us.”

The next thing that Zardari comes out with causes great surprise to Durrani. Zardari tells him that he is going to “fulfil the promise that Bibi made to you. I want you to become national security adviser to the prime minister with the rank of federal minister.” Durrani accepts the offer on the spot.

Now a few cobwebs that I would like to clear. IH Burney used to say that one thing he would never do is question a Pakistani’s patriotism — and he never did, though others were not so kind to him. It has been maliciously whispered socially and written about in the gutter press and the blogs, the latter the new terror weapon, that Durrani is and has been a CIA “asset”.

This is contemptible nonsense. While it is true that he has many friends in India and Washington, including Shirin Tahir-kheli (who does not have the ability to persuade the US government to have a retired Pakistani general appointed to this or that high post in his country), Durrani is not the only Pakistani general or diplomat to have enjoyed such respect. General Jehangir Karamat is one of the most admired Pakistanis in Washington. Does that make him a CIA agent? Since independence, we have had some most distinguished Pakistanis serve as our representatives. More recently, Maleeha Lodhi enjoyed much respect here and was credited for her hard work. Does that make her a CIA “asset”?

It is time we stopped demeaning ourselves and questioning the patriotism of some of our best and brightest. Before I move to the next point, I would like to say that a similar campaign of vilification has been carried out against the present ambassador, Husain Haqqani. We should grow up and learn to respect our people and ourselves, otherwise no one will respect us.

The Durrani affair could be the tip of the iceberg. The problem is not Durrani but the lack of a sufficiently functional government. Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy, but who holds the levers of power? Unless this dichotomy is worked out, other Durranis will continue to be used as pawns in a power game that has to come to an end.

Why? Because the Government of Pakistan has failed to pursue the investigation with any seriousness, nor is it clear as to what exactly it wants. Over time, the impression, which is beginning to turn into conviction, has grown that the Zardari government is merely using the UN in pursuit of its own agenda. And that, of course, is something the UN will not permit itself to be used for.

There have been so many mixed signals from Pakistan that it is no longer clear to anyone in New York what the intentions of the government in Islamabad are. In fact, the very worst, the most cynical interpretation is being placed on Islamabad’s contradictory and changing position.

To begin with, when the demand for a UN probe was first made by the PPP, it was not in power. General Musharraf was. Once the PPP took office, its first order of business should have been the formation of a national judicial commission to investigate the assassination. It did no such thing and has shown no such inclination.

Strange statements have flowed out of responsible members of the PPP government. On July 23, 2008, it was said that the UN investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto could cost up to $100 million. On December 25, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, “It was Shaheed Benazir’s demand that her assassination be investigated by the UN.”

What an absurd statement! Does it mean that Benazir knew she was going to be assassinated and once that event came to pass, the investigation should be handed over to the United Nations?

On December 27, her grieving spouse stunned the world by declaring that that he “knew the killers of Benazir Bhutto”. I am not the first to make the point that failing to share information about the perpetrators of a crime amounts to collaboration. There has been no follow-up explanation of this extraordinary claim and no-one from among the leading lights of the PPP has had the courage or the decency to ask the leader for details.

Let me go back to the UN and how and in what manner it was first invited to get involved in the Benazir murder probe. On July 10, 2008, during a meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a broad understanding was said to have been reached on certain issues concerning UN help for Pakistan’s efforts to have the assassination investigated.

The meeting followed a request to the Secretary General from the Foreign Minister to establish an international commission to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN would be required to examine the modalities and structure of such a commission.

At the time, Pakistan claimed that a broad understanding had been reached on the nature of the proposed commission, unhindered access to all sources of relevant information and measures to safeguard the objectivity, impartiality and independence of the commission.

The UN was more guarded in its comments. “While we’ve made some progress in terms of arriving at a broad understanding of some issues, there is the need for further consultations with Pakistan, and possibly with other states, about the scope and the mandate of this proposed committee,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters. “We’re trying to help Pakistan as we can,” he added.

By early October, the Secretary General made it clear that the commission that Pakistan wanted the UN to set up would not be an investigative unit, but a fact-finding body. “This is not going to be an investigation,” he told his monthly press conference.

Ban said that during his discussions with President Zardari in September, they agreed that there would be “some sort of a commission under the United Nations.” Discussions were still going on technical matters such as who should be appointed commission members, how it should be funded and under what time frame and scope should it function.

“We’re trying to work out solutions,” Ban said, adding, “We’re still discussing it with the Pakistan government.” When asked why it was taking so long to set up the commission, he said that it could take “a little bit longer”, but will be done “soon”.

Pakistan in the meantime shifted its position as to the financing of the inquiry. Foreign Minister Qureshi said that as regards the funding mechanism, it should not be such that Pakistan alone would have to bear the cost. But, he said, discussions between the two sides were still going on.

The last UN press release makes it clear that there has been no progress on the issue. On December 26, 2008, Ban Ki-moon expressed the hope that an independent Commission of Inquiry into the circumstance of the killing of Benazir Bhutto could be established soon. He said his office had consulted the Pakistani government on the nature and scope of the Commission, which Pakistan has asked him to establish to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN was needed to examine other modalities and the Commission’s structure, including its scope and mandate.

The statement from the UN chief’s office after his meeting with Zardari said the UN “would see what it could (do) to support the request for an independent fact-finding commission,” adding that it would “explore further the precise modalities and brief of such a commission.”

A UN source who wished to remain anonymous said that he doesn’t know what goes on in meetings between Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ban or Zardari, but from the papers the impression at the UN is that the Pakistani government wants a commission which functions under its control. The UN is of the view that if it has to do the investigation, the commission should be under UN control and have a free hand to do its work. The commission should be able to visit any place, interview anyone and seek any related document.

“What the Pakistan government is trying to do is to write the terms of reference for a UN commission,” the source said. That is not acceptable to the UN. So as an alternative, the UN has offered to provide experts borrowed from various countries to join a Pakistani commission, but Islamabad wants a UN commission, while it wishes to limit its investigative work.

Islamabad has been backtracking in various other ways too. When Qureshi first made the request in July 2008, he said his government would bear all costs. Later, when rough estimates were given, Islamabad had second thoughts and urged the UN to seek help from other nations, a long drawn out process and a classic example of delaying tactics.

To this grim story, a bit of comic relief was provided in January by PPP’s unelected and unelectable secretary general Jahangir Badar, who declared that the UN would begin its investigation in January. He made the statement after returning from New York.

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

Take 9/11.

Of course it put everyone living in the West with a Muslim name and what are euphemistically called “Middle Eastern looks” under suspicion as possibly being a distant cousin of the uncle of the man who had a brother-in-law, whose wife’s sister’s husband’s maternal uncle once shook hands with Osama bin Laden’s driver when OBL was living in Peshawar under the CIA’s benign care back in the Mujahideen’s heroic jihad against the infidel Russkies.

That was the bad news.

So here is the good news.

In brisk business and in a good deal of demand is an outcropping of Muslim comedians in the United States, Canada and England. Some time ago, three of them went on an Axis of Evil tour of Europe and were a sell-out.

Even the staid Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has run a documentary featuring Muslim comedians and some of their acts. Not all the faithful think what these people are doing is funny. Some of them consider these fellows — and there are a couple of very funny girls too — traitors to the faith, never missing a chance to rile against them, accusing them of denigrating Islam and making fun of their own people. One bearded gentleman, who spotted one of these comedians boarding a flight, shouted after him, “You are going to hell. That is where you’re going.” The man ended up in London, which, despite its wet summers and double-decker buses, is not quite the site of that great bonfire in the sky.

The American Muslim stand-up comedians — which means guys and gals who stand out there and make jokes, just as our own Omar Sharif does — who have become famous — or infamous as some of the brothers would have it — are: Ahmed Ahmed, Azhar Usman, Dean Obeidallah, Maysoon Zayid, and Tissa Hami. The PBS documentary pointed out that “many of these comedians do jokes about misconceptions of Islam and Middle Eastern and South Asian groups, using their humour as activism for their races and faith.”

Racial profiling and the going over given to Muslims at American airports is the staple of most of their jokes. Maysoon and Tissa, the two women, joke about their experiences as Muslim women. One of them wears a headscarf while she performs, which also serves as a prop for some of her jokes.

Azhar Usman, who is of South Asian origin, takes the stage and greets his audience with a resounding Assalam Alekum, then asks if they know what that means. “It means,” he goes on, “that I am gonna kill you.” His show, billed Allah Made Me Funny, has toured major US and Canadian cities, as well as Europe. There have been invitations from several Arab countries.

One popular stand-up woman comedian is Shazia Mirza, whose family is from Pakistan, though she grew up in England. She jokes about 9/11, sex-hungry Muslim men and the fact that she remains a certified virgin. Some of Shazia’s jokes run like this: “The women in my family all use the same passport.” “I said, Oh, come on, Germany, join the war, it’s not the same without you.” “My name is Shazia Mirza — at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence.”

She has received many death threats from “pious God-fearing Muslims”. One of her routines, “The Last Temptation of Shazia”, has her performing in front of a board plastered with printouts of the hate mail she receives some of which she pulls down and reads from. She says in her travels through Europe, she has been mistaken for everything ranging from suicide bomber to a character in a Harry Potter book.

In an interview with Priya Jain for Solan.com, Shazia said, “I stand up onstage for an hour and a half and make people laugh and tell them mostly the truth — most of the stuff is true, it happened to me — and then I go home and pray. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t take drugs, I don’t eat pork, and I’m a good Muslim. I don’t understand why people say I can’t be a comedian. I don’t relate the two at all.”

In one of her shows in Texas, Shazia said, “If nuns are all married to God, then God must be a polygamist.” It did not go down very well with the very Christian crowd.

The three Axis of Evil comedians — Dean Obeidallah, a Palestinian-Italian American, Ahmed Ahmed, a Muslim Egyptian American actor who couldn’t land “terrorist” roles because of his excellent English, Aron Kader, a Palestinian-Mormon American actor and Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American who bunked a PhD programme — spoke to Wajahat Ali of Altmuslim.com.

Obaidullah told Ali, “I’m surprised Fox News doesn’t give hurricanes Muslim names at this point just to screw with us even more. Why not? Just pretend. Just blame us for a tornado, ‘Today they say it’s due to hot and cold air, but I think it’s due to Al Qaeda’.”

On a serious note, he said, “I hope it encourages and inspires more Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims to get involved in the entertainment field, and all forms of the media. So often we sit and complain how we are demonised and portrayed horribly, the only ones who will ever clear our name is us. The burden is on us. No one is going to do us a favour.”

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

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

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