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operation review Breaking
the mould Dialysis
and Beyond Aesthetic
needs
Despite optimistic statements by the military commanders, the militants have neither given up their armed campaign nor backed down from their demand for enforcement of Shariah in Swat, Shangla and rest of Malakand division First the militants were
calling the shots in Swat and the adjoining Shangla district and occupying Then the tide turned and now the Pakistan Army is dictating terms. Troops have been gradually advancing into the scenic Swat valley from their bases in Kabal and Fizzaghat near the main town of Mingora, occupying hilltops and towns previously held by the militants and taking back control of police stations and government installations. In accordance with military plans, most of the militants have been pushed back to the remote Peochar and Namal mountainous region in Matta tehsil, which has always been their stronghold. Military commanders are now trying to execute their strategy of bottling up the militants in Peochar before going for the kill. However, the battle is far
from over. Despite optimistic statements by some of the military It seems the military
authorities under-estimated the militants' strength in Swat. There weren't The exact number of
Fazlullah's fighters is still not known. The issue was made complex by the
arrival and presence of a significant number of Taliban, jehadi and tribal
fighters from outside to reinforce Fazlullah's men in Swat. In fact, this has
been a standard practice with the local Taliban to call for help and
reinforcement from likeminded groups whenever they are under attack by
Pakistan Army. In the recent fighting in Swat and Shangla, there were reports
of fighters reaching there from South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Bajaur,
Dir, Buner and other districts in N The militants too were wrong in assuming that the military wasn't very firm in its resolve while dealing with them in Swat. It did take the army a while to finalise plans and initiate military operations once it became obvious that the police and paramilitary Frontier Constabulary would not be able to defeat the militants. Soldiers from the Pakistan Army had already been deployed in Swat at the Frontier Constabulary training centre at Kabal, the Kabal Golf Course and further away at the disused Saidu Sharif airport but the troops swung into action much later on November 24. Now 20,000 soldiers are involved in the military action in Swat and it isn't known how long they would be deployed there. The militants, armed with AK-47 (Kalashnikov) assault rifles but also in possession of mortars, 12.7 mm machine guns and rocket launchers, were emboldened when they easily took control of towns and villages and captured police stations. By beheading about a dozen policemen and paramilitary soldiers, the militants created fear in Swat and prompted a few hundred cops and militiamen to surrender to them and publicly promise not to fight them again. Those captured were subsequently freed and some of them told reporters on camera that they were not ready to fight fellow Muslims and Pashtuns. The beheadings and the strongarm tactics used by the militants to scare away villagers soon made them unpopular. In any case, the militants didn't enjoy much support in an area where all political parties, including secular ones like the ANP and PPP, have their strongholds, and where moderate religio-political groups such as Jamaat-i-Islami and JUI-F maintain pockets of influence. Though not many Swatis were generally opposed to Fazlullah's demand for Shariah and none of the political parties dared to confront him politically, there was little support for his decision to use force and stage an armed rebellion against the state. Mild-mannered compared to other Pashtuns, the Swatis were first radicalised in the early 1990s when militants affiliated to Maulana Sufi Mohammad's Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM) rebelled against the state in 1994 and waged armed struggle for enforcement of Shariah in Swat and rest of Malakand division. The fighting was fiercest in the scenic Swat valley, where militants made 65 government officials including judges and police and civil officers hostage, occupied the Saidu Sharif airport, roads and police stations. The 2007 uprising was almost a repeat of the 1994 battle though in this case Maulana Sufi Mohammad isn't leading his men and instead his 32-year old son-in-law Fazlullah, who isn't a qualified cleric but is still known as Maulana, is commanding the militants. Sufi Mohammad, recently shifted to a hospital in Peshawar after spending six years in the jail in Dera Ismail Khan, has expelled Fazlullah from TNSM for resorting to the use of force against his country's army. Despite his old age and risks to his life, he is willing to play his role in defusing the crisis in Swat. The government is considering formally releasing him after having jailed him for embarking on a disastrous military campaign to Afghanistan with almost 10,000 fighters to assist Taliban in their battle with US-led coalition forces. However, Sufi Mohammad doesn't have the kind of influence that he most effectively used at the behest of the government in 1994 to persuade his followers to end their armed campaign for Shariah, lift blockade of roads and release the hostages. Another measure that the government is considering is to improve the Shariah ordinance and the Nizam-i-Adl Act that were promulgated in 1994 and 1999, respectively, by the NWFP government to enforce Islamic law in Swat and rest of Malakand division, which at that time also included Bajaur tribal agency, and Kohistan district of Hazara division. Qazi courts were established in the area after promulgation of Shariah by the then chief minister Aftab Sherpao with active support from his prime minister Benazir Bhutto. However, these measures failed to satisfy Sufi Mohammad and his followers and the issue largely remained unresolved until it erupted again in 2007. However, the government doesn't want to give credit to Fazlullah for re-promulgation and enforcement of Shariah in Swat. That is probably the reason for the delay in making this announcement. The priority for the government is the success of the military operation. After the overly optimistic claims made by DGMO Major General Pasha earlier when he said Swat would be peaceful and opened up for public by December, the military commanders are now saying it would take a few months to stabilise Swat and root out the militants and their supporters. The government decision to hold elections in Swat and Shangla together with rest of the country on January 8 would be a challenging task. In case the polls are held in time and peacefully even if the turnout is low, it would signal return to normalcy and revival of political activity. Elections are an effective tool to involve the people in decision-making and the Indian government has been doing this regularly in Jammu & Kashmir and other troublespots in India. The military until now has claimed to have killed 270 militants and captured 255 suspects, including a few foreigners and some important Fazlullah associates. At least 30 of the suspects have been released after being found innocent and it appears that many others too would be freed after interrogation. Two important Fazlullah military commanders, Khan Khitab and Ibne Amin, both from Swat, too have been killed. Fazlullah was wounded along with his deputy Maulana Shah Dowran and both are at large. Fazlullah has spoken on his FM Radio to reassure his men that he was alive and free and to remind everyone that his armed campaign for Shariah is far from over. The military conceded the loss of 25 Pakistan Army soldiers, including a Major and Captain. This figure included the soldiers killed in suicide bombing in Matta in the initial phase of the troops' deployment. The paramilitary soldiers and cops who were killed were much high in number. The casualties suffered by the army weren't high but it faces greater risks now from suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted at roadsides and exploded through remote control and other means. The government also faced embarrassment when paramilitary soldiers and policemen surrendered to the militants, deserted their units or abandoned police stations and other positions. Another matter of concern was civilian casualties. Civilians were killed in Shangla and in Allahabad near Charbagh, Kabal area, Khwazakhela, Chaprial and in Matta when artillery shells fell on houses or gunship helicopters bombed wrong targets. One estimate put the civilian deaths at more than 100. The government didn't admit casualties to the extent claimed by villagers or the militants, who maintained that scores of innocent men, women and children were killed. 'Collateral damage' was always going to be a problem in densely-populated Swat. Lately, long-range artillery shelling and bombing and straffing by gunship helicopters have killed civilians in Peochar and Namal areas beyond Matta where the militants reportedly maintain bases. Displacement of people occurred at a large scale both in Swat and Shangla, particularly from Swat's Kabal tehsil where the military made announcements asking the villagers to leave. The government failed to make any arrangements for the displaced families and the camps set up for them lacked proper facilities. The camp set up in Risalpur received only one family. The people stayed with relations and friends or rented houses in Mingora, Malakand Agency, Mardan, Charsadda, Nowshera and Peshawar. This certainly wasn't the way to win the hearts and minds of the people in the battle against militancy and extremism. It takes the genius of an artist to remind the viewer of the vast scope of tradition and its inexhaustible possibility. This was affirmed in the recent exhibition of Imran Qureshi at Canvas By Quddus Mirza It was indeed surprising to
find only seven paintings on display in Imran Qureshi's solo show at From his first solo exhibition in 1995 to the latest, Imran Qureshi has shown extensively at prestigious places such as the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, Frieze Art Fair London and Armory Show in New York. Apart from these, he has also represented Pakistan in various important group exhibitions worldwide. Today the popularity of miniature painting rests upon its modern masters, including Imran Qureshi, and others from his generation. Though the development of this genre in the present era poses a problem for its practitioners: of dealing with dual expectations. While the audiences like to see a continuance of the glorious tradition of Historic Mughal painting, they simultaneously anticipate something novel, more relevant to their age. A seeming contradiction, but maybe an aesthetic challenge and artistic possibility for the makers of this art form. A number of artists have evolved a synthesis of the two. So one often observes the traditional figure of a king within a floral border decorated with items that belong to this society. Similarly, contemporary characters are composed in conventional setups, mainly comprising old buildings and ancient monuments. Yet all of these efforts to modernise miniature -- which in essence maintain a balance between the traditional vocabulary and modern day sensibility -- have ironically turned into a repeatedly seen and tried out formula. In a way it works towards reducing the notion of tradition. Not only artists but the audience (and that include educationists and critics as well) tend to believe in a limited version of tradition and follow that in their practice and appreciation of modern miniature painting. It takes the genius of an
artist to remind the viewer of the vast scope of tradition and its These limits or boundaries could have looked conventional, but these helped in extending the notion of tradition vis-a-vis miniature painting in our midst. For his new body of work, Qureshi took a different and untrodden route. In some of the paintings, the application of gold, again a practice from the past, was carried out in a completely different manner. Here the gold was not painted to enhance the edges of the clothes or to render the jewellery, but it was used for covering the whole sheet of the painting. Layers of gold-coats suggested a painterly surface, so alien to typical modern miniatures (often prepared by copying the reproductions of miniatures from the art books). In his paintings, the gold turned into a tactile tone that could be understood as an orthodox treatment of gold as well as the modern method of applying paint. Likewise, in his other works, the figure of bearded man against a landscape echoed the formal elements of Persian miniatures (which travelled to Indian subcontinent with Mir Sayyid and Khvaja Abd us-Samad). Lone figure in profile, with meticulously drawn hair, and posing in front of a patch of green field and a single tree recalled the imagery of Persian manuscripts. Lyrical quality in the body and rendering of the tree connected his work to another side of tradition, conveniently forgotten and easily abandoned: The Persian painting, which introduced a stylised form of vegetation and human beings in the art of Mughal India. This aspect of tradition is often neglected by our painters who prefer to reproduce a specific school and phase of miniature painting, and while doing so, presume it to be the complete (and sole) example of miniature art in India. Through his new paintings, Imran Qureshi affirmed that tradition was not confined to a handful of experiments, as it was spread into various trends, tests and tastes. This realisation was necessary to decode his work, because like identity, tradition was not a singular phenomenon or manifestation of a few ideas and practices. In this regard, his work reinstated the notion of tradition that was plural and encompassed contradictory views. This was conveyed with the imagery as well, because in his figurative pieces the bearded boys were drawn with a sense of humour. Although one could not ignore the association of young man in big beards with the recent stereotype of a fundamentalist, but in Qureshi's miniatures, that character seemed to be deviating from the prescribed role. This individual, while getting his underarms shaved, holding a designer bag and reading a book, tried to negate the pre-established ideas about an extremist. Along with these figurative works, the other miniatures with golden paint and oval shapes indicated the presence of some political content; since in most of these pieces the bright surfaces were covered with a few red marks that could be read as streaks of blood. However, the political substance was not intended as the primary motif of the work, but its subtle existence signified that the artist was conscious of his surroundings as well as his loyalty to the form. Probably this dichotomy of being aware of his social environment and adherence to his art, which could be described as a modern artist's link with his tradition, was the reason behind having two kinds of imagery parallel to each other in Qureshi's exhibition. Here two streaks were starkly defined and separated. The works with the man (in his obvious appearance of Islamic fundamentalist) resting on a simplified landscape alluded to the traditional scheme of 'figure in the field'; whereas the other -- the gold plated surface -- reminded of abstract canvases. In those gold painted works, outline of a pair of scissors, marks of red colour and stitched lines in the same shade connected the purely visual surfaces to the current scheme of things in our political world -- a content that was also channelled through the Muslim characters in the other body of works. Interestingly, the miniatures from the exhibition may be divided into two groups, such as figurative (traditional) and abstract (modern), yet the separation of that kind could be superficial in terms of Qureshi's work: Solely, because an artist of that calibre transcends the categorisation of concepts, technique -- or even of language. Pakistan's best produced film, believed to have been lost forever, was found and screened at a festival in France and left an 'initiated' audience spellbound By Sarwat Ali When Jago Huwa Sawera was
screened in France in the last week of November, it was the first What exactly was Jago Huwa Sawera and who were the people who had made the film. One had heard of the film so often and had not seen it; it was feared that the prints of the film made only about fifty years ago had been lost forever. The story based in the erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, revolved around fishermen who lived in a very poor village by the sea -- one fisherman in particular wanting to and succeeding in making his boat against all pervasive poverty, deprivation, ill-health and ignorance, the major obstacles he had inherited from his environment. The film was more about the lives of such people than dramatic events. The fisherman's building the boat was the symbolic success of earning his livelihood and providing sustenance for the entire family. With the creation of
Bangladesh it was thought that the master print of the film had been left In Pakistan some of the filmmakers, indeed creative people were constantly hounded by the authorities, especially during the cold war years. It was a quite normal, under the counter, act to make something and then to keep a backup copy (master copy) stashed somewhere, in any one capital of the western world, preferably London. It was thus feared that in one of such underhand exchanges the master print had either been misplaced or lost. Neither were the copies of this print traced anywhere else. The director A J Kardar belonged to the illustrious clan of Lahore who had also produced one of the early filmmakers of India and subsequently a film mogul of Bombay A R Kardar and the first captain of the Pakistan cricket team A H Kardar. The script of the film was written by none other than Faiz Ahmed Faiz. And the music was composed by Timir Baran, the great composer who had shot to fame in the 1930s with the releases of K L Saigal's Devdas. He belonged to the set of Bengali composers of the 1930s like R C Boral. Pankhaj Mullick, Panna Lal Gosh and Anil Biswas who established the parameters of Indian film music. The cameraman was Mervin and the producer was Noman Taseer. All these people are dead
now but when it was decided to hold a film festival in Paris Philippe The prints of the film were finally found in London where the films from Russia, particularly those acclaimed in the prestigious Moscow Film Festival, were kept as archives. The son of the producer Taseer, who now divides his time between Dubai and London running his business agreed to foot the bill of making the copies and thus the film after about four decades was screened again in Paris. And how was it received? According to Shireen Pasha who was present in the festival along with Jamal Shah, Shoaib Mansoor, Reema and Satish Anand, the initiated audience were spellbound because it was seen to be a film from Pakistan and, that too, such a fine sensitive effort. It was probably the first realistic and experimental film made in the country. As it is, Pakistan since many years, especially since the 9/11, has been the focus of world attention. The West has wavered between the resolve of saving the country from savage hordes whom they call fundamentalists and being beset with doubts about the failure of the enterprise. Despite this wavering resolve their focus has riveted on Pakistan and they are surprised that a country so blanketed in anarchy and conservatism can produce such a fine effort. It draws a response from them which may be a bit exaggerated. The Indian presence in the festival was outshone by the Pakistani cinema, claims Shireen Pasha. The Pakistani films screened in the festival were Gumnam, Koel, Beyond the Last Mountain, Khamosh Pani, Hima Remembered, Khuda Key Liye, Muthi Bhar Chawal, Towers of Silence, Nusrat Has Left the Building and short films made by student of National College of Arts and Indus Valley School. After 'Jago Huwa Savera' and the first few decades the film industry maintained a consistent flight before falling to the ground -- exhausted and perhaps starved of creative ideas. But after hitting a low it appears that the resilience and the creative ability is all set to come back together again for the dawn beckons -Jago Huwa Savera.
Dear
all, I am sitting in a hospital room watching my 84 year old father having dialysis. I see his blood being circulated through tubes, being cleaned and being directed back into his body, the machine doing the job that his kidneys can no longer do. He is fairly frail, and
needs some help getting up. But he has a good appetite, follows the cricket For the family of course, the dialysis is a bit of an adjustment, a new and daunting routine with a frightening underlying cause but we are hoping it will become just that: a routine. And as happens when a parent becomes unwell, I have started wondering more and more about my father's life, about the person he became and why. I think particularly about his childhood friend and first cousin who died at age 8. I remember a blurred black and white photo of a little boy and the sadness in my father's voice when he mentioned this cousin 'Achhan. Achhan mera yaar thaa'. Achhan was the son of my father's paternal aunt and just a month younger than him. My grandmother died when he was just a baby and although his father did later remarry and have more children, my father was brought up largely by his paternal grandparents and aunts. I imagine that the two little boys must have played together and been almost as close as twin brothers. My father had the best of a Delhi upbringing and a solid education and a good career. He enjoyed his life and even coped admirably with the cruellest blow that life dealt to him -- the loss of his eyesight. But now as I look at him as he is coping with this new medical problem, I think less of the darkness he has had to endure all these years, and more of what his early life must have been like on an emotional level. It is not of the darkness I think, but of the picture of one little boy mourning the loss of another little boy. I think it is because I have children of my own, that I now ponder on how the eight year old boy must have felt when his chum died, and I wonder how he made sense of it all. It is tiny little piece of the jigsaw of a full and eventful life, but one that, for some reason, I keep thinking about. But I suppose this is what we do: at some point we start thinking about parents and grandparents as interesting individuals and start reflecting on their lives and personalities instead of just seeing them as filling a particular stereotypical role. Amazing how little we really bother to find out about each other..... Anyhow, life goes on. Best wishes Umber Khairi
Aesthetic
needs By Madiha Sikander Senior artist Mashkoor Raza's solo exhibition held at the Native Art Gallery, from Dec 7-14 2007, launched by Roll Em' Events; identified with horses and nudes and lately by the image of the burning sun, the artist combines the two elements to demonstrate the power of beauty. This display, however, had some fresh pieces, which were completely abstract in nature. Mashkoor is also renowned for his contemporary calligraphic works. His paintings are not
necessarily based on the social or political issues nor do they deal with Mashkoor's work resembles that of the famous cubist artist, Pablo Picasso, the co-founder of cubism. His brush strokes bring out the contours of the geometrical shapes which form the fundamental structure of his works. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create shallow ambiguous spaces. The swift sweeping strokes of the drawing and the vigorously brushed in colours give the work a noticeable emotive quality. The application of whites, gives his work a translucent eminence. The free use of rich reds, dark blues and deep purples heightens the drama of the noble animal in action. The female figure synonymous to the horse is a symbol of beauty, strength and power. The females present in his work possess no facial features as recognition is of little importance in his work. He emphasises largely on the figurative magnificence of his subjects. He reveals the strength a line renders to painting by painting distorted images and later extends them to derive imagery. Pablo Picasso defined cubism as "To paint and nothing more...with a method linked only to my thought...Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful nor the useless." Mashkoor Raza is one of the most creative artists, who has achieved that rare distinction of developing an original style. Also, he is one of the few Pakistani artists to have taken up the challenge of cubism.
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towns and villages with surprising ease. The government's writ no longer ran
in the area and policemen and paramilitary soldiers were abandoning their
posts or surrendering to the Taliban-linked fighters loyal to rebel cleric
Maulana Fazlullah.
commanders, including the chief operations commander Major General Nasser
Janjua who briefed foreign journalists flown to Mingora on a guided visit on
December 8, the militants have neither given up their armed campaign nor
backed down from their demand for enforcement of Shariah in Swat, Shangla and
rest of Malakand division. No doubt they were forced to beat a hasty retreat
from their headquarters, Mamdheray village of Maulana Fazlullah, and other
villages and towns in their control due to the pressure both by the military
and the villagers fearing bombing and shelling by the army's gunship
helicopters and artillery guns. But they have now resorted to suicide
bombings in and outside Swat and could start waging guerrilla-style attacks
as threatened by Fazlullah's spokesman and cousin, Sirajuddin, before he and
other militants went into hiding.
many militants in Shangla and, therefore, fighters were sent from Swat to
occupy the district headquarters, Alpuri. They were flushed out after the
military action. However, the militants in Swat were numerous and were
getting reinforcements from outside. Corps Commander Peshawar, Lt General
Muhammad Masood Aslam, in his talk with reporters before the start of the
military operation said the militants were 500 to 800 in number. Major
General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, director general military operations at the GHQ,
Rawalpindi, while briefing foreign journalists estimated that there were 400
to 500 Taliban fighters in Swat. Major General Janjua subsequently said
Maulana Fazlullah could fall back on the support of up to 5,000 armed men.
WFP
and even from Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan. Military authorities also
alleged that foreigners, including Uzbeks, had come to Swat to assist
Fazlullah. However, no foreign militant has been produced before the media
yet, though there were reports that a few Afghans had been captured at
roadside checkpoints and from the posh Kanju town near Saidu Sharif airport.
Canvas Gallery in Karachi. This was his tenth one person exhibition -- a
landmark in the career of an artist, who at the age of 35 has become the
leading practitioner of modern miniature painting.
inexhaustible possibility. This was affirmed in the exhibition of Imran
Qureshi, as one could hardly compartmentalise his works into either category
-- traditional or modern. All the miniatures were created in the year 2007,
but due to specific treatment of the surface and the choice of imagery, these
seemed more traditional. There was no twist on technique, neither a play on
perspective nor a desire for decorations (like the patterns or borders) in
these pieces. Instead the works appeared to be controlled and contained
within certain limits.
chance even for film makers from Pakistan to see this famous film.Jago Huwa
Savera was released in 1958 and was instantly acclaimed as a very good film.
In Pakistan it was one of the first films to be made that was seen as
breaking the mould of the song and dance humdrum of the commercial cinema,
and was considered by many to be the beginning of an era that was to oversee
Pakistani cinema's growth -- from a fledgling effort to an authentic voice of
a struggling new nation.
behind, and since the prints were made during the era of a united Pakistan
and some important members of the team were West Pakistani, it was either
wilfully destroyed or had become a case of neglect. There seemed to be no
copy of the print in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. The search of the Indian
archives too proved to be futile.
Palladium, the creative festival director who specialises in screening films
belonging to Asia, Africa and Latin America in the annual event The 29th
Three Continents Film Festival at Nantes, decided to leave no stone unturned
in finding the film to make this festival wholesome and inclusive of the best
film made in the country.
commentary with interest and still has his trademark fits of bad temper. But
overall, I think he is fairly bored with all this rigmarole: the regular
hospital visits, the needles, the dietary restrictions...
philosophical ideas. His paintings offer solution to problems of a physical
nature. His work caters to the aesthetic needs of an ordinary man.
Calligraphy, horses, nudes, discs or aureoles etc are all his motifs, which
he interacts with colour and texture to achieve compositional equilibrium.
His paintings are freely improvised as he believes in the liberated
application of medium and execution of ideas. The stylistic treatment he puts
forward towards his subject is also commendable.