Owais Mughal

Whenever we travel to a new country and we see any reference to Pakistan, it naturally catches our attention. Recently this ATP ka numaainda (representative) was in China. I saw following subtle references to Pakistan in Beijing.

(1) Whether we liked her or not; whether we agreed with her or not; the fact remains that she is the single most known person outside Pakistan. I was browsing in the book store of Guanghua School of Management at the Peking University when I found this Chinese edition of ‘Daughter of the East’. Price RMB 28. This was the only book related to Pakistan that I was able to find in that book store.

(2) While in China, do as Chinese do. I did that for 6 days. On seventh day the craving for Pakistani food became so strong that I went looking for a Pakistani restaurant in Beijing. A quick internet search revealed there was only one Pakistani restaurant in Beijing and of all the names in this world, it was called ‘The Mughal Beijing’. Following is its signboard.

Adil Najam

At the new Prime Minister’s oath-taking recently, the body language of Gen. Pervez Musharraf as well as Yousuf Raza Gillani made it obvious that neither was comfortable being with the other. Each has deep reasons to distrust the motives of the other. One doubts, therefore, if they took any time t reminiscence about their college days. Both, after all, went to college at Lahore’s famed Forman Christian (F.C.) College; although at different times.

Syed Abbas Raza

A military dictatorship is a military dictatorship, and a democracy is a democracy. And the latter is always automatically better than the former. It is safer to agree with this statement and to look at every particular complex political situation through the lens of this cliché than to risk having one’s liberal-democratic credentials questioned.

But as a friend of mine once remarked, “All arguments for democracy in Pakistan are theoretical. For dictatorships, the greatest argument is the actual experience of Pakistani democracies.” Very similarly, another friend recently commented that “There are of course no theoretical arguments for a dictatorship, only practical ones.” In the case of Pakistan, the last two civilian democratic governments were sham democracies, and while I by no means support everything Pervez Musharraf has done, especially recently, there are various things for which his government deserves praise. Moreover, while George W. Bush may have gotten almost everything else wrong, his Pakistan policy has been basically sound.