Day of reconciliation
March 25, 2002

Times were when the advent of Moharram had galvanised both the Shias and the Sunnis, albeit in ways different from each other and the way they react now. The Shias would go into active mourning of the Karbala epic, centred around its emotion-charged remembrance in Majalis and culminating in the procession and self-flagellation on Youm-i-Ashur. The Sunnis shunned all festivities, made special offerings, facilitated the procession and arranged water-points along its way.

A sobering comparison
March 18, 2002

Most Indians must have heaved a huge sigh of relief at the peaceful passage of VHP's March 15 march in Ayodhya to mark the construction of Ram Mandir. Most relieved, however, would be the Indian Muslims. Having fled en masse from Ayodhya, the next-door Faizabad and even Delhi, said the Indian Muslim leader Syed Shahabuddin, the agony they endured the night before was beyond description.

BJP's harvest of blood
March 04, 2002

Doctrine of craziness
February 18, 2002

Foreign ministers from 72 OIC-EU countries met in Istanbul to bridge the gap between the Muslim world and the West. Quite appropriately, the US wasn't there. Quite predictably, the ministers rediscovered the key to good Muslim-West relations in resolving the Mideast conflict. And, naturally, they disagreed on a statement condemning Israel and a definition of terrorism -- which, the whole world agrees with the US, must be terminated.

Of hearts and minds
February 11, 2002

Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has hit the campaign trail with a bang, belying both his age and image as an elder statesman. Pakistan can never get (the Indian occupied) Kashmir and better handover Azad Kashmir as well, he thundered. By the calculus of power, he is quite right. 

The wars within
January 28, 2002

The manifest mutual benefits of an Indo-Pak rapprochement put this objective beyond debate and add a maddening irrationality to their continuing conflict. Caught in this paradox, even as horrendous devastation threatens the two antagonists, their roads to peace do not converge. Both blame each for causing and prolonging the conflict and, thus, advise the other to be "realistic." 

Prisoners pose problems
January 21, 2002

The US is having difficulty deciding what to do with the around 400 Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners netted during its Afghan campaign. Around 110 have so far been flown to its Guantanamo Bay Naval base in Cuba (Camp X-Ray). Shielded from the media, they were hooded, chained neck, hands and feet, tied together and to the plane and even tranquillised during the 26-hour flight. The US response to the criticism of this inhuman treatment is that the captives are suicidal killers. Fair enough.

After the speech
January 14, 2002

It was neither the US reaction to September 11 nor December 13 and the Indian cue for going berserk which has confronted Pakistan with its moment of truth. These events have only accelerated the unravelling already underway thanks to the follies of a myopic and self-serving ruling elite, civil and military. The tug of war between them has bred such an animosity that both would like the other to somehow disappear.

India wants folded hands
January 07, 2002

Their anaemic economies are haemorrhaging to fund the mobilisation of their over-sized war-machines. Their soldiers stand ready to wreak havoc on each other, the slightest error could incinerate their hapless people. The world is worried that a nuclear cataclysm could befall their countries, already among the world's poorest and most populous. 

Secular use of power
December 31, 2001

Also, I agree that corporate America through government and media control the US for their own interests. However, the problems with America in my view, go much deeper - Americans as a society have put their fundamental faith not in religion or political process, but inventions as a means to exist. 

The critical next phase
December 24, 2001

Even as it began bombing Afghanistan, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had notified that Osama may never be found but the Taliban and al-Qaeda would be wiped out. That has been accomplished, with minimal mourning for the uncounted collateral damage--the latest, and hopefully the last, being the bombing death of 65 tribal elders headed for Hamid Karzai's coronation in Kabul.

Can reason prevail?
December 10, 2001

It was argued last week that the merciless slaughter of prisoners by the Northern Alliance and their US-UK advisors and bombers had shredded one of humankind's most sublime achievements - the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war and humane treatment of POWs. 

Of human degradation
December 03, 2001

As the incessant US bombing blasted the way for Northern Alliance's triumphal return to Kabul, an American journalist asked his gung-ho Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, if the US proteges would not reenact their barbaric past? It would not be the bloodiest war the Afghans have ever seen, assured Rumsfeld. 

What is terrorism?
November 26, 2001

It seems elementary that before, or even after, beginning to rain death on Afghanistan to decimate the "barbarianism" which "threatens civilisation and democracy," the over-worked term "terrorism" would be defined. Yet, the UN and US-led West show no inclination towards doing so. The unabated crescendo against undefined terrorism has drowned out the meek voices protesting the fast blurring distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters.

The American way?
November 19, 2001

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, public resistance in America to joining World War-II was swept aside by the ensuing outrage. As patriotic fever was whipped up by the media, Japanese-Americans were rounded up, as President George W Bush likes to put it, and actually corralled. 

Indictment from India
November 12, 2001

Last week, Pakistani languor in presenting its case on Kashmir to the world was referred to. Some Indian readers have sent a robust response, contending that:
• Indian Prime Minister Nehru's plebiscite promise to the Kashmir was contingent upon a clause in the UN resolution requiring Pakistan to remove "its military and militants" from Kashmir. 

The guilt and worries
November 05, 2001

The sound isn't strong or sustained enough to filter through the every day noises around us. But sitting in a quiet corner, marvelling at God's greens outside and mulling over a world gone mad, it comes to you. Like rolling thunder far in the distance, wafting along the air, clear one moment and gone the next. The rumble of warplanes, the sound of death for many. 

The clash within
October 29, 2001

In evolving to the liberal-capitalist democracy, reckons Francis Fukuyama, humankind has reached perfection. Hence, the end of history. Given the ascendancy of the West and the intellectual and material decline of illiberal dictatorships, criticism of Fukuyama's formulation has mainly been conceptual. There are no alternative working models to cite in refuting his conclusion.

Self-defence and security
October 22, 2001

Last week, after Israeli forces had assassinated yet another Palestinian who "Israel believed" was "planning a new attack," prime minister Ariel Sharon said "This is not the first and not the last" killing because "that is how we will act." His spokesman, Raanan Gissin, warned that "we will exercise our right of self-defence, just as the US is doing in Afghanistan." 

A world going mad
October 15, 2001

"The bombardment against the innocent Afghan people, already persecuted by the Taliban, are as vile as the terrorist acts against the US," said Arlette Laguiller, spokeswoman of the French Workers Struggle party, as hundreds marched in Paris to denounce "terrorism and the logic of war." 

USA was forewarned
October 08, 2001

If only the Americans had heeded Dr Eqbal Ahmad's advice! The Pakistani-American scholar, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, had studied the terrorist phenomenon in all its all too often ignored socio-political complexities.

A dangerous enterprise
October 01, 2001

The American reaction to Black Tuesday's bolt from the blue had been given shape by the media frenzy and jingoistic official rhetoric much before any serious thinking could go into the issues involved. Then, in the haste to set things in black and white, public opinion in crucial countries like Pakistan was alienated by the US government cocking the gun and barking "Friend or foe?"

Beginning at the end
September 17 , 2001

Hunger cannot wait
September 10 , 2001

When news broke of the starvation deaths of 19 people in a remote village in Orissa, India, the knee-jerk reaction of the state and central governments was denial. The food godowns are stacked full, there is no question of any starvation and the deaths were caused by food poisoning. 

Humanity's shame
August 29 , 2001

Israel and India face a common concern. Both Zionist and Hindu caste discrimination could be raised at the UN's World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Relate Intolerance opening in Durban, South Africa, on August 31. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has warned Yasser Arafat not to derail the conference by demonising Israel. The US will not be there, it has warned, if its ally is to be vilified by equating Zionism with racism.

Treading a tightrope
August 27 , 2001

After the Agra summit, the Indian and Pakistani establishments have taken divergent routes. Having flirted briefly with salvaging the peace process, Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh and his boss have been leading the chorus in lambasting Pakistan (for promoting "cross border terrorism") and lampooning General Musharraf (for his "Kashmir fixation"). The sheer intensity of the rhetoric has carried it beyond the pale of domestic political expediency or even tactical posturing. Moreover, the pungent words have been more than matched by pugnacious deeds.

A precarious voyage
August 20 , 2001

The NRB's dream scheme has made an inauspicious start. With the old order ceasing to exist overnight and the new one not yet in place, administrative chaos has been reported from many places. Offices and assets were simply abandoned as the redundant officials knew not who to hand these over to. How much is lost in this extended twilight zone will only emerge over time.

Battle against terror
August 06 , 2001

Speaking at a seminar on arms-control, President Pervez Musharraf forthrightly conceded that, despite the deweaponisation drive, law and order has not improved. Giving an emotional account of his condolence conversation with Mrs Shaukat Mirza, he said unchecked ethnic and sectarian killings could destabilise the country psychologically and economically.

The uncertainties ahead
July 30 , 2001

The President has directed that the bureaucracy must not be politicised in the new district governments system. To prevent the victimisation or harassment of any official, he advised a rethink of that little gem in the as yet unpromulgated new local government law mandating disciplinary action against a district coordinating officer (DCO) transferred twice on the complaint of Nazims.

Life after the DM
July 23, 2001

Young officers of the District Management Group (DMG) are said to be despondent over the decision to abolish the office of the district magistrate (DM). Their reaction is understandable because, with the dispatch of this once powerful institution, the grandeur seems to have gone out of the service they had opted for. The unkindest cut is that, being at the top of he ladder, they could have chosen any other service - even police, who have finally won their long battle against the DM.

The bald truth
July 09, 2001

What lesser mortals in Pakistan had been screaming from the rooftops without catching the ear of the policy-makers is now official, certified by Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state. In May this year, Armitage chose his first Indian visit to fire a broadside at Pakistan by including it in the "rogues' gallery" from whose "irresponsibility" the National Missile Defence programme would shield the US and its allies (in this case, India). Islamabad had then hummed and hawed, as is the custom after such insults by US officials.

'Civilised' world's shame
July 02, 2001

Even as judicial proceedings were underway to stop his extradition, Slobodan Milosevic, former Yugoslav President, was spirited out of the Belgrade jail and into the custody of UN's war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. Not coincidentally, his sudden and swift transfer came a day before Friday's conference in Brussels where Yugoslavia duly received pledges of 1.3 billion dollars badly needed to rebuild its infrastructure shattered by NATO bombings. Thus, where there is a will, and dollars to back it up with, justice can be done.

The budget-free people
June 25, 2001

One thing the presidential surprise has certainly achieved is to scotch the obligatory post-budget debate even before it had started. But this isn't a great national loss. After all, how many Pakistanis have any idea at all of what this annual number-crunching ritual means for them? They only suffer its consequences. They are blissfully unaware even of the maddening - but obviously mandatory - homily that the budget would not affect the common man and national interest demands yet another belt-tightening.

Critical mass in Sindh
June 18, 2001

While the current unrest in Sindh flows from many complex factors, including our inability to forge shared national perceptions, priorities and power, a catalyst was provided by the inexplicable neglect of the water crisis. Despite repeated warnings by the independent media and parallels drawn with the 1970 cyclone in East Pakistan, Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore and the moribund state media appeared unwilling to grasp its explosive potential and the need to reach out to the people.

Will the truth be known?
June 11, 2001

Hakim Muhammad Said lived a selfless and work-filled life, showing how the Pakistan dream could be turned into reality. His intellectual endeavours regularly brought scholars and writers together from across the country to cement national bonds and spread awareness. The countrywide Hamdard health and education networks he built had made him a revered household name.

The 'Makalma' and after
May 14, 2001

The best thing about PTV's 'live' Makalma was that it not only happened, but continued to happen despite some scalding criticism of the military.

The rogue system
May 07, 2001

When George W Bush rode into the international scene, comparisons were promptly made with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Both were reputed to have the same cerebral content, the same attention span and behind both loomed a patriarch as the real string-puller. But there is a critical difference.

Ghosts of the past
April 30, 2001

It is still not quite clear why it happened at all. Pyrdiwah village was, after all, under Indian occupation since the 1971 Indo-Pak war which had helped Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's Awami League turn East Pakistan into Bangladesh. With the same Awami League in power, the bloody border clashes between Bangladesh and its benefactor make no sense.

The natural next step
April 23, 2001

During his infamous murder trial by Chief Justice Maulvi Mushtaq of the Lahore High Court, ZA Bhutto had cried bias, pre-judgment and dubbed his ordeal "the murder of a trial". But undeterred and oblivious to the scornful symbolism he was earning in history, Maulvi Mushtaq went on to complete the hatchet job.

For good times only?
April 16, 2001

Fortunes of nations are made and unmade by the will of its people. But this will has to find expression through a competent leadership, not just political and not just individual. It is, ultimately, the educated and devoted elite which leads a country to its destiny. While we justifiably mourn the absence of honest and competent political leaders, and some still hope for a messiah, the collective failure of its ruling elite has now increasingly become the focus of explaining Pakistan's inadequate performance.

At the people's expense
April 09, 2001

The PPP had fought a three-front battle to defend its leader in the corruption cases brought against her by the PML(N) government. With the retrial ordered by the Supreme Court, it has scored clear victories on the psychological and political fronts. As for the critical legal front, it has won to the extent that the conviction stands overturned and lost in so far as an outright acquittal has been denied. The corruption and kickbacks charges stand, and will have to be answered.

The bureaucratic flux
April 07, 2001

Given half a chance, every bureaucracy in the world would like to do two things. One, live in an eternal time-freeze to avoid the need for change and, two, multiply its numbers and power. To that extent, Pakistan's bureaucracy has only followed a universal and institutional instinct in resisting change and self-replicating.

From Kyoto to Jallozai
April 02, 2001

As unfettered free-market global capitalism continues to add to the world's poor and as power politics continues to make life more unbearable for the poorest across the world, the West has found another buzz word behind which to hide its increasing affluence. It is called compassion-fatigue.