words fail me...

As the scale of the devastation caused by the quake becomes more horrifyingly clear with every passing day, it also becomes evident that this country is totally ill-prepared for a natural disaster of these proportions, and after crises has struck, completely inadept at efficiently deploying the limited resources at its disposal. But then, when the mighty USA could not manage its hurricane crises effectively, how can the government of a poor, third-world country be really blamed for disaster mismanagement. It has been more than 72 hours since the quake struck and there are many areas where relief efforts have not yet begun. In most of Kashmir, people are working on a self-help basis to find people trapped in the rubble. Watching TV these days is too depressing. Where big machinery is needed, you see people clawing their way through the debris with pick-axes and shovels but mostly with their bare hands in the hope to rescue someone alive. You see little children being dug out of holes with the shadow of death upon their faces. You see people crying out in despair for help that is not forthcoming. And it is not because there is no feeling within the general public. There are massive issues of coordination. In cities like Karachi and Lahore, tonnes of aid has been gathered but no one can figure out how to send it across. And even if it does get sent across, who is to be responsible for its receipt and disbursement. Selfish interests are out to make a profit from this calamity. Truckers have increased their fares from Karachi to the northern parts of the country almost twofold. The price of cloth for 'kafan' has also doubled. So much for Shauket Aziz's free market economy and the joys it has brought to the nation. In the disaster-hit areas, people are beginning to get frustrated at how selectively help is being provided. Rural people looted an aid-carrying convoy on the Mansehra-Balakot road today. It has been obvious from the start that all relief efforts are aimed at urban areas. The rural populations of those regions have been left to fend for themselves against hunger, disease and the rapidly-approaching winters. In Azad Kashmir, people are bitterly voicing their protest against the government. For it is true that in most districts of AJK, help began filtering in 48 hours after the quake had struck and that too mostly in the form of foreign rescue teams. At the most filmed location of the quake, Margalla Towers, the rescue efforts somehow seem to be happening in the spirit of excavation rather than with the zeal that comes with rescuing live human beings.

In my opinion, our President spoke too prematurely when he said that Pakistan needs mostly financial assitance for it has enough manpower of its own. This was a stupid thing to say. We need all the help we can get, especially in the form of specialised disaster management teams who can coordinate on the spot activities to save as many lives as possible. In fact, if we do an honest self-analysis, we do not need as much financial assistance as is being touted. It is high time for our corporate fat-cats to live up to their slogans of corporate social responsibility. This country has enough money, though concentrated in a few hands, for launching and sustaining a large-scale relief effort. But how to get the money out of those hands is the real issue. In fact, the real question is whether the civil-military establishment really wants to take money out of those hands. There comes a time in every nation's existence that calls for honest introspection and a sincere appraisal of the wrongs in society. This is the time when all the if's and but's and should have's become important. And I think now is that time for Pakistan.

The role that media plays in such situations is of immense significance. PTV, the government's propaganda machine, has been a disappointment like always. All its focus is on how high-level government functionaries are doing great things to help people in the disaster zone. There is minimal news of what is actually happening on the ground, what has transpired so far and what still needs to be done. And while, from all accounts, the death toll has reached 40,000, PTV sticks by its two-day old casualty figure of 20,000, qualifying it with the statement that the government expects the number to double. In its efforts to please the higher-ups, PTV is extensively covering the movement of every federal minister in NWFP and AJK. Sometimes one wonders that even if some big government guy hiccups in the field, PTV would report that too. Geo, surprisingly, has been no better. It has also adopted the policy of sucking up to the government. The ruins of Margalla Towers and some aerial shots of Muzaffarabad and Balakot are shown on repeat all day long with useless debate and discussions. The smaller networks like Indus Plus and ARY, however, have been truer to the cause, presenting in-depth analysis of the situation with vital criticisms and ground realities. Although I believe that in such times there should not be criticism just for the heck of it, the government and the authorities need to know that the world is watching their every move.

The year 2005 has wrought terrible natural calamities upon humanity. There have been tsumanis and floods and earthquakes and hurricanes. We hear people around us say that the end is near, that we have invited God's wrath upon ourselves with our misguided lives and disregard for the path of righteousness. It may be so. But is God as insensitive as man that he makes one group of people into examples for others? For we, despite all our tall claims to humanitarianism and sympathy for the affected, are an insensitive kind. We watch TV and get all worked up about the misery and the suffering. And the next moment we get up and go feed ourselves at franchise food outlets. The fact that the Muzaffarabad jail also collapsed and some of the inmates escaped is a cause of amusement to us. We watch movies and sleep long hours thinking nothing of the many thousands who have to spend their nights out in the cold with hailstorms and torrential rain. And it is true that we can never really imagine the suffering for we are far removed from it. But is God far removed from it too? If an example was needed, why did He not strike the cities which are the centers of vice. Why destroy one of the most religiously conservative regions in the country? Or is God trying to make a point that none of us is getting. But who can question His writ. And as the hailstorm continues, and the onslaught of a premature winter threatens to finish off what the earthquake could not, the dead wait to be buried, and the living wait to be rescued.

milestone achieved

Today our much advertised grassroot level democracy delivered the nation neatly from all pretensions of free and fair electoral competition and into the hands of the same man for whose legitimization the whole shebang was originally created and his civilian lapdogs. Our beloved leader must be patting himself on the back, he has achieved what even Zia could not, the complete devolution of power to comprador elite ensuring his survival at the top. And if he can reinforce this achievement in 2007 that would be the last nail in the coffin. As things stand now, that is almost inevitable. The country would then be effectively reduced to a one-party system and he would be the unchallenged despot. From the looks of it, Pakistan is headed straight towards becoming a fascist state, client to none other than the burning torch of freedom and democracy, the great US of A.

The beauty of the entire thing is that elections have neither been outrightly rigged nor the electoral process unfairly tampered with as compared to the elections of the past. In fact, there was no need to. The system is designed such that the prize had to fall in the ruling party's lap. Let's start with a given: in Pakistan, there has never been any real party-based politics per se. People who get elected to the national and political legislatures do so on the basis of their own political contracting at the local level which is merely a function of their families' wealth and influence in the area. This means that the people who are generally elected are from the elite of a given area. And at the higher level, it is this elected elite that decides which party to support and which ideology to espouse. This is how it has happened whenever democracy's been given a chance since 1947. And it is also abundantly clear from past experiences that this political elite, both when in or out of power, is prone to switching affiliations and allegiances to suit its own interests. But the Devolution system offers such incentives that are every politico's dream come true, for it promises to empower them at the local level. In the past, local power had always been the domain of bureaucrats and civil servants and the local political elite lusted after it, and deeply resented the bureaucracy for it. Now the positions of District Nazims and Tehsil Nazims are so enticing that people are willing to give up their seats in the National Assembly for them. And it is this lust for local power that the powers in Islamabad have optimally exploited. The local political elites know that if they toe the line and unite under the banner of the King's party, they would get to share these lucrative posts created at the local level. Else, they would have to face the entire machinery of the state against them. This is why you get to see people who would normally be traditional rivals in the local political arena trying to create an atmosphere of a truce. So the local politico's, using all their instincts for side-switiching and maximum power-grabbing, line up behind the hand that is supposed to feed them. And then with all proper ado, the General's cronies distribute the hallowed posts among these people. Someone gets the District, the other the Tehsil. All major political groupings at the local level are satisfied and there remains no cause for dissent. The ruling party makes a clean sweep in an election that was on a non-party basis in the first place. And so in October 2005, for gaining limited power over limited pieces of land, our political elite has sold out the entire nation to a man who has no business being where he is today, vindicated him and made him even more powerful, if that is possible. In essence, our entire political elite has been bribed without them even realising it. The General and his associates have doled out these positions of prominence and the local elites have lapped them up like hungry street dogs. They have sold their conscience and their souls. And if this trend is strengthened in 2007 and the General's current clients remain loyal to him, this country is headed for absolutism. Then, I think, he would be crowned absolute monarch and worshipped as the image of God upon this Earth, ruler by Divine right. I wonder though who the Crown Prince would be.

profit and loss statement

The family seems to have decided that its going to make up for the losses suffered from 2000 to 2003 in 2005 and make the overall situation a zero-sum game. Well its easy to make up in numbers and that is how i shall keep it, for the sheer magnitude of the losses can never be expressed in words. The cycle started in October 2000, during my first quarter at LUMS, with Chachi. Then on April 4, 2001, Shab-e-Aashoor, Dadi Jaan. Exactly nine months after, on January 4, 2002 the family was shattered forever with Chacha's murder. The weight of the world fell upon a gray head between two stooped shoulders as Dada Jaan tried to keep his flock together and in the twilight of his time took the responsibility of his orphaned grandsons, a responsibility that taxes his every faculty. Someone spoke correctly at Chacha's wake, 'Khan da pahaar da jigger hay.' May he have a long life for our sake. On a tangent though, the exact nine-month difference between mother and son continues to haunt me still. April 14, 2002 Addi Amma. The Lord decided to give us a year-long breather. June 4, 2003, end of Junior year with the final exam of Colex, Chacha Tehroo. And then on November 15, 2003, the night of the 21st of Ramazan, in the middle of the Autumn finals and two days before my 21st birthday, Nana Jaan passed away. Exactly as had happened at Chacha's death, I skipped two exams and made a nocturnal journey back home. Exasperated voices cried out to heaven - no more, please, no more! As the family reeled from one painful shock after another, fate had another cycle planned, a cycle of birth which started not long after. On November 19, 2003, Syed Turaab Afghan stepped into the world, what a kid mashAllah. Can already tell the difference between a fake cellphone and a real one. 'Eeeeee' he calls it. Iblees Jr. Nana Jaan would have called him. April 24, 2004, Jaffer Reza Khan was born and although they put him onto artificial milk which caused the poor baby to inflate he is now the life of the paternal side of my family; spoiling him rotten they are. All his Grand-Uncles are crazy after him; i guess they see their own grandchildren in him. Then came March 2005 with Syeda Itrat Zehra, my Nana Nani's second great grandchild. This one already promises to be a ball of fire with her temper tantrums. April 21, 2005, Mohammed Ghazi Saeed, a baby providence chose to give after years of intense prayer and many a traumatic experience. Ghazi is going to be the wonder-boy of the family inshAllah, may he live forever and make his parents proud. Then came the 'Jahanpur dee pug da waaris' on the 2nd of September, Meekaeel Murtaza. Stately looks this one has mashAllah from the emailed pictures, still gotta see him in person though. Then on October 1 came the 'Sijaalpur dee pug da waaris', Mohammed Taqi, still in peaceful post-natal slumber. Tonight, two days from Taqi's arrival, another one is on its way. And in a few months' time inshAllah, Jaffer will have a sibling. The parents are 'secretly' hoping for a daughter; as am I. My paternal side of the family is in dire need of some 'rehmat'.

If you have taken the trouble of reading this far, I hope you're doing the math as well because i surely am not. My point is that although i pray from the bottom of my heart and even more sincerely than i do for myself that all these babies have long lives and grow up to be splendid people and a source of strength and joy for their parents, it is still a long time before they develop their independent personalities and really start to matter in the scheme of things. Some of the people who were taken away were taken away before it was really their time. And these were people who were already there, who were important to other people in many ways. But the Lord works in mysterious ways. And one can only hope that these newborns, when they come into their own, will surpass those whom they would never see but would hear about a lot in character and personality. But i guess by the time that happens, i would be dead and gone, another statistic on nature's frequency table. And so what im looking at, at the moment, is a deadweight loss. But then ive always been known to be a bit too pessimistic for my own good. Regardless of that, the fact that im writing all of this on a blog for the entire world to see may yet point to another loss that i think i will have to mourn pretty soon. Someday I will write a piece on how to hurt, lose, driveaway people who care. And then i will hopefully choke on my own nasal fluids and die.