They came together at different dates and times, in big groups and small in Islamabad and Peshawar, under the joint aegis of the Jinnah Institute, Islamabad and the United States Institute for Peace, Washington D.C.

Their “perceptions” were then “captured” for the report “aimed at better comprehending Pakistan’s outlook on the situation in Afghanistan”, and which has recently been let loose upon an unsuspecting world.

The report is copious but to start:

“Pakistani foreign policy elite [I kid you not] believe that only a truly inclusive government in Kabul can usher in an era of relatively efficient and stable governance in Afghanistan. Most participants defined this as a politically negotiated configuration with adequate Pakhtun representation that is recognised by all ethnic and political stakeholders in Afghanistan.

“While far from a consensus, some opinion-makers insisted that given the current situation, a sustainable arrangement would necessarily require the main Taliban factions — particularly Mullah Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura’ Taliban, and the Haqqani network — to be part of the new political arrangement. Specifically, a decentralised system of governance is more likely to be sustainable than an overly centralised one. Such an inclusive dispensation, it is believed, will view the relationship with Islamabad favourably and be sensitive to Pakistani concerns.”

Really now? So there is, after all, a Quetta Shura of the Taliban, what? Now, which of the ‘foreign policy elites’ has opened this particular can of worms please? Well, good and well as my friend Ashraf Afridi used to say, for prior to this there were stout denials from the security establishment and its handmaidens with only some non-foreign policy elites such as yours truly saying repeatedly that there was a Quetta Shura as large as death itself in Quetta.

It is also true then that President Karzai and his former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, the most hated of those that matter in the Land of the Pure, were always right when they said that the top leadership of the Taliban were headquartered in Quetta, one of Pakistan’s largest, most important cantonments? As were the Americans, who repeatedly said that the Quetta Shura was alive and kicking and should be apprehended to loud and cacophonic cries of ‘Israeli/Indian/US conspiracy’ against the Citadel of Islam.

And this despite Baloch politicians such as Hasil Bizenjo saying on record that the people of Quetta (and by extension Balochistan) were at the mercy of these terrorists. Indeed, despite Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar saying a year ago that not only was there a Quetta Shura, it had already been degraded by the Pakistan Army. The degrading bit was nonsense of course.

So then, there is insistence on the part of “some opinion makers” that Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani network have to necessarily be part of the “new political arrangement” for this “inclusive dispensation, it is believed, will view the relationship with Islamabad favourably and be sensitive to Pakistani concerns”?

How pray will these opinion makers (and foreign policy elites, let us never forget) make sure that their friends will find place in the new arrangement? Will there be elections so that the Afghans will freely choose the new ‘arrangement’? If so, what if these people are not elected? What then? Will it then be ‘arranged’ to get them on to the ‘new political arrangement’ by force of arms, and further terrorism? Will we never learn our lessons?

As for a decentralised system of governance being more likely to be sustainable than an overly centralised one (and which will be sensitive to Pakistani concerns!), how do our elites intend to ensure this system of governance in a sovereign, foreign country, named Afghanistan? At the point of terrorists’ guns? I mean is there any sense at all in any of this?

While there are mealy-mouthed references to how the Deep State and the civilian government (dragged onto the scene for no good reason for we know just where the policy on Afghanistan is manufactured) have now given up on a return to the 1990s type of dispensation in Afghanistan (please note the utter arrogance), there is nothing new in this report: it is merely an exercise in recollecting stuff that has been said umpteen times over, making some believe that this report is nothing but an insidious attempt at subtly propagating the views and the thoughts of, with notable exceptions, the very same people who got us into this mess in the first place.

One of the most ludicrous ‘perceptions’ is the China question. I’ll let the report speak for itself: “Some from among the policy elite take seriously the notion that India’s Afghanistan presence is part of a regional strategy to counter China, and in that sense, it complements long-term US interests in the region. For this cohort, Indian presence in Afghanistan will remain a major sticking point in the Pakistan-US bilateral relationship even after 2014.” Boggles the senses, eh reader? Cohort?

And to top it all: “Responses reflected an acute awareness that the Pakistani state had been embarrassed and cornered, with the world viewing Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan as proof that it is Pakistan, not Afghanistan that remains the centre of gravity of the problem.” And we Pakistanis do not view our country as being the centre of gravity of the problem? Osama was killed in Timbuktu? Tens of our own people are not blown to smithereens every day?

Our sahib log will never learn. We have had it.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

And utter condemnation for a private TV channel’s vitriolic host and her hate-filled red-capped guest who is known to be a propagandist of the Deep State, for their shrill and nasty attacks upon the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma) that arranged the seminar, generally, and Mr Sharif particularly, merely because he held out the hand of friendship to India?

The anchor did not stop at denigrating the former prime minister; she also attacked President Asif Ali Zardari for saying some years ago, soon after he became president, that India was not the main threat to our country, that the enemy was within. What angered one in the extreme was these two suggesting that any mention of peace with India amounted to treason, was against the two-nation theory, and every other nonsense trotted out by the establishment to seize the narrative on every aspect of Pakistan’s relations with its most important neighbour.

I have heard Mr Sharif’s speech in its entirety and found it to be warmly worded, sincere and laced with an earthy humour that so stirred our Indian friends who were present there. It was a speech that should have been made by a man who as prime minister had the Indian prime minister, Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, come to Lahore and give a friendly and conciliatory speech at Minar-i-Pakistan, no less, calling for peace and amity between India and Pakistan.

It was a speech that should have been made by a man who was let down by his own chief of army staff, who stabbed his Indian partner-in-peace in the back during the very days India and Pakistan were talking of improving relations, by mounting the mindless and stupid adventure called Kargil.

It was a speech that should have been made by a man who understands that there is no way forward for Pakistan or/and India without peace and friendship between the two. Indeed, Nawaz Sharif was right to say that whilst India had held several inquiries on (its forces being caught unprepared in) Kargil no inquiry was allowed to be held in Pakistan (on why the operation was mounted at all).

So what then so exercised the compere and her guest so much that they went off the deep end? What was so wrong with Nawaz Sharif saying that since India and Pakistan were neighbours one had to look out for the other just as our religion and culture teach us?

What was so wrong when he said that Indians and Pakistanis shared the same culture, even food? And that the border was just a line on the ground? And that instead of competing in arming ourselves with the weapons of war we should compete in the field of industry and business and commerce. What was so wrong in saying that God, who is Rab ul Alimeen was the Rab (God) of all mankind, and not Rab ul Muslimeen, the God of Muslims only?

Whilst most of the diatribe heard on the programme was disgusting, the most gut-wrenching was when the anchor dismissed the part about Indians and us eating the same food by asserting that Hindus worshipped what we ate i.e. beef! The question to ask is: when did she and her guest last visit India and interact with Indian (well alright, Hindu) friends?

The question to ask is: did the compere and her violent guest say what they said because they wanted to say it, or to parrot the Deep State’s line that India (and all those who sail in it) is enemy number one of Pakistan? That there can be no peace ever with India, and that anyone who says anything to the contrary is a traitor and worse?

It was instructive too to see the red-capped extremist, and by implication the TV channel, throw all caution to the winds by alleging that Safma was a RAW-funded organisation. I ask you! Whilst one has often asked the Deep State to rein in its lackeys aka the bright young things, the conspiracy theorists extraordinary who see RAW/Mossad/CIA behind every bush, this really takes the cake.

It is no wonder that 51 (and growing) respected and most senior journalists have condemned the canard and lie, and Safma has threatened legal action against the channel, the compere and her team, and the so-called analyst for defamation. While I add my name to the list of those who condemn this calumny, it is simply not enough to merely sue the so-called analyst, him with the red cap. He is but a puppet; it is his puppeteers who must be unmasked and dragged into the daylight. For there are many more like him, fed on government moneys expropriated by the Deep State for its own purposes and dark doings.

Such as sending out messages of hate and rancour to the world at large, and particularly to India and the US with Israel thrown in for good measure. The Internet is full of their rantings and ravings, going to the extent of holding out threats of using our bum on imagined enemies.

Which straightaway brings me to say what I have said so many times before: our political leaders must stay together, and arm-in-arm fight the monstrous Deep State. Otherwise, first one, then the other.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

Let me lay my case before you one more time, reader. First and foremost, the lowering of national flags at the sound of the haunting notes of Retreat (which used to invariably bring tears to my eyes in the days that I served our army, for they brought back thoughts of friends no more, of comrades who had left the unit for other duties elsewhere, those who we loved and appreciated as good soldiers no longer among us) when the troops are at rest after a full day of difficult, sometimes dangerous, duties, is a solemn and dignified exercise, done with grace, quiet and respect.Not the loud show of completely misplaced swagger and fake bravado and machismo and braggadocio on display every evening on the Pakistan-India border, with soldiers from both sides preening themselves, twirling their moustaches, glaring at the other, making non-regulation drill movements which have nothing whatsoever to do with the drill manuals of either country, and generally making idiots of themselves, and by sure extension, of their commanders.

It is a shameful exercise which inflames the crowds on both sides, that sit in specially constructed stands, listening to martial songs from their respective sides of the border. Whilst relations between the two nuclear-armed countries should be more civilised, more polite, this uncivilised behaviour is allowed to be demonstrated to the whole world that surely sniggers behind our backs for the cretinous fools we make of ourselves.

Let me appeal once more to the sensible (or is it asking for too much) in the two governments to please put an immediate stop to this scandalous show. If there is no agreement between the two countries to discontinue this violent display, let our country do it on its own. If India wants to continue acting like a court jester to the crowds let it do so. Let us prove that we are more sober, more respectful of our flag than others are of theirs.

Incidentally, some time ago there was a news item that India was going to unilaterally tone down this nonsensical show upon which I recall having written a laudatory piece congratulating our Indian brothers and sisters for doing the right thing. I was shocked, therefore, to see on PBS television a warming-up show for the independence days of both countries just the other day. The same old tamasha was put on display with the same old jingoism. Shame on both countries.

I might add that the recent meeting of the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India, and the vibes coming from both capitals are, thankfully, most positive, and a pointer to better relations in the future.

May one exhort both countries to continue on this path — to open our borders to one another’s citizens, to increase direct trade over the land route and direct contact between the political leaders of both countries. I want to be able to drive to Amritsar from Lahore in the morning for thandi khui dian poorian, just as my friends from Amritsar want to drive to Gujranwala for tikka kebabs. Would that this would be possible one day, and that the two countries live in peace and harmony.

For which, of course, the dinosaurs on both sides will have to be left behind: let them gnash their teeth in rage and anger; let them tear out their own flesh, for if the people of both countries come together in peace they can do nothing. It is imperative, therefore, that Sardar Manmohan Singh accept the invitation to visit Pakistan at the earliest followed by a visit by our prime minister to India. That should be followed by visits of Presidents Asif Ali Zardari and Pratibha Patil to each other’s countries.

And as suggested earlier in this same space, Indian army chief Gen Vijay Kumar Singh should visit Pakistan (after the visits of the heads of government and state), and the very next week Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani should visit India.

We simply must, the Indians and us, show the world that we are a civilised people who respect the mass of the people on either side of the border; that we are not hell-bent on using our respective bums on each other’s unsuspecting and innocent populations. Come on, gentlemen, get real, get with it. For there are no winners in any zero-sum game.

On Sunday night, I saw The Help a very moving film about the experiences of African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, the centre of anti-black sentiment, in the late 1950s/early 1960s. As I had noted before, the treatment of these blacks by white supremacists was far better than what our domestics face in our homes and police stations in both Pakistan and northern India today.

The years have taught me that we must be one of the most racist people on the planet, the one relief being given to the domestics and farm labour during the time of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto when these poor unfortunates finally found a voice. And the backlash, as in The Help, was something to behold: the Punjab glitterati turning against ZAB saying: “Yaar Bhutto nein taan nokkar hi kharab kar dittay nain” (‘Buddy, Bhutto has even spoilt [our] servants’).

Well sirs, there you go…

kshafi1@yahoo.com.uk

In his words: “I am also surprised that you couldn’t see the obvious context in which the FBI was ‘shocked to find’ (to quote the famous line from Casablanca) that KAC had connections with ‘the boys’. KAC has been operating under the very nose of all the intelligence agencies in the US for at least two decades.

It developed a close network of relations with the State Department, the White House (during the four administrations) and with both houses of Congress.

“Dr Fai and his KAC was facilitated by the US officials (and not by ‘the boys’) to present the Kashmir case before several UN-affiliated bodies both in New York and in Geneva for years. The ‘links’, therefore, were of several dimensions and, for years, part of the games that humourless people were playing with both Pakistan and India, and trying to develop independent access to the relevant actors in Kashmir, especially the Indian side, along the way.

“I was really surprised that a person of your analytical stature would so easily accept and endorse the FBI’s stated position.”

He also goes on to say that Dr Fai was jailed in India-administered Kashmir and that he escaped from jail and came to the US via Pakistan whereupon his Indian passport was cancelled in the early 1990s. And that he himself attended the 2006 Washington D.C. conference during which he can “vouch that Dr Fai showed the draft before the conclusion of the conference to the participants.

The draft did include the right of self-determination. However, all the American and Indian participants refused to sign the declaration if this phrase was there.

“A compromise phrase of ‘political rights’ was agreed on the suggestion of Mr Yousuf Buch and some prominent Indian
Kashmiri delegates who were eager to seek signatures from the American and Indian delegates. Dr Fai was not happy but he went along when the KAC board chairman agreed to the revised version.”

He also suggests that Khalid Hasan did not get on too well with Dr Fai, therefore his unfair remarks on the self-determination issue.

Which is all very well. But, respectfully, the point still remains that Dr Fai operated outside US law if the allegations made against him of getting undeclared funds from a foreign government aka ‘the boys’ is true. The point still is that the démarche made to the Americans on behalf of an American citizen was idiotic.

As for the matter of the US government looking away, if not exactly helping Fai along in the past, time and events have moved on. The fact is that Pakistan, prodded by the Ghairat Brigades, now has a testy relationship with the US.

The fact is that Pakistan, let’s face it, is a client state of the US upon which it depends for the weapons of war, upon which in turn its Deep State bases its intransigence; and plain good old cash. The fact is that this relationship is an unequal one.

The fact is that the junior partner in any relationship cannot strike attitudes and pretend it calls the shots. For if it does, the senior partner will hit back. Ergo, Dr Fai’s troubles. And more troubles to come, rest assured, friends.

For we have not yet seen the light. Just a few days ago, the American ambassador was stopped at Islamabad airport on his way to Karachi and asked to show the FO’s permission to travel to Karachi! I ask you! What if the Americans stopped our
ambassador from flying to, say, Chicago?

Do the movers and the shakers of the Deep State, for it is them surely, not understand the dictum tit for tat? Do they not understand that the wheel has come full circle, that there is a growing realisation in America that we Pakistanis are unreliable friends out to make a buck any which way; that we sucker our friends mercilessly, and that there is a certain resolve now to teach us a lesson?

Are the Rommels and the Guderians reading the signals emanating furiously (word chosen advisedly) from Washington D.C.

particularly from their former buddies the Republicans? Are they aware of the repeated references to the Kakul raid and the need to get more bad boys in the same manner soon? Unilaterally?

Is this then the time to strike attitudes, and strut about puffing out their puny chests or is it time to tell the Americans that the past is past and that in the future they will do the right thing and fight terror in the way and manner it should be fought: with sincerity and honesty of purpose because the fight is ours too.

Gentlemen, time is running out faster than you think. For the love of God spare our country more pain and sorrow which is sure to be ours if you continue to be bad boys. So stop whingeing, see reality and come down to earth immediately if not sooner.

In the meanwhile, there is a debate raging in the western world about whether Anders Behring Brevik is a Christian terrorist/extremist or not with most commentators, among them clergymen, saying that he is. But of course he is, as was Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Terrorists are terrorists: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, whatever.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

Every week brings forth new and newer allegations which only hurt our country evermore as if it was not wounded enough already. The newest news is the arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai the head of the Kashmir American Council, supposedly working for the cause of the Kashmiri people.

Before I go any further let me quote from an article by Khalid Hasan who was a Kashmiri in his heart and soul and who wrote so eloquently and wisely on Kashmir and its pain. Khalid lived in the Washington D.C. area for many years immediately preceding his untimely and sad death and was deeply involved in Kashmir-related activities across the world.

In August 2006, writing about Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan’s visit to Washington, Khalid Hasan says: “Asked what he thought of the recent Kashmir Conference held in Washington where the sponsor, the Kashmiri-American Council, refused to include any reference to self-determination in what it grandiloquently called ‘The Washington Declaration’, Sardar Qayyum, whose political acumen and skill even Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto acknowledged, replied, ‘If you take out the right of self-determination from the struggle of the Kashmiris, you are left with nothing. So how can you cast it aside?’

“When someone said that it was Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai who had seen to it that the final document issued by the Conference in controversial circumstances should carry no reference to self-determination, Sardar Qayyum smiled wanly and said, ‘What can I say? What Fai does is not on his own’. What he left unsaid is clear and it is time those who back operations that do a disservice to the Kashmir cause rather than advance it, were to re-examine their conduct and reassess their erroneous assumptions.”

He also wrote: “The links between the Council and certain sponsored Kashmir outfits in London, Toronto and Brussels are too well known for me [to make] a listing here. It is time this charade was brought to an end and the agencies (or more accurately The Agency) masterminding them were to begin to concentrate on the work for which it/they were originally set up. It is quite clear that unless the ‘Invisibles’ get out of the act, we will keep sinking deeper into the morass in which we find ourselves. The damage done, some feel, is already beyond repair, so let The Boys pick up their hats and their gadgets and leave by the nearest exit without saying goodbye.”

Now then, before the Ghairat Brigades get into an almighty lather in the matter of Fai’s arrest let them take two deep breaths and digest this:
— Dr Fai is an American national who holds dual nationality of India.

— He did not declare himself to be an agent of a foreign government (Pakistan) and therefore was outside the pale of the law when large payments were allegedly traced to him through emails and sworn testimony.

— The law’s spirit is: “The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) of 1938 requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”

Dr Fai is in jail pending trial.

Now then, since he is a US citizen, what got into our Foreign Office to issue a démarche to the US embassy — taken so seriously by the Americans that a lowly political counsellor received it, thank you very much — in rather bombastic and convoluted (as is our wont) language. The Foreign Office’s statement:

“Dr Fai is a US citizen. A démarche was made to the US embassy in Islamabad today to register our concerns, in particular the slander campaign against Pakistan … upholding [the] fundamental rights of Kashmiris is the fundamental responsibility of the international community and all conscientious people who value human rights and values … campaigns to defame the just cause of the Kashmiri people will not affect its legitimacy.”

Several problems here. How is this a “slander campaign against Pakistan”? Were the payments made in a clandestine manner or were they not? If they were not, the FO should say so. How is Fai’s arrest for what surely is dubious funding too, a “campaign to defame the just cause…”? Did such funding not happen? If it did not, the FO should say so. This newest jewel will not affect the ‘legitimacy’ of the cause of Kashmir? Of course it will when the pointsman of the cause is arrested for violating the law of his own country.

Whilst one sympathises with the FO for perpetually having a pistol held to its head by the arbiters of foreign policy of the country one wishes that one, just one honourable FO babu will stand up one day and say to what Khalid Hasan called ‘The Boys’: ‘I will not do your stupid bidding because it will hurt our country.’

In the end, just this for The Boys to chew on while they plan their next brilliant move: just one-third of US supplies for Afghanistan now go through Pakistan, with the Americans working hard to develop other routes, as ‘relations with Pakistan continue to deteriorate’.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

It is good to see that so-called ghairat, or at least the foolish version of ghairat peddled by our hard-right press, did not stand in the way of Gen Shuja Pasha’s visit to see CIA officials to urgently straighten out the kinks that had surfaced in this vital relationship as a result, first of the Raymond Davis case, and then Osama bin Laden’s killing by US Navy SEALs in Abbottabad
Cantonment.

Astonishingly, even the Mehran naval airbase attack was twisted out of shape and put on the shoulders of the Americans by the Ghairat Brigades by letting out rumours and innuendo on the Internet by the bright young things, about five or six unidentified Americans being seen in Karachi on the eve of the attack and then disappearing the next day and other such tripe when it was clear, even before Saleem Shahzad’s book came out, that it was an inside job made that much easier because of lax naval security standards.

It is important to recall that these kinks appeared as a direct consequence of the above-mentioned section of the extreme right-wing jingoistic media, print and electronic, running a shrill and raucous campaign which even our great Rommels and Guderians (who at the drop of a tin-hat get rid of elected governments) could not withstand.

Actually, much like News Corp and its News of the World (NoW) and Fox News, this part of our, let me say it again, raucous media actually held the general staff to ransom, just as Murdoch’s now crumbling empire held several British governments to ransom.

For more years than one cares to recall, this wily Australian freebooter and carpetbagger went around the world, throwing his weight about after acquiring ailing newspapers mainly from dissolute owners and setting up monopolies in the print and electronic media.

Barring a few, all of Murdoch’s media outlets were partisan and heavily tilted towards the hard right in politics and in social affairs except in the case of New Labour when they supported Tony Blair and actually helped him to victory.

They too were jingoistic and loud and in-your-face to the point of being downright offensive, cowing down governments and their leaders for fear that they might be exposed for the slightest misdemeanour in the most brutal way.

Indeed, barring Sky News, the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London, Murdoch’s papers and TV stations did not even have basic decency: the News of the World hacking the telephones of anyone who was in the media spotlight at a certain time, even the disappeared and later murdered 13-year old Milly Dowler.

The hacking was not all: NoW actually deleted the parents’ voicemails sent to the child’s cellphone to hear more pleas from them to her to come home, making the parents mistakenly believe that if the voicemails were being deleted (by her) the girl was still alive.

She had been killed many days before her body was found. This was Murdoch’s paper’s worst moment and showed it for the beast it was, with others in the stable joining in to criticise the Guardian which had done such sterling work in exposing the phone-hacking scandal.

Neither was this all. The crooked alliance between NoW and one of the world’s finest police forces, Scotland Yard, has also come to the fore in full force resulting in the resignation of the chief constable of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, as more allegations of his cosiness with NoW came to public knowledge, particularly the fact that the Yard had hired a NoW executive as a media consultant.

This is where the scandal takes a dramatic and unforeseen direction. Britain’s top cop has blamed the prime minister no less, of hiring a more compromised Andy Coulson, former editor of NoW, than the media consultant the Yard hired: Neil Wallis, a former deputy to Coulson.

According to the Guardian, Sir Paul Stephenson ‘effectively pointed the finger at Downing Street, drawing a comparison between Mr Cameron’s hiring of Andy Coulson and his own recruitment of his deputy. According to the Guardian “the point was implicit, but widely understood: ‘I’ll take responsibility: what about you?’”

This whole affair reads like a thriller already and I would not be much surprised if this scandal, for that is what it is, undermines Cameron critically if not mortally. The news at 10 am GMT, Monday July 18, is that the British prime minister is cutting short a trip to Africa on which he embarked barely 24 hours ago, to deal with the serious blowback of this sordid matter.

He has a lot of explaining to do, particularly his reasons for meeting News International executives 26 times in 15 months, the disgraced Rebekah Brooks four times at least. In the words of the Guardian again: “And thus a crisis which, for a long time, was perceived as a relatively contained issue of journalistic ethics, started lapping at the door of the prime minister himself….”

However, the British press is not the only problem that Murdoch faces. His American media empire is in danger too, with revelations that NoW tried to get details of the phone records of 9/11 victims. The attorney general has started an inquiry by the FBI into the matter and most commentators feel that if this is found to be true it could well mean the end of the quite despicable Fox News for one, which churns out hateful right-wing diatribes 24/7.

All of this should give those of our media outlets that are larger than they should be, pause to consider their own conduct and direction. Those in government and in its ‘agencies’ must also balance their media books so to say, and see if towing the line of these raucous outlets (and the agencies’ own mindless propagandists) has actually helped the country in these dangerous times, or damaged it grievously.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

I aim my angry shout at those who have brought our country to its present sorry pass — no prizes for guessing who ‘they’ are, of course — the recent raft of allegations being akin to several last straws on the poor camel’s back. The camel being our poor country, of course.

Whilst we will leave Saleem Shahzad’s brutal murder aside for a bit, it is poetic justice, is it not, that the dagger that has plunged deep into the back of the Deep State was wielded by none other than its own one-time hero, the oft-crowned with gold crowns (I kid you not) father of Pakistan’s bum, Dr A.Q. Khan, aka Mohsin-i-Pakistan.

By golly was he a sight to behold once upon a time; doing what he willed; striding across the Pakistani stage like a colossus; giving not a whit for elected prime ministers and other such, encouraged by the generals who had complete control of our bums and the factory out of which they came, and whatever went on within its secretive walls. And now that same man accuses a former COAS and another general of bribery.

Before we go any further, a little anecdote about His Arrogance. In 1989, when I was the sorely missed Benazir Bhutto’s press secretary, Khalid Hasan did a critical piece on AQ Khan in The Muslim, an English-language newspaper that used to come out from Islamabad.

AQ scrawled the prime minister a letter in pencil, on a paper torn from a child’s notebook (I ask you) to the effect that the
government was so ineffectual that it could do nothing about journalists like Khalid Hasan etcetera.

The PM marked the letter to me which I returned some minutes later with the remarks that there was complete freedom of the press and the government could do nothing at all in the matter; that the only course open to AQ was to sue Khalid Hasan/the paper.

I also added that he needed a quick course in staff duties, especially in the proper and appropriate way to address a D.O. letter to the prime minister of the country. Do I have to say that the note, file and all, disappeared, never to be seen again?

It is ironical is it not, that it was none other than the army high command who raised A.Q. Khan to the level of a demigod, so much so that even relatively junior officers would not hear a word against this hero. I remember a cousin and platoon-mate and buddy who was a colonel at the time, walking out of my house just because I said AQ was getting too big for his boots — this was 1989 — I had left the army in 1976.

Then you-know-what hit the fan and the then army chief kicked him off the totem pole and (like the Commando he was/is) went on kicking him until he was black and blue.

All of the blame was put on AQ as if anyone would believe that he was the only one involved in selling nuclear materials and know-how to others. Indeed, he simply could not have proliferated without the tin-hats knowing; I mean for God’s sake, C-130s take off in the middle of the night from Chaklala airbase and no one knows? Duh?

Remember also that AQ was the most well-protected, well-watched, well-spied-on person in the Land of the Pure. And they didn’t know he was flying off to North Korea, or was seeing off his precious cargo?

I am not saying Jehangir Karamat or that other chap mentioned in the letter leaked by AQ himself took those dollars and jewels, what I am saying is that AQ could not have sold nuclear technology by his lonesome self. And that the tin-hats (or some of them) would have asked for their share of the loot … I mean we, er, know their proclivity to make money. The fact is that our country has been very poorly served by the tin-hats — to the point that we are the pariahs of the world with all of us carrying the can for them. Serve them right that their own creation has come to haunt them.

Of course, the propagandists of the Deep State are again spreading it about that this is, what else, but a Jewish/Indian/American plot to do in Pakistan. Why do they simply not ask AQ to say he did not leak the letter or that it is a fake?

So then, the Ghairat Brigades led by our Rommels and Guderians must be thrilled that the Americans are putting the brakes on military aid — just what our sovereignty needed, if you ask me.

One hopes one will see a demonstration on the lines of the one praising the ISI with well-painted and expensive placards that was taken out in Islamabad after the Osama/Abbottabad affair, to the effect that Pakistan’s ghairat is at last restored.

What we will wait to see, however, is what other sources of military aid our geniuses come up with, to ensure their continued angry belligerence towards the rest of the world.

And now to Saleem Shahzad’s horrific murder. Surprise, surprise that the commission looking into it has announced its disappointment at people not coming forward to testify.

I should have warned the concerned to beware of Justice Saqib Nisar who is not afraid to say it like it is — good on you, My Lord — as I noticed during the hearings on the 19th Amendment in the Supreme Court. Well, they are terrified of being beaten to death themselves, even those who know exactly what happened to Saleem: please understand that you are dealing with a monster, My Lord. n

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

There are several organisations that operate as a part of APPNA, my host being the American Pakistani Physicians for Justice and Democracy. I was invited by Dr Mohammad Taqi, the last president of this body, and Dr Zahid Imran, the current president.

The seminar on the radicalisation of Pakistan that I participated in, and in which Shehrbano Taseer was the star speaker, was jointly hosted by APPJD and the women’s wing of APPNA, whose president and president-elect, Dr Humeraa Qamar and Dr Shaheen Mian, did so well in conducting the seminar seamlessly. Senator Robert Casey, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of its Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, stayed throughout the proceedings and came across as someone who understood the region and the tamasha going on in our part of the world.

Taqi, incidentally, writes incisively and eloquently about the present tragedy of the half-fought war on terror and the immense heartbreak being faced by the people of Pakistan and of his beloved Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with the Taliban now resurgent with the announcement of the impending American withdrawal from the region. He has for long sensitised people on what is going on in Fata, particularly Kurram, and the unholy shenanigans of the Deep State in its mad quest for the domination of Afghanistan.

This was the first time that I saw young Shehrbano and was most impressed by her humility and soft-spoken assurance. She is a brave girl and spoke most movingly about her father’s savage murder by his own bodyguard, the radicalisation of Pakistan, and how those who should be checking the scourge are mindlessly ignoring it and letting it grow to monstrous proportions.

Indeed, what could be a more damning example of the extent of the malaise than the questioning Salmaan Taseer’s son Shehryar was subjected to just the other day during a hearing of his father’s murder case?

What one would immediately like to ask is why this line of questioning was even allowed. What does Mr Taseer’s drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol have to do with the fact that he was shot dead by his own guard while six others stood around watching? What do his marriages have to do with the fact that the sitting governor of Pakistan’s largest province was brutally assassinated in broad daylight, and in the country’s capital, no less? What does his personal behaviour have to do with the fact that a well-known cleric had called for him to be assassinated in a Friday sermon at which his assassin was present, and seen on film as being in a trance? When will the madness stop? Are you listening, My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry? I know you will agree with me that the line allowed the murderer’s lawyer by the court is beyond the pale.

But back to the seminar: it was interesting to hear Dr Fareeha Peracha tell us about Sabaoon, the de-programming of suicide bombers in Swat that was inaugurated by the army chief and which she now runs. I was quite mystified to note, however, that the very army that considers the militants its strategic assets is de-programming young terrorists programmed by its own assets in the first place. How does this work, please? If the army is even half-way serious, and if this is not just a PR exercise in which ISPR seems to be making great strides in the days after Abbottabad — such as encouraging films showing the army’s heroics — could it first announce that it no longer considers the Taliban its asset? I mean, this is mindless.

On the heels of the APPNA meeting in St Louis came the gathering of the Sindh Association of North America that my old friend Aziz Narejo was conducting in the same city, so off Taqi and I went to that august meeting too. It was great to see Sindhi intellectuals, professionals and businessman standing up for their province’s rights and condemning those dark forces that would put down Sindhi nationalism. Our senior friend and guru Dr Manzoor Ejaz was there too, and set the precedent for Taqi and I to speak to the seminar in our own dialects of Punjabi and Hindko. I have to say with much pride that our Sindhi friends understood every word of what we spoke, their language being close to Seraiki.

Incidentally, I also quite fortunately made the acquaintance of the remarkable Dr S. Amjad Hussain, emeritus professor of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at the University of Toledo, Ohio, and an op-ed columnist for the daily Toledo Blade. Dr Hussain has a great sense of humour and can keep you laughing until you get cramps. Like Taqi, he too is a Peshawari and speaks the local dialect as if he came to America just three days ago. He has published a book containing his articles and readers’ comments, which make for some very vivid, very unkind and also very warm-hearted reading.

A word or two about St Louis: it seems like a tired old city, but still genteel in many inner-city areas. The St Louis Cardinals baseball team has the city as its base, and its stadium (Busch) is located here too. The great Mississippi River also flows alongside the city, and gives the city a whole new look. All in all, it was a great trip.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

And travelling in the bustling subway with its air-conditioned trains that take you all over the city for just $2.25 a ride. New York is one of my very favourite cities, up there with London and Tokyo and Rome: I just love its spirit.

Let me report too, that as usual I sailed right through immigration at JFK, this time in two minutes flat. The young immigration officer who processed my papers was polite to a fault and even though the airline (no, not PIA) had handed me the wrong form, first looked for the form in his cubicle, then directed me to where they were lying in the hall and asked me to come to the head of the queue when I was ready. As easy as that.

Central Park was as lovely as always when Masood and I walked through it to the West side where I had to pay my customary homage to Zabar’s, the finest cook-shop and delicatessen in the whole wide world. The sheer range of the food, prepared and otherwise, is staggering and the quality out of this world. No visit to New York City is complete without a visit or three to Zabar’s! The news on television and in the papers of course, is all about Pakistan and how to deal with it after over 30 people were arrested by its ‘agencies’ (and who are so far disappeared including the poor milkman) for allegedly tipping off the Americans about Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad Cantonment.

Everybody is asking why they were arrested when all they were doing was helping an ally of Pakistan’s to get to and kill a terrorist who was responsible for not only killing Americans but tens of thousands of Pakistanis?

In response, influential legislators are demanding that benchmarks specifying certain actions must be set and that no military aid should be given unless those benchmarks are met by Pakistan.

Whilst I have been advocating benchmarks since the procrastination of the military in going into Swat despite the reign of terror unleashed by Maulvi Nek Mohammad’s terrorists, it is about time the Americans applied them and dispensed aid only after these were reached. For that is the only way the Deep State will do the right thing, i.e., stop mollycoddling some terrorists.

I don’t buy it as I will explain later, but if first the New York Times and now the AP story about Ashfaq Kayani feeling the heat from his command about what happened in Abbottabad, and (because the army is the self-appointed Keeper of our Ideology and so on and so forth) at the Mehran naval airbase in Karachi are true, the commanders of the Deep State themselves bear all the blame.

For they have mindlessly danced to the tune of the hard-right jihadist-Taliban print journalists and their co-travellers in the electronic media, particularly those I call the ‘raucous’ ones.

The Deep State itself, while depending on American largesse in the shape of defence equipment and cash has deliberately also fuelled anti-Americanism to show itself, hypocritically of course, as being more ‘patriotic’ than the ‘bloody civilians’ in the elected government, if only to get the approval of the hard right sections of the media.

Given the stridency with which their commanders have always announced how invincible they are, what else should the rank and file feel but disappointment at the facility with which the Americans took out Bin Laden, and with which six terrorists kept the whole blessed navy and a battalion strength of the army at bay while destroying both of its remaining Orion aircraft?

Why am I sceptical about these stories? Because I know firsthand from the sons of friends who are mid-level officers in the army that the plot culture that has taken hold of the senior officer class has grown downwards to include officers with even 10 and 12 years service to become eligible for these handouts if they are good boys.

Add to this the senior ranks tally of several plots — four by the time they get to lieutenant general (when he appointed himself chief executive, the Commando declared seven if memory serves) — collected over the years and the prospect of heading one of the army’s business ventures and you have an officer corps totally beholden to its superiors in whose power it is to hand out these money spinners.

Barring jihadis, therefore, of which there should be a number, albeit not so large yet, I doubt that there would be a groundswell of opinion against the sitting chief.

In a clear sign that no lessons have been learnt by the Deep State, there was another arrogant statement from the ISPR, this time about the perceived public impression that the ISI is involved in Saleem Shahzad’s murder.

Voicing concern over “unfounded and baseless insinuations being voiced … against ISI”, the statement goes on to assert, “such negative aspersions and accusations were also voiced against ISI in some previous cases but investigations proved those wrong”. By God, the temerity. Might one ask the spokesperson to name a single ‘previous case’ that has been investigated and the ISI cleared? Just one?

Oh, and yes: the Americans have announced that they will replace the two Orion aircraft. Where, pray, are the Ghairat Brigades now? Where is PESA which actually demanded that Raymond Davis be water-boarded? The Orions must never be accepted, gentlemen: our ghairat has had it otherwise.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

I am in my 66th year, and have seen my younger brother pass away at the age of 21; my beloved grandmother who brought me up; loving and loved aunts and uncles, parents, even good friends pass on to the Great Beyond.

Whilst I wept my heart out when my brother died in a mountaineering accident, never have I cried as I did seeing the way Sarfaraz Shah was shot at point-blank range and then left to die. yaar

I will never forget his plaintive cries to the people standing around to “please take me to the hospital , please take me to the hospital, for God`s sake”. He would then lie down on the ground and writhe in pain, and then sit up again to repeat his request, all the while pleading, pleading … then lie down again, moaning until he turned his body one more time and died.

Not one of the people present there, not the Rangers one of whose number shot him, not the onlookers, no one stepped forward to give the boy some succour; no one encouraged him to hang in there, lift him up and take him to the nearby Ziauddin hospital where his bleeding might have been staunched and his poor life saved.

What in the world has happened to us? What an ugly and a brutish people we have become with not an iota of humanity left in us. For this is hardly the first instance of wanton killing we have seen: Balochistan and the weekly targeted killings there, most notably of the liberal-minded and hugely popular Prof Saba Dashtiari who was gunned down by masked men two weeks ago … Saleem Shahzad … Sialkot … police encounters every so often … what is this now? The killing fields of Pakistan?

And what does our intrepid interior minister have to say? Before My Lord the Chief Justice took notice, Rehman Malik in his inimitable style pronounced the boy a thief and a robber. Recall please that we heard no such denunciation from the government of the two Pakistanis killed by Raymond Davis in Mozang, Lahore (who were armed, and threatened Davis — as testified to by eyewitnesses — before he shot them) and which resulted in an international incident.

Selective morality and hypocrisy is what we have an abundance of, not one of Their Holinesses, not my friend Imran Khan coming out to condemn the most brutal murder of Sarfaraz Shah, surely because this, let me say it again, unarmed young man was killed by Pakistan`s security forces and those two men by an American. Shame on us.

And another thing: those two Lahori men`s next of kin were given compensation of millions of rupees for the deaths of their loved ones; who will pay compensation to Sarfaraz Shah`s poor parents? We know also, that if at all some compensation is paid, it will be a niggardly sum, nowhere near that shelled out to the families of the men shot by Davis.

For sheer brass, nothing can hold a candle to the press release of the ISPR on the conclusion of the corps commander`s conference, now also referred to as The Forum. Indeed, so brash was the tone that a former chief of army staff has written an article in a section of the English press which surely will find its translated way into the Urdu papers too, pointing out that “it would be wrong to consider this statement as signal for ill-considered hasty actions”. shaadi-ghars bias

Well no wonder Gen Karamat has been trotted out to say the army is not about to mount a coup d`état, for the statement is belligerent and aggressive. Witness: “some quarters, because of their perceptual biases, were trying to deliberately run down the Armed Forces and Army in particular”. I beg The Forum`s pardon, but what in heaven`s name is a `perceptual` bias? If a citizen`s perception differs with the general staff`s when it comes to, say, running bakeries and out of officers` messes, is that a against the army? put an end to it put an end

Look at this: “Any effort to create divisions between important institutions of the Country is not in our national interest. The participants agreed that all of us should take cognisance of this unfortunate trend and .”Of course it is true that there should be no divisions between our institutions of state but will the army decrease the size of its looming shadow that hovers over all aspects of decision-making in this country`s foreign and security policies? What other way is there to to it other than dragging the perceived offender before a summary military court?

Gentlemen, the army`s image will only improve when you begin to respect the ordinary people of Pakistan; when you co-opt us in defending our country, indeed when you stop the commercial activities that have polluted our cantonments and made it easy for terrorists to target our soldiers and their poor families as happened in the army bakery blast in Nowshera.

Also it is reprehensible that Nawaz Sharif is being singled out for the harshest criticism by known supporters of the Deep State for speaking out about the immediate and urgent need for civilian control over the armed forces and their agencies. One has to admire his courageous stand when he says there should be no holy cows, and that the constitution should be held supreme over every single institution of state.

Let me say at the end that it is very bad news indeed that two bomb-making factories in North and South Waziristan escaped punishment because the terrorists were warned by their moles before Pakistani forces got to the factories. Remember, gentlemen, that Pakistanis too are being killed by the hundreds every week by these beasts. And that the war against terror is our war too. So get your act together and then watch us lay Pakistanis give you more support than you need. For, you are ours, are you not?