Pakistan was created in 1947. Israel was created in 1948. Both are ideological states. Both are home to extremist elements. In Israel they are known as Zion. In Pakistan they are called Mullah/Militant/Taliban – or their sympathizer and supporter that exist not just in caves but like Zion in every field of life.

Zia said:

Pakistan is like Israel; an ideological state. Take out Judaism from Israel and it will collapse like a house of cards. Take Islam out of Pakistan and make it a secular state; it would collapse. For the past four years we have been trying to bring Islamic values to this country.

General Zia-ul-Haq (1916-1988), Chief Marshal Law Administrator, Pakistan 1981

Zia for me and our future generations is nothing more than a monster of sort for nurturing the Frankenstein that’s been turned against us. This Frankenstein devours our blood daily yet its thirst seems unquenchable.

IF in all your naivety you believe that Pakistan has nothing to do with Israel or that they are die hard enemies; you may consider changing your view after reading the report called: Beyond the veil: Israel-Pakistan Relations. It has been written by a Hindu for a think tank based in Tel Aviv and I first came across it in The News (Pakistan’s daily) in 2005. It is available online in the PDF format.

This report chronicles all the hidden – in diplomatic jargon – backdoor diplomatic channels between the two ideological states.

So Israel is basically yet another tool for our politicians to run their business and fire up things when needed. After all in their view, Israel wants to eliminate Pakistan because this under-developed, terrorist infested, poor country of 160 million people is a great threat to Israel.

No one realizes we are our worst enemies; the others just take full advantage of that!

Nizar Qabbani (21 March 1923 – 30 April 1998) was a Syrian poet and a diplomat. He was a prolific poet with numerous gems of literature to his name. But one of his poems that had created furor in the palaces of the Arab world (especially the verse 17 – The Egyptian government had banned all his books as well as his entry in the country but later on after negotiations all the restrictions were lifted) startled me because when I read it, I realized that nothing has been changed. The situation in the Arab world is the same if not worse and the Palestinians are still languishing in the refugee camps or are being thrown out of their homes. This poem is so true to present times indeed and some of the verses aptly reflect the situation in Pakistan as well.

Nizar Qabbani had written that poem called Footnotes to the Book of Setback after the 1967 war between the Israel and Egypt-Jordan-Syria forces.

1

Friends,
The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to defeat.

2

Our poetry has gone sour.
Women’s hair, nights, curtains and sofas
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone sour.

3

My grieved country,
In a flash
You changed me from a poet who wrote love poems
To a poet who writes with a knife.

4

What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our poems.

5

Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war
And lost.

6

Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.

7

In short
We wear the cape of civilization
But our souls live in the stone age.

8

You don’t win a war
With a reed and a flute.

9

Our impatience
Cost us fifty thousand new tents.

10

Don’t curse heaven
If it abandons you,
Don’t curse circumstances.
God gives victory to whom He wishes.
God is not a blacksmith to beat swords.

11

It’s painful to listen to the news in the morning.
It’s painful to listen to the barking of dogs.

12

Our enemies did not cross the border
They crept through our weakness like ants.

13

Five thousand years
Growing beards
In our caves.
Our currency is unknown,
Our eyes are a haven for flies.
Friends,
Smash the doors,
Wash your brains,
Wash your clothes.
Friends,
Read a book,
Write a book,
Grow words, pomegranates and grapes,
Sail to the country of fog and snow.
Nobody knows you exist in caves.
People take you for a breed of mongrels.

14

We are thick-skinned people
With empty souls.
We spend our days practicing witchcraft,
Playing chess and sleeping.
And we the ‘Nation by which God blessed mankind’?

15

Our desert oil could have become
Daggers of flame and fire.
We’re a disgrace to our noble ancestors:
We let our oil flow through the toes of whores.

16

We run wildly through streets
Dragging people with ropes,
Smashing windows and locks.
We praise like frogs,
Swear like frogs,
Turn midgets into heroes,
And heroes into scum:
We never stop and think.
In mosques
We crouch idly,
Write poems,
Proverbs
And beg God for victory
Over our enemy.

17

If I knew I’d come to no harm,
And could see the Sultan,
I’d tell him:
‘Sultan,
Your wild dogs have torn my clothes
Your spies hound me
Their eyes hound me
Their noses hound me
Their feet hound me
They hound me like Fate
Interrogate my wife
And take down the names of my friends,
Sultan,
When I came close to your walls
And talked about my pains,
Your soldiers beat me with their boots,
Forced me to eat my shoes.
Sultan,
You lost two wars.
Sultan,
Half of our people are without tongues,
What’s the use of people without tongues?
Half of our people
Are trapped like ants and rats
Between walls´.
If I knew I’d come to no harm
I’d tell him:
‘You lost two wars
You lost touch with children’

18

If we hadn’t buried our unity
If we hadn’t ripped its young body with bayonets
If it had stayed in our eyes
The dogs wouldn’t have savaged our flesh.

19

We want an angry generation
To plough the sky
To blow up history
To blow up our thoughts.
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend.
We want a generation of giants.

20

Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break out chains.
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don’t read about our windowless generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as water-melon rind.
Don’t read about us,
Don’t ape us,
Don’t accept us,
Don’t accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are a generation
That will overcome defeat.

(Translation by Abdullah al-Udhari)

20^th September, 2006

The Fact: On September 20, 1996 seven men were killed under the eyes and ears of the Karachi police force outside of 70 Clifton. It was around eight in the evening.

One of those men was my father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto.

He had been on his way home after attending a public meeting in the suburbs of Karachi where he addressed a gathering in Surjani Town. Just before he had walked out of the house that afternoon I had come running down the stairs to talk to him. Papa and I were supposed to play a game of basketball and he was reneging on our deal. He promised we would play later that evening when he returned home.

Fact: He never came home. 

I felt something was amiss. There had been tanks stationed outside our house for the last four days. Everyday there was a new one across from the house or behind it. In truth, I was worried. As he walked to the door that afternoon I asked him to wait a minute. “Just let me get my shoes”, I pleaded, “I’m coming with you.” My father said I couldn’t come. “It’s dangerous,” he said. “I’ll see you in the evening.”

I spent the whole day feeling restless. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I roamed around the house counting the hours until he would return. This was before the ubiquitous cell phone had entered our lives; I had no way to reach my father, so I waited.

Fact: By the evening of September 20, 1996, 70 to 100 policemen were stationed near 70 Clifton. There were men in the tress, ready in sniper positions. The streetlights had been shut and traffic had been diverted. Guards at the nearby Italian, Iranian, British and Russian embassies were told to retreat within their residences.   

I was on the phone talking to a classmate about a school assignment when I heard the first shot. My brother, Zulfiqar, who was six years old at that time, was sitting on the bed in our parent’s bedroom watching TV. We heard one shot first. We later learned through court proceedings and police reports that it was the signal to commence firing. When my father stepped out of his car to ask why he was being stopped by the police, who came without warrants, he was recognized and the command was given. One shot. A barrage of gunfire followed. It lasted two to three minutes.

Fact: There was no “shoot-out”, no “encounter”, no “incident”. Forensics showed the only artillery fired was that of the police. The tribunal headed by Supreme Court Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid confirmed this. These facts are public record, check them if my word is not good enough for you. It was a premeditated attack. An ambush. An assassination.

I shut the phone and picked up Zulfiqar. Both of us took shelter in the dressing room because there were no windows there. We stayed in the small airtight room until the shooting stopped. My mother, Ghinwa, came running into the room and held us. We moved to the drawing room, there were no windows in that room either. We waited. Papa would be home soon; we had no idea he had just been killed.

Fact: The men were left to bleed on the road for approximately 45 minutes. They received no medical attention during that time. They were, in fact, being left to bleed to death.

Fact: Papa had not been killed in the firing. Only wounded. Though he had been shot several times, he would have survived if not for the last bullet wound.

Fact: After he had walked, yes walked, into the police mobile and laid down on the stretcher to be taken to the hospital he was shot at point blank range in the face. The autopsy showed that it came from an angle of someone standing over him.

We were told by the police outside our gates that dacoits were in the area – it wasn’t safe for us to leave our house they said, stay inside. We listened. They were the police. We trusted them.

When papa didn’t return home and we didn’t receive any word from him, it was I who found out he had been hurt.

I called my aunt, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, at the PM house in Islamabad. Her ADC came on the phone and sounded like he had been crying. “Are you ok Bibi?” He asked me. Of course I was. I replied; let me talk to my aunt. I was fourteen. I didn’t know what he was saying, or rather what he was not saying.

“I’m sorry,” he said and then he patched me through.

My aunt, Wadi I used to call her in Sindhi, didn’t come on the phone. Her husband did. I didn’t want to talk to Asif, do

you blame me? I asked for my aunt, he said I couldn’t talk to her and that she was unable to come to the phone. There were theatrical wailing sounds in the background, I didn’t buy it. “Let me talk to Wadi” I demanded, in as an assertive tone as I could muster.

“She can’t come to the phone” he repeated, “Don’t you know? Your father’s been shot.”

That’s how we found out.

Fact: By the time we left for the hospital – a generous term, papa was taken to Mideast, a clinic famous for not dealing with emergencies – the roads had been washed clean. There was no blood, no glass, nothing to mark the scene where the hit had taken place. Nothing.

When we saw papa at the hospital his navy blue shalwaar kameez was stained with blood. I touched his face and kissed him as we waited for doctors to arrive. When I moved my hand, my left hand, there was blood on two of fingers.

My mother sat near my father and spoke to him, she shouted at him, “Don’t give up, don’t die,” she yelled. “Fati and Zulfiqar need you,” she screamed.

Fact: Every time my mother uttered mine and my brother’s name, my father’s heart monitor would speed up. His heart was responding to our names.

Papa died after midnight. He didn’t succumb to his injuries. He fought them, but when they shot him, they shot to kill. He died.

It has been ten years since that night. Ten years of court cases and court recesses. Ten years of absconding. Ten years of police promotions and rewards.

Fact: The Intelligence Bureau Chief, Masood Sharif, was made Central Committee member of my aunt’s party; Wajid Durrani was promoted to the Deputy Inspector General of a special police branch in Karachi; Rai Tahir was made Senior Superintendent of the police in the Punjab; Shahid Hayat is surrently the Director of the Federal Investigation Agency; and after leading the Baluchistan police force during the American invasion of Afghanistan, Shoaib Suddle, was then promoted to head the commission on police reforms and is now the Head Commissioner of crimes against women.  

Those who are killed fighting for life can’t be called dead. On Monday night, on what have been my father’s 52^nd birthday, my family and I went to lay flowers on the spot near our house where he was killed. There was a large crowd around us throwing rose petals and chanting slogans in his memory. As we recited ‘fateha’ and said a silent Happy Birthday for papa, I looked up around me. The rose petals were still being thrown; it seemed as if it was raining flowers.

The largest mistake my father’s killers made was one that they couldn’t help. They couldn’t kill all of us, all of us who were enraged and disgusted by the state’s public assassination of an elected official. They couldn’t murder our memory. And they couldn’t and still can’t silence our calls for justice. That will be their undoing at end.

She was born in Kabul, grew up in Lebanon, did MA from Columbia University, USA and emerged as a writer/poet and social worker (sort of). She has got the might of pen and it’s due to that I like her a lot. I truly appreciate her point of view on many subjects. And I stayed in touch with her throughout when she used to write a weekly column in The News called A hundred beats.

With the start of political campaign last year she almost stopped writing. After the assassination of Benazir she came into limelight once again. The media thronged her to get her take on the whole issue. She tentatively pointed finger at Asif Ali Zardari for her assassination. It’s a known fact that the distance grew between the Bhuttos in mid 90s because of Zardari. She vehemently maintains that her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto was murdered in an encounter style by the then establishment, which was headed by her aunt Benazir.

Fatima still awaits justice in the case of her father’s assassination. As she pointed out the important witnesses have either been killed or retracted their early statements. The police officials involved in an encounter have been given promotions. That is just one aspect of the sad state of affairs in our country.

She is a huge critic of Zardari. When PPP won the majority vote and formed the government, the writer/journalist William Dalrymple rang her up and asked:

“So, with Zardari in power, are you now afraid for your own safety?”

Fatima considered for a second before answering: “Well, I am certainly very afraid for this country,” she said. “Even before Zardari, this was a country where anything can happen, a country that regularly disappears its own people. The state here is, in the worst way, expedient. You just don’t know what’s waiting for you, especially if you stand up and say what you think. And I have never been an especially diplomatic person. I certainly don’t belong to the silent majority.”

She paused. “So perhaps I should be anxious,” she said. “After all, this man knows no limits. He has a record. He has, as they say, form. And he is now clearly indulging in the politics of revenge and retribution. It’s nothing new – it’s how he has always been.” She paused again. “But what can you do? You just have to carry on as you can, and try to tell the truth as you see it. That’s all you can do.”

Ever since Zardari has come into power she doesn’t write regularly in the paper. After prolonged absence, last month she wrote an article about the impeachment of Musharraff and sensing where things are moving she wrote this,  

“We have options. Zardari is not an option. Sharif is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million of us: I’m sure we can think of something better.”

Zardari is not an option. We do admit this but then what is something better she talked about. We have yet to figure out that. I wish she stay safe and keep writing the truth.

It’s a new day, a new beginning but the news from FATA isn’t good at all. Yesterday USA’s UAV hit a small town in Bajaur with hellfire missile. The target was a house of a local tribesman. His house has been destroyed but luckily there was no major loss of life.

In response Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has vowed to carry out suicide attacks in the major cities of the country. TTP isn’t happy with the government at all as they blame them for still supporting US.

The pattern is very clear. America’s UAVs attack our tribal areas mostly Bajaur. Such attacks are enough to provoke TTP. They in retaliation carry out attacks in the other cities of the country. It’s a very simple formula of creating chaos and lawlessness. The targets are usually defined, such as police, military and other law enforcing personnel and facilities.

The interesting thing is that TTP didn’t accept the responsibility of recent Islamabad and Karachi bombings.

Today I read upsetting news that the militants torched down a motel, meteorological office and also damaged chair lift in Malam Jabba. Malam Jabba is the only ski resort of Pakistan. They are on rampage, destroying public property. I thought the NWFP government had struck a peace deal with them. But still such acts have been happening.

Below is the editorial published in The News on 26th of June. I hope it’s all false and wrong like always.

State of siege
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The report that the historic town of Peshawar could fall to militants is obviously terrifying. Worse still, it seems that despite meetings between the chief minister, top military officers stationed in the city and the adviser on interior, no one is ready to defend the city against a possible onslaught by the militant militias that stand ranged all around it. The foray by forces who took away 16 Christians recently from a locality in the heart of the city shows just how vulnerable it is. It is believed that militants, who have scored a series of victories in operations across the northern areas, may just make an attempt to seize Peshawar. The fall of the city, analysts believe, will bring other districts across the NWFP toppling down before militants as well. The resurgence of these forces is evident everywhere. After several weeks of calm, conflict between security troops and the local Taliban has been reported from Swat, where ten people have been killed. Indeed, each day stories come in of new aggression and new acts of brutality by these crazed men who wield automatic weapons and believe that Islam means burning down schools, attacking video shops or beheading people they suspect of collusion with the government.

The extent to which Peshawar, the once peaceful entry point to the northern areas, has changed over the last decade or so is also terrifying. Music, once integral to the culture of the city, has been banned. Folk artistes have been forced into penury, shops selling instruments destroyed. Women on some campuses have been forced into veils; many fear leaving their houses unescorted; schools for girls have been threatened and the relaxed traditions of bazaars where people sipped their tea in the many ‘chai houses’ dotted across them has given way to one of suspicion and anger.

The threat to Peshawar of course exposes the ineptness of government policy. Under Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’, even as the US declared him a key ally against terror, militancy grew everywhere. The new government has failed, despite some efforts, to do very much about it. Things in the FATA areas appear to be tumbling out of control – and the possibility of Taliban forces driving through Peshawar in trucks now stares us in the face. There is, quite obviously, no time to lose. If militancy is to be defeated, the strategies to do so must be put in place now. There is no space left to fumble or to ponder, and as a first step, a plan to defend Peshawar must be devised immediately before it is too late to prevent the frenzied armies of extremists marching in on the city.

Where Nawaz Sharif only talks about restoration of deposed judges and impeachment of the president, PPP on the other hand, assuming power after 11 years is wrapping up all the pending issues. The release of Rehmat Shah Afridi was one of them.

Rehmat Shah spent 9 years behind the bars, was sentence to death on the account of smuggling narcotics but later on his sentence was changed to life imprisonment. 9 years is the period.

I know Rehmat Shah as a staunch supporter of PPP and Benazir Bhutto. His daughter (I don’t know she was the eldest or youngest) was my class fellow in junior school. One day she had brought a large colored photograph of her father with Benazir because she would talk about her father and none of us would believe her. She gave me many rides on our way to home. After attending school for 3 years with me she disappeared. We had no idea where did she go. Till date I don’t have any news of her.

I often think why a man of his stature, an opinion maker would do smuggling. Rehmat Shah maintains that his forthright articles brought the wrath of military and anti narcotics force. Irrespective of who is right and who is wrong I think his release is well timed. I can imagine the elation of his daughter, a happy go lucky girl, who would like me a lot… I don’t know why.