The
Queen is Dead…Long Live
the Crown Prince
Columnist
FAZAL HABIB CURMALLY dwells on the politics
of Dynasties, Sardars and Nawabs, and
hopes that a new group of thinking Pakistani
politicians will emerge to serve this
country, instead of themselves.
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“Because it
is recognized at this moment of crisis
the party needed a close association with
my mother through a blood line——”
Bilalwal Bhutto-Zardari
- London 8th January 2008.
Pakistan is essentially an agricultural
country. Bulk of Pakistan’s population
live by exploiting the land capable of
agriculture, in other words anything that
is based on land holding. This way of
life has been transplanted into the urban
centers because when Pakistan was created,
it had a very small but not powerful urban
population, that was both vocal and wielded
a modicum of power. With population migrations,
they were soon outnumbered and disappeared
into the background. An interesting example
is the city of Karachi which had a population
of around 250,000 at the time of Partition.
In 1936 Karachi boasted of 30 odd automobiles.
The city’s claim to fame was that
it was the western most port in British
India. It was developed for speedy movement
of troops towards Central Asia where the
British were involved with Afghanistan
and to the North they were playing the
Great Game with Russia.It was the predominant
rural structure that would become the
way the country was to be run by bureaucrats
in the beginning with prominent feudals
playing a part from as far back as the
Pakistan Movement. This meant large landholdings
and a landowning aristocracy in the shape
of families and tribes. And when it comes
to tribes holding large tracts of land,
we get tribal chiefs who are the law of
their lands without accountability, as
a natural consequence..........more
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Bemoaning
Benazir
Columnist
Dr S M RAHMAN mourns the loss of Ms Benazir
Bhutto and takes a brief look at former
military rulers of Pakistan.
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The Benazir was not an ordinary mortal. Both in
life as well as her death, she maintained
the grace and dignity and demonstrated
to what heights humans can rise to leave
a legacy, which lends pride to a nation.
The fact that she is rated the second
woman only to Hillary Clinton, the prospective
female leader of the most powerful nation
of the world – USA - is itself a
great recognition to her well-rounded
qualities. That she was the first Muslim
woman to become the Prime Minister of
a country is again a great achievement.
She was elected twice as the popular leader
of Pakistan, and had she not been eliminated,
through dastardly death, she was bound
to emerge as the leader of crisis to extricate
the nation from the lingering shadow of
dictatorial rule that has sapped the morale
of the people and created a climate of
diffidence that perhaps the country’s
political culture is beyond repair. Her
return to Pakistan and the massive crowd
that came to welcome her is a testimony
to the rekindling of the hope that some
flickering light is still there and the
sixty years’ excruciating national
trauma will at least recede to bring into
focus that Pakistan will actualize into
what it was destined to be, as per vision
of the founder of the nation. I am reminded
of a couplet of Faiz:.........more
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Nuclear weapons’ safety
Columnist Gp Capt (Retd) SM HALI illustrates
the long list of US nuclear accidents
since 1944.
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Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons program has been suspect
ever since its inception. Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto’s resolve to go nuclear
after the Indian atomic tests at Pokhran
in 1974 was shrouded in secrecy but
the baton passed from one government
to another despite their diverse political
dispositions. Pakistan was forced to
cross the nuclear threshold in 1998
in tit for tat tests, forced by Indian
saber rattling after their own tests.
The west however, has alternately been
critical of Pakistan’s nuclear
program or chosen to look the other
way, depending on Pakistan’s efficacy
to the plans of the west in the region.
In the early eighties, USA turned a
blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons program to solicit its support
to check the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s fortunes waned with
the Soviet retreat, and the infamous
Pressler Amendment was slapped on Pakistan
in 1991. After 9/11, when the USA needed
Pakistan’s support to launch an
invasion of Afghanistan, all was forgiven
and forgotten...........more
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