Raids every other day

IT should now be clear to all and sundry that the US has decided to continue attacking targets inside Pakistan no matter what Islamabad’s sensitivities may be on the matter. This is evident from the increase in the frequency of raids by American forces and attacks by drones inside Fata. On Friday an American drone attacked a non-functional school building, killing 12 people. This was their fifth attack in 10 days, making it an average of one raid every second day. The reason for the impunity with which the Americans are operating inside Pakistan territory is obvious: the leadership chaos. The question of Pakistan’s military prowess and its ability to hit back is of secondary importance. In any case, we have no choice but to tackle the issue diplomatically. As Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Friday, Pakistan would like to settle the issue through diplomatic means because Islamabad enjoyed cordial relations with the countries concerned. This policy is obviously based on common sense. Pakistan has to act cool-headedly, because the situation is grave, and the allies tend to give an impression as if they are enemies. The glee with which President Hamid Karzai has endorsed America’s new ‘forward policy’ shows Afghan national interests getting mixed up with America’s war on terror. No Afghan leader would like to miss this opportunity. More menacingly, having received a snub from Nato, the Bush administration is now trying to rope in Britain. Even without Tony Blair one could be reasonably sure the British would be only too happy to be on board in raiding across the Durand Line as apparently Gordon Brown is no different inasmuch as poodle-like tendencies are concerned.

The issue for Pakistan is the need for putting its own house in order. One does not know who is minding the store. In fact, it appears the process of foreign policy formulation and its articulation has been forgotten and those at the helm are trying to learn it, for one cannot but note the gaucherie about it. Incidentally, do we have a foreign minister? It is indeed astonishing that everybody is doing the talking except Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Those who have spoken on the American raids are army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, President Asif Ali Zardari and the prime minister; the foreign minister, until yesterday, had been conspicuous by his silence. Also, the high-level contacts that have been a feature of our close relationship with China have declined. Since assuming office, the prime minister has visited Sri Lanka, America, Malaysia and Egypt, but, ignoring the Olympic formality, he has not paid an official visit to Beijing to know what our north-eastern neighbour thinks about the situation Pakistan is trapped in.

Power play?

PAKISTAN is a long way from accepting a woman’s right to free speech. Shocking reports state that the PML-Q’s Senator Yasmeen Shah — who had earlier raised the issue of the women allegedly buried alive in Balochistan — has claimed that Senator Israrullah Zehri threatened her with dire consequences for highlighting the matter in the Senate. Mr Zehri had earlier stunned the nation by indicating that the killing and burying alive of women were part of Baloch tribal traditions. According to some reports, Senator Yasmeen Shah also claimed that Senator Zehri maintained that ‘a death squad comprising 12 tribesmen had been dispatched to assassinate her’. Clearly, the issue is not only about the burying alive of the ‘errant’ women of tribal terrains; it is also apparent that there is an attempt to dissuade those voices that are raised in condemnation. Although the Senate committee on human rights has condemned the Balochistan senator for his remarks to a fellow legislator, a deeper malaise is at play. Pakistan is one of the few places in the world where public figures not only get away with defending murder in the name of age-old customs and accusing the media of giving these atrocities undue coverage, they are also not prevented from uttering words that smack of a medieval mindset. It will certainly be a while before our women can be protected from brutal social mores that demand abject submission.

The plot has often been sidelined in the case of the murdered Balochistan women. First, all official emphasis centred on the ‘idea’ of the victims being ‘buried alive’ rather than the fact that the acts were crimes against the state. Second, the senator who deserved all-round censure for defending what is tantamount to plain murder was not pulled up by government high-ups as he deserved. Perhaps, it is not much more than a stunt to divert attention from the barbarism that plagues his province, however if a political personality — and Senator Zehri is not the only one to have done so — upholds such brutalities, why do we lay the blame at the door of jirgas that comprise orthodox elements who, unlike presumably educated legislators, can hardly envision a different world than the one they inhabit? Does no law prescribe any admonishment for those who condone such brutalities? After all, they are not much more than instigators of mass injustices against women. It is time that we woke up to the fact that it is those who promote inhumane customs, as much as the criminals themselves, that need to be deterred, irrespective of their political standing.

Water crisis

AN acute shortage of water is set to play havoc with Pakistan’s crops. According to the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) the country will face a shortage of 35-40 per cent in the upcoming rabi (winter) season, threatening the wheat crop, which is critical to the country’s food security. To stave off a food crisis next year, Irsa has demanded that the two largest consumers of irrigation water — Sindh and Punjab — reduce their indents in the current last days of the kharif (summer) season. The provinces have been reluctant to accede to Irsa’s demand because reducing the water supplied to the rice and cotton crops in the crucial last watering period will dent the output of those crops, which are critical to Pakistan’s economy. Sindh and Punjab argue that nature may yet intervene to supply more water for the wheat crop this winter. Irsa has prevailed over Sindh but Punjab is resisting. The Punjab resistance is based on a shrewd calculation. Irsa wants Punjab to reduce its current indent from Tarbela dam and take extra water from Mangla; however, the canal system is such that a higher water level in Mangla will benefit Punjab more this winter than a higher level in Tarbela.

The current crisis, while grave, is only a symptom of a deeper malaise: the lack of water planning in the country. The current water crisis has been triggered by unusually low temperatures in the Northern Areas which has reduced the flow in rivers. However, that is precisely what long-term water planning accommodates for: seasonal fluctuations and a buffer for unexpected dry spells. As far back as 1976, when Tarbela was completed, it was estimated that Pakistan needed a new dam of Tarbela’s size — the world’s largest earth- and rock-filled dam — every seven years to meet its water requirements. Thirty-two years on, not a single comparable dam has been built. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Pakistan’s ruling elite. Water is quite literally the lifeblood of Pakistan. Agriculture accounts for 20 per cent of the country’s GDP and employs 40 per cent of Pakistan’s labour force. What Pakistan desperately needs are two things: a national water policy and immediate implementation of that policy.

Who owns Karachi?

I LIKE our city nazim Mr Mustafa Kamal’s ‘can do’ spirit with regard to his belief that it’s up to the citizens of Karachi to take responsibility for the upkeep and civic health of this city. Forward-thinking and progressive, the nazim has created a website for the project which boasts the tagline ‘My City — My Responsibility’.

The programme was started on Aug 14 this year, and the idea is simple: anyone can come forward and register himself or herself as a ‘city owner’. All you have to do is volunteer two hours of your time per week doing something “in the interest of the city”.

According to the website, on Independence Day, labourers, students, artists, members of the business community, government officers, elected representatives, taxi drivers, and even the pesh imams of mosques came and put their names down to become city owners. Although it’s still far too early to judge the success of the programme, the nazim has big dreams for Karachi, and envisions a whole cadre of city owners who will do things like plant trees, clear rubbish, inspect schools and hospitals, help with traffic (students of Karachi University and Sir Syed University did this in Clifton and Defence in the second week of September) and other civic duties of this nature.

All this got me thinking about the question: who owns Karachi? Is it the people? Is it the mafia? Is it the army? Is it the members of one ethnic group or another? The original inhabitants of the province? Immigrants of the old guard from India, or the new wave from the NWFP or Afghanistan? Is it the much-maligned ‘foreign hand’? Do I own Karachi? Do you?

Recently, I got a beautiful letter from a Mr Yusuf Dadabhoy, and many of the things he describes in it make this question even more complex. He defined old Karachi of the forties, fifties and sixties (the golden years, according to most people of my parents’ generation) as “the prestigious locality of Karachi: Garden East, bordering between Chowk Gurumandir on the south, Lasbella intersection on the north, [and] Soldier Bazaar on the west side”.

He went on to reminisce with great fondness how this area was considered the “gem of Karachi”, in which newly designed bungalows competed for grandeur with old mahals and havelis built by Hindu Sindhis in the thirties and forties, bringing to life with his vivid words a Karachi that most people in my generation and younger can’t even imagine in today’s Karachi of guns, drugs, crime and filth.

Mr Dadabhoy talked about the old Muslim Sindhi settlements around Lasbella Chowk, known as goths, and described a cheerful scene on Eid day as “little Sindhi children dressed in shining red, orange and yellow shalwar kameez with matching glittering gold and silver dupattas, golden and silver sandals with little heels and bands packed our houses in good cheer”.

In true Gujarati style, the grand houses of this neighbourhood would open their doors to the Sindhis and treat them to morning Eid feasts of Indian-spiced whole chickens, tomato-flavoured red mutton ‘champ’ qorma, Gujarati kofta with fresh baked naan, meethi roti, meetha paratha, coconut-filled samosas, and Gujarati mithai.

I learned more about Karachi from Mr Dadabhoy’s letter than I have from all my years living in this city, to be honest. He told me about the newly built universities in the Garden East area, the engineering schools, science colleges, the hospitals, the primary and secondary schools. I could close my eyes and envision wide boulevards lined with cherry trees that bloomed with hibiscus and gulhmohar in springtime. I could smell the chicken tikka as it was being grilled on the hot coals at Bundu Khan’s; I could hear the shouts of excited children as they stood in line at the Bambino, Lyric, Naz and Nishaat cinemas. And if I concentrated hard, I could hear the lions roaring from Karachi Zoo in the early mornings….

And that’s not all. Karachi at one point was considered to be one of the most exciting centres of industrial activity: crossing the Lasbella Bridge, you’d get to the Site Industrial Area, where large cotton mills, factories that produced ceramics, aluminum, plastics, cast iron foundries, cement plants, pipe-making plants, soap and detergent plants, all bore testament to the remarkable ‘can-do’ spirit that Karachi has always been known for.

At five o’clock, the bells and whistles would pierce the air, and Mr Dadabhoy told me that you’d see lines of disciplined workers changing shifts from their homes in Pak Colony, Nazimabad, Golimar and Lasbella. “We invested in businesses, industries, primary schools, hospitals, charities, banking and insurance … the urban Sindhi contributed greatly to making Pakistan a sustainable country.”

But as Mr Dadabhoy rightly points out in his letter, things are different today. “The plight of the urban Sindhi living in scattered goths around the old areas of Karachi is now [moving] towards despondency, helplessness, and misery…. What went wrong with the Sindh provincial urban planning commission?... why were they not given land to build new settlements closer to their goths, competitive primary schools, institutes to learn basic trade or the healthcare profession, Sindh government scholarships for the bright and able, community centres or government-funded programmes to uplift their goths?”

Some provincial planners, well aware of the plight of the urban Sindhi population, have decided to focus on Thatta as an option for a growing young population, and with development of both Thatta and the Keti Bandar area, the women legislators of Sindh are working on creating modern settlements with sound infrastructure to house the disenfranchised populations of the old goths of Karachi, as well as a restive interior youth who want to move from the rural to the urban areas of Sindh, but find it hard to succeed in Karachi.

Yes, I can’t help but wonder, does the urban Sindhi today feel that he or she owns Karachi? And if the new generations do find Thatta a viable alternative to the economic opportunities that once attracted people from all over Pakistan to Karachi, the gem of Pakistan, will they feel cheated of their inheritance?

A football ballet

WHEN the English National Ballet (ENB) announced a new work which interpreted 10 great footballing moments through the medium of dance, there was much to look forward to — not least in the hairdressing department.

Would the company don Charles II-style wigs of tightly permed curls to play Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita? Are there any dancers bald enough to make a convincing Archie Gemmill, the Scotsman who scored a wondrous goal against the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup (“Scotland are in dreamland!” blared TV commentator David Coleman)? Can a dancer still look elegant en pointe in a Maradona mullet?

Alas, these important questions must remain unanswered. The Beautiful Game — A Football Ballet, which previewed on Friday in London ahead of its premiere proper in Liverpool next Tuesday, does not take its mission literally. Its nine-strong cast wear their own, tasteful hair throughout.

And while they do incorporate elements of each of the ten pieces of footballing history voted for by more than 20,000 fans as being the best ever, they do so in a rather loose manner.

It opens with five buff boys in football kits jogging out of an imaginary tunnel, followed by four dainty ballerinas in sporty, tight white tops and red, white and blue tutus.

Another highlight of The Beautiful Game comes when one of the ballerinas is hoisted into the sky, her fingertips clearly tapping an imaginary ball, which will invoke painful memories for those still bitter about Diego Maradona and the Hand of God in the 1986 World Cup.

Other footballing memories recreated with arabesques and battements include Gordon Banks’s World Cup save against Brazil in 1970, David Beckham’s free kick against Greece in 2001, Johan Cruyff’s nifty turn, which he debuted in 1974, and, of course, England’s Geoff Hurst’s “They think it’s all over” World Cup goal from 1966.

At the launch, former soccer star John Barnes — a guest of the New Football Pools, which commissioned the ballet to celebrate its 85th anniversary — admitted that professional ballet dancers train far harder than their footballing counterparts.

“For most footballers, they just have to give their all for 90 minutes two times a week, and apart from a few training sessions spend the rest of the time resting. They only train intensively for six weeks before the new season,” said Barnes, who in the 1980s was sent, with his team mates at the southern English club Watford, to learn ballet by the club’s then manager, Graham Taylor, who believed it would improve their footwork, coordination and balance.

— The Guardian, London

OTHER VOICES - Indian Press

On to a new era of discovery

The Hindu

FOURTEEN years, thousands of physicists and $8bn in the making, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator built at the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva, crossed a major milestone on Wednesday. The first proton beam was successfully switched on and steered around the full 27-kilometre circumference of the underground ringed machine, marking the beginning of a new era of discovery in physics. The world particle physics community today is perhaps in the midst of a revolution in its understanding of what the universe is made of and how it works. Even as physicists have successfully described the fundamental constituents of matter that make up the universe with increasing detail based on what is called the Standard Model, over the last 15 years they have realised that they know much less than they thought they did. For instance, the Model cannot describe the universe in the first moments after the Big Bang. Today physicists believe that visible matter — the stars and the galaxies — makes up only five per cent of the energy density of the universe. The rest is believed to be some mysterious dark matter and dark energy. A crucial missing link in the Standard Model is the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that is believed to endow mass to all the particles. Tevatron, the most powerful accelerator of today at Fermilab in the United States, fell short of the energy required to produce Higgs.

The LHC is designed to bring together counter-rotating beams of protons to collide head-on with seven times Tevatron’s energy and create temperatures and energy densities prevalent at a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This will produce a host of particles — known, expected and totally unexpected. These may answer some outstanding questions. Is Higgs for real? What is dark matter made of? What is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe? What lies beyond the Standard Model? Is it supersymmetry? Are there higher dimensions that string theories require? Is there new physics lurking at these energies and beyond? They may also raise new ones. All these will slowly unravel as results begin to emerge from the LHC a year from now. About 600 million collisions per second will spew out 15 million gigabytes of data annually that physicists around the world will analyse. In this exciting development, there is some creditable contribution from Indian physicists, who are participating in two of the six experiments to be performed using the LHC. It is, however, unfortunate that at this time of great scientific excitement over the prospect of new discoveries, there should be irrational voices predicting an apocalypse. — (Sept 12)