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Tigers of Balochistan and elsewhere

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  • Tigers of Balochistan and elsewhere

    Tigers of Balochistan and elsewhere

    By Ardeshir Cowasjee


    Last week was a bad week. My old friend Rahim Bakhsh Soomro died (his younger sister Afroze, Hafiz Shaikh's mother had died but three days earlier). Rahim Bakhsh and I had met some months ago and during our conversation he remarked, 'Law and order ! What law, what order? My father, Allah Bakhsh, the first prime minister of Sindh, was murdered in cold blood in 1943 and they, whoever they may be, are still trying, or pretending to be trying, to find his murderers."

    No one has ever listened, no on has ever learnt, and no one is now listening nor learning. The founder and maker of this nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, told the prospective rulers of the country he had made, Pakistan, three days before its birth in August 1947 that he assumed that all the men present in the Constituent Assembly at Karachi that day would agree with his first observation - that the first duty of a government, of any government, "is to maintain law and order so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the state." (Jinnah, democrat but authoritarian, had it that the government had 'subjects' rather than citizens.)

    Fifty-seven years down the Pakistani line, an editorial in one of our leading newspapers, entitled 'Above the law', on January 28 told us : "When some time back the BBC revealed, on conducting a survey, that well over 90 per cent of Pakistanis took pride in violating the law, it came as no surprise. Disregard of the law seems to have become a second nature in the country and it hits one in the eye the moment one steps out of one's house.

    The curse may have so permeated society because even high government functionaries, who are supposed to frame or enforce the law, indulge in law-breaking freely and with impunity. And there lies the rub! Unless they learn to show respect and abide by this basic norm of a civilized society, the man in the street will be easily tempted to disregard it."

    We are all following the harrowing tale of the rape of the woman doctor in Sui. Last week, 24 days after the rape with no arrests of any suspects having been made, the karo-kari specialists of Ghambat, Khairpur, 'decided' at an unlawful illegal jirga, that the woman should be killed so as to restore the lost honour of her tribe. This should not sit strangely, because if, as has happened in the past, a blind woman can be raped, proven to have been raped, and yet be jailed for 'adultery' under the hideous Hudood laws of Ziaul Haq, which the present enlightened and moderate successor of his feels the need to retain, nothing should be unexpected.

    For centuries nothing has changed. Jirgas and their peculiar justice has been part of the life of the various provinces which make up this country. In her book, 'The Tigers of Balochistan' (pub.1967) Sylvia Matheson's first chapter opens up : " 'Of course," said the Nawab, "you must remember that I killed my first man when I was twelve!' We were talking of tribal law and the fact that within the tribal area, murder was not a capital offence. The Nawab was in fact the Tumandar, or Chieftan, of the Bugti tribe....".

    Is Akbar Bugti, Tumandar of All the Bugtis, my friend? I would say yes, as I have known him for many years. But this stubborn, unpredictable, quirky man might say no. I have visited him in his stronghold at Dera Bugti on several occasions and can support his statement that nothing can happen in the territory he controls without his knowledge. But he has been a recluse for far too long. Old habits die hard and heaven knows for how long he will be able to sit in his fortress and attempt to impose his will. Times are changing fast in the world outside - though they may be static here - and one day this country, willy-nilly, whether it likes it or not, will have to catch up and conform.

    One of my last 'interactions' (to use President General Pervez Musharraf's favourite words) with Akbar Bugti was at Islamabad when in 1997 Nawaz Sharif set forth on his second term in the prime ministerial hot seat. Akbar and I had a bet about how long he would last. I think I had it that Nawaz, this time round, would not last 100 days.

    Well, as we all know, armed with his 'heavy mandate' and the 'bomb', he managed to go well past that number of days (making it to almost 350). On the 101st day of his reign I sent off to the Nawab a cheque for one lakh rupees, the amount we had bet. He rejected it on the ground that he could not take money from a 'kafir'. I insisted that a bet was a bet and had to be honoured and that if he felt it below him to accept the wager, then at least he should use it for some good purpose.

    It was mutually decided that it would be donated to the Quetta Press Club. Akbar agreed to this as presumably to his mind the members of the press club were obviously not prone to contamination by 'kafirs'.

    General Musharraf should be able to handle Balochistan, 43 per cent of the land mass of this country, without making unfortunate statements about how he intends to go about it. In fact, the general should be able to handle most things about this country that are so glaringly and manifestly wrong. Perhaps one day he will shed his reluctance to move, and strike. There should be no impediment to his doing so provided he himself has the will.

    Why does he allow his prime minister, banker par excellence Shaukat Aziz, to announce to the world at the Davos economic forum that he, the general, had reneged on his promise to take off his uniform at the end of December 2004, that many disagree with his holding of two offices, but that 'time is ticking away' and the uniform would come off in 2007. A little more diplomacy should have been the order of the day. There should have been no talk of 'reneging', or of time ticking away.

    The prime minister should have just stuck to the old hard principled stand type of statement and brought up the supreme or simply the plain old national interest and let it go at that. There is little hope for us as long as we have ruling the roost such democrats as the Chaudhry of Gujrat who have Musharraf's ear. The general may not be able to produce democratic rabbits out of his hat but he should at least distance himself from acknowledged corrupt opportunists who have so misused and abused the word 'democracy'.

    http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm
    A very informal but a subtle way to discuss what's up in Pakistan.


    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA
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