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freedom Communism
strikes back Taal
Matol profile Soldier of
Peace RIPPLE EFFECT
Even with the new government wanting Akhtar freed as part of a larger reconciliation process for Balochistan, does not mean he can walk out a free man By Adnan Rehmat It is not unusual in Pakistan for elected leaders, especially big figures, to be meted out harsh punishment for crimes real or imagined although many of the punishments are atypical -- Bhutto was hanged in a dark cell; Benazir was gunned down in the streets; as was promised, Bugti did not know what hit him but we know it was a missile and he died in a faraway cave; Sharif was dragged away to exile, hand-cuffed and chained to the seat of his plane; Zardari almost lost his voice when a jailer attempted to slash his tongue; and so on. Sardar Akhtar Khan
Mengal’s membership of this august hall of fame -- and punishment infamy --
is that he was presented in court in an outsized iron cage. Here’s how
Human Rights Commission of Clearly, the minions of one military ruler, General Musharraf, had borrowed the idea from the counterparts of another: Under General Zia’s rule, the Lahore High Court had ordered a special stand constructed in the court room to keep deposed prime minister Bhutto as he was tried on a charge of murder. In this narrow and constricted stand, there was only standing room and Bhutto was made to stand during the entirety of the farcical trial against him. The contraption was clearly aimed at belittling the country’s first ever popularly elected leader and conveying that he would be treated as guilty until proven innocent. The procedural purpose was repeated in Akhtar’s case. The iron cage was an irony albeit lost on the authorities: Musharraf’s government was behaving in tribal fashion while charging that Akhtar and his Baloch ilk were tribals opposed to modernity. The one thing common to all the above cases was the purpose behind the treatment: humiliation. Another commonality, (except for Zardari’s case), was that the treatment was meted out on the watch of one military dictator or the other. The civilised world criticised Saddam Hussein’s execution not because he was put to death but because he was humiliated: the guards who took him to the gallows taunted and insulted him. Only one word can describe all the cases above, including Saddam’s: barbaric. Humiliation and violence seem to be especially intense and sustained when it comes to dealing with the elected leaders of Balochistan -- Pakistan’s biggest and most inhospitable province, which is also its poorest and most marginalised. Quetta has mostly had a troubled relationship with Islamabad, which has usually treated its leaders as too tribal and backward to be trusted. All three major tribes of Balochistan -- the Marris, the Bugtis and the Mengals have had their share of facing the state’s military might. But what makes Akhtar Mengal’s case of harassment stand out is his young age and the symbolism of state intimidation extending to a new generation of the simmering province’s alienated leadership. What also makes Akhtar’s case special is the charge against him: that he allegedly ordered his men to ‘abduct’ military Intelligence operatives. He was refused filing of an FIR with the police about the ‘counter abduction’ of at least 20 of his men who had ‘detained’ the operatives, for only a few minutes before they were ‘rescued’ by their colleague ‘men in black’, to find out why they were tailing Akhtar’s car mysteriously as he chauffeured his children to school. Incredibly, four of his guards have been sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment and handed heavy fines each. Additionally, another 14 of Akhtar’s party supporters, who were arrested along with him two months later, have simply disappeared and have never been heard of again. Akhtar repeatedly turned down offers of freedom in return for an apology by stressing that he won’t come out of prison unless his 14 colleagues are also not released with him. Despite Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani’s directives that all charges against him be dropped, including treason, and that he be freed, one key reason why he remains still in jail is the insistence he will only walk out with his colleagues. Even a trip by Rehman Malik to his cell to persuade him otherwise has not borne fruit. Even with the new government wanting Akhtar freed as part of a larger reconciliation process for Balochistan, does not mean he can walk out a free man. Sources in his party say the establishment wants him to state in writing that he will not support Brahamdagh Bugti, the son of the late sardar of the Bugtis, who is based in Afghanistan and who the military intelligence suspects is being supported by India. And therein lies the rub: the perennial establishment suspicion of Balochistan sardars ‘working for the enemy’ even though the less than above-board ties of the establishment with the United States and some Gulf states are justified in national interest. While he wasn’t arrested because he supported Brahamdagh, his freedom is being linked to not supporting him even though he has been given cause for revenge. The case of Akhtar, the leader of arguably the province’s biggest and most influential party, the Balochistan National Party-M, and who has served as the chief minister, being hounded a la tradition, is also exceptional when compared with that of another political leader of Pakistan who has faced serious charges such as treason: Altaf Hussain and Dr Imran Farooq of Muttahida Qaumi Movement. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in 1991 for kidnapping a major of the army and torturing him. And yet the government agreed to withdraw the charges and sentence against them in August 2007 because they were crucial to political survival of a beleaguered Musharraf. And yet for someone who has served as the chief minister of the province and that too after forgiving the humiliation of his father, Sardar Ataullah Mengal, who was Balochistan’s first elected chief minister and had to flee in exile after the federal government hounded him, he has been humiliated and bruised. He even forgave the murder of his brother, Sardar Asadullah Mengal at the hands of military operatives. And here’s someone who has spent more time in jail than in the Chief Minister House who strangely is seen by the establishment as a traitor even though he was poised to gain a big enough slice of the popular vote in the February elections had his BNP-M not boycotted it and become a kingmaker in Balochistan. The young kingmaker-to-be currently is in jail, not needing political power to be the king of the Mengals, if not many more Balochs. A huge responsibility now rests on the CPN (M) to make a success story of this rare popular mandate in Nepal By Dr Arif Azad Much against the predictions of political pundits, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)-CPN (M), staged a remarkable electoral triumph by winning handsomely in the April 10 election. The likelihood of CPN (M) forming the next government is quite strong despite possible arm-twisting by India and the US to prevent what Henry Kissinger famously said about Chile prior to the US-inspired coup: the threat of a bad example for the region and beyond. Maoist’s electoral
victory represents a huge advance for a party which, until recently was
deeply steeped in the old fashioned notion of a guerrilla warfare against the
Palace-dominated corrupt and unjust political system. What explains the CPN (M)’s
evolution from a movement of the bullet box into For a start, Nepal’s chronic underdevelopment and the palace-dominated monarchical system has provided a fertile soil for radical political formations for democratic rights. Radical political formations that have articulated agitation and bottom-up concerns have been, historically, the communist parties of different hues and complexions. The original communist party of Nepal was formed in 1949. Nepali Communism harbours three dominant trends: The first trend, initially pro-Moscow Stalinist and latter day parliamentary social democrat was largely represented in the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) which soon lost its power base to the Maoists. The second dominant trend, initially pro-Beijing ultra leftist, splintered into two, with one section drifting into social democracy parliamentary reformism in the shape of CPN-Marxist-Leninists, while the other remained wedded to radical Maoism. This last splinter group, which staged uprisings under the influence of Naxalbari movement in 1970, could be said to be the founding Nepali Maoist Communist party consolidated in 1989 as the Communist Party of Nepal -- Unity centre under the current leader of CPN (M) Prachanda).The party changed its name to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or CPN (M) in 1995. Nepal remained an old Hindu kingdom with no provision for a parliament till 1990 when things began to change with the Communist party and CPN (ML) along with the Nepalese Congress forming Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD). This first democratic revolution -- or ‘Jan Andolan’ -- resulted in the abolition of the Palace sponsored ‘Panchayati’ raj and the restoration of democracy. In the 1991 election the combined CPN-ML under a new name Communist Party of Nepal --Unified Marxist-Leninist or CPN-UML emerged as the second largest party after the Nepalese congress, thus inaugurating the entry of the Communists in electoral politics. In the 1994 elections, CPNUML won handsomely enough to form the first ever communist-led coalition government. The CPN-(M), on the other hand, took to the path of peoples’ war and retreated to the countryside much against the prevalent wisdom. The party followed a classic formula of encircling the city and building up area bases among the rural and disenfranchised poor. This, tactically, was a bold move at a time when the Peruvian Maoist -- Shining Path guerrilla movement -- had been crushed. While the CPN-(M) worked on its classic peasant-based revolutionary strategy, mainstream political parties -- both right of centre bourgeois party the Nepalese’s Congress and CPN-UML -- failed to effect material or social change to the life of rural poor.( Nepal is 15 per cent urban and 85 per cent rural, with 75 per cent living on subsistence farming) . Nepal’s power structure is also heavily tilted in favour of three dominant castes, Bahun, Newars and Chettris while the Janajatis and Dalits are vastly underrepresented (the last two makeup 37 per cent and 14 per cent respectively). With the mainstream political class largely discredited, and Maoist guerrilla war at its height, King Birendra sent in troops to crush the brewing countryside rebellion in 2001. (By this time the size of the Royal Nepalese Army had grown thanks to the US aid that began flooding Nepal to crush the Maoist movement) But within two months of the operation, the extraordinary news of King Brindera’s son going on a killing rampage, gunning down the King, the Queen, himself and some other members of the royal family changed the political landscape altogether. The new king, Gyanendra, reverted to heavy-handed management of politics from above with the help of the dominant castes and the mainstream political parties. In one repressive measure after another the king sought to tighten his hold over power by dismissing parliaments. In 2006, when he imposed the emergency, the whole population erupted in a second popular uprising -- or the second Jan Andolan. The CPN (M) played a major role in mobilising the popular power and clipping the power of the king in the constituent assembly that came into being. Earlier on, from 2005 onwards, the CPN (M) had entered into peace talks with the government and the mainstream parties with a view to engaging in the political process. This smart move, in total contrast to the Shining path guerrilla movement in Peru, put CPN (M) solidly in a pole position to reap the harvest of disillusionment with the mainstream parties and anti-monarchy sentiments in any upcoming electoral tussle. This was powerfully reflected in the result of April 10 elections which have returned CPN (M) to a dominant position in Nepalese politics. Three other factors which contributed to the CPN (M)’s success were the party’s firm stand on the abolition of monarchy, its formidable organisational machinery perfected in guerrilla fighting years, fielding parliamentary candidates from marginal castes and women and radical land reforms programme. Now the tasks before CPN (M) are of immense and grave magnitude. Internationally, the CPN (M) needs to conciliate India by assuring that the party would have no interest with the brewing Maoist insurgency in India (there is so far no evidence of CPN (M)’s links with the Maoists of India. In this sense CPN (M) is largely an indigenous phenomenon.) Domestically it will have to walk a tightrope in knitting all parties in the new constituent assembly together in a political concord. The party would also have to tame winning national parties in the Tiara region within the Nepalese federation. More importantly still, the issue of integrating Maoist guerrillas into the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) could prove a great headache. This may require, in the long term, reduction of the RNA’s size which has grown thanks to the US aid in recent years. In the coming days the unique experiment of Nepalese Maoism in power shall be closely watched by all those outsiders interested in Nepalese Communism. A huge responsibility now rests on the CPN (M) to make a success story of this rare popular mandate and turn it into transformative project for emancipation of the poor. By Shoaib Hashmi It is named after the ancient village of ‘Mauza Mozang’ long known as the first village out of Lahore, but it is a very short street stretching only from the gate of Lawrence Gardens to where it ends near the Accountant General’s office, or if you prefer near where three of the most scrumptious ‘Chaat’ establishments are. The odd thing is that at
either end of this short road, there is the tomb of a saint. At one end, and
inside the Lawrence Gardens there is the shrine of ‘Baba Turt Muraad’
whose name means that he The hillock was known as the abode of another saint, and the hill is gone but the shrine is still there approached by a small lane between the buildings, opening out into a spacious courtyard and a mosque. This is the shrine of ‘Mauj-e-Darya Bokhari’, a saint from the time of Akbar the Great whose main claim to fame is that it was by his prayers that the impregnable Fort of Chittor finally fell to Akbar. The emperor’s wars against the Rajputs gave rise to a host of legends including the one you must be familiar with right now -- that of the King and the Rajput princess Jodha Bai -- and the little acknowledged fact that all subsequent Mughals had at least a trace of Rajput blood in their veins. Also that of one of the Maharajas, whose name I forget, but whose ancestors well into the nineteenth century prided themselves on the fact that they were the only Rajput royal house who never gave a princess away in marriage to the Mughals. It is a most disconcerting fact that whereas all these saints have kept their hold over the people’s imagination, and their disciples still flock to them, few have taken the trouble to probe the past, and precious little is known about their personal lives. The few people who have attempted to write introductions to their works have contented themselves with writing wordy estimates of their spiritual qualities and their miracles, which don’t have to be researched and can simply be made up even if most piously. It is a fact that in the case of one of the most popular, the great Bulleh Shah of Kasur, we are not even sure of his real name! Most experts have simply gone and asserted that it was ‘Abdullah’ mostly on the basis of ‘Bullah’ being the shortened version of the full name; while others have insisted that that could not be because the shortened version of Abdullah should be ‘Dullah’ and not ‘Bullah.’ Most of the other asserted ‘facts’ of his life are speculations and interpolations of incidents referred to in his poems. One of these was brought home to me recently because apparently they have used one of his poems in the film ‘Khuda Kay Liyay’ In which he goes on a bit about the tribe of ‘Araeens’; and I have had to explain to many a young Araeen maiden in my class that we are not really against them, the poem merely refers to the fact that Bulleh Shah’s Murshid belonged to that tribe. Shah Inayat Qadri, the great Murshid too lies buried in Lahore, very accessibly just beside Queen’s Road where it crosses Lawrence road. He is well-known and popular, and yet most people who visit know him mostly as the Master of Bulleh Shah, and not many people know that he was the learned author of at least eleven books, perhaps because most of them are in Arabic, which was why Bullah Shah wanted him as a mentor. profile Mangal Bagh is the emerging ‘commander’ in the Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency There seems to be a steady supply of ‘commanders’ making their mark in the tribal and even some settled areas of NWFP. The latest to emerge from the ranks of the Islamic militants is the uniquely-named Mangal Bagh, who for a change isn’t aligned to the Pakistani Taliban. Mangal Bagh’s fiefdom is
the Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency. He has been gradually extending his Mangal Bagh even made his presence felt in some villages located on the edge of Khyber Agency in Peshawar district by sending his fighters there to intimidate fearful villagers into submission. Villagers in Sheikhan area tried to resist but they were no match for the heavily-armed fighters from Lashkar-i-Islam, or Army of Islam, the tribal militia commanded by Mangal Bagh. Things have gone quiet on this front and Mangal Bagh told this writer in a recent interview at his mountainous base in Bara area that he has no intention of operating outside his native Khyber Agency or threatening Peshawar and its adjoining villages. However, Peshawarites were
scared recently when Mangal Bagh’s fighters fought Kukikhel Afridi Commander Mangal Bagh is a slightly-built and bearded man aged about 35. He confessed being illiterate even though he is able to read Urdu newspapers and applications made by people seeking his intervention and help in almost every matter. He did study for some years in a madrassa and is, therefore, able to quote from the Quran and Ahadith to make his point. He is articulate and his nightly 9 pm speeches on his illegal FM radio channel are eagerly listened to by people in Bara to keep themselves abreast about his decisions and policies. Listeners pointed out that he speaks like a learned man and can go on for long. Mangal Bagh is from the
small Sepah sub-tribe of the Afridis. His family had a transport business One heard stories galore as to how Mangal Bagh punished rich Maliks and other tribesmen violating the tribal and Lashkar-i-Islam’s code of conduct by ordering them to host feast of rice cooked with meat to feed the whole tribe. He even forced almost all candidates for the National Assembly seat from Bara including the eventual winner and now federal minister Hamidullah Jan Afridi to pay for a grand feast for voters, makes speeches at a joint public meeting, agree to a code of conduct for electioneering and pledge to honestly spend all development funds upon election as MNA in consultation with Lashkar-i-Islam. If one were to believe Mangal Bagh, Lashkar-i-Islam has 120,000 men under arms who control almost all of Khyber Agency except parts of Jamrud tehsil and a two-kilometre stretch of territory in Maidan area of Tirah valley. “All I have to do is to make an announcement on our FM radio channel and my mujahideen volunteers would be ready to fight for the Lashkar-i-Islam. We have about 70 pick-up trucks donated by pious and wealthy tribesmen for use of our men,” he explained. Mangal Bagh is forever surrounded by scores of heavily-armed bodyguards. Young men with long hair give him cover as he walks or sits in a small room that serves as his headquarters. Armed volunteers seated in vehicles escort him wherever he goes. A long convoy of vehicles could be seen when he is on the move. It creates awe and instills fear among the people. Lashkar-i-Islam volunteers patrol Bara area in their sturdy, Japanese vehicles flying white flags. Bara shopkeepers now pay Lashkar-i-Islam a monthly fee that they previously gave to a bazaar committee for providing security to the large markets in the town that years ago sold foreign smuggled goods. The day this writer visited Bara, the political administration had abandoned and locked the government premises in the town and the security was being handled by armed Lashkar-i-Islam men. It was clear the government writ no longer ran in Bara and in its place Mangal Bagh’s Lashkar-i-Islam Mangal Bagh has had a strange life. As a young man he fought on the side of the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupying forces. He returned home when the Red Army pulled out from Afghanistan in 1989 and for a while remained a member of the secular and nationalist ANP. Subsequently, he drifted to religious militancy and sided with fiery cleric Mufti Munir Shakir in the latter’s clash with Pir Saifur Rahman. When Mufti Munir Shakir and Pir Saifur Rahman were forced by the government and tribal jirga to leave Bara to avert further bloodshed in the area, Mangal Bagh assumed command of the Lashkar-i-Islam and fought the rival Ansarul Islam militia headed by Ustad Mahboob and other followers of the Pir. A ceasefire brokered by Afghan Taliban leader Ustad Yasir ended the fighting in Bara and Tirah but by then Lashkar-i-Islam had emerged stronger than Ansarul Islam. The latter is now confined to Tirah valley and is becoming weaker and ineffective. Unlike other Islamic militant groups, Lashkar-i-Islam isn’t pro-Taliban. Mangal Bagh maintained that he was repeatedly invited by Baitullah Mahsud and his supporters to join the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) but he declined the invitation as he didn’t want to fight Pakistan’s security forces and harm the country. Claiming that he didn’t send his fighters to Waziristan, Swat and even Darra Adamkhel where the Afridi tribe lives to help Pakistani Taliban, he reminded that Lashkar-i-Islam didn’t have any objection to the presence of Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps in Bara. He denied links with Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban or al-Qaeda but defended the Taliban’s resistance to US-led coalition forces occupying Afghanistan. Asked to explain Lashkar-i-Islam’s objectives, Mangal Bagh said: “Ours is a reformist organisation trying to promote virtue and prevent vice. We rid Bara of drug-traffickers, gamblers, kidnappers, car-snatchers and other criminals and we want to cleanse Jamrud and all of Peshawar of those selling drugs and liquor and running gambling dens.” When queried whether he would step aside if the government decided to do all these things after extending its writ to Bara and rest of Khyber Agency, Mangal Bagh opined that it had failed to protect the life and property of the people in the past and, therefore, cannot be depended upon to accomplish this difficult task in the future. Nirmala Deshpande will always be remembered for her call for peaceful co-existence By Ali Sultan “Nirmala was the only woman I know who all her life, danced to her own tune. It’s easy to praise her but very hard to understand what she was,” said Dr Mubashir Hassan. At the age of 79, Nirmala Deshpande, a noted Gandhian, social activist and a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, died in her sleep on May 1, 2008. The Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan (HRCP) held a condolence reference over the demise of Nirmala
Deshpande on May 8, 2008. The Hall was packed with people who worked and
admired her. Pakistanis have a special place in their hearts for Nirmala for her significant contribution to the peace process between Pakistan and India. Deshpande had travelled many times to Pakistan, always promoting the Gandhian ideal of peaceful co-existence. She was known as ‘Didi’ among her large number of fans here, particularly from the civil society. “I saw no difference between her personality and her work,” said Mohammad Tahseen, Executive Director, SAP (South Asian Partnership) “She was always ready to help in any manner she could and she did, always with a smile on her face.” Deshpande was also known to be the spirit behind the peace marches in Punjab and Kashmir when violence was at its peak in the regions. Her peace mission to Kashmir in 1994 and her initiative to organise the India-Pakistan meet in 1996 were some of her major achievements in her decades of public service. Deshpande organised the Indo-Pakistan amity meet in 1996 that was attended by academics, artists, social activists and journalists from both countries. She led the Indian delegation to Karachi in 1997 for a similar meet. “She used no other weapon except the art of conversation. For her, Indians and Pakistanis were not enemies, she did not have the word ‘enemy’ in her dictionary,” said Dr Mubashir Hassan. In 1999, she again led the Indian delegation to the Pakistan Peace Conference, organised by the Pakistan Peace Coalition. “During the whole peace process there were a lot of hurdles, but Nirmala was an extremely sure-footed activist. She was the soldier of peace and opened the way to it,” said Dr Hassan. In March 2000, she led a women’s Bus of Peace from Delhi to Lahore, comprising women from different walks of life. The same year, as founder chairperson of Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia, she hosted two Buses of Peace from Pakistan to Delhi. “I first met her in Beijing in 1995 where the Fourth World Conference on Women was being held. We shared many opinions and differed on a lot, but Didi was always the optimist. In the late 1990s to early 2000, there was lot of cross-cultural exchange between India and Pakistan, but then the peace process started to wither away. But Didi never left hope; she used to say if nothing happens today, something will happen tomorrow. We will have peace amongst us some day,” said Nighat Saeed Khan, Director ASR (Applied Social Research). “We have lost a real sister, who was beacon of light in the present world,” said an emotional Syeda Diep, a peace activist who worked very closely with Nirmala. Nirmala also helped retired services officers to form the Indo-Pak Soldiers’ Initiative for Peace in India and its counterpart in Pakistan. She led a delegation of the India chapter of this organisation to Pakistan in 2001. In April 2008, one month before she died, Deshpande called for the setting up of a South Asian Union on the lines of the European Union, she urged that if the countries in Europe which were fighting with one another on various issues can come together to form a European Union with a common currency, why couldn’t South Asia form a union and have a common currency? “Someone asked Didi once,” said Asma Jehangir, prominent lawyer and peace activist, “Why are you promoting peace? We are enemies and you are an Indian!, she softly replied: ‘because first I am a citizen of the world.’ The one quality I will always remember about her is that she was always working, always thinking about strategy and never giving up hope.” People like Nirmala Deshpande never die and her lifelong noble struggle for love, affection and peace among various cultures, faiths and especially across the border, would always remind the generations to talk about these accomplishments. As per her wish, Deshpande’s ashes were divided into six lots, one each to be immersed in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the places where she endlessly worked for peace.
RIPPLE
EFFECT By Omar R. Quraishi One of these past weeknights I happened to watch a show on Dawn News hosted by Ejaz Haider by the name of ‘The Alternative.’ It was on the role of the media -- print as well as electronic -- and had Talat Hussain of Aaj TV and Fahd Hussain of Express TV. He also had Zaffar Abbas of Dawn and an apparent audience representative in Shaista Sirajuddin -- head of the Arts Department of Punjab University. As I feared, discussion soon veered to a comparison between print and electronic and as often happens with many an arm-chair/drawing room critic, both Talat and to some extent Fahd, had to bear the brunt of considerable criticism -- much of it, I have to say, misplaced. This centred mostly on the electronic media’s failure to regulate itself and to be professional and also its thirst for ‘breaking news’ when it is often clearly not breaking news. Zaffar further elaborated this by saying that not only did many items that were posted on tickers of TV channels as ‘breaking news’ not worthy of this adjective, in most cases after a few hours the TV channel itself would not even bother following up on the breaking story -- which clearly suggested that the initial projection of the said event had been blown out of proportion. The implication was clear -- that TV channels deliberately spun their stories to get better ratings. For the academic -- clearly not your average TV viewer -- to have said it, one could understand, but that this point was being piloted by two print journalists was a bit surprising given that they would be expected to understand the mechanics/dynamics of a breaking story and its importance even to a newspaper whose news cycle runs every 24 hours. However, it was good to see Talat Hussain, who himself has been and continues to be a print journalist as well, to stoutly defend the electronic media. He did agree with Ejaz that some anchors could perhaps ask more informed questions (and a bit ironic that Ejaz should have said that given that his show comes on Dawn News) but otherwise he quite rightly said that let alone television, many newspapers around the world were updated several times during a 24 hour news cycle and in addition to that there was a burgeoning new media where news was being relayed and accessed on the Internet and that such sources of information were being continuously updated as well. As for television, he said, urgency and immediacy of coverage was linked to a TV network’s credibility and to see the priority for quick coverage merely as a war between competing news channels that whoever gets the story first was to ignore the important point that proximity to a new event was linked with credibility. He was, one gathered, also trying to suggest that it was important for TV to be able to cover a news event as it unfolded and this is where urgency of coverage played an important role. Fahd Hussain also made a valid point when he said that clearly a news story that was relayed three hours after it broke would lose its value and erode the credibility of the TV network relaying it. Also, one has to say that the critics were not in synch with the psychology of the average news hungry TV watcher who would want news relating to some important event as quickly as possible. Besides, TV is one medium that can be used effectively to portray to audiences all of real life’s drama, action, trials and tribulations and in that context too proximity where the action and/or drama is taking place is key. In any case, the competition for being the first to break a story is an intrinsic part of the press -- and this goes back to the time when there was no television at all and when newspapers endeavored to be the first one to break a story. To some extent, this is still the case with newspapers even today trying to beat each other with exclusive stories. Seen in this context, it should not be difficult to understand that TV channels are essentially doing the same thing since the commodity that they sell and eventually survive on -- and which their audiences want to watch and be told of -- is news. One was particularly disappointed at the academic/audience member’s response. It seemed to fit that of the typical arm-chair liberal adopting -- for some unknown reason -- a position of self-righteousness and claiming the moral high-ground. Her remarks that it was time that the media took stock of itself, using the analogy of democracy, and her comments on the latter seemed as if they were coming from an apologist for the military. Of course, there should be self-regulation in the media but perhaps audiences do not know that there already is considerable self-regulation and in fact even self-censorship. Furthermore, to say that we have been waiting far too long for democracy to take root, as if to suggest that this is now becoming a worn-out (read lame) excuse is to miss the point that the damage to democracy has been most by the men in khaki and their many years of (mis)rule. ***************** In response to a column written some weeks ago on problems faced by people who had gone to NADRA’s offices in Karachi to collect their NICOP cards, the regional general manager of the authority, Brig Agha, promptly sent an email asking for details of the particular case. At least those running the authority seemed to be heeding criticism, and acting on it. As a follow-up he also said that all NADRA staff had been instructed that they must deal with card applicants in a manner that increased the latter’s convenience and not create unnecessary hurdles and/or bureaucratic delays in handing out cards to applicants after all formalities had been completed. The
writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News. Email:
omarq@cyber.net.pk
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Pakistan’s secretary general Iqbal Haider found him in an anti-terrorism
court: “In the court room, I was surprised to find that by installing iron
bars from floor to ceiling and covering those iron bars with an iron net, a
sort of cage had been created in a corner of the court room for the accused.
This iron cage had a separate iron gate at its rear. Mengal was brought into
this iron cage from a separate backdoor when the presiding officer started
the proceedings. Mengal was not allowed to sit with his lawyers nor was any
member of his family allowed to witness the proceedings. I requested the
court to allow him to sit alongside his lawyers but the court merely ignored
me.”
a government of the ballot box? What challenges the party is likely to
encounter in the coming days as it negotiates the new government and the
constitution.
grants your deepest wishes in the twinkling of an eye. The other end of
Mozang Road used to be a small hillock, which is no longer there and it just
ends in a T-junction and a row of offices.
influence to other areas such as Jamrud, Landikotal and the remote Tirah
valley. His attempt to set up base in Jamrud was thwarted by sections of the
Kukikhel Afridi sub-tribe dwelling there. But his armed intervention prompted
some tribal elders to seek his forgiveness and forced traders selling liquor
and drugs to give up their business, at least for the time-being. It is
another matter that this clandestine business cannot be halted owing to the
huge demand for heroin, opium and liquor from buyers in neighbouring Peshawar
and beyond.
tribesmen in Jamrud area and rockets landed close to Peshawar’s suburban
Hayatabad town. Many Hayatabad residents spent the night in basements and
considered shifting from the posh town to safer parts of Peshawar city as
they heard gunfire and firing of rockets in their neighbourhood.
plying a bus from Bara to Peshawar and owning a truck or two. Those who knew
him claimed he used to work as a bus conductor. However, Mangal Bagh
maintained that he drove his own bus. In any case, his family wasn’t very
rich or feudal. His humble origins have made him anti-feudal and pro-people.
He loses no opportunity to criticise the Maliks, the hereditary tribal elders
who are traditionally pro-establishment and receive all the benefits doled
out by the government. He is keen to highlight the plight of the ordinary
tribesmen and motivated to solve the problems confronting the common man. If
he has his way, he would like to rob the rich to pay the poor like a
modern-day Robin Hood. That explains the reason for young men, mostly
jobless, to flock to his banner and make up bulk of his Lashkar-i-Islam
outfit.
