Friends Not, Masters [1 of 2]

by Nayyar Hashmey

I already uploaded two posts on the shameful agreeemnt our awami hakoomat has made with the US on reopening transit facilities for NATO and ISAF forces in Afghanistan. As I put up the third one of this series, this time by Humayun Gauhar, I recall the two  posts I earlier had on my WordPress blog, titled: Pakistan ‘trashed’ and insulted, Kayani won’t meet US official (here) and Clinton’s $33m raid on Pakistan shows that, in the end, hypocrisy will win (here) 

Do The Unthinkable!

DO THE UNTHINKBLE NOW

Nayyar Hashmey

IN THE FOLLOWING POST, Dr. Haider Mehdi raises some very pertinent points. Points that concern our current economic, administrative and social malaise. He suggests also a solution to fight the malaise

His write-up is unique in concept insofar as we have lot of thinkers and analysts, who day and night discuss our problems, our ailments and crises but never do they ever venture to suggest a solution. Dr. Mehdi’s analysis is different from them; he suggests a route, a guiding path, a solution for resurrecting the nation from its hapless situation. If the people [and there is a big IF] who have power could take some time to think over what Dr. Mehdi says, perhaps some change we could see in the sad state of our state of Pakistan.

Coming to some points mentioned by Dr. Mehdi particularly when he mentions the example of a Chinese lady working in Dubai - an individualistic skilled approach of a one woman enterprise who though is not very rich but at least is a self employed, self reliant and quite happy lady with her enterprise. And this is what makes nations strong.

Its interesting that what Dr. Mehdi mentions in his post, makes me recall my own assessments of the situation that once prevailed in the Peoples Republic of China when the republic was being led by its great fathers like Mao-Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Those were the days when ideological strife between the USSR and the P.R. was at its peak. The Chinese were blaming the Soviets for having adopted the course of revisionism whereas they themselves took pride in Leninism Marxism. Majority of young folk in those days thought the Chinese as extremists and the Russians more pragmatists. But I was of the opinion that behind the Chinese extremism there is a certain rationale. They were modernizing their industries, their military and their social structure and a massive overhaul was underway in almost every sphere, every aspect of life. 

In that massive overhaul certain excesses were indeed indulged into but by and large China kept this overhaul at a swift pace. The country started asserting its role. Exit the Maoists. Enter Deng Xiaoping and his team of liberal communists. China continued on its path of industrialization, not towing the line of the Russians, not towing the line of America but a pure Chinese approach toward the great reformation of Chinese society. 

We used to read a lot of media stuff about China then, the wrongs being committed, the people suffering under Chinese Communism and a lot of the dis- and misinformation the western propaganda mills were churning out against the Chinese. But the Chinese did not blink. They continued their path, the Chinese concept of handling things. Result? From a poverty ridden economy and an opium addicted nation, China emerged finally as a power to be reckoned with. The opium addicted Chinese of yesteryears started lending money to the world’s mightiest nation on earth.

I recall again my session with a Chinese visitor I had during the days I was associated with a US multinational. The Chinese friend told me we Pakistanis made a blunder in our agricultural planning. I was surprised. What blunder? I asked. So said the Chinese guest. See you are seeking collaboration to develop your agriculture and whom do you take as your guide, your consultant. The Americans. They are highly developed in agriculture no doubt . But don’t forget, they would never want you to develop your agriculture to an extent that they have no markets to sell their products or services, that instead of their customer they should turn you  into their own competition! 

If you do wish to develop your agriculture, your industry or your general economy, you should better seek collaboration with a developing country [like China] because we too have similar problems and similar endeavors. Both of us need to develop. If we progress, so shall you. If you do, so shall we. But as far as United States is concerned, they are already too developed, so why should they be interested in your development and self reliance. A simple logic but it did carry a weight. Alas! our leaders always took US as the only source to seek light from. Light they did take but plunged this country into darkness.

 

US is a great county indeed. Its forefathers were the source of light that beckoned the whole world once. A man like Abraham Lincoln was one such light. I love that man, he has always been my role model ever since my childhood days. But our leaders never ever did want to emulate the man, the source of light, the source of wisdom and a political philosophy to follow. Instead they took US  bosses of the like of Bush as their models whom they obeyed and obey they did blindly. Instead of going for innovation, perseverance and a goal oriented enterprise, the hallmark of US entrepreneurship; they went for a simple solution. Make the state a tool to extract as much funds as possible to fatten the family coffers. 

Of all the leaders we had in this category, the worst case was of our former Chief Martial Law Administrator-cum-Chief Executive-cum COAS-Cum-President-cum Everything. Unfortunately Mr. Asif Ali Zardari too did prove, he is no less inferior in wandering with a begging bowl than his erstwhile predecessor and dictator Pervez Musharraf.

 

To come out of the abyss, we have been thrown in, the guidelines provided by Dr. Mehdi are words in earnest. Read his write up and see how correct his analysis is. Its particularly so for our policy makers who should read this first of all.

 

“ Shayad ke uttar jaey dill main unke yahi baat”

Continued...http://wondersofpakistan.blogspot.com/2010/11/do-unthinkble-now-by-dr.html

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TOURRISM NOT TERRORISM

• We can sustain our economy only by promoting tourism in this country

• Once normalcy is restored, this country has tremendous potential to become an economic hub of tourism. Its history and heritage alone are fabulously rich - to lure international tourists to this land of immense beauty

• The electricity and gas crunches have crippled our textile industry, the main source of export earnings and employment provider in this country.

The end of January, the starting month of the year, the coldest one is ending now. A change in the air is coming. Trees will soon be loaded with fresh green. Multi colored flowers – many with a mosaic of beautiful patterns will open up to fill the airs with a sweet fragrance. The whole ambience all over the country will wear a cool, green and fresh look of spring.

        Simultaneously in the months to come, the vales of Swat and the rugged mountains of the  federally administered areas in our tribal belt will welcome the spring with ear shattering cannon shots. In return shall come again the gun shots. The point is – who is getting killed? If a soldier of the Pakistan army or a paramilitary sepoy loses life, it is the blood of a Pakistani that is spilled on the sacred soil of Pakistan. Again if an unarmed civilian tribal from the other side is killed, it’s the blood of our own country man. Dilemma before us is that guns and the drones do not precisely differentiate between a terrorist and a peaceful civilian living nearby.

          Why can’t we understand, in this modern age when technology has reached its zenith, when information revolution has taken the whole world by a storm, we in Pakistan are fighting along with the US, a war which seems to have no end. We should not overlook the very fact that a Pakistani can never be and should never be the enemy of another Pakistani? Our common enemy at the moment is terrorism. And this very enemy is working against acceptability of our country as a modern democratic entity which has endless beauty to offer to its visitors. But alas! With firing of guns, and people getting killed through bomb blasts, would a foreign guest ever think of coming to Pakistan risking his / her life!

          It is the time, we as a nation should think, should ponder over the core question: how can we make this land of ours a land of peace, tranquility, a secure and a leisure-full vacationing land so that the endless touristic wonders that we have can be properly marketed to the outside world as an ideal place to visit, for a land infested with wars, extreme polarizations in political and social culture, with acute lawlessness all over, who would ever dare to enter this land just to view such touristic splendors.

        We could perhaps go a step further.  Why not initiate a nationwide dialogue amongst all stakeholders on one point agendum only: “Tourism not Terrorism” will henceforth be the creed, the philosophy and the dictum of Pakistan. Once we succeed to achieve this, we would be leaving a prideful legacy not only for our coming generations but may see happy days in our lifetime as well.

By promoting tourism, not only do we offer a wholesome environment to international guests, to see the real beauty of the country, the hospitality of its people but also succeed to wash our image as  a nation abetting terrorism. (Wrong though, unfortunately this is the image we have).

TOURISM IN AZAD KASHMIR

            
by Trueman


           Last Sunday, the 4^th of Jan. 2009, I was watching “Jawabdeh” the Pakistani version of BBC’s HARDTalk show by Geo News. The interviewer was channel’s most popular anchorman Iftikhar Ahmad, who is known for his razor sharp questions - questions that baffle even the sharpest, the wittiest and the wisest guy. At the grinding disc of Itikhar now was none else than the young prime minister of Azad Kashmir, Sardar Ateeq Ahmad Khan.

           Though presently the PM is facing a no confidence move in the Assembly, he appeared very confident to emerge successful over what he called move by a bunch of legislators who could hardly muster 2-3 seats in the AJK Assembly.

But politics apart, the most important aspect of this Q & A session was young PM’s approach towards a policy of dialogue vis-á-vis his father’s on Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Quite logically did he respond to pointed questions raised by I.A. and apprised the latter on salient features of phased withdrawal of Pakistani and Indian forces from both parts of Kashmir. A step which, he said, will pave way for a gradual move towards a permanent solution of Kashmir dispute, a solution which would guarantee a face saving formula for all stake holders.

           Another idea which this writer found highly innovative was Saradar Ateeq’s approach on development and promotion of Tourism in Azad Kashmir. Hitherto A.K. has been an area where only Pakistanis could see the touristic attractions of this paradise like part of the valley. Foreigners were allowed only on a special permit to visit the area.

         During my personal visits to Azad Kashmir I saw lot of developments, which were done during the administration of former prime minister of the state. But this wonderful developmental work was shattered during the terrible earthquake in Oct. 2005. Extensive efforts were made ever since and the life in the affected areas has almost come to normal. Now the state administration endeavors to go beyond restoration and is intending to surpass development much above the pre 2005 level. It is good news that the present prime minister of A.K. recognises the importance of tourism in the economy of the state. We are confident that if he seriously follows up his own initiative, the area of Azad Kashmir can definitely turn into a touristic paradise not only for domestic but also for our foreign guests.

CAN INDIA AND PAKISTAN LIVE IN PEACE

by Nayyar Hashmey

Hinduism in Pakistan is viewed more in a political sense than religious, an approach that has turned both Islam and Hinduism into adversaries. The politicization of two great faiths in the subcontinent is goaded in the pages of history ever since partition of India and beyond. The Afghan King Mahmud of Ghazni in Pakistan is acclaimed more as a hero than a foreign intruder. His famous saying to Hindu priests while plundering the wealth of Somnath, when the former offered him as much money and gold as he wished but to spare the idols kept in the temple. To their appeal quipped Mahmud, “Am a destroyer and not dealer of idols”. This slogan for a long time after creation of Pakistan has been a rallying cry for the Pakistanis to develop a wave of hate against Hinduism.

While delving into this particular part of history, I came to observe that Mahmud though a Muslim was not the monarch who was determined to destroy Hinduism or spread Islam, like typical imperialist he accepted retributions from conquered peoples and then went back to Ghazni in Afghanistan. The basic aim of Mahmud like any other ruler of the ilk was to retain the largest piece from the cake, the “Gold Bird” called India (here India is synonymous with the South Asian subcontinent). Had he been a Mujahid as most of our Pakistani writers portray and believe, he should have tried to convert Hindus to the fold of Islam, which he did not – not because he was a liberal Muslim but because of his desire to amass the Indian wealth and expand his empire. Like most of the rulers who invaded the subcontinent, he either accepted reparations from Hindu rulers in the subcontinent or demanded abject obedience; in other words slavish statehood for the conquered people and the lands.

Contrary to Mahmud and quite ironically the local Muslim rulers who established themselves 

in the soil of this subcontinent like certain Afghan and Mughal rulers in the later day periods, the sad fact of history is that the Hindu’s too never accepted even those local Muslim rulers as their own (vis-à-vis the Hindu rulers) a very sad fact indeed, which created a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims as separate and distinct identities. Then there were incidents in history like Shiva ji stabbing Afzal Khan in the back while he was invited at a dinner by the Maratha leader. Incidents like these exacerbated the gulf between Muslims and Hindus still wider.

It’s in backdrop of such incidents that relations between the Hindus and Muslims always remain tense, creating a perpetual atmosphere of rivalry between the two giants of the subcontinent, rivalry which with every passing day is getting more serious, more vitriolic thus turning the subcontinent  into a flashpoint.

No wonder then that both India and Pakistan even till this day see themselves as arch enemies. After three successive wars we have come back to square one. There still are many religious extremists on both sides of the sub continental divide, who every now and then start sabre rattling, crying for a war obliviating the very fact that both are nuclear powers.

“I lived through the whole war,” Thucydides remarks in his History of the Peloponnesian war, one of the greatest woks of history ever written, “being of an age to comprehend events and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them”.

I personally find it extremely difficult and not always possible to learn the exact truth about the enmity between the two neighbours who have fought three successive wars in our recent history. The avalanche of history books do throw further light on road to the stark truth, which otherwise would not have been possible, but its very vastness can often be confusing for in all human records and testimony there are bound to be baffling contradictions.

No doubt my own prejudices, which inevitably spring from my experience and make-up, creep thorough while I write these lines.

I detest totalitarian dictatorships in principle and come to loathe the ones we have had in our country and watched their ugly assaults upon the very noble and human spirit of Pakistan. Nevertheless in this approach I have tried to be severely objective, letting the facts speak for themselves. No incidents, scenes or quotations stem from the imagination; all are based either on documents, the testimony of eye witnesses or writers’ own personal accounts and observations.

My interpretations, I have no doubt, will be disputed by many. That is inevitable, since no man’s opinions are infallible. Those that I have ventured here in order to add clarity and depth to this narrative are merely the best I could come by from the evidence and from what knowledge and experience I have had.

Pervaiz Musharraf should probably be the last of the generals–conqueror in the tradition of Ayub, Yahya, and Ziaul Haque, or for that matter the democratically elected president and prime minister of India to start a war between two giants of the subcontinent. The curtain has however rung down on that phase of the history, at least by explosion of nuclear bombs by both, and their experimentation with the long range missiles and of satellites that hit the moon.

In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which have supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited subcontinent. Should this be our fate?
_______

Photo Credits: 1st on top: All Things Pakistan, 2nd on right www.indyarocks.com and 3rd at  bottom left www.gulfnews.com

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President Asif Ali Zardari, A 10% Scammer or a 100 % Pakistani?

 

 Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan

by Nayyar Hashmey

                       

          As I write these lines, words echo in my mind, words she uttered in her last  

speech.

So said Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, “My dear brothers and my dear sisters, this is the time when our country is in turmoil. My country, your country” said B. Bhutto “is in serious travails and turpitudes; I have come to you to help me save this land. Help me my brothers, my sisters, to save our motherland”. Shortly after she had uttered these words, she was shot at by an unknown assailant. She could not even leave the public park she had chosen to address.

 After she was out of scene, situation moved at an electric speed. Erstwhile dictator, who had orchestrated all machinations, fair or foul and turned this country into a marionette, had to resign. In the aftermath, Mohtarma‘s hubby got catapulted to the seat of presidency.

But the irony continues to haunt this nation. The inheritor of Mohtarma’s   legacy, her vision and her struggle occupies the place where an erstwhile dictator, with the sheer use of force got himself seated for 8 years.

Now when I ponder over BB’s last words, the whole scene seems to me like an action replay. The words she uttered then were as true then as they are now. This country, this most beloved land of ours is still in turmoil, even though the man who was the life partner of that graceful lady, who ruled and still rules over the hearts of millions of have-nots in Pakistan, is sitting on the throne of Pakistan. Yet this country is back to square one. Things have gone from bad to worse. Terrorists whosoever, are bombing the nerve centre of the country. Just the day before yesterday at some minutes walk from the National Assembly; they bombed the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad, 60 people, almost all civilians died in the blast.

In last 8 years the ex dictator was telling us, like a worn out recorded tape that he saved Pakistan from wrath of the US when the later threatened him to send Pakistan into stone age. [it later transpired that this threat did not come from the US President, as our the then President Gen.(R) Pervaiz Musharraf maintained but from an Assistant Secretary of State and the language too was not the same that the ex General told this nation].

Although many Pakistanis did not believe then and I myself had strong reservations on this so called Stone Age statement and the way it was played by ex dictator to dread his own people, yet we believed then and we believe it today that had there been a democratic polity, a truly democratic culture in Pakistan, the matter would never have been settled or decided the way, it was [when this country was unconditionally thrown to the mercy of the United States of America and mind it, it was not the US of Thomas Jefferson or of George Washington, it was the US of Neocons like George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, Donny Rumsfield and Condy Rice who think they have a divine right, destined to annihilate the governments, the people, the armies in the name of democracy, free world and liberty, so on and so forth].

Whether it was the threats, the persuasions or fear of these Pentagon and White House guys, is immaterial. Fact remains that ex dictator succumbed to those threats and accepted whatever the neocons told him. What the then President did on their askance, he said, was to save Pakistan, a position which he later cleverly tried to camouflage under the slogan “Sab Se Pehle Pakistan (SSPP), but the price this country paid for this SSPP policy was the sale of innocent Pakistanis to unknown agents within and outside Pakistan and till today one does not know what was their sin, their doing and where they are now.

In Punjabi there is a story where under similar circumstances this country has been brought to by the ex dictator and the incumbent President, in which a man belonging to the rural singing clan in our villages (who are usually the butts of humour in our countryside) was asked by the village head to opt out of the two options only… Either eat 100 onions at a time, or get 100 shoe beatings (littars). The poor man using all his wits opts to take 100 onions. Thinks he, ‘100 shoe beatings are too hard to bear’, hence take onions. But after having eaten some dozens of onions, he cries “No Sir am going to accept 100 shoe beatings instead”. In this dilemma he eats 100 onions and gets 100 shoe beatings too. So dear readers, this is how the ex General made this country to have a punishment in either way. Eaten 100 onions and……

The ex General President allied this country to the US and Pakistan became a frontline state, however, with that status we, Pakistanis, the most allied ally of the US, are being bombed by US forces in Fata where poor, innocent civilians are dying after every chopper attack or through drone raids in our territory. So both ways, we are facing the punishment as it happened with the mirasi boy in a Punjabi village. Perhaps this is the first and the only instance in the history where a major power is attacking its own ally.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any change from the stance taken by the ex-General. We are still America’s ally and our poor innocent civilians are being bombed by the US and its coalition partners.

Gen de Gaulle, one time President of France once said, 70 million French can’t be wrong, so on an analogy 160 millions Pakistanis can’t be wrong either—to push Mr. Zardari to the coveted seat of the country’s presidency. It’s very much for Mr. Zardari to prove whether 160 million Pakistanis were indeed not wrong to elect him?

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