| A system has crashed |
| Ahmed Quraishi |
| We’ve just seen the collapse of government and the helplessness of bankrupt political elite in Pakistan. Pakistanis have just seen one of the most defining moments in their political history. Almost the entire political system has been swept away with the floods. Those Pakistanis who were not directly hit by tragedy have been hit by the second worst thing that could have happened: possibly a total loss of faith and trust in a political system that has been tried, tested and failed. Our condition begs change. This is the stuff that revolutions are made of. Our rains and floods could never have turned into a tragedy worse than Haiti and Kashmir earthquakes and the Indian ocean tsunami combined if not for the manmade factors: an entire government and administrative structure that failed to offer any contingency planning before the tragedy or rapid response after. Village after village, Pakistanis saw how cardboard local administrations raised white flags and handed power over to the Pakistani military [army, navy, and air force] at the slightest hint of challenge. I still can’t get over the video footage of our Sindh chief minister who, having been alerted by the Punjab government about floods, headed his way, stood before a camera to laugh along with his aides at how Punjab opened the waterways now that there is a flood, a thinly-disguised reference to the water disputes among provinces. He and his aides thought it was funny to shirk responsibility in this fashion and play politics. Sure enough, days later his administration sat helpless as the army seized Sukkur Barrage and took responsibility for making the hard decisions. For two weeks now, victims and volunteers are yet to see a single elected representative out to help in post-disaster operations anywhere across flood-hit areas of Pakistan, especially in those areas where ‘dynastic’ elected politicians dominate. In fact, the most common complaint aid volunteers heard from the victims is that politicians have been busy worrying about their feudal landholdings. This is nothing to say of economic collapse and how most of the hundreds of millions of dollars that our government is soliciting from the world will disappear in private pockets a few years later leaving millions of flood victims fester into social wounds that will haunt Pakistan for decades to come. We’ve already seen how the Musharraf government fared in dealing with the 2005 Kashmir earthquake reconstruction. Between 2006 and now, we should have had in place a first class disaster management and rapid response system. Instead we have an agency called NDMA with a bulging bureaucracy whose seniors enjoy juicy perks and TV airtime and zero utility. This is a failed system because it is marked less by politics and organization and more by violence and chaos. For example, the monsoon rains could have been a boon had we built dams. But our current crop of politicians, knowing they have nothing else to attract voters, have been whipping up linguistic divisions among Pakistanis and raising hysteria over how one dam or the other would threaten the lives of this linguistic group or another in the country. Political parties have stolen the Pakistani state’s right to represent all citizens and instead have appointed themselves as sole representatives of entire linguistic groups [I won’t say ‘ethnic’ groups because it is absurd to talk about this imaginary division that no longer exists in the strict sense of the word but has been exploited by political parties for political gain]. The height of tragedy is that today some parties consider it legitimate to kill innocent Pakistani citizens based on their supposed linguistic affiliation to settle scores with another party that claims to represent them. Democracy cannot remain an excuse for these gigantic failures. And criticizing them should not be interpreted as an invitation to the military to stage a coup. We’ve experimented with a British-inspired political system after our Independence in 1947. We’ve experimented with an American-inspired political setup since 2007. It is time we introduced a Pakistani political system suited to us. And all options are fair if the job can be delivered. The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com |
Monday, August 16, 2010
| Since Pakistan’s first Aug 14 |
| Roedad Khan |
| On Aug 14, 1947, I was a 24-year-old subordinate judge–full of idealism, hope and ambition. For me and for all those who belonged to my generation, Pakistan symbolised all our wishes and expectations. On that day, over a century-and-a-half of British rule came to an end. The Union Jack was lowered for the last time. I saw the sun set on the British Empire in the subcontinent. It is not just that we had a great leader who seemed to embody in his determination a bright and different world as each person imagined it. We had entered a new era. Mr Jinnah could not have foreseen the tragic decline of Pakistan when he passed his flaming torch into the hands of his successors, or how venal those hands could be. Sixty-three years after Mr Jinnah gave us a great country, little men mired in corruption have captured political power and destroyed his legacy. If Mr Jinnah came today and saw Zardari in occupation of his august office, he would say, “I am afraid I need to erase this and start all over again.” Zardari’s handling of the current unprecedented flood crisis is horrendous. The response one would expect from the head of state never happened. He ignored the country’s worst flooding in 80 years, a national disaster of epic proportions with thousands of lives lost and millions of people affected, in order to travel abroad and address a party meeting in Birmingham. He seems too indifferent, too callous, too insensitive on the television screen. What is there to celebrate? Bloated dead bodies are floating down the rivers of Pakistan, reminiscent of the terrible cyclone which struck East Pakistan in 1970 with disastrous consequences. Millions have been displaced. Whole villages have disappeared. People have lost all their belongings. Zardari couldn’t care less. Sixty-three years after independence, we have a disjointed, dysfunctional, lopsided, hybrid, artificial, political system–a non-sovereign rubberstamp parliament, a weak and ineffective prime minister, appointed by a powerful accidental president. The federation is united only by a “rope of sand.” The independence of Pakistan is a myth. By succumbing to American pressure, we managed to secure a temporary reprieve. But at what price? Everyday American aircraft violate our airspace, and bomb our villages, killing innocent men, women and children. In 2009 alone, the Americans killed 667 innocent men, women and children. With impunity, no questions asked, no protest, no expression of remorse from them. Today Pakistan is dotted with American fortresses, which seriously compromises our internal and external sovereignty. American security personnel stationed on our soil move in and out of the country without any let or hindrance. Pakistan has become a launching pad for military operations against neighbouring Muslim countries. We have been drawn into somebody else’s war without understanding its true dimension or ultimate objectives. Nuclear Pakistan has been turned into an American lackey, currently engaged in a proxy war against its own people. To no nation has fate been more malignant than to Pakistan. With few exceptions, Pakistan has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership: predatory kleptocrats, military dictators, political illiterates and carpetbaggers. After Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination, Mr Zardari’s sudden ascension to the Presidency caused panic and fear among people. His record since then hasn’t exactly been an exercise in the glories of Pakistan’s democracy. We are saddened when we look back at all the squandered decades. Once we were the envy of the developing world. That is now the stuff of nostalgia. Pakistan has lapsed into languor, a spiritless lassitude. A sense of guilt, shame, danger and anxiety hangs over the country like a pall. It appears as if we are on a phantom train that is gathering momentum and we cannot get off. Today Pakistan is a silent, mournful land where few people talk of the distant future and most live from day to day. They see themselves as ordinary and unimportant, their suffering too common to be noted, and prefer to bury their pain. Today the political landscape of Pakistan is dotted with Potemkin villages. All the trappings of democracy are there, albeit in anaemic form. Parliamentarians go through the motions of attending parliamentary sessions, question hour and privilege motions, endless debates which everybody knows are sterile and totally unrelated to the people’s real problems. Why did Pakistan become a land of opportunities for corrupt, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians, judges, generals and civil servants, smugglers and tax-evaders, who have bank accounts, luxurious villas, mansions, and apartments in the West? Why did Pakistan become a nightmare of corruption, crime and despair? Sixty-three years after it came into being, Pakistan is among the world’s most badly governed and politically corrupt countries. Corruption is endemic and extends throughout all segments of society. It is made all the worse by a “culture of impunity.” Why? The whys of history are never answered. Too long have we been passive spectators of events. Today our fate is in our hands, but soon it may pass beyond control. A shout in the mountains has been known to start an avalanche. We must call things by their names and shout louder. Let Pakistan be Pakistan again. Let it be the dream it used to be—a dream that is almost dead today. “From those who live like leeches on people’s lives”—who have robbed us of everything, our past, our present, our future and all our beautiful dreams—we must take back our land, and our money. Many nations in the past have attempted to develop democratic institutions, only to lose them when they took their liberties and political institutions for granted, and failed to comprehend the threats, both internal and external, facing them. Pakistan is a classic example. Born at midnight as a sovereign, independent, democratic country, today it is neither sovereign, nor independent, nor even democratic. Today it is not just a “rentier state,” not just a client state. It is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a power-hungry junta and a puppet government set up by Washington. Where are the voices of public outrage? Where is the leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! Enough! We have sullied ourselves enough. Why are we so passively mute? How can we be so comatose as a nation when thousands of poor people are dying along the rivers of Pakistan before our own eyes? Millions are stranded without shelter, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink with nobody to look after them. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the Pakistani army and independent media, both print and electronic, were the only institutions which served the nation most meritoriously in its hour of greatest need. The spontaneous demonstrations and outpouring of anger of the flood-affected people witnessed all over the world are ominous. With such ripples, do tidal waves begin? Who will tap the anger, the frustration and the resentment among millions of our people? Both military dictatorship and corrupt, fraudulent democracy, have failed them. The country is impoverished and humiliated. Democratic forms remain, but democracy itself is in effect dead or dying. One man, one man alone, occupying the commanding heights of power, is responsible for the mess we are in today. Zardari is taking Pakistan to a perilous place. The course he is on leads is downhill. It is not enough to sit back and let history slowly evolve. To settle back into cold-hearted acceptance of the status quo is not an option. The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com |
Sunday, August 8, 2010
My political struggle
| My political struggle |
| My early life:Part I |
| M Asghar Khan |
| I was born in Jammu on January 17, 1921. My grandfather, a Malik Din Khel Afridi, had moved to Kashmir in about 1855 from Tirah, in the tribal territory of the North-West Frontier. He had four sons of whom my father was the youngest. My grandfather, who died in about 1903, had settled in Buttal Balian, near Udhampur in Jammu province of Kashmir State. His sons joined the state armed forces and my uncle, Summander Khan, in whose house I was born, was living a quiet life, having retired from service as a major-general. He had more leisure than my father and gave us all his attention. A kinder man would be difficult to imagine. No trouble was too much for him. He had no children of his own and treated us with unimaginable love and affection. I was the second of eleven children born to my mother – eight sons and three daughters. My father had another son from an earlier marriage, who was about 20 years old when I was born. My uncle, his wife, my father, mother, my brothers and I lived, as was the custom those days, as one family. My father joined the Jammu and Kashmir Army, took part in the First World War in East Africa and was a major when I was born. He retired as a brigadier in 1941. My father was a strict disciplinarian and professionally very competent. He could not tolerate incompetence or laziness and set a high standard of morality and character in his personal life. As children, my brothers and I saw very little of him, dreaded his strict nature and spent most of our time in our uncle’s care. Our aunt was also like a mother to us and she and our uncle gave us so much love and affection that had it not been for the balancing factor of the terror that our father inspired in our minds, we might have been thoroughly spoilt. As it turned out, the balance was perfect and I do not think that I suffered as a result. As I grew up, I began to feel closer to my father than I had as a youngster and this relationship continued to grow until his death in 1966. My mother, with a new child every year and half to two years, was kept so busy that she could give us very little individual attention. The early years passed very quickly and at the age of 12, I came across an advertisement in a newspaper which invited applications for interview for entry to the Prince of Wales’s Royal Indian Military College in Dehra Dun. The age of entry was 11-12 years and after successful completion of six years at this college, one could appear for an examination for entry into the Indian Military Academy for service as a commissioned officer in the Indian Army. I immediately made up my mind to try to get into this college and began to pester my father. Since the tuition fee was about Rs125 per month which was about one-fifth of my father’s total salary, he was reluctant at first but finally agreed to allow me to try. I was selected in the interview and went to Dehra Dun in March 1933. The six years that followed were very interesting and rewarding. ‘RIMC.’, as it was called, was probably the best school of its kind in India at that time. Run on English public school lines it combined liberal education with a military environment, only sufficient to induce us to lead a regular disciplined life, new to most Indian children. The emphasis was very well-defined and the products of this college did well in comparison with those of other schools in India at that time. The principal and all the staff were British, except the Urdu and Hindi language teachers. The college had a mosque, a temple and a gurdawara and we were marched daily in time for evening prayers to our respective places of worship. Playing facilities were ample and the surroundings and the environment clean and healthy. I was an average student in class and had nothing to show in the way of brilliance in any particular field. A convention that caused me considerable annoyance was the wrong age with which most children entered schools in India. Since there were no birth certificates, it was normal for parents to show the child’s age a year or two less than their actual age. This put those children at a disadvantage in the class whose year of birth had been recorded correctly. So at the age of 12, I was in a class whose average age was 13 or 14. I would have much preferred to have been dropped a class but had to struggle throughout my educational career with some children my seniors in age. Some 30 years later when I put my own children in school, I remembered my experience and when my son Omar was experiencing a little difficulty in class, I asked the principal, much to his surprise, to put him back in a lower class. I wanted him to feel comfortable in class and not undergo the experience I had in school. I think Omar benefited from this decision. In 1939 I took the entrance examination at Delhi for the Indian Military Academy (I.M.A) at Dehra Dun. In those days, only fifteen boys were selected for the Indian Army every six months for Officers’ training. Twelve were selected by an open examination and three were taken from the ranks of the Indian Army. I was one of the twelve who passed the open examination. Another, also from the RIMC, was Yaqub Khan. The examination at Delhi was an interesting affair. There were almost equal marks for the written examination and the interview. The members of the interview board were five or six senior British armed forces or civilian officers and Sir Hissamdudin Khan of Peshawar. Sir Hissamuddin Khan knew my father and the interview was a pleasant affair. A few general questions were asked by the panel and Sir Hissamuddin Khan asked me to do a ‘cart-wheel’. This I did and so ended the interview. I am sure that my ‘cart-wheel’, though not perfect, got me good marks and I had no difficulty in being one of the twelve selected for the IMA. Yaqub Khan was also selected. One of the other three, selected from the ranks of the Indian Army, was Tikka Khan, who also rose to be a general in the Pakistan Army. Yaqub and I lived in Srinagar and were required to be medically examined at the Combined Military Hospital at Sialkot before joining the IMA. When we reported to the CMH at Sialkot, we were given laboratory tests and examined by Major Puri of the Indian Medical Service (IMS). Yaqub was declared fit but I was told that I was suffering from a serious disease. I was admitted into the hospital. I was told that my laboratory test had shown that I had albumin in my urine which was at a dangerous level. Yaqub bade me farewell and I asked him to inform my father in Srinagar about the state of my health. I felt perfectly well but spent an anxious two days in the hospital until my father arrived with a doctor from Srinagar with a few medical books. These showed that albumin had been considered a dangerous thing in the past but recent tests had shown that some of the Cambridge University rowing crew had albumin in their urine and research on the subject had revealed that albumin was of two kinds – caustic and functional. The caustic variety was considered dangerous but functional albumin was quite harmless. In my case, the albumin turned out to be functional. Major Puri was sufficiently convinced and I was declared fit for joining the IMA. The two-and-a-half-year course at the IMA was reduced to one and a half years because of the war. Yaqub and I graduated from the IMA at the end of 1940 and I was commissioned in the ‘9 Royal Deccan Horse’. Immediately afterwards, however, the Indian Air Force asked for volunteers from the army for the Indian Air Force. I was one of those who volunteered, was interviewed and selected without having to do a cart-wheel! Wing Commander Shubrato Mukerjee, the senior-most Indian Air Force officer at the time, was one of the members of the interview board. (To be continued) This is an excerpt from the writer’s book “My Political Struggle”. He is a retired air chief and veteran politician. |
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
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