Pakistan’s Economic Dilemma

In Pakistan: The Economic Dilemma

By Shahnawaz Mahmood

Roti, Kapra, aur Makan — or Bread, Clothing, and Shelter — this has been the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)’s slogan to woo the electorate since the 1970’s. While the PPP emerged from February’s elections with the largest majority, it did not win sufficient seats to claim control of the government and was forced to form a coalition, mainly with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).  Given the still unresolved question of the restoration of the judiciary, including the Chief Justice of Pakistan and other judges who were dismissed by President Musharraf last year, the PML-N could withdraw from the coalition and the government’s center could collapse — unless the Musharraf-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) were to intercede. This political uncertainty surrounding the new government, combined with the worsening security situation, has inflicted a great toll on economic growth as investors are becoming wary. This will make providing such essentials as bread, clothing, and shelter increasingly difficult.

Record oil prices and high food prices are creating universal economic hardships. The Food and Agriculture Organization and International Monetary Fund have even warned of food shortages being catalysts for war in developing countries. Pakistan is no exception to such economic hardships; economic indicators in the country are worsening. Fiscal and current account deficits are both expanding, and inflationary pressures — particularly food inflation — are escalating at an unprecedented rate. According to the government’s Pakistan Economic Survey, food inflation reached more than 25% in April, the highest since 1980. In addition, Pakistan is experiencing a massive shortfall in the supply of electrical power, leading to power cuts which have not only affected industrial output but have also sparked riots in many parts of the country.

Kinhar to Khunjerab

Traveled for days,
in quest for patterns
Raveling of existence
From Kinhar to Khunjerab
In days to remember,
The old photographs
Old features and formation
From old Russian cigarettes
To adventure with death
In the old mountains
Beautiful and serene
Unforgiving & brutal
Characters of past,
From one town to another
Followed we those steps
As words follow the book
Of all those moments
and its loss
as we traveled for days
in quest for patterns
raveling of our existence!

Kashkin

Pakistan Re-Visited – Lahore, Karachi and Reflections

This is the second post on the travelogue by the Jeddah based writer Tariq Al-Maeena on his travels to Pakistan.

Pakistan Re-Visited – (4)
The road to Lahore

On a day following several meetings with officials from the Pakistani government that ran later than scheduled, we missed our flight reservations to Lahore. Faced with the option to drive from Islamabad to Peshawar and take a flight to Lahore, or else take a four hour drive to the Punjabi city, the Saudi media delegation unanimously opted for the latter. The drive would provide us a closer insight into the countryside of a country that was quickly garnering admiration from each one of us by the moment.

A few miles out of the city of Islamabad we soon passed a toll-booth on the outskirts of the city and were soon on our way in a Toyota Crown graciously supplied by our host on the M2 expressway that would lead us to Lahore. A six-lane highway that was meticulously clean and well asphalted with none of the pot-holes and road carnage we have been so accustomed to in Jeddah had us all marvel at the will of the Pakistani road authorities who have indeed managed to maintain a world class motorway.

An hour into our journey, we passed through a hilly region noted on either side by well planned trees and shrubbery. The road was clean and traffic laws strictly enforced. Road signs every few miles reminded motorists not to litter, and there was ample evidence that motorists paid heed. Our group was definitely taken aback with the ease and comfort of driving as we moved on. Contrary to our expectations, we did not witness one road incident that would have raised alarm.

Towns and villages flashed by; names like Kallar Kahhar, Chakwal, Gujran and Sarghoda sped by, each with its unique flavor. Some were farming villages, others terraced communities that lay on either side of the expressway. Halfway en route, a rest area beckoned us, and we decided to stop for a short break and some refreshments. Similar but so unlike the SAPTCO rest stop between Jeddah and Madinah, this rest stop afforded its guests a full fledged restaurant and other amenities. The difference lay in its standards of cleanliness. Even the restrooms had us Saudis shaking our heads at the pitiful conditions some of us have encountered at the SAPTCO stop. And this was supposed to be a third world country?

Rediscovering Jinnah’s Politics: Pakistan and Democratic Nation-Building in South Asia

A special contribution by Dr. TT Sreekumar

Jinnah’s image as an adamant fighter for a separate Muslim Homeland and hence as someone responsible for the division of India is often reinforced by Pakistan’s own constructions of his persona as father of the nation. An unkind fashioning of his politics as inherently sectarian obliterates the nuances of the strategic political positions held by Jinnah, his multiple subjectivities; the subtleties of the subaltern/minority politics he upheld and his visions of regional peace, cooperation and security.

The whirl of events in Pakistan causes concern in an historical sense. Pakistan’s political transformation has unfortunately negated a legacy, the legacy of Jinnah, inheriting which would have allowed better mediations for peace and democracy in the region. The ideals cherished by Jinnah who believed that Pakistan will progress only if they “work together in a spirit that everyone, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations” has been completely undermined both in India and Pakistan.

Jinnah’s visions of a non-theocratic democratic Pakistan are in no way inferior to the aspirations shared by Indian National Congress (INC) leaders of the time in rest of British India. Indian textbooks probably provide an uncharitable account of his role in India’s freedom struggle. After all, he was a great leader of the INC who took a profound role in re-imagining Hindu-Muslim unity, shaping INC’s Lucknow pact with Muslim League (ML) and democratizing minority politics in the subcontinent. Torn with sectarian violence, State repressions and increasing human right violations, South Asian countries in general and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular, would immensely benefit from a reassessment of Jinnah’s politics and ideals.

Jinnah’s image as an adamant fighter for a separate Muslim Homeland and hence as someone responsible for the division of India is often reinforced by Pakistan’s own constructions of his persona as father of the nation. An unkind fashioning of his politics as inherently sectarian obliterates the nuances of the strategic political positions held by Jinnah, his multiple subjectivities; the subtleties of the subaltern/minority politics he upheld and his visions of regional peace, cooperation and security.

Uncle Sam Needs You: Two Cartoons

by temporal

Uncle Sam Needs You: Two Cartoons

Wish I were a cartoonist. Let me share two cartoons.

1: Uncle Sam Needs You

Imagine a caricature
Of Mullah George bin Laden
In a recruiting poster
For Osama bin Bush

2: It is All About Democracy

While a city is cluster-bombed
Buildings are leveled
And the smoke is rising
A little bird says to another
It’s all about freedom
And democracy

Afghanistan, Pakistan and the War on Terror

by Yasser Latif Hamdani

A popularly-elected secular government in Islamabad — which shares several broad objectives with the US in Afghanistan and the greater Muslim world — is being pressurized by an unthinking coterie of policy planners in Washington. A secular mass movement for constitution, democracy and independent judiciary threatens to become a Khomeniesque Islamic revolution of 1979 if the present wave of anti-Americanism subsists. Increased Allied pressure on Pakistan will virtually seal it. Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.

Slain Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party leads a coalition that brings together center left and center right with the marginalized ethno-nationalist forces serving as a counterweight to Islamist forces in the NWFP. It has entered into peace negotiations with the Taliban forces and, consequently, the ratio of one suicide bombing a day in Pakistan has decreased. To now try and undo it by having the Afghan President send out threats- which in any event are a violation of international law - means that the myopia has set in somewhere. The Afghan president is in a precarious position. In his own country, Karzai has various monikers: the “palace president”, the “mayor of Kabul” and even the derogatory “mouse-President”. It is unlikely that his government would survive even a single day without the Allied help. Therefore, backing him against a legitimate and popular government in Pakistan which promises to put a long-term sustainable secular democratic order- the kind envisaged by its founding father- in place is akin to being penny wise pound-foolish. Doing so would also be to the detriment of the lawyers’ movement which aims at strengthening Pakistan’s judiciary and constitution.

Watering the the Indus Valley

Published on telegraph.co.uk - Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/05/2008

Peter Parker reviews Empires of the Indus: the Story of a River by Alice Albinia

The River Indus rises in Tibet and flows west through northern India before turning south through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. Like many rivers, it has often acted as a border, marking off Baluchistan from Sindh and the North West Frontier Province from the Punjab, or halting the progress of invaders from the West.

A rather more arbitrary border was created in 1947 by Partition, which among other things left the “heartland” of the Rig Veda, one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts, in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The Indus, however, is also a place where syncretism survives, and the confluence of its waters sometimes seems like a metaphor running through Alice Albinia’s impressive and original first book. Unlike the Ganges, which is sacred only to the Hindus, the Indus has spiritual and historical significance for Muslims, Buddhists and Sikhs.

At one point, Albinia looks out from the militarised zone to where the lethally disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir “opens up like the wings of a green and yellow butterfly on a dull brown rock”.

This intensifies her sense, present throughout the book, that with Partition, “the citizens of India and Pakistan have suffered the stifling of their mutual history, and the loss of access to lands, languages and faces that were once part of their shared vocabulary”.

Albinia travels back along the Indus from its delta to its source, but also travels backwards in history, from “1947″ to “50 million years ago” as the chapters’ subtitles have it, describing the many civilisations that have flourished in the Indus Valley.

Like the river itself, and indeed history, her narrative is not as linear as this might suggest, and much of the most fascinating material is found in its tributaries.

In Sindh we meet the Sheedi, dark-skinned Muslims with tightly curled hair. They are supposedly descended from an Ethiopian slave who became not only one of the Prophet’s first converts but also his first muezzin because of his “sonorous voice”.

The Wahhabisation of Pakistan

* Manan Ahmed published in the guardian.co.uk,
* Friday June 27, 2008

The migration of thousands of Pakistani men to Gulf states since the 1970s has had a huge impact on the character of the country

“Pakistan is in a leaderless drift four months after elections”, concluded Carlotta Gall in the New York Times on June 24. Just two days later, comes news that “Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban” has killed 22 members of an intermediary peace committee between the State of Pakistan and Mehsud. I guess there are some leaders in Pakistan, after all. Pakistan’s “Talibanisation” in the northwestern rural regions and the stalled lawyer’s movement in the major cities appear, at first glance, to reflect a deep chasm within Pakistani society. This division, if one should call it anything, is routinely understood as a manifestation of moderate v extreme Islam. But that raises the question of why it manifests itself along rural/urban, and class lines.

Extremist ideology, as we have learned in the last 8 years, is just as prone to attract highly-educated members of the professional class as unemployed, frustrated youth. We have to delve deeper into Pakistan’s recent past if we are to understand the crisis it faces at the present. Sub-continental history is dotted with intermittent mass movement of people – usually triggered by famine, war or worse – replete with attendant tales of distress and misery. In my reckoning, the early 1970s saw the another key migration that has so far received little analysis. It involved vast numbers of men from the rural and semi-urban parts of Pakistan moving to the emerging oil-based oligarchies in the Gulf.

Struggling to dance

By Beena Sarwar

An evening of classical dance at the Arts Council Auditorium, Karachi
was a moving tribute to young, upcoming dancers — and most of all,
to Sheema Kermani

Sheema Kermani shines through her students. At an evening of
classical dance in Karachi on May 24, she performed and showcased the
work of sixteen students, ranging from newcomers to experienced
dancers. The end of the over-two hour long ‘Jugalbandi’ that
juxtaposed dance styles on one platform, drew sustained applause and
a standing ovation from much of the audience filling the Arts Council
Auditorium to its 500-strong capacity. It was a moving tribute to
young, upcoming dancers — and most of all, to Sheema Kirmani for her
lifelong dedication as a teacher, creativity as a choreographer and
as a dancer herself.

Civil Service Is No Longer An Alluring Career for Pakistan’s youth

Raza Rumi

A little news item that appeared a few weeks ago was ignored by our all-knowing analysts and TV channels. Reportedly, the Federal Public Service Commission failed to recruit all the vacancies that were advertised for the CSS competitive examination held in 2007. Out of 290 available posts, the number of successful candidates in the 2007 CSS competition was merely 190, leaving almost 100 vacancies unoccupied.

In the photo above Founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah is seen talking to Pakistani Civil Servants (circa 1947)

Last year, too, the government could not get enough number of successful CSS candidates to fill in the available posts and 47 vacancies could not be filled. Such instances have occurred before but given the state of unemployment this is, to put it mildly, shocking.

The truth of the matter is that entering the civil service is no longer an alluring career option for the talented young men and women of this country. Perhaps, the greatest damage to the attractiveness of the civil service came in the wake of the devolution plan that rendered the most coveted service group — District Management Group – unpalatable. Within days, the district administrators had no prescribed career-paths and that they had to be subservient to small time political cronies of the central political elites.

But this would be too simplistic an explanation. The last decade has also witnessed Pakistan’s fitful integration into the global economy resulting in expansion of private sector opportunities with higher salaries. The remuneration of a new entrant into the civil service is three times less than what a telecom company would pay to its junior employee. With money as a new god in the age of globalisation, choosing a dysfunctional civil service would make little sense.

The legend of Kasu Ma sati in Pakistan’s Sindh

Kasu Ma is said to have immolated herself in the 18th century, after her son died in battle. She took on what was traditionally a wife’s duty because her daughter-in-law refused to die on the pyre – a bad omen which Kasu Ma hoped to negate with her own death

Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro

An elderly woman leaned against the pillar of Kasu Ma sati, her head bowed down in prayer, oblivious to her surroundings. As I approached her, thinking to ask about the sati, she turned around and signalled for me to sit down. Her name was Shani Bai, she told me, and she was a member of the Meghwar community and a devout devotee of Kasu Ma sati. She had come to the shrine, in Sindh’s Mithi district, from the nearby town of Chelhar to pay homage.

Sati is a funeral rite, practiced by some Hindus, in which a recent widow immolates herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre; the term can also refer to the widow herself. The ritual is named after the goddess Sati, who, according to Hindu mythology, burned herself to death after her father insulted her husband, the god Shiva. Although strict proscriptions against the rite now exist, sati dates as far back as the fifth century, if not earlier, and was practiced regularly in parts of India until the 20th century. Even today, sati veneration is widespread throughout the Sindhi district of Tharparkar, where nearly every village has a memorial stone commemorating a sati.

As she sat in front of the shrine, Shani Bai told me she paid her respects to Kasu Ma whenever there was a problem in the family – and she is hardly alone. Many women of her community visit the shrine of Kasu Ma regularly in hopes of finding solutions to their worries and travails. During the annual mela, almost every caste of Hindus swarm to the shrine, where Maganhars, who have traditionally provided musical services, sing bhajan (devotional songs) and chhands (folk poetry) in honour of the sati.

Travels to Pakistan - A Jeddah-based journalist’s account

Pak Tea House is grateful for this contribution from Tariq Al-Maeena a journalist based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - his account of travels in Pakistan is engaging. We are publishing the first three parts on his impressions of Islamabad, political intrigues of the Capital and his sojourn to Murree. The interesting bits are his comparisons with Saudi Arabia where Pakistan is viewed as a poor country. The remaining parts will be published later.  (Raza Rumi)
 
Pakistan Re-Visited – (1)
Islamabad
 
When the invitation came in from the Pakistani Consulate in Jeddah to visit Pakistan as part of a media delegation for the purpose of acquainting ourselves with that country, I had no moment of hesitation in accepting their gracious offer.  This in spite of my family’s vocal concerns about my personal safety, with pre-election violence that had plagued that country still fresh in their minds. 
 
I had been to Pakistan before, albeit the city of Karachi only and that was thirty years ago.  This trip would afford me the opportunity to visit several cities in Pakistan for the first time and my excitement at exploring new adventures knew no bounds and there was no stopping me.
 
It was PIA, the national airline that we boarded one night for our flight to Islamabad.  Along with me was the rest of the media delegation: Tariq Mishkhas, managing editor from Urdu News, Nasser Habtar, Al-Watan newspaper bureau chief in Abha, and Mohammed Yousuf, Arab News correspondent.

All Yours Now

Bring you will “the revolution” they said,
As my young soul stared into its existence,
From those tables where they all ate,
Fruits, knowledge and fear of unknown
Raise yourself, you have learnt enough
Our voices will be there, always
Unfold your arms, don’t remain silent
The old desks, heavy in their burden
As my old friends let me disappear
From their world of magic and wisdom

Karachi calling - Mohammad Hanif

posted by Raza Rumi

When novelist Mohammed Hanif told friends he was returning to Pakistan after 12 years in Britain, they were aghast. Why would he and his young family swap London for a city with daily power cuts and rampant gun crime? The answer proved surprisingly simple …

• Mohammed Hanif writing for The Guardian (Tuesday June 24, 200

Twelve years ago, I arrived in London from Karachi with eight suitcases, a new wife and a three-year job contract. Before leaving for London, we had put our books, furniture and even some of our kitchen utensils at our relatives’ houses. When I told my friends and family that we would be back after exactly three years, they gave us a knowing smile and encouraged us to sell that sofa instead of putting it in their store room.

Two months from now, we are planning to return to Karachi with a container full of furniture, more pots and pans than we left behind and a 10-year-old son. Friends and family in Pakistan are aghast. From London to Karachi? Why are you coming to Karachi? Do you know what happened to Sana’s friend the other day? Do you have any idea how you’ll live without electricity for 10 hours every day? And, by the way, have you discussed this with Channan? How does he feel about it?

Awami Jamhori Forum’s new issue

Awami Jamhori Forum’s latest issue 44 (20th June 200 has been uploaded here.

In the current issue AJF magazine, you will find some important articles regarding left, liberal and nationalist politics of Pakistan along with some articles on international issues. Some highlights for those who may be interested are:

• An eye opening interview of a Bengali Nationalist, Mr. Kamal Lohani who unfolds weaknesses of Bengali nationalist movement and also throws light on 37 years post freedom Bangladesh.

• Two articles on great Mian Iftikhar ud Din (one by Kashif Bukhari and other by Rauf Malik) who was the first Muslim leaguer who opposed Qarar Dade-Maqasad. He was founder of daily Pakistan times, Imroz and weekly Lail lo Nehar. He also was the founder of Azad Pakistan party which later joined National Awami Party.

• Regular columns of Prof Khalid Mahmood, Salman Sawati, Hukam Singh Siasi, Iqbal Bali,

Regular articles of Tufail Dhana, Shah Mohamad Marri , Dr. Ravish Nadeem, Mahmood Qazi, Qaisar Nazir Khawar and Dr. Afshan Zaheer

• A critical article on Faiz-Izat Majeed controversy by Dr Manzur Ijaz

• Two special articles on situation of ‘tribal belt’ by Raja Waliat and another by Mujahid Mirza

• An exclusive article by Khurshid Javed on Bukharin

• An article by Mahfoz Khan on bleeding Multan

• An exclusive book review on a book regarding the struggle of Punjab University students in recent times by Q.N.Khawar. Also a stunning Film Review on film ‘AMU’ a must see.

You can also visit their archive web site www.sajjanlahore.org.

The end of Taxila

by Salman Rashid

With the defeat of the Huns in 528, Taxila attempted to make a comeback. But forsaken by its upper classes, Taxila perhaps became home to rustics from surrounding settlements and began its final journey into the long night

Beginning with the annexation of Taxila to the kingdom of Alexander, there began a three hundred year-long period of Taxilan Hellenisation — save of course the century-long hiatus of the Mauryan period. The successors of Alexander’s general Seleucus Nikator annexed Afghanistan and Taxila together with most of modern Pakistan.

A hundred and fifty years later, they were overthrown by the pale-skinned Scythians (Saka to the Indians). These horse-riding warriors so overwhelmed our part of the world that Sindh became Saka Dvipa — Island of the Sakas for the people of India and Indo-Scythia for the distant Greeks.

Taxila was now ruled by the Scythian king Maues. Within a few years of his death in 53 BCE, the land was overtaken by yet another wave of equestrian warriors. The Parthians had much in common with their distant kinsmen, the Sakas; only they were a good deal culturally less refined than the people they replaced. They had, nevertheless, the desire to appear as Greek as possible and therefore emulated Greek fine arts, even if in a somewhat cruder form.

By the year 19 CE, Taxila was firmly in the able hands of the Parthian king Gondophares in whose reign the Greek philosopher Apollonious visited the city to tell us so much about it. When Gondophares died in 50 CE, so too did the great age of Hellenisation of Taxila come to an end. No long after this great king’s death, Taxila was visited by the plague which wiped out a major part of its population and left the city reeling.

In that enfeebled state about the year 65, it was run over by the Kushans — another Central Asiatic race. Unlike the nearly bloodless takeover by the Parthians only fifty years earlier, this change was bloody: as the Kushans tore across the Yusufzai plain leaving death and destruction in their wake, and even as they came over the fords of the Sindhu River, Taxila was seized by a frenzy of terror.

Just a Man

Zarah K has contributed this stirring poem - She wrote: “having observed the recent trend on PTH, I thought I should make a “feminist” contribution of my own. I’m no poet so I’m afraid it is amateurish… and also a bit edgy.” Zarah your edginess is most endearing and we will share it here… (Raza Rumi)

i am a man not a mensche
don’t expect me to see beyond
your broken heart,
your broken hymen

feed me your vulnerability,
and the ravages of your vulgarity,
i am a vulture i am Vulcan,
venerate me, burn for me

godless, shameless,
you lie naked on my prayer mat
tonight, all night, i will call you my hoor
tomorrow i will call you a whore

because, can’t you see?
i have a birthright to this hypocrisy,
for your soft secrets to caress only me,
for the power to call it your depravity

remember i am a man, just a man,
don’t expect me to see beyond
your broken heart,
your broken hymen

جیو ٹی وی ؟ کڑوا سچ GEO TV: the bitter truth

This is a rather strongly worded piece authored by a concerned Pakistani based abroad. Whilst I do not agree with all the contents of this article, it surely is ‘another’ view of the ongoing GEO TV saga! In light of Pak Tea House’s efforts to promote debate and air unfashionable views, we are posting this piece. (Raza Rumi)

نصر ملک۔۔ کوپن ہیگن

پاکستان کے اندر اور بیرون پاکستان “ جیو ٹیلیویژن “ کی نشریات پاکستانیوں میں خوب دیکھی جاتی ہیں لیکن “ جیو ٹی وی “ کی ان نشریات میں پیش کِیا کیا جاتا ہے اور اس کے پیچھے کیا محرکات ہوتے ہیں یہ اندازہ شاید ہی کسی نے لگایا ہو ۔ اندرون پاکستان ‘ جیو ٹی وی کی نشریات پر حساس ناظرین اپنے خدشات کا اظہار تو کرتے ہی رہتے ہیں اب بیرون ملک بھی “ جیو ٹی وی “ کی نشریات پر “ پاکستانی ناظرین “ کے تحفظات میں اضافہ ہوتا جا رہا ہے ۔ لیکن کیوں؟

آئیے دیکھتے ہیں کہ جیو ٹی وی کی ابتدا کیسے ہوئی اور اس کی وہ نشریات جنہیں یہ ادارہ “ قومی مفادات اور شعور ملی کی بیداری کے لیے پیش کرنے “ کا دعویٰ کرتا ہے ‘ اِن نشریات کا دوسرے ٹی وی اداروں کی نشریات سے موازنہ کیا جائے کہ جیو ٹی وی ‘ کہاں تک “ ملی مفادات اور قومی شعور کی بیداری کے لیے متحرک ہے ۔“

Wild Orchards

I am the same person
Who once existed
For your ideology and promise
For years
In between
The two enemies
Through the old landscape
Haunted and gripped
In its old spirit

Once it was me,
The same person
In music and poetry
I found myself
From travels of past
In wild orchards
The offerings of youth

As the time switched on
From present into past
As the regions slip into darkness
Here I am still,
With two enemies
Misconceptions and indifference

In this most beautiful place
I am all alone,
Gone those wild orchards
As the world unites
With new ideology
Against us

As I travel back
For a moment to reside
In old wild orchards
Heads straight our way
The purple wrath
In between
My life,
Unfinished story
Lies there a body
Charred in its old scent
Of my distant time
extinguished in split seconds!

Kashkin

Buddha stories on display at Peshawar Museum

PESHAWAR: There are 74 Buddha stories carved in stone, which are on display in Peshawar Museum, describing all happenings in his life.

Prof Fidaullah Sehri, former director of the Museum and ex-chairman of the Archaeology and Fine Arts Department, Peshawar University, told US Ambassador Anne W Patterson during her visit to the museum.

NWFP Minister of Culture Syed Aaqil Shah and Director Archaeology and Museums Malik Saleh Muhammad KhanYusufzai, Hazara University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Ihsan Ali Khan and Prof Sehri received Patterson, who was accompanied by her husband.

Goodbye Shahzadi - the controversial book

Raza Rumi

We are posting two reviews of the new book on Benazir Bhutto authored by Shyam Bhatia. The first is a critical, crisp impression of M.A. Soofi; and the other is by the legendary Khushwant Singh who discusses wider issues such as corruption comparisons between India and Pakistan and apparently believes whatever Bhatia has written despite the condemnation from late Bhutto’s spokesperson.

Enjoy!

Mayank Austen Soofi: An Indian journalist’s sleazy biography of Benazir Bhutto.

Petty games people play. Indian journalist Mr. Shyam Bhatia who had known Ms. Benazir Bhutto since her student days in Oxford, during the 70s, have penned a quickie biography of Pakistan’s late prime minister. He has accused her of smuggling nuclear secrets to North Korea during a state visit to Pyongang by carrying CDs containing data about uranium enrichment in an overcoat “with deepest possible pockets”.

That’s just the most serious charge in this thin, seemingly hurriedly written book that has little flair for fine writing and hardly any consideration for credible sources to back up its wild claims.

Mr. Bhatia calls the young Ms. Bhutto a ‘self-obsessed’ girl with legendary tantrums who would throw “ashtrays like flying saucers at the servants” in ancestral home at Larkana.

Indeed, his Benazir-at-Oxford emerges as quite a flamboyant woman who drove a yellow MG sports car, dunked down white wine, and had a “myriad of mostly white boyfriends.” However, Mr. Bhatia soon contradicts himself by claiming that Ms. Bhutto was madly in love with “two extremely handsome Pakistani students” who (here’s the cake) “firmly rebuffed marital enquiries on her part”.

In this breezy breathless portrayal of Benazir’s young days, Mr. Bhatia hasn’t inserted any footnotes to add to the credibility of his ‘accusations’.

There’s more.

The Urban Frontier: Karachi

Posted by Raza Rumi

This is a brilliant series from the NPR on Karachi and its myriad issues and stark inequalities. We are posting the leads and links here for easy reference. Readers should not miss it.

Akhtar Soomro for NPR

Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, is growing so fast that estimates of its population range from 12 million to 18 million. The country’s financial capital is also a city where about half the population lives in illegal houses. In Karachi, Morning Edition begins a series called “The Urban Frontier,” about the world’s expanding cities.

IN THIS SERIES

Land Ownership a Root of Many Problems in Karachi

June 11, 2008 · As part of the “Urban Frontier” series, Steve Inskeep reported last week from Karachi, Pakistan — one of the world’s largest cities. He found problems there familiar to cities around the world: from ethnic, religious and political strife to water shortages and pollution — and land ownership was a common undercurrent.

Pakistani-Hindustani Bhai-Bhai, Literally Up In The Sky!

Yoginder Sikand

We have a three-hour stop over at Lahore airport on our way back to
Delhi from Islamabad. I am excited about going back home, but, at the
same time, am sad at the thought of leaving Pakistan. I don’t know
when, if at all, I can come back here, if I can ever again meet some
of those wonderful people whom I almost instantly bonded with in my
short week-long visit to the country. I wonder if I will again be
fortunate enough to get a visa to visit Pakistan.

After all, this, my second visit to Pakistan, was made possible only
after great effort and because of having friends who had the right
contacts in the right places. After my first visit, three years ago,
my applications for a visa to return, to attend conferences and meet
friends, were repeatedly turned down. The reason, so I heard: Upon my
return from that visit, some articles that I wrote on certain aspects
of life in Pakistan—the problems of Dalits and other rural poor in
Sindh and the crisis of intellectuals in the country generally—were
not quite liked by someone in the Pakistan High Commission in New
Delhi, who, so I gather, assumed that this somehow made me highly
suspect. So, he made it a point to make sure that I was to be refused
to enter the country again by putting my name on a particular ‘list’
of unwanted elements. Of course, this someone did not care to notice
the good things that I had written about Pakistan as well, and the
fact, as I had mentioned in my writings that he had seen, that we in
India face similar problems—observations which firmly contradicted the
opinion that he had formed about me.

But, somehow, I am back now in Pakistan and I feel wonderful about it
(after all, this was the home of half of my ancestors!) and this
week-long visit to Islamabad has been overwhelming in every sense of
the term. This trip has afforded me an opportunity to see a different
side of Pakistan, in many respects quite in contrast to what I
observed on my first visit. Islamabad is certainly the cleanest and
most organized city in all of South Asia, and the friends that I’ve
made on this trip have been exceptionally interesting: social
activists, religious scholars, journalists, NGO workers and
documentary film makers. All of which makes me feel a sense of loss
and a heavy sadness deep down inside at the prospect that now that I
should be in Delhi in four hours’ time and not knowing if I can ever
come back.

Chador aur Char Divari: Subverting the discourse of exclusion 6

In this article, our prolific contributor Shaheryar Ali looks at the invisibility of women in extreme interpretations of Islam that were adopted by the General Zia-ul-Haq and that refuse to go away despite decades of struggle. He cites a powerful poem by the Urdu poet Fahmida Riaz that sums up the perversity of this peculiar mindset and is a bitter song of liberation too. (Ed: RR)

Of the three great systems of exclusion governing discourse — prohibited words, the division of madness and the will to truth ———” Foucault

The non-existence of women is the most important problem that has plagued the discourse in the Muslim countries. “Representational discourse” is in itself a discourse of exclusion, the “woman” and “woman hood” are representational entities, the Woman has always been be represented in the discourse , she never had her own voice. The famous existential philosopher Simone de Beauvior whilst writing her seminal feminist work “The second Sex” reached the conclusion : “No Human is born a Woman”.

In fundamentalist ‘Islamic’ context this representational discourse acquired a legal status where woman was judged to be unworthy of testimony. De-humanization of woman reached its peak under the USA sponsored Islamization of the Muslim world. General Muhammed Zia ul Haq and the theologians brought the “Law of Evidence” according to which the testimony of the woman was to be considered half of that of man. The traditional reading of Islam brought about the concept of “Naqis ul Aqal” “semi compos mentis” for the Woman. An animal which is not capable of making independent decisions, is source of Sin and lust and hence must be covered in a black veil, to protect the piety of Men, whose place is within the 4 walls of the house and who cant leave it without a male relative escorting her.

“Zina” (or fornication) became the ultimate focus of the project that aimed to suppress women’s sexuality with the fear of stones and lashes. “Chador or Char divari” became the official state doctrine for “woman” with approval from Mansoora! [Pakistan's self-styled Vatican, headquarter of the Jamate Islami]

The Progressive left led a heroic struggle against the Neo Fascist Zia ul Haq, resulting in one of the most brutal crackdown against them, hangings, torture,murders,exiles, lashes—. Fahmida Riaz , Kishwar Naheed stood up against this tyranny , the result was the emergence of a radical feminist discourse that was modernist and progressive and which challenged the Islamist discourse on woman.

Fehmida Riaz is a true artist who never compromised , she was victimized by Zia ul Haq and his political Son Nawaz Sharif but she stood firm. Chador aur Char Divari is one of the most important poems ever written in Urdu. It traces the origins of Islamist exclusionist discourse and de constructs it. It asserts the “humanity” of woman , her independent will and voice and her challenge to the tyrants.

‘am no god’ and other poems

four poems by temporal

am no god

when i was young
i knew everything
could do anything
i was GOD
today i know i know
so little
am barely inches
above ground
and contentedly
am no god

painting with words

if i were a painter
with whisks
would wipe away scowls
make faces smile
again

she smiled at my folly,
and
i thought of the rancor
between religions,
states
and sullen gods

but i am a stargazer and
armed with word-chisel
would work to wipe away
a few more frowns.

gajra

karachi
he never yelled
just pushed the gajras* in view
and looked with baleful eyes

when the traffic halted
other hawkers, beggars pounced
seeking alms, selling wares

but this kid

and his younger sister
merely looked at you

they could’ve been mute
i never heard them peddle
the only thing i traded
was a dismissive
maaf karo! nahiN chahiyay**

* * *

toronto
stopped at red on islington*** yesterday
and the scent of jasmine wafted in
i looked around for baleful eyes
______________________________

*….a bracelet made of flowers
**…forgive me! don’t need it
***..a T.O. street

choices

I
here
fate deals, we play
we own not the deck
play best as we can
whine, thank, pray, scold

but

for the allotted seconds
we play

II
here
dropped in waters
we swim
with or against the tide
in shallow and deep waters

but

for the allotted seconds
we swim

III
is there anything
we cannot do
to stay afloat?
tell me then why
are we segmented?