Adil Najam
These are distressing times. But this is not a time to be depressed.
This is a time, as Owais reminds us in his last post, to reaffirm our hopes for the future. True defeat would be to give up on those hopes. I have put up the splash image (on the front page) that I have to reassert and to remind ourselves that ultimately Pakistan will be what we make of it. Emergency or no emergency, no one can snatch our Pakistaniat from us. Not until we ourselves surrender it!
Back in May, at a moment of similar desperation, I had written a post where I had sought “solace in the one place where I always find it. In poetry. Especially in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry.” The video clip I had used there is worth repeating here.
I had written then - and it seems even more pertinent today to repeat it:
Here is Faiz - in his own words, in his own voice. The second half has the same poem masterfully sung by Nayarra Noor. Enjoy this rare find of kalam i Faiz, ba zaban i Faiz. But more than that, think about what he is saying and how it relates to what is happening today.
What I had to say (including about US role) I said at length in an NPR Radio show today (or here). But what Faiz has to say is far more profound.
The words of Faiz certainly cut deeper than anything I can say. They are an invitation to action. But they are also an invitation to thought. An invitation to responsibility. An invitation to continuing the struggle no matter what. An invitation to keep moving onwards despite the odds. An invitation to celebrate the spirit of defiance of those who will not give up.
I had ended that post by reaffirming ATP’s committment “to celebrating all the diverse trials and tribulations of being Pakistan … the mundane as well as the profound; the sad as well as the gleeful; the immediate as well as the long-term.” It is time, today, to repeat that commitment.
This is our commitment to Pakistaniat. We love Pakistan not because everything is right in it. But despite that which is clearly not right. And with a commitment to make right that which has gone astray. Ameen.
What is the point of such cliched posts? This is a time for action - not feeling good about ourselves. A lot of people visit ATP and so, ATP should be organizing protests and bringing people out in the US and Canada instead of quoting Faiz yet again. There is only one side in the right here and the ATP editors need to take a firm and official stance on that instead of hiding behind Faiz.
-in days of college my professor teaching in history, told us 2 things that are standing crystalclear for me , the day today ;
1) History repeats itself…..
2)The pen is more sharpen than the sword/ (or the gun)…..
Let us all tell and conduct in different ways this message to
Gen Musharraf and all those in the Army from cadets to Generals those whom are defending this Cruelty , this profound disrespect of Pakistan and Pakistanii`s, We the people of Pakistan are the true developers/inheritors of The future of PAKistan.
-from a Pakistani in Europe.
Aqil Sajjad,
Yes, you are right. Daily Times editorials have been very soft on the Emergency. I think the Businessman in Najam Sethi has taken the better of the the liberal journalist in him.
Meanwhile, there was a small but vociferous protest yesterday on the Fifth Avenue near the Pakistan Consulate in New York today. Many of the participants were young men and women of Pakistani origin from Columbia University. They were carrying placards with messages like Down with Emergency, Down with Martial Law etc. and were raising slogans.
There is a lot of foot traffic in this area and people were amused by the noisy protest but were not sure what was the protest about and what country were we representing. One older American approached me and curiously pointing to the placard I was carrying, “No to Martial law” asked me if the protest was about Burma!!! I thought that pretty well summed up the situation in Pakistan.
Editorial, The News, Nov. 6, 2007
US role & reaction
The United States is in a real soup after the second Musharraf coup against his own self. Statements of top US leaders betray a sense of helplessness in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has come out strongly demanding that Musharraf should quit his army post and Pakistan should move towards elections under the constitution. She also said America would review its aid package to Pakistan and implicitly, but belatedly, also admitted to a serious US policy flaw in relying too much on Musharraf which Washington has been doing for the past six years. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Monday asked Musharraf to return his country to a law-based, constitutional and democratic rule as soon as possible saying that the state of emergency and suspension of the constitution was a disturbing development. A White House spokesman chipped in, saying that the move was unfortunate. The defence secretary further said that the US was reviewing all assistance programmes and the Pentagon also later said that it was suspending its annual defence talks in Islamabad scheduled to begin today. Influential US senators have been talking even tougher. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, has been severely critical of the Bush administration’s “Musharraf policy” saying that this is why Washington’s options are now limited. He also said that he would be pushing the US president for a review of the relationship to make it focus on channelling aid to help moderates in Pakistan.
Another influential member of the US Senate, Republican Senator Arlen Specter said he would not support American aid to Pakistan with the new development since these were against the cause of democracy. The senator said that America needed to get “very tough with the dictator”. It should be remembered that these are not empty words, because those who have spoken them do have the power to influence policymaking in America. Many US think-tanks and analysts had been for days cautioning the Bush administration of the consequences of a policy that relied too much on a dictator who was fast losing popularity and his grip on power — and their warnings have now become reality. A change in US policy is thus very much on the cards, especially when one considers that both houses of Congress are controlled by the Democrats, who have been at odds with President Bush over his handling of the war on terror and specifically Pakistan. Besides, many Americans will question the sending of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop a military dictator who has ravaged the constitution and trampled on human rights and the press in his own country. It would be fair to say that Washington’s continued display of support for General Musharraf is crucial to his survival. The nature of the emergency — which is nothing more nor less than a severe martial law — is such that this support may well be coming to an end.
The US is only worried about the war on terror and the 24,000 US troops next to the troubled Pakistani tribal areas. If Washington gets assurances from Pakistani power brokers and stakeholders that its interests will be watched, personalities may no longer be of interest to it. Right or wrong, the US has acquired a balancing role in Pakistan’s domestic power games. It is time now that it stood on the side of democracy and stopped working with an autocrat whose only objective seems to be to preserve his own rule at any cost, regardless of what happens to his country and its people.
Please do not monopolise Pakistaniat to Faiz,
millions of Pakistanis do not agree with Faiz,
so we will not come out like old age Majnou
with iron chains around the ankles, we should
come out like muslims in Pakistan must do,i.e.
courage, tenacity, arguments, and no theatre
Pakistaniat Zindabad, Dehriate Murdabad
Real democarcy comes from burning desire from pepole to be free from whims and fancies of an autocrat.
I remember the time when emergency was imposed by Mrs Gandhi. I was about a 11 year old child then. I remember the dislike we could feel among the people towards Emergency. It is this level of dislike among the Indian citizens that ultimatly lead to her removal. This was also a great lesson for political parties that you have to let go the power when people do not want you to be in power.
Another example is Nepal. 20 years back no one could have imagined that the Nepal would become a democratic country and is on the way to beome a republic (after removing monarchy). King was like a god to them. Again the strong will of its people is making this change happen.
I think for the first time in past 60 year people of Pakistan has seriouly made their mind to get their freedom back of autocratic rule. If this reflect on the street they will have their own democracy.
May god bless the People of Pakistan.
Akash (India)
glad you noticed that aqil
Editorial, The News, Nov 6, 2007
Filling the jails
The country’s jails are fast filling up as ever greater numbers of miscreants and extremists, dangerous men and women all, arrive at their gates. They come by the van-load, bumped and bruised, battered and beaten, having been detained after being caught red-handed in the act of committing a felony — a felony usually taking the form of standing in the road and waving a banner or, at the more serious end of the spectrum, shouting a slogan. This includes hundreds of lawyers who have been brutally beaten and arrested nationwide as well as members of civil society voicing their protest against the whims of one man bent on pushing the country to ruin. Some of those newly sampling life in jail have clearly crossed the boundary into out-and-out terrorism — they have declared themselves to be politicians, no less, and have been duly carried off to await an uncertain fate.
Curiously, none of these dangers to the security of the nation appear to have been — at the time of their arrest or detention — in possession of anything more lethal than a fine legal mind, a couple of ball-pens and some hastily scribbled notes. Some of them come equipped with the kind of intellect that can stop a man dead in his tracks at a hundred meters. Others possess yet more dangerous weaponry — they have the ability to string half-a-dozen words together coherently whilst at the same time holding several conflicting ideas in their head at the same time — self-evidently, they are all individuals likely to shake the pillars of society to their foundations. Which is why they are being locked up – in a most ruthless manner by the police, the veritable handmaiden of the dictatorship, which is now emboldened by the strong defence that the president took for them in his ‘emergency proclamation’.
Yet more curiously, there appears to be a positive dearth of arrests of those who publicly carry a range of exploding and projectile weaponry, are unafraid to use it against officers of the state and the citizenry, and are able to flout any and every law that the land may have with complete impunity and cut the heads from those who displease them. These paragons of virtue regularly issue threats to kill, have by their own admission carried out those threats and promise to deliver more of the same in the future. Clearly, these men present no threat whatsoever to the state, which has itself displayed its gratitude by ceding large tracts of scenic countryside and entire local administrations into their tender care.
Little of this will have been seen by the average citizen over the last three days as the electronic media has been called into the headmaster’s office for a severe talking-to on the matter of what they can or cannot report or comment on. Screens will remain dark until the powers that be and the broadcasters reach an accommodation. The print media are feeling a cautious way forward in the new environment and newspapers are now the most accessible news source — in a country where some 60 per cent of the population is illiterate. It might be reasonably wondered how long it will be before their pages start appearing with large blank areas — presumably put there for people unable to read.
The old adage ‘Don’t shoot me I’m only the messenger’ seems to have failed to surface in the collective minds of the latest dispensation, and the Orwellian prospect of the nation’s best and brightest landing up behind bars while self-confessed cold-blooded murderers wander at will, looms large for all to see. Or not. Shooting the messenger is only an option when you don’t want to hear the news he bears, but to quote another equally ancient adage — ‘There are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.’
Adil,
a great reminder of Faiz for us all.
This is what I call -
Back to Oblivion !!!
Regards
Naseer