WHY THIS ARMY?

By:Rabia Ahmed        PAKISTAN TODAY  17 January 2012

Imagine all the money we could save


Mehdi Hassan and Noor Jehan’s songs held the public in thrall during the war of 1965: Apni jaan nazar karoon; Aye watan kay sajilay jawanon; Meria dhol sipaiya. Now if only the dhol sipaiya would remember their raison d’etre, people would still be peshingtheir wafas to the army today and they’d be something more than justsajilay.

Many jawans lost their lives in Pakistan’s several wars and skirmishes against enemies within and without its borders. However the armed forces cannot claim to be alone in their losses here.

According to figures produced by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), in 2003 140 civilians lost their lives in Pakistan, as did 24 members of the Security Forces and 25 terrorists. These numbers peaked in 2009 with 2,307 civilian, 1,011 Security Force and 8,267 terrorist deaths...a staggering 11,585 deaths that single year alone.

In 2010 the figures were down to 1,796 civilian, 469 SF, and 384 terrorist deaths, a total of 7,435 fatalities. Data collected up to February in 2011 indicated 226 civilian, 98 SF, and 384 terrorist deaths...in two months alone.

All in all, 9,620 civilians died in the space of seven years and two months in this country, while 3,443 SF personnel and 20,150 terrorists lost their lives, a staggering total of 33,213 lives all told.

Either the armed forces are no longer effective, or unable to be so.

Mind you, the performance elsewhere is as poor. Each successive civilian government has been more inept than the one before, so much so that our current president has been WikiLeaked as a ‘numbskull’ in a conversation between Sir Jock Stirrup and American diplomats, and as ‘highly corrupt’ to quote other senior British officials.

I found myself writing last week about whether democracy is all that it is cracked up to be. Can the same question be asked about the armed forces? Dare I ask if an army is really necessary in this country, at least in the shape, size and form it takes today?

Casting a slur (whether real or imagined), on two groups seems to cause the supporters of each to spit and foam incoherently at the mouth. So much so that writing about them has become for me an exercise in taking the Mickey out of both. Those two groups are the PTI and the army.

So let’s carry on with a few more facts.

According to an article by Kamran Yousaf in a daily newspaper, Pakistan’s defence budget for the year 2011-12 increased by almost 12 percent from the previous year, and now stands at over Rs 495 billion. This does not include a whopping Rs 73 billion set aside for military pensions which sum is to be taken from the civilian budget, in addition to other sums taken from the civilian budget. The column goes on to say that according to Bushra Gohar of the ANP, the defence budget of Pakistan has never been properly questioned in parliament.

Any organisation that finds itself running out of jobs has to create them. The huge American arms industry has been doing so for years by supporting and creating the need for weapons around the world. WikiLeaks have indicated that the Pakistani establishment too is implicated in supporting terrorism in the entire South Asian region...and beyond. It also points towards the corruption of the various components of the Pakistani government.

The ineptness/involvement of the Pakistan army in the Osama bin Laden case, their ineffectiveness in the Raymond Davis episode, American drone attacks and regional militant violence begs the question why such huge amounts of funds are being diverted from the crucial needs of a poverty stricken nation into military coffers.

To quote one single example, the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital in Lahore needs more than two billion rupees in donations this year to help patients who are otherwise unable to pay for themselves.          


And there are many, many other examples. Two years ago the Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust which runs a free eye hospital in Lahore required Rs 423 million to be able to continue treating curable blindness in Pakistan. This year costs have risen as have their requirements.

Education needs money. Roads, power, industry…all beg for help, and we give money to a bunch of people who end up forming a state within a state and have become so much too big for their boots? Let me spell that out: what justification does such huge and ineffective military spending have when our people have no food and in many places no drinking water?

Given such conditions, we may all be better off overrun by foreign armies anyway.

What excuse do we have for pandering so to our army?

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DEMAGOGUERY FOR DUMMIES

By:Rabia Ahmed               Monday, 9 Jan 2012 9:51 pm  PAKISTAN TODAY

A trial of Benazir’s grave


In his interview with Hamid Mir, Mr Zardari, although extremely relaxed and otherwise rational, was definitely working to build further evidence of mental incapacity should need for such evidence ever arise again. He was more than a little schizoid, a state characterised by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements. What with his attempt at being both Zardari the Co-Chairperson as well as the neutral and unaligned (and much maligned) President of Pakistan all at the same time, this was very clearly the man who gave birth to the slogan ‘Pakistan Khappay’.For those who do not know, this means ‘Long Live Pakistan’ in Sindhi but the very opposite in Urdu and Punjabi.

Mr Zardari was also asked whether his government meant to write to the Swiss government with reference to the cases against him there. He replied that his party had decided against it. He then likened the Swiss case to ‘a trial of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s grave’.

PPP supporters around the country are probably nodding their heads sagely and agreeing that this would be a sacrilege.

It is a lesson taught in Chapter 1 of ‘Demagoguery for Dummies’ that human beings invented speech in order to disguise their thoughts. It is beyond doubt that Asif Zardari is past master at using speech to press the right buttons on a public that has actually been trained into manipulation.

It is a mystery how Benazir came to be ‘shaheed’ in the first place, and I am not speaking of the criminal facts surrounding her death. Also, what on earth does ‘a trial of her grave’ mean? Quite aside from these is the question of how pertinent either of these is to the issue of the Swiss cases.

The Pakistani public, firmly in possession of a sheep-like mentality and quite unstable due to the strong vein of sentiment and irrational religiosity that runs through it, has thus been seeded with appropriate phrases. It means that Benazir Shaheed, firmly established in sainthood for a while now, accompanied by her husband co-suffused in her aura, has now been further saddled with the onus of placing him above any proceedings against him because this will be considered disrespectful to her grave.

This is a great illustration of rhetoric unleashed by a politician/demagogue, aimed at the median mentality of his electorate. It is in every demagogue’s interests to keep public mentality at the level of his speech.

A well educated, reasoning public is only possible in countries where those in public office are elected on the basis of their performance. In places like Pakistan, such a public would be a gross inconvenience.

The tendency to grasp at short term personal benefit in this country means that many schools paid for by international donations exist on paper alone, since the money allocated for them has found its way into unauthorised pockets.

Those that do exist teach a curriculum composed of irrelevant, soppy details. This curriculum stresses the rote learning of historical events and names. It does not encourage students to think or engage in debate on any issue arising from these events. As a result we churn out an electorate of unreasoning, ill-informed persons easily led by means of slogans and misinformation which works well into the hands of politicians seeking to lead by such means, rather than by good governance.

At its basic level, all education provides students with the ability to read and write, which is the ability to speak and scribe alphabets strung together to form words and sentences. Only a good education encourages students to look beyond the alphabet forming the phrases they read, to critically assess and understand the concepts behind the words.

The sad fact is that we send our children to schools (whether government or private) only for the sake of ‘keeping them away from trouble’. In other words, to prevent them from thinking too independently, a habit that is considered a threat to morality.

On the contrary, the protection afforded by means of an education that stresses imagination, self-discovery, debate and analysis is the best safeguard for a nation, much more so than a weapon toting army with or without nuclear capability, or a judgemental social police.

Unless we train ourselves to think freely and critically, statements such as Mr Zardari’s which seek to connect two quite separate matters by links forged of cultural and emotional millstones will always be present, and will always have the power to drown us.

CAN DEMOCRACY WORK?

By:Rabia Ahmed     PAKISTAN TODAY

On the competence of the electorate


If an elected person or group of persons proves disappointing one can only blame oneself, as with marriage to a person of one’s own choosing. In the case of marriage, both arranged marriages and marriages of choice appear to possess a similar profile of success (or failure), which makes it difficult to prefer one above the other. In fact, the best option is probably a blend of the two.

So why are people so much in favour of democracy to the exclusion of other options, at least here in Pakistan, where we have neither seen much of democracy and have only been disappointed when it (supposedly) existed? In fact the question should be whether what we so fondly call ‘democracy’ in Pakistan is democracy at all.

Democracy appears to have become a cornerstone of civilisation. Suggesting alternatives (‘the ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination,’ Voltaire) results in shock and recoil, as if you’d owned up to having lice. I postulate that this affection for democracy in Pakistan is related to the mysterious rolling of ‘Rs’ which has afflicted us all of a sudden.

Much of Pakistan’s short life was spent under military dictatorship; years of unmitigated disaster – think Zia and Musharraf more than Ayub. However, none of the civilian governments interspersed through these martial episodes of history can claim to have delivered better, their only difference a mandate of sorts to form a government. Given that many of those elected assumed office under dubious credentials, it begs the question how strong this mandate actually was. In fact, their performance based on self interest and toeing the party line rather than representation of their electorate only adds to the doubts surrounding this system of government.

Of course the inevitable intellectual argument is that non-democratic forms of government such as military coups are unacceptable ‘because they do not allow institutions to develop’. Ah, these institutions. Are any of them really alive much less well in Pakistan today?

One institution, of course, is the parliament including, as mentioned above, several members possessing dubious, even fake credentials. In 2010, the Election Commission issued summons against twenty parliamentarians in this connection, seven from the National Assembly, eleven from the Punjab and one each from the Sindh and Balochistan Assemblies.

We also possess a judiciary suffused with bias against the civilian government of the day. Expressing her disagreement with the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s decision to take on the case and conduct an enquiry into the memo scandal, Asma Jahangir, counsel for Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani, questioned whether the court was there to serve and protect the rights of the public or the establishment.

Pakistan’s over-endowed and scandal-ridden military establishment, addicted to being in government, is unwilling to relinquish foreign policy and security related decision-making into civilian hands where they belong. Hierarchically, it considers itself above the civilian government and the president of the country, both of whom are in fact charged with the command and upkeep of the armed forces under the constitution of Pakistan.

A top heavy Steel Mill, PIA and Pakistan Railways, riddled with corruption, nepotism and cronyism, a similarly afflicted bureaucracy, power providers on the rocks, and the tale of the aforementioned institutions not allowed to develop is told.

Democracy, as Plato found, ‘presupposes a competent citizenry.’ It is also pertinent what Albert Einstein said, that ‘an empty stomach is not a good political advisor.’ The question is therefore: do we have a competent citizenry in Pakistan or/and one with a full stomach? And if not, can democracy work here?

We know literacy, education and economic figures for Pakistan. There is moreover no civic or political education in the schools of this country which would enable what educated individuals there are to make informed decisions about the leaders they elect. Neither Mr Zardari’s emotional references to martyred family members ad nauseam, or Mr Nawaz Sharif’s carping on improper removal from office, nor indeed Imran Khan’s hunky good looks – none of these are valid grounds for election.

True we have only ourselves to blame if our choices turn out to be poor, and in Pakistan democracy’s other raison d'êtree does not work either where we can replace our choices, or force our elected representatives to do their job by threatening them with loss of office. Once secure in office these elected individuals appear to develop an uncanny ability to remain there, as well as the thickest of skins, preventing the penetration and efficacy of any external pressures whatsoever.

So once again: why are people so much in favour of democracy, at least here in Pakistan? Is it because there are no alternatives? But wait now,are we speaking here of democracy, or of Imran Khan?

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NOT ANOTHER FEUDAL ENCLAVE

By Rabia Ahmed     Pakistan Today  27 December 2011

PTI, sajada nashins and lotas


Well, what could be nicer than the news of Javed Hashmi joining the PTI? It appears to have tried, but the PML(N) leadership was unable to lure him back into a rapidly sinking ship. Yes, the PML(N) is definitely sinking, and like a couple of desperate housewives the brothers Sharif have witnessed texts in the city from the chief of the Tehreek-e-Insaaf to the cell phones of an avid electorate, inviting them to join the PTI rally in Karachi. That rally turned out to be a resounding success. Now let’s see how many of his promises Mr Khan is able to honour. If he can manage to ‘keep (even one of) the *&^%$!@# honest’, he will have earned his keep.

Years of imprisonment and a stroke could not prevent Mr Hashmi becoming a much respected “political scientist, geo-strategist and a statesman” or “one of the most vocal critics of General Pervez Musharraf's military regime (who) openly criticised General Musharraf's treatment of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, and his policy on the war on terror.” He will be a valuable addition and an asset to a party on the scramble for stalwarts. Mr Hashmi’s inclusion might go some way towards righting the balance for a party that is threatening, but not sure, to become another feudal enclave what with the inclusion of stray sajjada nashinsand other lotas.

The PTI is now pretty sure to be the major opposition to a government that will almost certainly still be an amalgam of the PPP and MQM, plus whoever else joins the circus – who knows, perhaps even the eternally miffed PML(N)? It will be interesting to see Imran’s choice of some of those shadowy persons in opposition parties who say “Yo!” and rise purposefully when the man calls “Minister for Defence?” or “Foreign Minister?”

Students at a madrassah

On quite another positive front was news of the rescue of 45 students discovered chained in the basement of a madrassah in Karachi’s infamous Sohrab Goth. The news was lost somewhere between the Memogate and the political maneuverings that monopolise media attention in this country. The wonderful fact of these kids, most of whom aged around 20, being found and set free definitely deserves a resounding hurrah.

A police official involved in the operation said that "The madrassahofficials claim that they had chained those students because they were drug addicts and they wanted to rehabilitate them and make them better Muslims."

Yay for madrassah wisdom and logic! Way to make good Muslims and cure junkies. While you’re at it, drag them into the fold in chains, club them on their heads and get them to detox. Zia-ul-Haq did not die in an air crash; he parachuted straight into Sohrab Goth where he landed bang on top of Jimmy Hendrix and gave birth to a litter of suicide bombers to each of whom he bequeathed an exploding mango with the instructions to go forth and detonate.

Please, Pakistan Police, check all madrassahs and all remote buildings and make sure that their basements are free of our precious children. And thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We may be happy to see the last of this government, but we’d much rather it was sent on its way under circumstances other than yet another military ouster. The mind boggles at the prospect of going through the whole coup process once more, of yet another bimbo in khaki with political aspirations hogging the airwaves again.

Definitely Imran Khan will be a welcome change with Hashmi to give him direction, if he can sort the wheat from the chaff entering his party. Here is a man with some integrity who is worried about his ‘kursi’, true, but mostly that he could have ended up paying for them all if they had been stolen in bulk by the Quaid’s children after the PTI’s rally at the Quaid’s mazaar on Sunday.

If the army is so keen to safeguard the nation and ‘support the democratic process in the country’, it should guard the chairs at such free and democratic political rallies so that politicians can indulge their penchant for making rash promises in peace. We can then hang them at leisure if they fail to keep them.

MORE THAN A HEADDRESS

By Rabia Ahmed             20 December 2011    Pakistan Today

The rich and the covered

I’m all for a decent burial, but only after I die. So while tempted to don thehijab in defiant reaction to prejudice against it in Australia while I lived there, several factors prevented me, but mainly the heat. A close second was the difficulty of explaining my antipathy to the hijab to my two small children even though I wore it. The third was the inconvenience of managing the children, a job and a home while battling extra garments, and the fourth the conviction that one’s personal appearance should be dictated by personal views in the light of certain beliefs, not social pressure. I could align myself as definitely if more sensibly in other, better ways.

Therefore I remained as before, practically and decently but less expensively dressed.

It is a moot point whether hijabs/niqabs/abayas are prescribed by Islam.

Everyone knows that the Quran enjoins modesty on all believing men and all believing women. In the case of women, it expects them not to display their beauty in public, and to draw their outer garments over themselves when out of doors. There are various interpretations of what constitutes a woman’s beauty, her outer garments, etc. It is not the remit of this column to cover any of this.

A reason for not adopting the hijab in Australia was the heat. This remains an argument against this headdress anywhere and at anytime, also prompting the question whether the All Merciful enjoined this headdress in fanless times. It is not unusual, says the BBC, for temperatures from May to September ‘over much of the Arabian Peninsula, with the exception of the mountains, to rise above 48°C/120°F.’

Clothing most suitable for such temperatures is pale, lose cotton that covers against the burning sun, yet allows free circulation of air. This cannot include two layers of tight head covering, nor a veil over the face, and nor can it mean a coat, however light, over an inner dress, however thin, not to mention a third layer of the foundation garments worn by women. Layering, as those who have lived in cooler climates know, is the best way to keep warm, not cool.

It would take just one week for men (the main interpreters of religion) forced to wear such clothes to say “pshaw” and hotly defend this argument. It is a measure of women’s suppression that they dressed this way for years.

The working women of Pakistan, the cleaning ladies and those who work in the fields, wear shalwars that end short of the ankle, and light dupattasthat shield the head and neck from the sun. Most, moreover, discard thedupatta when they work and hitch the shalwar up further to facilitate movement. You will almost never see one of these practical women in ahijab, or abaya as the outer coat is called. They can’t afford them, they can’t work in them.

Teachers wearing the niqab cannot make essential eye contact, and remembering Lal Masjid and Abdul Aziz tantalisingly clad in a burqa, it is also a security issue.

I lay myself open to recrimination by saying that the hijab, niqab andabaya are mainly accessories of the rich, the tradition bound, and those dictated to, although many women wear them with the genuine intention of fulfilling the terms of their belief, as I do not. I respect their strength and vehemently defend their right to their convictions thereby thumbing my nose at the French. Still, the majority of those clad this way live in air conditioned homes with UPS and generators, two drawing rooms for segregation, servants, and money enough to buy the extra fabric.

Modesty is an attitude which applies as much to men as it does to women – bottom pinchers of Bohri Bazaar take heed.

I, as a Muslim, defend the right of any Muslim to interpret this beautiful religion of Islam any which peaceful way he chooses, hopefully with intelligence. I also defend the right of any person to try to convince another of the validity of his arguments and interpretation. I reject and hopefully most Muslims reject with me the supposed right of anyone to harm anyone else on the basis of these views. Such violence is what is destroying this country.

I would dearly love Islam to be the foundation of any edifice we build. However, like all beautiful things, Islam can be twisted, sometimes into an ugly shape, just like the one we see today. I’ve said this before, but unless we learn to build rather than break in its name, we must lay Islam to one side on the public front, and start the long trudge along the hard road of human error with every successive generation.

THE FUTURE OF OUR PAST

  By Rabia Ahmed                          Pakistan Today  12 December 2011

Inside the Mohatta Palace, Karachi

Why preserve a heritage?

The Mohatta palace, built in colonial times for a Hindu businessman by a Muslim architect in the Mughal style using traditional pink Jodhpur stone and the yellow Gizri stone of Karachi is a speaking amalgam of time, place and person. Sensitively restored, it is a living symbol of the pleasure the past brings to a living present.

In this setting a panel discussion took place entitled ‘Critical Heritage: The future of Pakistan’s past.’ As keynote speaker Kamil Khan Mumtaz, one of Pakistan’s most gifted architects posed the simple question: Who are we?

Who are we indeed?

It is worth asking in addition why the past must be preserved and how? Is it so that we can revert to it?

According to Bertrand Russell, “There are two reasons for reading a book: one that you enjoy it, the other that you can boast about it!” Exactly so, it is a pleasure to explore one’s heritage, the Mohatta Palace, the Badshahi Mosque, the Lahore Fort; they are also a source of pride, inspite of the flaws.

Inside the Badshahi mosque,
Lahore

It is also that the past, like another direction on a compass, is a point of reference that provides you with identity and helps position you in this world.

The people of Pakistan despite their varied genealogy rise to certain occasions as one. This could be defined as a collective identity, provided by the country we live in now, our recent past, and the years before. We may not live like our ancestors any longer or share all their values and predilections – not many of us move to another country to proselytise, not many of us move to another country to conquer – but we are undoubtedly products of a common history and it is this history that speaks to us by means of our visual heritage. This is why it needs to be preserved.

The statues of Buddha so wantonly destroyed were no threat to any faith. They simply spoke of the skill and dedication of those who chiselled these mammoths from harsh stone. They stood in mute testimony to persons who lived in these parts before we did, who were milestones along our history, helping us to visualise the pathways travelled by others before we arrived at where we stand today.

Buildings of the Mughal period would tempt no one to fratricide, patricide or to build lavish tombs for one’s spouse, although they do tempt some to poetry. They stand (or now almost fall) as a reminder of opulence gone by when elephants carried riders up wide steps into a fort, when a candle lit inside a pavilion burst into a thousand dazzling flames.

There is no threat implicit in someone else’s past either. Their heritage in Rome is a pleasure even though they were not my ancestors – Michaelangelo, Leonardo, or Raphael. Yet they instil in me a pride in the talents of my fellow human beings. I arise from the cradle of Mesopotamia or Gandhara and then from Jodhpur, Delhi, Agra or Bengal. I live now in Lahore or Karachi or Dera Ghazi Khan and am in addition a citizen of the world. I need to destroy no one, pull down no monuments to prove my identity or the worth of my ancestors.

Our children today are scattered in a diaspora as unsettling as the one that scattered the children of Israel. They dress in various ways, speak and eat according to their adoptive lands, yet their roots feed on exactly the same springs as ours. For those who remain at home, a longing for wider horizons leads them to adopt ways that express this yearning but the opportunity is often denied. What is more, life at home is such that even to copy is torment and anything that stands for change bitter.

The threat to our monuments from negligence, vandalism and their destruction by religious fanatics has no basis in religion. It is purely an expression of anger and an urge for self-assertion in a world that denies many the basic economic means for survival.

Budhist statues, Taxila

In countries like Pakistan, the expensive preservation of monuments requires more sensitivity than elsewhere in the world. To leave this work of restoration in the hands of workers who possess neither skill for the job nor the wherewithal for personal existence is foolish. As the architect Sajjad Kausar demonstrated in his presentation, the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore suffered as a result of a lack of this sensitivity, as have other monuments, and by extension the people to whom these monuments belong.

The past can never be destroyed but its lessons certainly can, along with the roots that it provides.

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THE VIOLATIONS WITHIN

By Rabia Ahmed         Pakistan Today 6th December 2011

A case of selective outrage

“Thy government is thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance…To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

Whilst thou lie’st warm at home, secure and safe;” says Kate, Shakespeare’s erstwhile Shrew once tamed.

Kate, of course used the word ‘husband’ rather than ‘government’, but alas the unhusbanded people of Pakistan, uncared for, hardly maintained, unable to lie warm at home…neither safe nor secure.

Last month, Nato aircrafts attacked two of Pakistan’s border posts along Afghanistan, reportedly unprovoked, killing at least 24 Pakistani troops.

It is as Huma Yusuf said in her column Understanding Sovereignty:‘Other countries cannot be expected to take our state’s flirtation with the concept (of sovereignty) seriously. At times, we thump righteous fists in defence of a concept we barely understand or value. At (others) we are the first to subvert our own sovereignty by inviting foreign states to interfere in matters that ought to be Pakistan’s unique business.’

Inviting the US to meddle with our armed forces, or complaining to Britain to help resolve security issue is the best this government can do but by no means the worst, which is when it subverts its own role as the sovereign authority within a state claiming independence.

As many as 24, some say more, soldiers killed by violent means is tragic any time; if the violence is unprovoked it is criminal as well. Yet look around to see how many innocent civilians die everyday in this country because of the criminal negligence of those who are supposed to care for them.

The government asked the National Institute of Health (NIH) to stop compiling lists of dengue-related cases to avoid panic. Therefore there are no figures available for deaths this year as a result of dengue fever, but they appear to be in hundreds. These deaths, still occurring, are largely linked to the negligence of relevant authorities who failed to take appropriate measures against the spread of this virus.

The horrifying practice of karo kari (‘honour’ killing) is, according to the Ansar Burney Trust website, a ‘shockingly common practice in Pakistan’. Quoting loosely, the website says that “karo kari involves the murder of a female member of a family by a relative because she is thought to have brought dishonor upon the family. Women on whom suspicion falls are rarely given the opportunity to defend themselves. (Her) relatives have no other socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain of dishonor on the family name by killing her, the female responsible.

This violation of the code of ‘decent behaviour’ can be anything: a woman refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, seeking divorce (even from an abusive husband), having extra-marital relationships (sexual or otherwise), flirting, or even becoming the victim of rape.

Suspicion and accusations alone are often enough to defile a family’s honour and therefore enough to warrant the killing of the woman.”

News dated 3 December: a girl who had eloped with and married the man of her choice was shot dead by her uncle, right in her parents’ home in Lahore. She was lucky to be shot. Some women in such situations are burnt to death, often with acid, others are beaten and tortured until they die.

This woman was one of about 1000 women who die every year in Pakistan as a result of karo kari. Persons committing murder are punishable with death or life imprisonment under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code. According to the Ansar Burney Trust however, persons ‘who commit karo kari typically go unpunished.’

There have been many expressions of outrage following the Nato attacks, rallies in various Pakistani cities where citizens expressed their anger towards Nato and specifically the US. Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan have been closed, no Bonn, and the government has made the appropriate noises, demanding an apology from Washington which, saysThe New York Times, President Obama will not tender, at least for now.

Where is the outcry following the dengue, the karo kari, the target killings?

Again, and it was a man, Zaheer Iqbal this time, who suffered the consequences of a family’s ‘lost honour’. Zaheer was shot for having ‘developed illicit relations with the sister of a local man.’

The news of Zaheer’s murder in one newspaper was immediately followed by news of the Chief Traffic Officer of some area deputing wardens intelligently on the roads to maintain traffic flow outside a makeshift goat market.

The issue has been placed in the perspective in which it is viewed in this country. For this issue no righteous fists were thumped.

‘Providence, the most popular scapegoat for our sins,’ said Mark Twain. It is either Providence, or the USA; never ourselves.