Ardeshir Cowasjee Articles: The danger within

TIME and time again one must retreat to the beginnings of the country and the exhortation of its founder and maker, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, that the first and paramount duty of any government is the imposition and maintenance of law and order.

What he did not envisage was the deterioration of the judiciary of his country, which was firm and steadfast during the short time he had.

For without an independent and responsible judiciary law and order is a far cry. And as we all well know, within six years of the country’s birth the judiciary had crumbled, by then largely bereft of its inherited judges. There has been no government since 1954 which could tolerate or survive an independent and honourable judiciary. Such has been our fate.

The law and order situation for too many years has been abysmal, as has been the state of the judiciary. The mighty Pakistan Army when in power has been either unable or unwilling to impose a system where law and order prevails — with the sole exception of a brief period in the early Ayub Khan years when a far smaller army than we now have, less politicised and radical, did manage to bring in a semblance of order and apply the law as it should be applied.

The 1965 war, the East Pakistan disaster, the wild years of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (the first civilian martial law administrator) during which the constitution was constantly violated, and the nightmare years of Ziaul Haq from which this country has never recovered ensured that law and order would not figure on the lists of priorities, nor would the judiciary be given a chance to recover and reform.

If the army, the most disciplined, orderly in itself, and the richest party in the country could do nothing about law and order, what could be expected from the immature, self-centred and even more corrupt civilian politicians? Corruption is endemic. One of the most telling remarks made by Gen Pervez Musharraf shortly after he took over, when asked by a BBC correspondent whether the army was corrupt, was his response: “We are all of the same stock.” Thus, any expectations for us to be an orderly nation, obedient to the law, must remain at the lowest ebb.

What was known as the ‘restoration’ of democracy in 1988 did not help matters, partially because there was no democracy to be restored and partly because a weak and corrupt government was totally in thrall to a hostile military.

The yo-yo years, with their political musical chairs and an erratic judiciary which normally gave legal cover to military or presidential coups but deviated in the one case of the 1993 dismissal of Nawaz Sharif (to no avail ultimately) helped to worsen the lack of law or order and the two participating political parties, in turn, saw to it that the judiciary became the tool of whoever was currently in power.

A few incidents from those 11 ‘restorative’ years will serve to illustrate the government-judiciary mentality.

Early in 1994, former chief justice of the Sindh High Court, Sajjad Ali Shah who had been elevated to the Supreme Court of Pakistan was sitting on the Lahore Bench. One day he received a message that the prime minister’s house had telephoned asking for a convenient time for prime ministerial husband Asif Ali Zardari to call on him. A time was fixed and Zardari duly turned up, with Aitzaz Ahsan. Sajjad was told that the prime minister was considering appointing him the chief justice of Pakistan. What was his reaction? Sajjad told his visitors that he would not care to leapfrog over three senior judges, but that he would be agreeable to go back to Sindh as its chief justice. This did not fit in with the government plan.

Contacts between Zardari and Sajjad continued and they met thrice at Zardari’s house in Islamabad when the offer of appointment as chief justice was raised again. On one occasion, Zardari, accompanied by Agha Rafiq Ahmad, “finally came out openly with the proposal that the prime minister was prepared to appoint me as the chief justice of Pakistan on the condition that I give my written resignation in advance, which would be used if I failed to oblige her. Obviously the letter was to be undated.” (Law Courts in a Glass House, Chief Justice (Retd) Sajjad Ali Shah, pub. OUP 2001).

There are many other anecdotes in the book which outline the constant contact between the judiciary and the governments in power, neither side at all respecting the concept of independence.

Come Nawaz Sharif as prime minister in 1977, with Sajjad Ali Shah as chief justice of Pakistan. A prickly person, not open to wheeling and dealing, he did not suit Sharif or his designs to assume full and complete power, transforming himself into an amir-ul-momineen and the country into his vision of a citadel of Islam. The tussle reached its peak in November 1997. Gohar Ayub Khan in his book, Glimpses into the Corridors of Power (OUP 2007) relates how on the 5th, when driving with Nawaz Sharif from the Assembly to his house, Sharif naively asked him : “Gohar Sahib, show me a way to arrest the chief justice and keep him in jail for a night.”

Later, on Nov 28, Sharif did the unthinkable. He arranged for a mob of his party storm troopers to physically invade the Supreme Court building at a time when its chief justice was sitting hearing a contempt of court case that had been brought against the prime minister and various others. Pakistan was disgraced in front of the world. Many of the attackers were identified, but, the judiciary being the judiciary, they got off lightly.

The Musharraf years probably put the penultimate nail into the coffin of the judiciary of Pakistan. This last military regime started off with the usual PCO and a reshuffle of the judges of the superior courts, and in due course it was given legal cover by the Supreme Court. Totally averse to law and order, the country, under an army of half a million men, ran amok. Musharraf had other matters on his agenda of priorities and in March 2007 total chaos set in. He has gone, and it is now up to President Asif Zardari to hammer in the final nail.

The judiciary is broken as never before, and in the portion of the country which still remains under some sort of control of both the civilian and the army law and order has fled to an unknown destination.

Ardeshir Cowasjee Articles: A stitch in time saves nine

THIS 18th-century adage finds particular application in the rampant maladministration obtaining all over Pakistan.

Rather than tackling problems under established procedures and rules, as and when they occur, our government functionaries procrastinate, seeking magical solutions that will satisfy everyone, until the heavy hand of the law descends on all.

They allow unlawful situations to deteriorate to the extent that addressing them becomes difficult or virtually impossible.

In March 2010, former Karachi Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, petitioned the Supreme Court against the shameless brazen conversion of amenity spaces all over his “sinking city” into private residential and commercial estate. He told the court that political, ethnic, sectarian and religious groups, in collusion with the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) and functionaries of the provincial government, had been and were in the process of occupying and usurping public land for pelf.Naimatullah submitted satellite images of encroached parks/playgrounds, impotent complaint letters addressed to the prime minister, the Sindh governor, chief minister, chief secretary and a string of politicians and administrators of the city and province.

Also submitted was comprehensive supporting documentation (news clippings, opinion columns, photographs).

He acknowledged the courageous role of the apex court in recent years in arresting such anti-public interest practices all over Pakistan — including Islamabad, Lahore and Murree — and prayed that Karachi’s amenity spaces be restored to designated master-plan use.

On Feb 2, 2011, a full bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday and Justice Ghulam Rabbani, directed the CDGK to demolish, within 30 days, all encroachments and illegal buildings (including government and political party offices) in Karachi’s public parks and amenity spaces. When informed that religious structures also existed on these plots, the honourable judges observed that illegally built mosques could not be considered legitimate constructions.

The special force (supported by area police) and criminal courts established last September under the Sindh Public Property (Removal of Encroachment) Act 2010 could be well utilised to assist in this gigantic operation against amenity-space usurpers. Encroachers (and their partners in government and police) are liable to onerous fines and heavy prison sentences, aside from underwriting demolition expenses.

The Karachi scenario is worse than as described by Naimatullah. For instance, Webb Ground in Lines Area is still being utilised by the Makro-Habib mega-store 12 months after the Supreme Court handed down a decision that the amenity plot was not the defence ministry’s to lease, and that, in any case, government land could not be leased to NGOs at throwaway prices. The plot had been master-planned as a playground in 1983 and could not be used for commercial purposes.

When I talked to young Mustafa Kamal in 2008, the then city nazim frankly admitted that his party had settled and housed political workers on the parks of North Nazimabad. He asked why we were not tackling the increasing mosque encroachments on amenity spaces in the city, and stated that he would remove his party’s encroachments when the mosques were dismantled — and this from a mayor sworn under law to protect the takeover of public land.

Karachi’s Cantonment areas are not free from this menace. Some 20 per cent of a park adjacent to The Forum in Clifton is being used for parking cars from nearby illegal commercial structures: but for determined citizen action, the entire park would today be a multi-storeyed parking-plaza (we fail to understand the difference between ‘park’ and ‘parking’). Usmani Park on the seafront in Defence Housing Authority in 2005 was leased for a huge shopping-cum-entertainment-cum-residential complex before the high court stopped it under the ‘public trust doctrine’.

A 2009 series of columns entitled ‘I own Karachi — and can sell it!’, dealt with the escalating rape of amenity spaces in the city : the land-grab of over 50 park/playground plots including Gutter Baghicha, unlawful conversion by the City Council of numerous amenity spaces (2.5 acres at Clifton beach-promenade, 40 acres at Mahmoodabad sewage-treatment plant, etc), setting up of MQM party offices on 175 public plots, and auction of amenity land including public-building, dispensary, community-centre/garden, post-office, and car-shelter plots.

In September 2009, my friend and former chief secretary of Sindh, Kunwar Idris, wrote in this newspaper: “The nazim [Mustafa Kamal] of Karachi was heard complaining on television the other day that he could not prevent encroachments in Gutter Baghicha because the police wouldn’t come to his help. Surely he knows that both under the local government and police laws he is responsible for law and order and the chief of the district police is also answerable to him.

“Deputy commissioners had no better control over the police under the colonial laws than the nazim now has in Musharraf’s system. No deputy commissioner however could ever disown responsibility for encroachments. This writer was deputy commissioner of Karachi 40 years ago for four years. Those were not the best of times for the administration and Gutter Baghicha even then was a favourite target of professional encroachers. But they were able to nibble at the edges and no more. Losing 400 acres to them in four years signifies total lawlessness or connivance — neither should be tolerated.”

Enrique Penalosa, the outstanding former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, visited Pakistan in early-2009. He rightly brought up the future generations residing in congested cities bereft of parks, playgrounds and open spaces. What will they think of us, their forebears? That we were uncaring, selfish and rapacious, that our greed for money was never slaked?

He pointed out the obvious fact that in the future wealth and other assets can be created, but hoggishly devoured open spaces and parks once meant for the beneficial use of citizens can never be restored.
We must wish more power to the elbow of the Supreme Court!

Ardeshir Cowasjee Articles: Blind and stupid and savage

MY generation and the one that followed have much to answer for. But we cannot, because it is now too late. We let things slip and slide.
We supported the wrong leaderships for the wrong reasons, or we acquiesced silently. We had benefits that today’s youth lack — we were given a liberal education by those who were amply qualified to impart it. We were taught the tenets of tolerance, of live and let live and of doing unto others as you wish they would do unto you.
But we lost it. We failed the nation, and most of all we failed the creed of the man who made this nation and who set out for us, and for those who were to legislate and rule, the manner and style in which he intended the country he had created to be run. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was let down with a big bang, mostly by those who lorded it over the nation when he was dead and gone. But, maybe unwittingly (and I would like to think so), we did our part. We had no prescience. Over the decaying decades we failed to foresee the dangers under our noses and the ever-increasing dangers that lay ahead.
All this has been on my mind for a long time but was brought home by an email message from a young reader who had read my last column on some of Jinnah’s sayings. “Where we are today, we deserve it 100 per cent,” he wrote. “And it’s not because of our generation. Where were you when Ayub defeated Fatima Jinnah in the elections? Where were you when Bhutto [and others] bartered away half the country [and parliament decreed who was or was not a Muslim]?
Where was your generation when Zia introduced this warped ideology? I’ll answer that: nowhere. Because of the cowardice of your generation, I and a lot of others find ourselves in distant lands to gain liberty and freedom.”
Yes, it is unforgivable. We should hide our faces in shame. In particular a great number such as me, for in the 1930s I had one of the finest teachers who laid down the law strictly and who made sure that we fully understood the knowledge he was imparting. Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla (1875-1956) was a Zoroastrian priest and scholar who received a master’s degree from Columbia University in1906 after studying Iranian languages and Sanskrit with minors in philology and philosophy. In 1929, following the publication of several books, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Columbia. In 1935 he was given the title Shamsul Ulema. At that time he was teaching us at the BVS Parsi High School, and to this day I keep close at hand one of his lectures entitled ‘Let none nurse intolerance’:
“Intolerance and bigotry and dogmatism are the bitterest enemies of religion upon earth. They make religion a tyrant, a persecutor, a veritable daeva, the demoniac perversion of angelic religion.
“The frog croaks that his well is the whole world and the bigot boasts that his is the only inspired and perfect religion. The truth and the whole truth is exclusively garnered in his religion, he avers. His religion is the crown and culmination of all religions, his religion is ordained to be the universal religion of mankind and salvation is possible only through his religion, he adds.
“All bigotry is blind and stupid and savage. Sectarian bigotry is as bad as inter-religious bigotry. Bigotry stifles reason and the bigot, in his frenzy, is out to force all to believe what he believes.
“All religions come from one and the only God, who makes himself known by many a name. From the same source, like the tributaries of a river, they flow. All religions make man equally good upon earth and with equal safety do they conduct his soul to heaven. One alone is truth and all religions teach this truth, for religion itself is truth.
“All open their hearts to the same God. All seek refuge in the same God. All seek fellowship with the same God. All commend their souls into the hands of the same God.
“Man has no right to demand that his neighbour shall address God after his pattern and shall pray in his own way and worship according to his liking and sacrifice unto God in the manner he does.
“No thinking man’s own idea of God and religion, at all times and in all conditions of life, is ever the same. For everybody’s views on religion, then, it is not possible ever to be alike. Monotonous would our world become, if all thought equally and in the same way without ever differing in religious beliefs and practices from one another. Nature shines in her luxuriant glory because of the wide variety of her form and colour and beauty. So do there bloom and blossom in the garden of the spirit pervading mankind, foliage and flowers of all shades and grades of devotion and religious emotions.
“Teach me, my God, to see that I have no right to impose my own way of thinking upon others. Teach me to acknowledge and honour the right of all to pray and worship and sacrifice in their own way. Keep me free from sectarian spirit, and give me strength to root out from my heart bigotry and fanatic zeal. Teach me
to discern true religion from religiosity. Fill my mind and heart with the spirit of toleration.”
This is what the early generations were taught. We all listened well then. But later, along the way, we failed to see or check the creeping darkness.

Ardeshir Cowasjee Articles: Delusions Of Grandeur

WHILST watching the screeching anchors on our television screens one can say with certainty that the advent of mass communication in Pakistan merely adds to the general state of ignorance of its populace.

If the ghairat champions dominating the airwaves are to be believed, Pakistan is the centre of the universe, with the entire world, led by the United States, conspiring to somehow steal the pride and honour of this impoverished nation and state. Facts, however, indicate that the ever-increasing bellows about our national pride notwithstanding there is less and less for us to be proud of.

Pakistan`s politicos do not read books, let alone write them (nor do they have any concept of history). But in the civilised democratic world there is a strong tradition of leaders writing political memoirs.

The latest is George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, not known for his intellectual prowess, who has managed to produce a 490-page memoir with the help of co-authors and editors. The book, Decision Points , should help put things in perspective for Pakistanis by its lack of mention of Pakistan.

After eight years as US president, during which Pakistanis probably burnt him in effigy virtually every day, Bush`s book mentions our country only 47 times on eight pages — an average of one page per year.

Gen Pervez Musharraf, perceived as Bush`s key ally and denigrated by our ghairat wallahs as `Busharraf` merits 33 mentions on those same eight pages while `democratically elected` President Asif Zardari who came into office towards the tail-end of Bush`s era is mentioned only once.

Such is the `centrality` of Pakistan for the US that is constantly touted in our media and by our self-absorbed leaders. The truth, if it is ever told in Pakistan, is that Pakistan must struggle to gain America`s attention and aid, and has done so since its inception. Our endless rhetoric of ghairat only generously feeds the prevalent lack of realism and delusions of grandeur.

The legendary Life magazine reporter/photographer Margaret Bourke-White covered partition and the birth of Pakistan and published photo-essays from newly independent India and Pakistan in her magazine practically every week during 1947-48. In 1949, the essays were published as a book by Simon and Schuster titled Halfway to Freedom: A report on the new India in the words and photographs of Margaret Bourke-White .

On pages 91-93, Bourke-White describes her discussion with the country`s Founder-Maker Mohammad Ali Jinnah when “Pakistan was one month old”.

“What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?” she asked Jinnah.

“`America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America,` was Jinnah`s reply. `Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed` … `the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.` … `Russia,` confided Mr Jinnah, `is not so very far away.`”

“In the weeks to come,” Bourke-White wrote, “I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam`s thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. `Surely America will build our army,` they would say to me. `Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in.` But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. `No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan.`”

“This hope of tapping the US treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan`s own uncertain position as a new political entity. Actually, I think, it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new Muslim state — a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze.”

In 63 years, little has changed. The menace now cited for tapping the US treasury is no longer communist Russia, it is terrorism. But simultaneous to seeking US assistance is our penchant for abusing the US and those we send to Washington as supplicants.

Last month the Internet was bombarded with clips of a television performance by a ghairat champion quoting from Obama`s Wars by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who changed US history by exposing the Watergate scandal.

Woodward speaks of Pakistan`s man in Washington trying to persuade the Americans to woo Pakistan as you would “woo a woman”, with gifts, respect and admiration. That our man in Washington has the access he has and can make a case for tapping the American treasury in Pakistan`s interest would not have disturbed Pakistan`s founding father. The faux religiosity of our TV anchors, dangerously and sometimes killingly fanning ancient hatreds into a new blaze, is far more disturbing than favourable references to Pakistan`s envoy to the US in Woodward`s latest bestseller.

Ardeshir Cowasjee Articles: A diplomatic tangle

UNDER the Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Immunity and Privileges (1961), diplomats and their family members can be charged with crimes but are immune from criminal prosecution and civil liability. In some cases, they can be expelled from the country where they are posted.

In January 2001, a Russian diplomat was accused of killing a woman in Ottawa, driving whilst drunk. The accident happened as Mr Andrei Knyazev, first secretary at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, was returning from an ice-fishing party. He lost control of his car and mounted the pavement, killing 50-year-old lawyer Catherine McLean, and severely injuring her friend, Catherine Dore.

The low-level diplomat Andrey Knyazev was charged with criminal negligence causing death, impaired driving, failing to provide a breath sample and criminal negligence causing bodily harm. However, Mr Knyazev immediately claimed diplomatic immunity and Russia denied Canada`s request to lift it asserting that the diplomat would be prosecuted in his own country. On return to Russia Mr Knyazev was jailed for four years.

At a news conference in Ottawa, soon after the incident, Russia`s ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, stated how “profoundly shocked and extremely upset” he was by the incident. However, he insisted that his country had every right to use diplomatic immunity and urged Canadians not to judge all Russians on the actions of one man.

The case of the Russian diplomat is not an isolated incident. Such incidents occur in every country and involve diplomats from around the world. Between 1999 and 2004, according to released British government records, 122 serious offences were allegedly committed by diplomatic staff.

These include allegations of murder by a Colombian diplomat, two counts of indecent assault from South Africa — including an incident of drunken groping — and Moroccan embassy officials accused of rape and child abuse. In May 2010, South Korea and Ukraine were involved in a diplomatic row over whether or not the Ukrainian ambassador to Seoul caused a serious traffic incident while under the influence of alcohol.

Every country, including the United States, has always chosen to abide by the Vienna Convention although every country states it wishes to maintain sovereignty and control within its territory. This is because the Vienna Convention is not a laundry list of items where we can pick and choose the rules and regulations we like. Rather the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity includes guidelines laid down for all countries to follow and abide by.

Only if we follow these guidelines and respect the diplomatic privileges and immunities of foreign diplomats will those of our own diplomats abroad be protected. The question of immunity rests between the foreign ministries of the two countries and does not involve courts of law. One country confers diplomatic immunity by sending someone abroad on a diplomatic passport and the other accepts it by granting a diplomat a visa.

In 1977, when a US diplomat killed an Australian government worker in a Canberra traffic accident the diplomat was sent home without trial. In 1997, a drunk Georgian diplomat killed a 16-year-old girl in New York with his reckless driving and the US requested a waiver from immunity for him. In this case the Georgian government withdrew his diplomatic immunity.

The diplomat was sentenced for seven to 21 years but was transferred back to Georgia after serving three years. In 1984, a British constable Yvonne Fletcher was apparently shot dead by Libyan embassy staff in London in 1984. Diplomatic immunity shielded the staff though it led to Britain breaking off diplomatic relations with Libya. Fifteen years later, as part of a package designed to restore normal relations, Libya accepted “general responsibility” and paid compensation.

As with many other countries, Pakistan has also used diplomatic immunity to protect its diplomats across the world. In 1975, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto withdrew an ambassador from a European country without allowing prosecution when heroin was discovered in his suitcase.

In January 2003, the State Department asked Pakistan to withdraw the diplomatic immunity of its permanent representative to the UN, Munir Akram, after New York City prosecutors sought to bring misdemeanour assault charges against him as a result of a quarrel with his girlfriend, Marjiana Mihic, who claimed that after an argument with Mr Akram, when she tried to leave, he assaulted and injured her.

The US State department demanded the withdrawal of immunity, the Pakistanis invoked it. The incident was resolved when the girlfriend withdrew her charges.

This leads us to the current case of American Raymond Davis who shot two people ostensibly trying to rob him. Without getting into whether or not Davis should have been carrying a gun and what the circumstances of the shooting were, if, as our interior minister has confirmed in the Senate on Feb 2, he holds a diplomatic passport this grants him immunity from prosecution for any civil or criminal offences.

If we adhere to international law not only should Pakistan release him but, as a diplomat, he should not have been arrested in the first place. National pride and cries of ghairat should not lead us to lose sight of the key point here, i.e. diplomatic immunity covers all aspects of civil and criminal conduct, including murder.

If this nation was a responsible member of the international community led by reasonable people, we would have protested the actions of Davis and demanded that the US take action against him. But being infused with a disproportionate amount of ghairat and only a limited quantum of reason we have chosen to create a diplomatic standoff with the United States which we will ultimately lose if it is found that international law stands against our stance. Rantings and ravings by our media ghairatwallahs will neither enhance our international standing nor change facts.

forex trading ARDESHIR COWASJEE ARTICLES : Hypocrites to the core

THE local outrage over the WikiLeaks exposure is as hypocritical as is the hypocrisy of our civil and military so-called leaders who cosy up to the Americans in private whilst expediently criticising them publicly.
For far too long, Pakistanis have abused the Americans while simultaneously seeking help from them. Those who have attempted to acknowledge our dependence on the US have been slammed by the ridiculous ` ghairat ` lobby. Why the unwillingness to recognise that our military needs US-made hardware and our economy needs US aid and investment? Does ghairat demand that we publicly abuse the US and those who openly acknowledge Pakistan`s dependence on Uncle Sam?
We all know how Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan pursued the US seeking aid, as have done all their successors. Let us look at the response to the country`s fifth prime minister, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who tried to be honest and explain the realities of the world to the ghairat -obsessed. S.M. Burke, one of Pakistan`s earliest diplomats, who died recently aged 94, in his book, Pakistan`s Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis describes truth telling thus:
“Suhrawardy frequently defended his pro-US foreign policy in public with a frankness unheard of in Pakistan till then. In one such extempore performance he faced a large gathering of East Pakistani students in the Salimullah Muslim Hall at Dhaka and decried the fact `that if we say anything in favour of America or the UK we are called “stooges of imperialism” and if we say anything in favour of Russia we are called “independent”`. He would try to compare the differences between various Muslim countries but it must be remembered that all the existing Muslim governments were weak. `The question is asked: why don`t we get together rather than be tied to a big power like the UK or America? My answer to that is that zero plus zero plus zero plus zero is after all equal to zero. We have, therefore, to go farther afield rather than get all the zeros together`.”
Nationwide protests ensued against the prime minister`s insult to the ummah. His resignation was demanded, and the Muslim League and religious parties dubbed him an imperialist agent.
WikiLeaks on Pakistan are merely premature. Most State Department cables become available after a few years following declassification. Access to old cables aptly illustrate the hypocrisy of Pakistanis towards the US.
Ayub Khan publicly spoke of wanting Friends not Masters. But what did he say to the Americans in private? In 1953, “Ayub Khan visited Washington `at his own volition,` ahead of a visit by Pakistan`s civilian head of state and foreign minister. He sought a `deal whereby Pakistan could — for the right price — serve as the West`s eastern anchor in an Asian alliance structure.” State Department declassified cable quoted in Shirin Tahir-Kheli`s book The United States and Pakistan : Evolution of an Influence Relationship.
“In the quest for US support, Ayub Khan went so far as to tell a US official, `Our army can be your army if you want.” Dennis Kux . United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto made a career out of being anti-American. He even wrote a book titled The Myth of Independence after leaving the Ayub government to score the point that whilst others compromised sovereignty, he would not. But let`s look at the text of Department of State Telegram from American Embassy Islamabad to Secretary of State, Secret Cable No 861 dated 22 December 1971. ( Also included in Roedad Khan`s book, The American Papers Secret and Confidential, India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Documents 1965-1973) . It talks of Bhutto`s visit to the US ambassador two days after he took over. “Surprisingly and quite independently, I received a phone call late afternoon of Wednesday, Dec 22, from the president`s office asking if I would receive the president at my residence in the evening. President Bhutto arrived at 2130 hours local and conversed with me for 35 minutes. He was accompanied by Mustafa Khar, recently announced governor and martial law administrator of Punjab. Khar took virtually no part in the conversation which ensued.
“After exchange of social amenities, and after noting that his call upon me was most unusual from the standpoint of protocol, Bhutto said that he was so acting to signal strongly his reaffirmation of a whole new period of close and effective relations with the United States. He said whatever criticism the United States may have had regarding his past posture, he now hoped that it would be forgotten as our two countries `with mutual interests` came closer together in common cause. He said that he again wished to express his appreciation for the assistance which the United States had extended to Pakistan during its greatest crisis, and added that it would not be forgotten.” There is much more but space is short.
Things haven`t changed since 1956, when Suhrawardy made his remark. Pakistan`s present often reviled ambassador the US, Husain Haqqani, has read and learned a lot since his birth in 1956. He attempted to do as did Suhrawardy.
Soon after becoming ambassador in a June 2008 in a TV interview with one of the ghairat champions Haqqani was asked, “Why don`t we look the US in the eye?” He responded, accurately, “To look someone in the eye, you have to be approximately the same height.” Haqqani`s name has not yet cropped up in any embarrassing WikiLeaks cables but he is still unreasonably abused for seeking what Pakistan has always sought from the US — military and economic aid.

forex trading ARDESHIR COWASJEE ARTICES : Pakistan, terrorism and our combined failure

A common reaction to the almost universal conclusion that one of Pakistan’s main exports is terrorism — bolstered by the latest would-be hero of Times Square who fortunately failed — is that the larger majority of the Pakistani nation and its would-be leadership exist in a state of denial.
Apart from the fact that most deny historical fact with impunity the trend is to ignore the mote in one’s eye and focus on how mean and nasty is the rest of the world by its censure of many of the country’s inadequacies. By far the most sensible reactions to the incompetent bomb-maker (by design or accident one does not know) come from Pakistanis in America, many naturalised US citizens.
They are puzzled as to why a seemingly well-educated well-settled man, albeit of apparently modest means, would be prompted to attempt to kill and maim fellow citizens — or to even merely make a statement (if that is what he was doing).
One e-mailer this week has it that “the biggest problem is we are a group of people, not a nation, who are ruled by well-known and well-qualified thieves. We have been deprived of everything of which an educated person such as Faisal Shahzad and other Pakistanis can be proud of or have respect for. We are embarrassed in front of the entire world by the deeds of our leaders, past and present. Our identity is deformed and distorted. Thus we can easily be trapped by the so-called mullahs into ‘serving’ our religion.”
This from a young expatriate Pakistani — he went on to say that Pakistanis now living abroad, when applying for jobs, often declare themselves to be Indian or of Indian extraction to avoid being turned away. Not a happy situation.
There are, of course, some who in line with the current fashion squarely put the blame for the spread of terrorism and the adoption of its methods by the young men of Pakistan on to the western world, particularly the US, for its ‘use’ of Pakistan, its attitude and its superiority in so many fields — resentment is a great spur towards senseless reaction. They ask why the Americans are doing what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, why are they there? (Strangely, there has been no mention of Palestine.) What one needs to ask these expatriates is why are they in the US.
From a man of Pakistani descent who has been working and living in the US for 30 years came valid comments, that it took Pakistan an inordinately long time to acknowledge that terrorism did exist; for years those who killed and destroyed bore the euphemism ‘freedom fighters’. It was not until the bombs started going off in the heartland of Pakistan that we began to acknowledge that, yes, terrorism does exist, it was not until we saw killings and bombings in the house of God that we stopped in our tracks and realised something was wrong. To this gentleman both Pakistan and America have failed as far as Pakistan is concerned — the Pakistanis, generals and politicians, because of their corruption, incompetence and double-dealing and their failure to deal with the US.
“We failed miserably,” he wrote, “our military failed in properly analysing the threat level and future assessment of the damage our incompetence and lack of action would do. We all thought of it as a game, our military and politicians toyed around with the Americans with sporadic arrests, selling men for $500 a head, and we failed to understand or look at the larger picture. …We have failed our children, we have failed to instil in them the unique identity of being a Pakistani first and foremost, and until we do that our boys will run around like rudderless boats seeking causes which have nothing to do with their identity.”
The younger writers are less thoughtful, they are angry, disillusioned and clueless as to where their allegiance should lie. They have no nexus with their nationhood, simply with the religion they have been taught from a very young age, a religion that has been distorted by the politics Pakistan has adopted and its firm denial, through fear of clerical vengeance, of its maker’s exhortation that religion is not the business of the state.
Too many of our youth, within and without the country, may have roots in Pakistan but thanks to 63 years of political and religious dishonesty combined with bungling, they have no cause when it comes to their country of birth or descent.
And these present politicians? Last Wednesday in the Senate cries of ‘shame’ were raised about a Newsweek article which had quoted from Husain Haqqani’s book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, published in 2005. Haqqani tells “how the government’s jihadist connections date to the country’s creation as an ideological, Islamic state and the decision by successive governments to use jihad both to gain domestic support and to hurt its perennial rival, India. Describing the military’s distinction between terrorists and ‘freedom fighters’, he notes that the problem is systemic. ‘This duality … is a structural problem, rooted in history and a consistent policy of the state. It is not just the inadvertent outcome of decisions by some governments’.”
To deny this is foolish as it factually sets out one root cause of why we are what we are today. Haqqani, our ambassador in Washington, ends his book: “Pakistan was created in a hurry and without giving detailed thought to various aspects of nation and state building … Both Pakistan’s elite and their US benefactors would have to participate in transforming Pakistan into a functional, rather than ideological state.”