The one and only Ahmed Faraz is no more. Today Pakistan has lost its most precious son, it is a day of mourning for a nation now bereft of its last living legend, may he rest in eternal peace and may ALLAH grant this great man the highest abodes in JANNAT.
FEIMANALLAH FARAZ SAAB
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
First and foremost I must express my delight and extend mubarak to the nation at the news of Musharraf’s resignation. This is indeed a great day for all of Pakistan as we have rid ourselves of a vile military dictator who has done much to destroy the very soul of Pakistan. His crimes are too many to mention from the killing fields of Balochistan and the Tribal Areas to the NRO and his Nov 3 actions and much more.
Musharraf in his resignation speech said that he will leave his future in the hands of the people. I hope this means he remains in the country for he always barked of ‘Pakistan First’, I wonder whether his actions will match his words this time or will it be another lie to add to his collection. I believe Musharraf must stand in the dock in a court of law and soon INSHALLAH for violating the constitution twice and he will be richly deserving of the punishment enshrined in Article 6 of our luckless constitution.
Today is a day of victory for many groups above all the lawyers movement who challenged an army chief in his element in March 2007 and bought him to his knees clutching for a deal with BB to save his rule. Even after the Nov 3 actions the lawyers movement remained his biggest headache and so they deserve the plaudits for ridding the first and second skin of Musharraf from this land of the pure. Civil society, students, APDM and the electioneering political parties too deserve credit as well as the media.
Today is a day to dance in the streets of Quetta especially for Balochistan has suffered the most under Musharraf rule. It is also a day of victory for the missing people of this land wherever they are for their chief jailer is no more.
Before I end I must be honest in admitting my mistake again in initially supporting Musharraf. I will not go into a long debate on the topic suffice to say that I was duped like most of the nation. The lesson for us all is that so called good-intentioned khaki kings like Musharraf serve only as an enemy within, they must be resisted from day one and must be treated as an enemy of the state, period.
Some of my older posts on Musharraf and a few guest posts are worth a read for they capture the fall of Musharraf well, do have a read by selecting the tag Go Musharraf Go here
Also read the guest posts by Nadeem Arif Najmi titled Do or Die and the best of the lot Unbearable:The Future of a Retired General via link
- STILL WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (Come on Gillani restore the Chief Justice today!)
I begin by saying AZAADI MUBARAK to all Pakistanis inside and outside of Pakistan as we celebrate our 61st year of independence. On this day I am always full of hope irrespective of the doom and gloom all around for it is a day to celebrate, a day to rejoice and marvel at the sacrifice of our forefathers whose blood and toil make this land truly a land of the pure.
The political and social state of the nation is precarious to say the very least however on this day I will not dampen the spirits for I echo the sentiments of the QUAID who said that Muslims never crumble when confronted with problems. We live in a new Pakistan, full of hope and vigour, democracy is seeing a new dawn and dictatorship is dying its death.
So today I pay tribute to all our forefathers and at the same time retain hope for a better tomorrow in this new Pakistan, for the nation is turning the corner, INSHALLAH Pakistan will prosper. Please see my tribute to the Quaid and our great leaders and to our new heroes and hopes in this new Pakistan on this great day below:
PAKISTAN ZINDABAD & PAKISTAN PEINDABAD
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
The Zardari House Declaration of August 7 like the Murree Declaration of March 9 has received universal acclaim. If implemented in letter and in spirit it will bring about the return of the real Supreme Court (and the end of martial law as covered in an earlier post) well as the much needed impeachment of the dictator.
However many commentators remain cautious as to what will happen given the u-turn by the Zardari PPP after the Murree Declaration, once bitten twice shy comes to mind.
Personally I feel hopeful yet cautious given I can never truly trust Mr 10% for Asif Ali Zardari has shown since February 18th a contagious chameleon-like desire to be all things to all people. In particular I fear Zardari may impeach Musharraf and then renege on his committment to restore the judges and instead waste time on selecting a new President ( May ALLAH help us if its him!)
That said as the 14th of August is near I will choose to remain upbeat but remain ever watchful for a snake in the grass. The words of the great Munir Niazi saab are apt here:
Ik aur darya ka saamna tha Munir mujh ko
Mein aik darya kay paar utra tau mein ne dekha
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
Regular visitors to this blog will know that I end all posts with four words - written under martial law. This post aims to provide the rationale for such a statement which may seem rather dated to some and even incredulous given we have a democractic government in power today. On the surface this may well be true but I wish to paint another picture.
The 3rd of November will forever be remembered as the dark day when martial law was declared in Pakistan against the Chief Justice and his brother judges for seeking to provide justice to the masses. To this day the very same Chief Justice and his brother judges remain incarcerated by design thanks to Mr 10% from serving the nation in their judicial roles. This is why martial law remains as until the real Supreme Court replaces the Dog court of Doggar it continues to thrive in luckless Pakistan.
I recall that on that vile day when martial law was declared in the guise of an ‘emergency’ this blog dedicated a specific martial law page that was made black to symbolise the dark days Pakistan was enduring. My words written at that time still stand today and are shown below:
This page has been deliberately made ‘Black’ to symbolise the dark days Pakistan is currently enduring thanks to Musharraf’s vile martial law since the reality is that martial law has not been lifted. It has only been concealed just like the tip of a proverbial iceberg, the ugly realities of dictatorship continue hidden below the surface.
We will resist and we will win for our struggle is noble. The dye has been cast and the Pakistani people have chose to stand for principle over profit. Sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option, we must stand tall against dictatorship for Pakistan has chose to do or die and from its ashes will rise a new Pakistan the ‘Other Pakistan’ we all seek. I am hopeful for our struggle is in the spirit of the words spoken by the great Prophet Moses in the Holy Quran: ‘For as much as you (God) have favoured me, never more shall I be a supporter of the guilty’(Holy Quran 28: 17)
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
The legend that is Ahmed Faraz is as I write this post fighting for his life. Earlier reports of his demise have thankfully proved false and this post serves as a heartfelt appeal to all Pakistanis inside and outside of Pakistan to pray for Faraz saab.
Faraz saab is Pakistan’s most eminent living poet and literary genius. He is lauded by one and all and his star will forever sparkle as Pakistani stars spell out his name. Indeed until the sun rises and sets in Pakistan, we shall never produce another Faraz.
Faraz saab’s love for the nation is legendary and best encapsulated in his poetry. Yet his actions speak even louder than his words for Faraz saab has sacrificed for the cause of democracy since Pakistan’s inception.
He personally fought alongside tribal elders and helped liberate Azad Kashmir from the evil of the Indian empire. This is a fact dear to my heart as I owe my liberty and freedom to his sacrifice for I am a Pakistani of Azad Kashmiri heritage.
He fought Zia the tyrant and won and was exiled and is active even to this day with his open support of the lawyers movement. He has also refused national accolades in protest at the treatment of our great Balochi brothers by Musharraf’s vile regime. In a nutshell he is the true son of the soil, he is a son of the Quaid and someone who Pakistan is so so proud of.
Adil Bhai has led the effort on ATP to ask for your prayers and I echo his sentiments here. So I beg of you all to say a prayer for Faraz saab.
OH ALLAH PLEASE SAVE FARAZ SAAB
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
Pakistan is today a nation in total freefall. The optimism and hopes after February 18th seem a distant memory now with the nation now starved of food, power and basic human rights whilst her leaders tour the globe. Pakistan has been put on autopilot on the road to hell without anyone to steer it away from the multiple internal and external dangers that continue to bedevil the nation.
The lacklustre Gillani government of Zardari’s Pervez People Party is exactly that. It has failed in almost every regard and has demoralised a nation beaming with hope.
The real judges remain incarcerated by default while even the the beloved masses of the PPP have been starved of their famed and legendary ‘roti, kapra aur makaan’. Instead the masses have been toasted to the fruits of ever increasing prices and much more.
I could go on and on but I will not as the great Ayaz Amir’s op-ed in the News today does far better justice and it is shown below:
Arrest this rot, please, if Pakistan is to be savedThe cup of patience spilleth over and there is anger across the land as the people of Pakistan, foolish enough to think they were entering a new era on February 18, contemplate the mess being made by their masters.
No, disguises will not do and we must have recourse to plain words. At the top of the list of masters is Rais Asif Ali Zardari and the bizarre knights of his round table.
Those who knew their history of the 1990s — the ill-starred decade of democracy which ended with Pervez Musharraf’s coup and disastrous dictatorship — had few illusions about the leadership thrown up by the Feb elections. But they withheld judgment, hoping (against hope) that, smoothened by experience, the rotten apples of the 1990s would have turned into wholesome fruit after all. But they are being proved wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined.
It’s not that Zardari’s intentions are necessarily bad. It’s just that he lacks the capacity to lead Pakistan. He after all is the power behind Yusuf Raza Gilani’s increasingly shoddy prime ministerial throne. So the buck stops at his desk, if he has one and if he chooses to sit at it instead of flitting off to Dubai every now and then. At this rate, why not declare Dubai the winter, spring and summer capital of Pakistan?
Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination was a double tragedy. It deprived the nation of her presence, when the nation needed her presence the most. And it made Zardari leader of the PPP and hence, on the evening of Feb 18, leader of Pakistan.
It is early days to blow the whistle but on current evidence the PPP is unlikely to emerge unscathed from this calamity — that is, Zardari’s assumption of leadership. That the party of Bhutto would, through the vicissitudes of fortune, fall into the lap of a Zardari, not even Macbeth’s witches could have predicted. Gen Ziaul Haq, the darkest thing to have ever happened to Pakistan, could not break the PPP. To judge by the dismay spreading in the ranks of the PPP as a result of Zardari’s policies — if the drift and cronyism on display can be dignified by the name of policy — Zardari might just succeed where Zia failed.
Benazir Bhutto’s leadership of the PPP was unchallenged. But with Zardari proving his inadequacy as party leader, and with more and more party figures disenchanted with his way of running things, it is only a matter of time before a war of succession breaks out between Zardari and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s paternal grandchildren — the offspring of his two sons, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, both of whom died in tragic circumstances — to lay claim to Bhutto’s political legacy. The noises being made by the estranged Amin Fahim are early warning signs of what may lie ahead.
Trouble in the PPP should be no cause for celebration. For a long time it was the only national political party we had, other political parties being regional groupings or the foster-children of different dictatorships. Then came the PML-N but after many, many years — that too after Nawaz Sharif, spreading his wings, outgrew his political antecedents as a protégé of the hated Gen Zia. If Pakistani democracy is to survive, these two parties must remain effective and strong.
This is what makes Zardari’s fortuitous rise to power so troubling. He may be an operator, and a smart one at that, but his outlook and capacity are both limited. He is the last pilot who should be on deck to steer Pakistan out of the swirling waters in which it is caught.
It used to be said that such-and-such a dictator and Pakistan cannot co-exist. The time has come to rework this cliche. Three or four months into this latest rendezvous with democracy and even born optimists, and I daresay diehard PPP partisans, are coming round to the opinion that the present leadership and Pakistan’s well-being are incompatible propositions.
Pakistan seems to be in freefall these days, the rupee’s steady fall accurately mirroring the national condition. And there is no hand on the tiller. If in the absence of Zardari and Gilani from the country — both of whom are all set to break the record previously held by Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz as international frequent flyers — the most visible presence in the corridors of power is that of friend Rehman Malik, the interior boss, it tells us something of what Pakistan’s affairs have come to.
Isn’t it time to have some mercy on this sorely-tried nation? The people of Pakistan no longer begrudge Zardari his millions (or, if wags are to be believed, more likely his billions). But a few more months of friend Rehman Malik and other Zardari appointees tinkering with the nation’s affairs and there will be nothing left to save.
Beware the consequences of this dangerous drift. The discrediting of democracy is setting the stage for another ‘horseback’ intervention. When and if it comes we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
The writing on the wall is never fixed; it keeps changing. Before Feb 18 it said that Musharraf and his clowns of the Q League were destined to go. Folly such as that perpetrated by them could not remain unpunished. The current writing on the wall is that the champions of democracy must take heed if the past is not to be repeated. Folly, although of a different kind, is again on the march and again those responsible will not go unpunished.
But we are stuck with Zardari, at least for the time being. And his ideas of patriotism are not such as to persuade him to give the nation a break. Zardari or perdition: that’s the choice Pakistan currently has. Makes you both laugh and weep.
The restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary could have set in train a process that could have broken the current logjam and taken the nation forward. But Zardari could have been an early casualty of that restoration. So no marks for guessing why he so detests the very mention of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s name.
The PPP’s mounting troubles are benefiting the PML-N. The more the PPP falls in public estimation the more the PML-N gains. But the PML-N is mistaken if it thinks the future is neatly laid out for it. Nothing is certain in Pakistani politics and if there is a break in political continuity no one can predict how it will end or how the future will unfold. If the present political experiment collapses all political forces, including the PML-N, go down with it. So we all have a stake in the present experiment succeeding. But with such masters on deck, it is an increasingly forlorn hope.
The PML-N also needs to improve its performance. Decision-making need not be so slipshod or haphazard. And the party could learn the meaning of inner-party consultation.
All said and done, however, one good thing it has going for it is Shahbaz Sharif’s chief ministership in Punjab. The way he puts his shoulder to the wheel it wouldn’t be a bad idea if one day he becomes prime minister. Someone like Rana Bhagwandas or, if his being a Hindu comes in the way, Sardar Attaullah Mengal as president of Pakistan — yes, Sardar Attaullah Mengal whose elevation at a stroke will assuage much of the bitterness of Balochistan; Shahbaz Sharif as prime minister; Iftikhar Chaudhry as chief justice; and Ashfaq Kayani as army chief. Put this combination together and the clouds part and hope once again comes to rule Pakistan.
This nation was meant for better things. We don’t deserve what we are getting. What kind of a leadership is it which goes about shooting itself in the foot over our nuclear programme? Don’t Musharraf and whiz-kids like Lt-Gen Kidwai realize that to accuse an individual — in this case, Dr A Q Khan — of proliferation amounts to indicting the entire national security apparatus, beginning with the army command, on the same charge?
A centrifuge is not a ballpoint pen that you can put in your pocket and take around with you. Much as we would like to believe it, the rest of the world is not made up of idiots who would be taken in by our self-serving narratives. To say that Dr Khan was instrumental in smuggling centrifuges to North Korea amounts to saying that the army command, which has always been in charge of nuclear security, was also involved in the same enterprise. So why don’t we learn to shut up on this issue?
And Kidwai is head of the grandiloquently-named Strategic Planning Division. If this is anyone’s idea of strategic planning, what would strategic chaos look like?
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
The satantic Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has spread her tentacles across the province. Even peace deals with the ANP and tribal elders aimed at bringing about some peace and calm have had only a cosmetic impact with business as usual including targeted killings and kidnappings of innocent Christians and the like.
One only has to watch a couple of episodes from last week’s Live with Talat on Aaj TV to see the precarious situation the nation finds itself in Sarhad. Having seen each of the episodes, I saw the urgent need for action yet as a peace-loving Pakistani, I still find it difficult to support violent actions against our own people, no matter how deserving they may be of it. Irrespective of wherever we stand on the issue of radicalisation and the rise of the Taliban, Pakistan is the real loser today.
That said the Taliban must be taken on 110%, a two pronged strategy is necessary involving the Parliament and other stakeholders which I will cover in another more detailed post. In the interim I do believe that the violent Taliban must be taken on head on wherever they are, while the moderates amongst them must be sought out and brought to our side by persuasion, by using tribal customs and generally by proving to them that Pakistan is their country and they all have a stake in its surival and success.
This issue will not disappear and even after the so-called ‘operation’ it will remain a live and burning issue for the nation, we must stand united and tall against all those who disregard the writ of the state, for we cannot be half-pregnant on this issue.
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
My greatest regret is that I only have one life to lose for Pakistan
Other Pakistan’s success has surprised me and I unreservedly thank all the readers, visitors, guest writers and one and all for making Other Pakistan the success it is today.
That said it very much remains a work in progress and has plenty of scope for improvement, so please pass on your suggestions for improvement.
Let us together work to create the Quaid’s Pakistan, a just Pakistan, an ‘other’ Pakistan.
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
The title of this post is inspired by Ernest Hemmingway’s classic novel ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. However its focus is the story of an old lady and her participance in the now legendary long march of last week. The ninety-year old Aziz Begum chose to stand tall for the cause despite her age, and so it goes old is gold.
Mumtaz Alvi of The News covered the story and it can be seen below:
Oldest participant of the ‘Long March’ By Mumtaz Alvi
Ninety-year-old Aziz Begum is perhaps the senior most participant of the ‘Long March’ in Islamabad. She is determined to be around till the show is over. She has come all the way from Wazirabad to take part in what she says a noble cause for reinstatement of deposed judges and packing up of President General (r) Pervez Musharraf.
“Tell me, who is speaking for Musharraf. Meet anyone, he will talk against him and won’t stop unless you ask him to do so,” she quipped in an assertive manner in Punjabi, when asked why she wanted the president to go.
Aziz Begum is happy to be in Islamabad at this juncture and says she will go back triumphantly as will the lawyers, who have gathered here from all across the country. “I have braved sweltering weather at this age just to see that the nation gets out of the troubles as a result of the legal fraternity’s unprecedented sacrifices. Free judiciary is the panacea for all ills,” she says in a thoughtful manner while trying to comfort herself with a handmade fan (pakkhi), she brought with her from Wazirabad.
The old woman says she does not fear anyone. And counter-questioned this correspondent, why should she hesitate from speaking the truth and alleged Musharraf and Chaudhrys of Gujrat had not done any good to the country.
About prevailing problems, she believes that these could be resolved with commitment and sincerity, which the rulers lack, particularly those who were in power since 1999. She innocently argues that how come Pakistan face ‘atta’ crisis, being a wheat producer itself. “When you, I and rulers are equal before the law, problems will start fizzling out,” she said.
As she talked with pauses, lawyer gathered around and evinced great interest. Aziz Begum was sitting in a chair close to the Jang Building. “I know, I am too old now. I will sit back here and listen to speeches of leaders,” she remarked plainly, when asked wouldn’t she move forward closer to the venue of the programme. After the ‘Long March,’ she will go to her son who is a veterinarian at Nurpur Shahan on the outskirts of the capital.
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW
