’s legacy:
Sunday, 11 September, 2011
The need for a new ethics A world is being crafted in which no one can trust another, where all is monitored, where everything can be defined as terrorism, where everyone can be a terrorist
“It is the task of democratic politics to prevent the development of conditions which lead to hatred, terror, and destruction and not to limits itself to attempts to control them once they have already occurred.” Giorgio Agamben, On security and terror
I
correctness of the global world order. The war on terror morphed into a war of terror, all the while seeking cover behind a charade of ‘ethicality’. On 7 October 2001, a war on Afghanistan was declared. The purpose: to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, to eliminate Al Qaeda and to finish the Taliban. The Taliban, of course, had been accorded the status of “the moral equivalent of founding fathers of America” by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. If a Freudian analogy from the early history of religion be used, this war constituted ‘a killing of the father.’ The earliest question to ask was: did anything special happen to the US on 9/11? Writing in the 1990s, Eqbal Ahmed would say, there is nothing special. The US has persistently backed draconian regimes from General Pinochet to General Zia, it has backed the apartheid of the Palestinians, it has used Agent Orange in Vietnam and it
Beneath this façade operated the real world of interests: military contracts were won, oil contracts negotiated underhand, private security firms’ mushrooms, and mining contracts handed out. All of these were in the name of ‘reconstructing’ the countries the US war had destroyed. Iraq and Afghanistan both became the role models.
The Pakistan angle: From Lal Masjid to Bin Laden
In the same period, the war spilled into Pakistan. General Musharraf, usurping the Pakistani presidency at that time, sought international legitimacy. Asked to provide support to the US, he was expected to play the role of devil’s advocate. He was put in a situation where he had to reverse all existing notions of the Pakistan army’s strategic interest. It was a well-known fact that the Taliban had been built up during the Soviet invasion by the Pakistan army, in close liaison with the US. After the US had left, the Taliban were thought of as core strategic assets by the Pakistani security establishment. Strategic assets were soon to be labeled enemies, and so emerged the Good Taliban/Bad Taliban narrative that was openly sold by the
security establishment throughout the early 2000s. In 2009, DG ISPR General Athar Abbas stood before us in the Lahore University of Management Sciences and offered us the same narrative. Asked to explain the Swat operation and how the Taliban under Sufi Muhammad had been able to take all of Swat, there was no explanation. There was just a ‘caught us by surprise,’ a ‘these were all ex-criminals,’ a ‘broken promises from them’ and a reiteration of the good Taliban rhetoric. A couple of months ago, when I had visited the IDP camps, a different story was told. Across the board, there was a sense that the army would fire everywhere but where suspected militants were. Civilian losses from the Swat operation are not yet known. The fear was expressed back then, that the operation would only increase the militancy as the sentiment of Pashtun targeting would increase. This was a lesson that should have been learnt after the Lal Masjid raid. Before the 2005 raid, only three terror attacks were known to have occurred in Pakistan. Following the raid, the number of dead still unknown, targets increasingly became internal. The official stance would remain: these are not our Taliban, these are foreigners. But a tacit consensus began to develop: there was something peculiar about what was being taught in madrassas. Their curriculums designed in the 1980s, during Zia’s Islamisation and the Soviet war, would teach its’ students the need for Islamic resistance. Lal Masjid stood as a marker. It almost appears as the moment when the militant lost the trust of the Pakistani state and turned against it. The same period saw a mushrooming of missing persons’ cases within Pakistan. Numerous young bearded gentlemen were picked up, never to be returned. The sense that one could be targeted for one’s religious leaning began to rise. Attacks turned inwards. Suicide attacks began to rise. Women and children became the one’s carrying the bombs. From an early focus on security targets, a shift to civilian targets was seen. The tolls speak for themselves: 2003 saw 140, 2004 saw 435, 2005 saw 430, 2006 saw 608, 2007 saw 1522, 2008 saw 2155, 2009 saw 2324, 2010 saw 1796 and 2011 saw 2065 civilians killed. The standing irony is that May 2011 kicked off with a US raid on an Abbotabad compound which killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The irony lies in the fact that in Pakistan there was a mass in-absentia funerals offered for the slain Al Qaeda leader. The July and August that followed were the two bloodiest months Pakistan had Continued on page 7
Illustrated & Designed by Javeria Mirza
The rhetoric of rights, democracy and freedoms has been shamelessly used as an ethical justification for perpetuating a hegemonic world order – this edifice must be dismantled, and a new ethics put forth
remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons. “The US wages war for peace,” we were told then. And, thus, was created a state of perpetual war, citing the desire for perpetual peace.
2 Bagram: A Human Rights Black Hole 8 Here lies deception
t is now a decade since a single event that set the tone for things to follow. The fall of the twin towers has faded in to the past, overshadowed by its consequences, and yet it seems like only yesterday that it happened. The Afghan war, the Iraq war, Abu Ghuraib, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot act, the Pakistani militancy, the growth of myopic media, the strengthening of the Right and the overexpansion of the security state, all followed in quick succession. So allconsuming were these changes that a world before 9/11 seems a hazy memory. It is worth recollecting, when the American President spoke, he presented to the world an ethical dilemma: to join the forces of good (the US) or the forces of bad (Al Qaeda). Other than rendering the world in absolute terms of black and white, this choice was also rooted in a myopic world view, at the core of which lay the presumption of the ethical
Human security has become a myth in the post 9/11 world where ordinary citizens are abducted and packed off to other countries where they languish indefinitely in a place where laws and humanity remain suspended. By Sonya Qadir
02 - 03
Sunday, 11 September, 2011
Illustrated & Designed by Sana Ahmed
I
f you have ever had the chance to see the inside of a regular prison, you may recall a deep sense of dread emanating from its very walls. From the Superintendent’s arrogant parade to the guard’s cheerful tour of the gallows, the hours of waiting and negotiation required to meet a single prisoner and the sight of his thin, languid, often scarred face when you finally see him; the suffocating smallness of his living quarters and the implacable silence of a solitary cell. All in all it is exceedingly morbid. It is the sort of place where centuries pass in a split second, yet nothing ever changes. A world apart from these regular, still marginally humane prisons run under judicial scrutiny and subject to inspection, there is yet another kind of prison. The kind which is located in the middle of nowhere, governed by no laws or lengthy ‘ prison manuals’, where a prisoner’s living quarters can be unexaggeratedly referred to as a ‘cage’, where torturing is the only method of interrogation, and the guards use physical violence not when provoked, but when they are bored. Here you do not get access to any lawyers, good or bad, and your guilt or innocence is decided by the same people who captured and charged you, if there were any charges to begin with. This Prison is like a Black Hole, a place which you can enter but can never leave.
The existence of the living hell that is such a prison, is justified on the pretext that it is reserved for the most
dangerous and depraved criminals known to humanity. So to speak. Someone like FazalKarim perhaps, a resident of Karachi who had to leave school to support his family by running a cigarette and sweets stall at a very tender a g e . Later he began a
required him to travel across the country, and one day in 2003 he left his home for an ordinary business errand and never returned. He was 20 years old. Or someone like Amal Khan, a laborer known for his jovial nature, who left his house in Mansehra one fateful day in 2002 to look for work, and was never heard from again. His family searched frantically, but to no avail. It seemed that 20 year old Amal had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
business of selling CDs which
Hamidullah Khan Hamidullah is a sixteen year old boy currently imprisoned at Bagram Airbase. He was picked up in July 2008, when at the age of fourteen he travelled from Karachi to his father’s village in Waziristan to salvage the family’s possessions in their home during the ongoing military operation. His friend, Khairullah, travelled with him by bus from Karachi up till Dera Ismail Khan. When Hamidullah parted with his friend, he told him to wait for his return from Waziristan within two days so they could travel back to Karachi together. Khairullah never saw Hamidullah again and since then his family has been praying for his return. Hamidullah’s mother, Din Roza is desperate for his return and continues to fast from dawn till dusk even during the scorching summer months of Karachi with the hope that her prayers are answered and her son is returned to her.
courtesy Justice Project Pakistan (JPP)
Amal Khan Amal Khan is 28 years of age. In July 2002, he left the family home in Mansehra to look for work. He vanished shortly thereafter. Unable to understand why he was not in contact for seven months, his family lived in terror that he had somehow been killed. In early 2003, they learnt that he was being held prisoner in Bagram, and by 2004 they had been able to speak with him there through the ICRC. He is not allowed to tell them how he came to be there, however, and any time he has tried to talk about this, or the treatment he has received, the line has been cut. Since Amal Khan’s disappearance, his family has suffered severe emotional hardship, and his mother breaks down each time she tries to speak to him.
Or better still, the sixteen year old Awal Noor perhaps, an orphan living in abject poverty along with his 8 siblings, who worked as a goat herder in PaktikaMargha near the Afghanistan border in 2006. Severely injured in a US aerial bombing in the region, Awal did not make it back home. His siblings feared he had been killed in the attack. It was only years later that the grieving families were brought a letter by the International Committee of the Red Cross that disclosed that their loved one was alive and being held as a prisoner in a place called Bagram. Lacking any prior criminal records, and with no evidence against them for any terrorist activity whatsoever, it is anyone’s guess how these “depraved criminals” ended up in Bagram, a high security prison located at Bagram Air Base (now Parwan) in Afghanistan and run by the U.S. military. Referred to as “Guantanamo’s Evil Twin” to emphasizeand the chaotic environment and its status as a holding camp for Gitmo, Bagram denies its inmates even trifling shreds of human dignity that were conceded to Guantanamo Bay prisoners once the latter became a public relations disaster for the US government. But US courts are adamant that Bagram is different – being located in Afghanistan it is an active
evidence through a Hotline set up by the prison, or by written or video testimony sent mailed to Bagram, it is a fact that is not well-known besides being unfeasible because there is no way to send mail to Afghanistan than through the embassy and the Hotline is never available. The prisoners’ own communication with the families is heavily censored and if they try to mention circumstances in which they were brought to Bagram, or how they are treated there, the line is immediately dropped. Facilities like Bagram, and the process of abduction whereby people are picked up and transferred to them, and the legal “proceedings” that take place subsequently, are a flagrant violation of international law as well the domestic laws of all the countries involved. While legal processes have always been abused, post 9/11, the illegal transfer of civilians to third countries where they are subjected to torture and denied a fair trial or even informed of the reason for their arrest, has sky-rocketed. Not only has the US Government been successfully sued in relation to running some of these facilities (like Gitmo) and kidnapping civilians, but the British Government which always denied any involvement in extraordinary rendition has also been exposed to have been complicit. A barrage of articles in the British newspaper the Guardian has documented human rights violations by the British Government relating to extra-ordinary rendition. Moreover, in cases like Norwich Pharmacal and Binyan Muhammad, the courts declared that the government even if not directly involved, was responsible for helping the victims if it had, knowingly or unknowingly, become involved in the actual wrong doing (e.g. handing over a suspect to the US authorities who is later renditioned and tortured). Hamidullah is another minor Pakistani locked up at Bagram. In 2008, his father, Wakeel Khan asked the 14 year old to retrieve their belongings from their family home in Waziristan and bring them back to their residence in Karachi. On his way back to Karachi, his family saw him off at the bus station, and he was never heard off again. When asked who he blames for his family’s misfortune, United States, Taliban or Pakistan, Hamidullah’s father retorts that it is the Pakistani Government that is the culprit. “I served in the Army. Now I’m a security guard in a Walls factory, barely making enough to make ends meet. But how can the State that I served, treat me this way? How can they give away my innocent minor son to the Americans?” Saifullah, another Pakistani citizen, was picked up from Karachi after he dropped his father off to a doctor’s clinic and promised to be back soon. His father died of grief soon after, but his uncle Haroon who sits across the room from Wakeel
‘They will give away anyone just to show to the US that they are doing something…We were even afraid to report it, as we feared for our own lives at the hands of the agencies’ - Haroon, uncle of Saifullah who mysteriously disappeared in Karachi en route to the doctor’s clinic war zone, and hence US law, and the right to Habeas Corpus (which allows an aggrieved party to petition the court to demand that the missing person be produced before it without delay) are inapplicable. This means that those held at Bagram and their families have no legal remedy, at least in US courts. This legal void was filled by the Obama Administration by setting up Detainee Review Boards at Bagram, a body very similar in structure to the‘Combatant Status Review Tribunals’ at Guantánamo. The review is held twice a year and the prisoners are assigned a “personal representative”, who could be any official working at the prison, but is definitely not a lawyer. The representative meets the prisoner once before his hearing to go over his defence with him. The judges are also officers at the prison or with the US army. Often there is no translator available. The biggest catch perhaps is that the prisoner “on trial” is not allowed to be present on any hearing where “classified” and “secret” information may be discussed, hence he may never be able to defend himself or even know the charges against him. Even though families of the prisoners are allowed to provide
Khan, joins in “They will give away anyone just to show to the US that they are doing something… We were even afraid to report it, as we feared for own lives at the hands of the agencies” Young people are the most at risk, they both agree. Unable to understand what is going on and successfully defend themselves when questioned, they make easy targets for the local as well as foreign agencies desperate to prove that the ‘war on terror’ is successful. Indeed, the most significant question in our context is the role played by the Pakistani Government and agencies in the extraordinary rendition and their inability and unwillingness to do anything to have their citizens brought home, even after they are cleared for release by the Bagram authorities. In a petition filed in Lahore High Court on the behalf of Pakistani nationals in Bagram by Justice Project Pakistan (a legal action charity associated with the UK charity Reprieve), the respondent Ministries have wavered between completely denying any knowledge of the existence of such prisoners, to assuring the court that they have and are continuing to do everything in their power to have these prisoners released. The documents put on record by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for example, consist of nothing but letters to the US embassy in Kabul asking for a response as to the status of the Pakistani citizens and asking for their release. No response by the US embassy is brought on record, nor any other measures that should have been pursued at other levels of authority, which makes one wonder if the ministry, and the government as a whole, has the slightest interest in seriously pursuing the release of the prisoners. Not only is extraordinary rendition against principles of international law, like the Convention Against Torture andother Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Pakistan signed in 2010,it also clearly violates the domestic laws. Most countries possess a legal provision for transferring an accused fugitive to a third country under the due process of law. Known as Extradition, this legal provision ensures that the process does not prejudice the fundamental rights of the accused, for example his right to be treated with dignity, to not be tortured and to receive a fair trial. In Pakistan, the Extradition Act of 1974 regulates this process. According to the Act, it is only after an accused is arrested under a warrant (if applicable) and brought before a magistrate who after hearing both sides, is satisfied that is there is sufficient evidence against the accused (of a nonpolitical nature) to put him to trial, and such report is sent to Federal Government which in turn acts on it by sending a notification to go ahead with the transfer
Fazal Karim Hamidullah is a sixteen year old boy currently imprisoned at Bagram Airbase. He was picked up in July 2008, when at the age of fourteen he travelled from Karachi to his father’s village in Waziristan to salvage the family’s possessions in their home during the ongoing military operation. His friend, Khairullah, travelled with him by bus from Karachi up till Dera Ismail Khan. When Hamidullah parted with his friend, he told him to wait for his return from Waziristan within two days so they could travel back to Karachi together. Khairullah never saw Hamidullah again and since then his family has been praying for his return. Hamidullah’s mother, Din Roza is desperate for his return and continues to fast from dawn till dusk even during the scorching summer months of Karachi with the hope that her prayers are answered and her son is returned to her.
Fazal Karim’s family is originally from Swat, but they settled in Karachi many years ago. Fazal was abducted in 2003 when he was travelling across the country for a business trip. His family did not know that he had been rendered to Bagram till they received a letter from him via the ICRC in 2005. In 2008, after years of poor health and escalating depression, Fazal’s father, Shahtab Gul, to whom he had been very close, passed away. The family initially could not bear to tell Fazal about the loss, but eventually did inform him of his father’s death. Fazal has been able to communicate to his family that when the authorities at Bagram interrogated him, he was physically abused. However, he said that no matter how many beatings he endures, he will insist on his innocence.
of the accused to the third country, that the actual transfer can get underway. If at any stage there appears a possibility that the accused may be tortured or prejudiced against in the third country, the extradition cannot go through. It is clear that Pakistani authorities, working in close collaboration with USA on the war on terror, could foresee a reasonable likelihood that their citizens would be tortured and denied their fundamental rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution when handed over to the US authorities. Yet, they were allowed to be picked up from Pakistan’s territory, or if picked up elsewhere, the Government failed to have them released or given legal representation even after receiving knowledge of their detention. The petition in the Lahore High Court has itself been stalled due to multiple adjournments often over small technicalities and long gaps between hearing dates. It appears that the judiciary too is not keen on resolving this issue, seeing as it involves serious charges against the Government and possible implications for secret agencies. With the sitting judge changed for a third time though, it is hoped that here may be some progress in the next hearing at the end of September. But till such time, Hamidullah’s father’s lament will reverberate in our minds. What kind of a State can sell its own innocent citizens to foreign powers, without any evidence against them and be even unwilling to bring them home after their clearance for release? In this political checkerboard, the wretched lives of ordinary citizens are of no consequence. While the establishment continues to demonize terrorists and non-state actors for threating State security, its own actions that render human security vulnerable, nay irrelevant, are carefully kept out of the public eye. The rhetoric of citizenship and the ‘social contract’ seems extremely misplaced in a scenario where a 14 year old child, walking to a bus station can be abducted and renditioned to the most horrific prison in a foreign country with the complicity of his own Government, and then left there to be tortured for decades with no formal charges or trial, and hardly any contact with the outside world.
Iftikhar Ahmed Iftikhar Ahmed is a 22 year old mentally ill man from Pakpattan. Since 2009, Iftikhar had been making trips to the area around Quetta to provide manual assistance in ongoing water boring projects. He made his last trip in January 2010 and when he was done with his project in February, he called his family to tell them that he would be returning the next day. However, Iftikhar never came home and when his family called his mobile number it was constantly switched off. In June 2010, Iftikhar’s father heard from the ICRC that he was in Bagram. His family has received one letter from him to date and they have spoken over the telephone three times. Iftikhar has managed to convey to his family that he was picked up by the Americans in the border area of Chamman and taken to Bagram.
Johnny-on-the-spot: Jason Burke does it again
the review
Burke brings you the 9/11 Wars – and you’re lucky you can have them in the comfort of your home “No soldiers at the battle of Castillon in 1453 knew they were fighting in the last major engagement of the Hundred Years War. No one fighting at Waterloo could have known they were taking part in what turned out to be the ultimate confrontation of the Napoleonic wars. The First World War was the Great War until the Second World War came along. Inevitably perhaps, this present conflict is currently without a name. In decades or centuries to come historians will no doubt find one – or several, as is usually the case. In the interim, given the one event that, in the western public consciousness at least, saw hostilities commence, ‘the 9/11 wars’ seems an apt working title.”
By Natasha Shahid Kunwar
E
ver since the appearance of his “Al-Qaeda: the True Story of Radical Islam” in 2003, Jason Burke has been an important name in circles of contemporary historical scholarship. A journalist by profession, Burke chanced to have the rare offering of a westerner’s first-hand experience of the extremist sectors of the Muslim world – something that the western world was craving for in the wake of the September 11 attacks. He did it back then, and now, eight years later he does it again: Jason Burke plays Johnny-on-the-spot and gives us what the Noam Chomskys of the world could not – an eyewitness account of the war-torn world in his ingeniously named new work, “The 9/11 Wars”. But, he hasn’t come back in quite the same fashion. While “Al-Qaeda” was a ruthlessly focused work – with its barrel set firmly on Islamic Terrorism around the globe – the work of a
Sunday, 11 September, 2011
2001-3,” ends just before the commencement of the War in Iraq; the second, named “Escalation: 20034,” is particularly focused on the early Days of the Iraq War; the third, “Europe, the Darkest Days: 2005-6” takes the reader back to 7/7 and the famous caricature riots; the fourth, called “Iraq and the Turning: 20057,” is a collection of terrorist events in the Middle The 9/11 Wars East in the said period, whereby, By Jason Burke according to Burke, the Publisher: Allen Lane War on Terror peaked; and, Pages: 709; Price: 1395; Year: 2011 finally, the fifth and sixth parts, respectively entitled, Available at Readings “Afghanistan, Pakistan and Al-Qaeda: 2008” and “Endgames: 2009-11” together trace That’s that for the overview, but what the recession of what the writer has really stands out in this new release labeled as the “9/11 Wars”. on the beaten and battered topic of
The Observer’s man in the Middle-East follows up his bestselling work, “Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror”, with “The 9/11 Wars” attention to a single area, period, personality or organization. The book is neatly divided into six parts, each holding a collection of data and analysis on a particular period in time, always moving forward in a chronological order. Each part has a specially assigned title: the first, called “Afghanistan, America, Al-Qaeda:
Jinnah speeches & reminiscenc
Initially designed to comprise a collection of speeches bearing on the person and achievements of subsequently included in the book to inform and interest the reader
By Syed Afsar Sajid
04 - 05
sniper – “the 9/11 Wars” is more in semblance of machine gun-fire: everything that has been happening in the name of the “War on Terror” for the past ten years is enclosed in this seven-hundred paged work, with little intention of paying any specific
J
innah The Founder of Pakistan is a compendious book, containing among other things, his contemporaries’ views about him and some documentary records at Lincoln’s Inn and the Inner Temple. It is the second edition of the book, the first having been published in 1998. As its flap would indicate, the first edition carried reminiscences of friends and contemporaries of Mohammad Ali Jinnah besides the documents relating to his time in London and extracts from his speeches conveying his political philosophy. The present edition, its second, is in effect an expanded version of the first embodying some little known aspects of Jinnah’s professional practice and also the field of Islamic banking, seemingly pertinent to the current financial climate.
Salim Qureshi, a distinguished London-based barrister called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and later called ad eundem by Lincoln’s Inn, has compiled and edited this work as a token of his reverence for the Quaid-iAzam. Incidentally Salim Qureshi too started his career from Lincoln’s Inn following the footsteps of the Quaid and sometimes later formed the M.A. Jinnah Society whose first session was staged in the historic Old Hall of Lincoln’s Inn in April 1984. The book was initially designed to comprise a collection of speeches bearing on the person and achievements of the founder of Pakistan but other contemporary material was subsequently included to inform and interest the reader. The foreword (1996) to the book has been written by Lord Bernard Weatherill (1920-2007), a former Speaker of the House of Commons and also recipient of the Hilal-i-Pakistan. The compiler of the book states in the preface that the inaugural meeting of the Jinnah Society was attended by a host of luminaries including ambassador Ali Arshad (the chief guest), (William Francis Hare) Lord Listowel (1906-97), formerly secretary of state for India, Sir John (Alec) BiggsDavison (1918-88), a Conservative MP, Bernard Budd, QC (1912-2003),
a former ICS officer, Ahmed Ebrahim Haroon Jaffer (190990), a Pakistani statesman, (Begum Viqarunnisa) Lady Noon (1920-2000), a Pakistani social worker, Dr. Gordon Johnson (b.1943), director of the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge and a prominent British historian of colonial India, and Prof. (Dr.) Riaz-ulIslam (1919-2007), a visiting professor (of history) at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, on a Quaid-iAzam fellowship. To facilitate assessment, the book could be visually divided into parts. Part I (Jinnah: An introduction) contains an article titled ‘The Greatness of Jinnah’ by Qutbuddin Aziz, the then minister for information at the Pakistan Embassy
Title: Jinnah The Founder of Pakistan Compiler/Editor: Salim Qureshi Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi Pages: 176; Price: Rs.550/-
Jason Burke may not be a scholar or an academic, he may not be a political analyst of the highest rank, but he is what many leading analysts of such contemporary issues are not: a journalist. He may not possess the analytical depth of a Paul Kennedy or a Niall Ferguson, but he surely possesses one thing and that is the gift of inquisitiveness – a journalist’s inquisitiveness the War on Terror is its hands-on approach. As has already been said, the writer of the book is a professional journalist – the chief foreign correspondent of “The Observer” – and had been based in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan since 1998 until he recently relocated to New Delhi, in order to report on the very war under consideration; therefore, most of the information provided in the work is straight from the horse’s mouth, no middleman involved. Whether to trust the horse – so to speak – or not, is, however, a different matter. Furthermore, even if the area lay without his reporting limits, Burke has, whenever possible, favoured the micro perspective over the macro. He has picked up newspapers
and other media articles, scanned through official and unofficial documents and has made use of legal reports in order to, as they say, “get to the bottom of things”. This investigative approach is what makes this work stand out. Jason Burke may not be a scholar or an academic, he may not be a political analyst of the highest rank, but he is what many analysts of contemporary issues are not: a journalist. And it definitely shows in his work, for, he may not possess the depth of analysis of a Paul Kennedy or a Niall Ferguson, but he surely possesses one thing and that is the gift of inquisitiveness – a journalist’s inquisitiveness. Couple that with his “identity” as the Johnnyon-the-spot, and we would sooner rather than later discover the worth of the time we would invest in reading this expansive work on the greatest issue of the twentyfirst century. However, that said, I would end my review with a light warning against considering this particular book as a work of scholarly research. For all its qualities, “The 9/11 Wars” is not a scholarly work. It is – as admitted by the writer himself in the Introduction of the book – not neutral. It is not exhaustively analytical. Shortly and candidly, it has not been written by an old bespectacled man surrounded by towers of books in a safe and silent library. It is the work of a man who has tasted the mix himself, who has been in the thick of things. And the thick of things isn’t the best place to be if you are looking to churn out a thought provoking analysis. For, in situations like this, one’s heart gets the better of one’s brain more often than not. Therefore, I advise the reader to read the book as it meant to be read: a bloody ride through the rugged mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the sandy deserts of the Middle-East; a tale of terrorist camps and drone attacks; an emotionally charged sketch of dead bodies and weeping loved ones. Sans the bullets and flying pieces of shrapnel, of course. Burke brings you the 9/11 Wars – and you’re lucky you can have them in the comfort of your home.
ces
f the Quaid, other contemporary material was in London and the speech (titled ‘The Great Leader’) delivered by the compiler/ editor of the book whereas Part II (Jinnah: Contemporary views) carries speeches of William Francis Listowel (‘A Brilliant Politician’), John Biggs-Davison (‘The Founder of Pakistan’), Viqarunnis Noon (‘Jinnah’s Charisma’), Bernard Budd (‘A Unique Leader’), Ahmed E.H. Jaffer (‘A
extract on Lincoln’s Inn from Sir Robert Megarry’s handbook on the alma mater besides reproduction of two record books pertaining to Mr. Jinnah’s membership and call to the Bar as well as thirteen other documents, some of which in his own handwriting, relating to his academic pursuits at the Inn. Part VI (‘Jinnah and the Inner Temple’) bears a brief history of the Temple alongwith images of official documents showing the rent book, the record book and the Bench table order book bearing the decision to allow Jinnah to be called ad eundem (as a matter of courtesy but treated at par with the original call) to the Inner Temple. Part VII deals with extracts from Jinnah’s speech at the Lahore Session of All India Muslim League (22-24 March, 1940) and his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August, 1947 besides some short extracts from his other speeches taken from Jamilud-Din Ahmed’s book on the subject. Part VIII (‘Jinnah and Islamic Banking’) incorporates his speech on the occasion of the opening ceremony of State Bank of Pakistan in Karachi (1 July, 1948) and an article on Islamic finance and banking by (Professor) Philip Molyneux of the Bangor Business School at Bangor University (UK) followed by a detailed chronology of Quaidi-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah by Salim AlDin Quraishi. The book is a good read and will engage the reader’s attention for the assortment of personal material assimilated in it.
The book is a good read and will engage the reader’s attention for the assortment of personal material assimilated in it. Man of Integrity’) and ambassador Ali Arshad (‘A Tribute’) together with an obituary reference and the lead article dated September 13, 1948 from The Times newspaper (London). Part III of the book (Jinnah: A retrospective view) comprises the speech of Gordon Johnson (‘A Great Constitutionalist’) and a message (‘Founder of a New Nation’) from Alexander Andrew Mackay Irvine (b.1940), the Lord Chancellor, on the occasion of the launch of this book Part IV (Jinnah and Iqbal) brings into focus three of Iqbal’s letters to Jinnah datelined May, June and October, 1937. Part V is captioned ‘Jinnah and Lincoln’s Inn’. It spotlights an elaborate introductory
Benazir Bhutto’s odyssey The recent Urdu translation of Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography has once again bought into focus the life of this remarkable woman By Aamir Riaz
T
he 16th century Sufi poet Madhu Lal Hussain once famously said “Takhat na milday mangay,” which means that people will not get their rights just by asking, but only with fierce resistance. Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was indeed invaluable to the resistance movement in our country and for that, she will occupy an exalted place in the collective memory of our people. We have a rich tradition of resistance spanning from the days when Punjab was still referred to as Poros of Pantapotamia (the ancient name of Punjab) to the age of the Sindhi and Punjabi Sufi poets cum qalandars. The forms of resistance have altered yet the spirit of defiance still remains alive. In the past guerrilla warfare, poetry and battles were famous forms of resistance but the 20th century bought with it a new struggle for political & democratic rights. This form began to gain increased resonance in the subcontinent and in the first half of 20th century, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Dr Iqbal, Suhrawardy, Jawahar Lal Nehru all adopted constitutional forms of resistance. This tradition has been carried on by PPP and Bhuttos in Pakistan who fought and died for a liberal democratic Pakistan. The book under review, the Benazir Bhutto autobiography, chronicles such a struggle. The Urdu translation of the second edition of the book was recently published by the Bhutto Legacy Foundation (19 Tariq Block New Garden Town, Lahore) which once again brings to the centrestage the journey of this remarkable woman. The chairman of the foundation, Mr. Bashir Riaz, a well-respected member of the media, has done an excellent job of translating this book. The first edition of “Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography” was published by a London-based publisher in November 1988, just as she was preparing to take oath as prime minister. It affords insight into the political scene at the time. From the last pages of this edition, it is evident that President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and COAS Mirza Aslam Beg were unwilling to transfer power to the majority Party. She writes, “With the days passing since my electoral victory and a constitutional crisis looming, I wrote a detail letter to the international community explaining the situation… after an indecent delay, and finding no cracks within my parliamentary party, President Ishaq accepted the will of the people.” Its second updated edition was published in April 2007, when Benazir was planning to return home from exile. In this edition she dedicated a 36 page long chapter to her time in office, entitled “Prime Minister and beyond.” This chapter offers a unique insight into the past 20 years of Pakistan. In January 2007, she met Musharraf twice in Abu Dubai and engaged in detailed talks, yet in the book she openly admits her dislike for the General. “I declined to make him (Musharraf) my military secretary. We initially refused his promotion because of his suspected, though unproven, links to the ethnic, often violent, party known as MQM.” She engaged with a new military dictator only with the purpose of restoring democracy. Not only this, but she also signed an unprecedented accord, the Charter of Democracy, with her political rival Nawaz Sharif in May 2006. These incidents are proof of her absolute and unwavering commitment to democracy. In his recent book “The 9/11 Wars,” Jason Burke reported her negotiations first with Gen. Kiani and then with Gen. Musharraf, confirming that it was the latter who called her in August 2006 when she was in New York. Her last paragraph of the second
edition is a prophecy, a presage, which made her immortal. Just before embarking on her return journey, in an attempt to explain her controversial decision, she said, “Some people might not understand what drives me forward into this unchartered and potentially dangerous crossroads of my life. Too many people have sacrificed too much, too many have died, and too many people see me as their remaining hope for liberty, for me to stop fighting now. I recall the words of Martain Luther King: Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent on things that matter. With my faith in God, I put my fate in the hands of my people.” Even her fiercest enemies and critics have been compelled to pay respect to her sacrifice. She knew what hardships awaited her. Yet her
“Some people might not understand what drives me forward into this unchartered and potentially dangerous crossroads of my life. Too many people have sacrificed too much, too many have died, and too many people see me as their remaining hope for liberty, for me to stop fighting now” belief in people’s power held strong. Musharraf tried his best to delay her return to Pakistan using every means possible yet she braved the journey that would take her life. After her return, Musharraf and his cronies tried to defame her by referring to a so-called secret deal with Musharraf but these accusations were soon proven baseless. Around this time, even the ‘free media’ turned against her, choosing rather to dwell endlessly on this ‘secret deal.’ By December 20, she was ready to start the final phase of her electoral campaign. She knew the importance of her public meetings in the Punjab, via G.T.Road. She knew it would decide the fate of Pakistan. She re-called the dark ages of Zia, and how establishment has stopped at nothing to drive out the Bhuttos out from Punjab. And she took pride on knowing that they had failed terribly in their designs. In 2007, both popular parties had an agreement to not allow the army entry into Pakistani politics. It was a turning point in the history of the nation. Yet, in the tragic footsteps of her father, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was killed in Rawalpindi where thousands of Punjabis were jubilantly greeting her. Her prophecy came true and she became a permanent symbol of resistance in Pakistani society. The recent Urdu publication is an extremely positive step as it makes her story accessible to a wider audience. Other foundations should take similar initiatives to publish speeches, letters and interviews of Bhottos in Urdu, English and regional languages. This record is not only for PPP workers alone but it is a record of people’s resistance in Pakistan. –The author is a Lahore based researcher & editor
Insulting with style There is a way to temporarily lighten the gloom for the educated and the interested by arming oneself with the weapon of the sharp and stinging verbal riposte
A
rrogance and violence, whether physical or psychological, have become the hallmarks of our modern-day civilization. The rise of totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century, the atrocities committed against their own citizens and other countries in the bid for world domination, and lately, the sole superpower’s glorification of naked force, aggression and expansionism, have left indelible scars on humanity and raised serious question marks over man actually being the ‘roof and crown of things’. And now, with the world’s population mounting (if that is the correct word) at a phenomenal rate and the available r e s o u r c e s shrinking in comparison, the global competition has become fiercer, leaving extensive poverty in its wake. With the number of the dispossessed and the misbegotten rising sharply, it is hardly surprising that the world today appears an even more hostile, rude and violent place. Our society too, has generally turned into an excessively shorttempered one, to put it mildly. But there are some genuine reasons behind all the lava and the volcanic
activity. One is painfully aware that the above opening remark is woefully inadequate to describe the savage events of Karachi, or the gruesome
people on edge with depression, repressed anger and helplessness. However, this also explains why most people are all too willing to
suicide bombings, bigoted killings and kidnappings taking place in our major cities, which apart from taking a heavy toll of citizens’ lives are otherwise extremely stressful, leaving
follow up a heated verbal duel in public with a full-fledged brawl, watched by an interested throng of pensive spectators. A common street sight these days.
Our great proclivity for procreation, in which we are second to none, ensures that there are just too many of us at any given time for our own good, and the density per metre per individual seems to be fast growing as we bump and collide with each other in going our separate ways. Then there are illiteracy and ignorance, man’s principal enemies in his quest for prosperity, personal development and broader horizons. So, taken overall, there is a method behind all the madness. And, we have not even talked of the economy yet… But there is a way to temporarily lighten the gloom for the educated and the interested (a problematic proposition in itself, if not actually an oxymoron) by arming oneself, not with a revolver or knife, one hastens to add, as much favoured by the Karachi party, but with the weapon of the sharp and stinging verbal riposte. Cassel’s Dictionary of Insulting Quotations by Jonathon Green is an armoury with a wide range of witty ways in which to get back at a tormentor in a (somewhat) civilized manner rather than resorting to the popular device of seizing him by the throat! The DOIQ’s ‘records the guilty verdicts passed on a whole host of individuals, nations and way of life … and is a glorious celebration of the outpourings of its (rudeness’) most successful practitioners’.
06 - 07
Sunday, 11 September, 2011
the review
By Khawaja Manzar Amin
Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. (Oscar Wilde) Frank Harris is invited to all the great houses in England – once. (Oscar Wilde) Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. (Oscar Wilde)
His social vision did not go beyond the classic prescriptions for dealing with injustice: give everybody an equal start, above all in education, and meanwhile keep the niggers off your porch. (Christopher Lasch, US academic in Lyndon B. Johnson: The Presidential Mystique.)
The only time he ever put up a fight in his life was when we asked him for his resignation. (French Prime Minister Clemenceau on Marshal Jacques Joffre, French soldier)
War is capitalism with the gloves off. (Tom Stoppard, British playwright)
9/11’s Legacy
The need for a new ethics from page 1
seen. The rise of anti-Americanism amongst the Pakistani public could almost be said to have reached its zenith. A simple lesson was never learnt: to end militancy, one must end the conditions which produce the militancy. And as Pakistan continues to formulate its military and defense policy on the basis of a skewed ideological commitment to the ‘Good Taliban’ and a skewed financial dependency on the US, there appears no resolution. The American male doesn’t mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities. (Wilfrid Sheed, US writer)
What changed in the world: He objected to ideas only when others had them. (Historian A.J.P Taylor on British politician Ernest Bevin)
A modest little man with much to be modest about. (Winston Churchill on Clement Attlee) He occasionally stumbled over the truth but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. (Churchill on Stanley Baldwin) He can best be described as one of those orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say; and when they are speaking do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, do not know what they have said ( W. Churchill on Lord Charles Beresford, British politician)
Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it? (Mark Twain) I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. ( Mark Twain on Cecil Rhodes, English-born South African politician) One German a beer; two Germans an organization; three Germans a war. (Polish saying) He was an incorrigible borrower of money; he borrowed from all his friends; if he ever repaid a loan the incident failed to pass into history. (Mark Twain on Francis Bret Harte, US author)
In the depths of that dusty soul is nothing but abject surrender. (Churchill on Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement)
… A systematic liar and a beggarly cheat; a swindler and a poltroon… He has committed every crime that does not require courage. (Benjamin Disraeli on Daniel O’ Connell, Irish politician) Gladstone: ‘Mr. Disraeli, you will probably die by the hangman’s noose or a vile disease’. Disraeli: ‘Sir, that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.’ (Quoted in George E. Allen, Presidents Who Have Known Me 1950)
Nixon’s motto was if two wrongs don’t make a right, try three. (Norman Cousins, US writer on Richard Nixon)
He had the memory of an elephant and the hide of an elephant. The only difference is that elephants are vegetarians, and (Louis) Mayer’s diet was his fellow man. (Herman J. Mankiewicz, US journalist and screenwriter)
He has all the characteristics of a dog, except loyalty. (Sam Houston on T.H Green, both US politicians)
He has sufficient conscience to bother him but not enough to keep him straight. (Lloyd George on Ramsay Macdonald, first Labour Prime Minister)
Eisenhower is the only living Unknown Soldier. (Senator R.S Kerr of Oklahoma on Dwight David Eisenhower, US general and President)
The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Hon. Gentleman for four and a half years. (Aneurin Bevan speaking in Parliament of Neville Chamberlain as Minister of Health, 23 July, 1929)
Sir Stafford has a brilliant mind until it is made up. (Lady Violet Bonham-Carter)
So, having set a cursory stage, we do feel the need to move into the concrete question: how has the war on terror fared? The early editorials to come of leading newspapers are that the war has been lost. There were two 9-11 wars: the Afghan war and the Iraq war. The Afghan war, the only one directly linked to the Al Qaeda question, has proved to be such a resounding failure for the US that they now sit at the negotiating table with the Taliban. The ability of imperialism to produce internal resistance remains the same. When warned with the stark example of Vietnam before, the US went in believing that superiority of military strength would win them a war. The lesson of the 20th century has been reiterated in the 21st. Guerilla movements cannot be met with modern armies. But that is not the worst part: over a million people have been killed in Afghanistan, over two million in Iraq. And yet as long as the polarizing presence of the American military remains, there is no hope for the violence to subside. The above is the cost to life: numeric. The second cost suffered has been the loss of human dignity. A world is being crafted in which no one can trust another, where all is monitored, where everything can be defined as terrorism, where everyone can be a terrorist. This is what has been labeled in state theory as a ‘state of exception.”
A ‘state of exception’ for human rights:
The question of human rights has been put under, what would rightly be called a permanent ‘state of exception. It is philosophically defined as “the sovereign’s ability to transcend the rule of law in the name of the public good.” Laws mirroring each other, giving governments and States’ rights to shift individuals in identity-less custody have begun to emerge around the world. The questions began to be asked in the US witzh the Patriot Act but similar regulations appeared elsewhere. And all of this was separate to the rising stock of illegal picked up persons, and formed the basis for the question: how many people are missing in the world? Where are the missing persons? This was a question that each ruler has dismissed. General Musharraf would say, “Most of these are abroad by choice.” Over the course of a painstaking process of judicial activism from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the real tale behind the missing persons’ began to open up. A tale that promises to further open through the Bagram prisoners case. But the opening up of these tales does not reveal any form of learning from the State. During this process, sweeps of people from predominantly Muslim countries resulted in the “preventive detention” of 1,200 people; voluntary interviews of 19,000; and a program of special registration for more than 82,000. However, not a single terrorism conviction followed. Despite this record, in Pakistan, a new Anti-Terrorism Law (Amendment) 2010 is under discussion. It makes the state of being a missing person ‘legal’. If passed, you could be held in custody without the need to tell anyone where you are for 90 days. You are a legally missing person. Historically, laws restraining state entities were put in place exactly to protect the citizen from the Hobbesian sovereign. The loosening of these restraining laws are increasingly moving towards unleashing the Hobbesian sovereign, an entity that one can see in operation in Balochistan already, using ‘kill-and-dump.’ Under the same law, the lines between terrorism and any form of street violence or rights’ movement become further blurred, and the power of distinction and definition lies solely with the state. And we must continue to ask: why are not members of State paramilitary forces subjected to terrorism laws? Clearly, one can ask questions from a number of subject positions on the ethics of State-driven offensives against civilian populations. For one, it needs to be recognized that the form of social action we label ‘terrorism’ today was an outgrowths of forms of State manipulation of society. The same is true with the US for Al-Qaeda, the same is true with Pakistan for the Taliban. The change in human rights paradigm have seen State’s grant themselves the right to take away human identity, the right to humanity, on a mere whim.All this as a global world system, an unequal world system, continues to disguise itself under the rhetoric of rights, freedoms and democracy.
Thinking a new global ethic: The real legacy of 9/11?
One has to wonder again how we shall continue to raise the question of oppression, of domination without being labeled terrorists. Or is being labeled a terrorist a label to proudly carry? When in 2007, activists took to the streets to oppose Musharraf’s military rule, the charges they faced were terrorism charges. With the expansion of the existing law to ‘damage to private or public property,’ it appears that soon striking workers would be labeled terrorists and go missing for 90 days. In so many ways, the fact that the word ‘terrorism’ has remained an abstract ever-useable, interchangeable term has meant the word almost appears a joke now. To those who support the tightening of laws, and rights, one must ask the question: is there no longer legitimate violence against the State? To cede the monopoly of violence, the monopoly to abuse, to States, which as we have argued have a critical role to play in the very creation of the problem of terror(ism), is almost hypocritical. It is a ceding of human agency to bureaucracy unlike any other in history. It is a cessation of human dignity. As we know, it is the limits of State ethics that have put us in the conflict ridden situation we are in today. So here, if we argue that the world is yet to have seen democracy, if we argue that the world has yet to have seen equality, if we argue that the world has yet to seen light – the powerful of the world shall call us blasphemers. But it is to keep this dream alive, through a critique of the security state produced after 9/11 that is our task as humans, to maintain our dignity. That is the legacy of 9/11: existing ethics are insufficient. In so many ways, it then leaves us without a direction, without an ethics, as creators of our own destiny, if we will ourselves to. This can be captured in late Eqbal Ahmed’s lament, “When do we stop creating terrorists?” It is this that is the question we must leave with when searching for 9/11’s legacy.
Sunday, 11 September, 2011
The question is: if the king’s corpse was borne to Ghazni as history testifies, who is buried in this tomb?
Pictures by the Author
08
The marble Tomb of the Viscera
Here lies Deception The Turkish king was thus duly indigenised, but Dhamiak became the burial place of deception for real history has another tale to tell
I
By Salman Rashid
n the bleak, tortured landscape of the northeastern Potohar Plateau Dhamiak had remained uncelebrated since the beginning of time. Lying amid a wearisome tangle of narrow and meandering gullies, tinged red by sub-soil salt and thinly covered with scrub, it never had reason for fame or glory. Its only claim to fame was for being a staging post just off one branch of the old Rajapatha, or King’s Road, that has been in use from ancient times. While the main royal road leading west through Punjab went by the Salt Range, this branch followed the same alignment as the modern Grand Trunk Road by way of Jhelum, Sohawa and Gujar Khan – though none of these towns would have then existed. This latter was the road less travelled; the majority of traffic passing through the heart of the Salt Range. The celebrated Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang writes of his prolonged sojourn at Taxila (631 AD) and a visit to the monasteries of the Salt Range. Thereafter, he tells us of his journey to Kashmir. Though he does not describe his route, it is evident that he would have used this road. Nine hundred years later Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, tells us of having travelled by the ‘sub-montane road’ through the country of the warlike Gakkhars of the Potohar Plateau en route to Lahore in November 1523. In between a remarkable event took place by this lesser branch of the King’s Road. This event would have remained no more than a footnote in our history had we not become masters of a missile that needed to be named after a hero. And since from the moment of our conversion to Islam, we were divorced from our earlier history, all heroes had to be, necessarily, Muslims. So it is that Muiz ud Din, better known as Shahab ud Din Ghory, a Turkish chieftain
from the narrow and impoverished valley of Ghor, southeast of Herat in Afghanistan, is celebrated by subcontinental Muslims for his invasion and mastery of the northern part of India. In 1203 rumour reached the Khokhar Rajputs of the Salt Range that Shahab ud Din had been killed by the Mongols on the wind-scoured grasslands of far away Central Asia. Having been nominal feudatories of the Ghorid sultan, these doughty warriors began to assert their independence by closing the roads that passed through their territory. Thereafter they set about raiding Ghorid dependencies in Punjab. But it was only rumour: Shahab ud Din was alive and by 1205 brought retribution upon these people in full force. The battle fought near Gujrat was all but carried by the Khokhars until Turkish reinforcements under Qutub ud Din Aibak arrived from Delhi to turn the tide. The Rajputs were routed after a great slaughter and the country returned to Turkish control. Smarting under the shame of defeat, the Rajputs set their hearts on revenge. Barely a year later, when the Ghorid sultan was returning from Delhi to the Afghan highlands, he was done in. The sources say that it was either a single individual or a small band of Khokhars (no more than three) that stole into the king’s camp, dispatched his bodyguards and repeatedly stabbed the king as he slept in his tent. And even before an alarm could be raised, these intrepid guerrillas had vanished into the dark of night while the sultan lay dying in a pool of blood. The sources are also divided on another issue: the location of this historical event. At least two early sources tell of the king’s tent having been pitched by a ford on the Sindhu River and that the Khokhars entered his camp by swimming in. But the Tabakate-Nasiri of Minhaj ud Din Siraj, generally considered fairly reliable as an historical source, very categorically states that the murder took place at ‘the halting place of Dhamiak… at the hand of a disciple of the Mulahida.’ The Mulahida or heretics here being the Ismailis, a persuasion that many of the Khokhars followed at that time. Several contemporary and later writers agree with Siraj that Dhamiak was indeed the site of the murder. And so it was that when it came time for us to name our missile we called it Ghory: therein lay a symbolism. The Indians call their missile Prithvi
(after Prithviraj Chauhan) we are one up because Shahab ud Din Ghory had eventually won victory after an initial defeat at the hands of the Chauhan king. Having done that, we also needed to reinvent history. This was easily do-able because we knew from folklore that Shahab ud Din Ghory had died at Dhamiak. Being well-known for our national aversion to reading, the creators of this new history did not bother to consult the books and simply went ahead to raise the white marble tomb of the Ghorid sultan at Dhamiak. The Turkish king was thus duly indigenised, but Dhamiak became the burial place of deception for real history has another tale to tell. The Tabakat-e-Nasiri tells us of the dispatch of the king’s bier from Dhamiak towards Ghazni. Now, it needs be told that at the time of this murder (1206 AD), Afghanistan was held by the Turks as different principalities all owing allegiance to the sultan. While Ghor was held by the sultan’s cousins, Ghazni was under the control of Taj ud Din Yalduz, one of Shahab ud Din Ghori’s most trusted slaves and generals. As the funerary procession accompanied by amirs from both Ghor and Ghazni crossed the Sindhu River and arrived in the vicinity of modern day Kohat, a dispute for the possession of the coffin as well as the considerable treasure being borne with it broke out between the two parties. From all accounts it appears that a minor battle was fought. The Ghoris were defeated and routed. The funeral then proceeded to Ghazni by way of Sankuran that we today know as Shalozan. This is a right beautiful, well-watered valley of orchards and farmland lying a few kilometres to the northwest of Parachinar. It was at Sankuran that Yalduz kept headquarters and as the bier reached in this vicinity, we hear of him riding out to meet the body of his lord and master. The histories tell us of how having seen the grim procession from a distance, Yalduz dismounted and came up to the
bier with ‘utmost veneration.’ It is also recorded that he wept so inconsolably that his grief moved others to tears as well. Arriving at Ghazni, the sultan’s body was buried in the madrasah he had founded during his lifetime and named after his daughter – his only child who survived beyond infancy. Yet we have a marble monstrosity plonked amid the furrowed badlands of the Potohar Plateau. The building can be reached by a blacktop motorable road that takes off to the east of the Grand Trunk Road at Sohawa exactly opposite the fork that goes in the other direction to Chakwal. Less than twenty kilometres from the main highway, the white tomb can be spotted from some way off. The façade bears a plaque that briefly tells of the sultan’s exploits against the Rajputs. It would be foolish to imagine that the plaque would also recall the chivalry of the victorious Rajputs in the first encounter. For the Rajputs a battle was no different from a sport: when they routed an enemy, they did not stoop so low as to pursue and annihilate a withdrawing army. They broke away and jubilantly went their own way. They permitted the vanquished foe to live to fight another day. Be that as it may, the question is: if the king’s corpse was borne to Ghazni as history testifies, who is buried in this tomb? No one – at least not a person. It must not be forgotten that summer had begun and the body would have started to rot very quickly in the Punjabi heat. As was the practice, the sultan’s courtiers would in all probability have eviscerated the
corpse. As time passed and memory faded, it was only remembered as the burial of Shahab ud Din Ghory ignominiously murdered at the hands of an Ismaili Khokhar sworn to revenge. When it came time to reincarnate the Ghorid king as a missile, the tomb was raised as a sort of proprietorial claim over that exalted personage. History was not consulted and if official historians were required, of them there were aplenty falling over each other to attest to the veracity of the murder at Dhamiak. As has been the way of this breed of experts, the rest of the truth was not revealed. And so the marble Tomb of the Viscera was raised. If, however, the mausoleum only commemorates the location of the sultan’s last moments on earth, then the raising of this edifice is doubly criminal. In a country where ordinary folks, superstitious as they are, worship every available tomb, this will only create yet another giver of sons and wealth. This will give them another demi-god to worship and pray to. The Auqaf Department that was raised to curb such mindless superstition actually abets in its spread for every new shrine in the country means more income for the department. Even if the shrines contain only excrement-filled intestines. - Salman Rashid, rated as the best in the country, is a travel writer and photographer who has travelled all around Pakistan and written about his journeys.