Seeing young Bilawal
BabyBhutto Zardari
...Pak dynastic politician, son of Benazir Bhutto and grandon of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As far as is known, Bilawal has no particular talents other than being pretty and being able to memorize political slogans, but he had the good luck to be born into the right family and he hasn't been assassinated yet...
spearheading the two-weeks long Sindh Festival is refreshing but is this effort enough to revive a Sindhi culture that historically has promoted peace, harmony and diversity among the residents of Sindh, irrespective of differences in faith? In his promotional video speech, Bilawal Bhutto said that the culture was in danger and expeditious acts were needed to protect it.
"The Sindh Festival will make us aware of our existence. The heritage was under threat and the festival is an effort to protect it," he said. However,
the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach...
it is not just Sindhi culture that is in danger; Pashtun, Baloch and Punjabi cultures are in danger too after Zia ul Haq's
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...tyrannical 11-year-rule.
There is little doubt that after the demise of General Zia, Pakistain remains clearly divided between two distinct blocks, one associating itself with Bhutto, the other linked with Zia.
The block representing Zia is gradually taking hold of Pakistain while the space for Bhutto's mindset is shrinking. The recent threat from the Taliban to the peaceful Kalash community in Chitral to convert to Islam or prepare for elimination, or their stopping students in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
University from celebrating Valentine's Day instead of haya (modesty) day, are manifestations of that disturbing reality.
The incessant attacks on Shias, Hindus and Ahmedis in Pakistain indicate that people belonging to Zia's block hold the strings of our lives in their hands and that the militancy and religious extremism nurtured by Zia are making it impossible for people of other faiths or free thinkers (like me) to live in Pakistain. It seems that the sunlight is receding and the shadows are increasing in this God forsaken country.
The words 'liberal' and 'secular' have become gaalis (insults) in Pakistain. A good example of the dominance of Zia's followers is the weakness of Bhutto's own party on the small matter of unblocking access to the popular video sharing website YouTube, where it could not take on the radical elements belonging to Zia's block. Who could foresee in the time of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent...
that one day his own liberal party, after forming the government, would feel so weak and powerless against the forces of darkness that it would dither in its decision to unblock the website?
The PPP also failed to stand up for Salmaan Taseer when he was singled out by the media and religious forces for defending a woman accused of blasphemy. The constant media coverage awarded to Maulana Abdul Aziz, the man responsible for the killing of dozens of innocent people in the Red Mosque incident, is another reminder that Zia's forces are dominating the mainstream discourse.
Bhutto was a symbol of modernity; Zia represented darkness and made Pakistain an entity of hatred where only Moslems of a certain school of thought could live, and where the more illogical one is, the more acceptance and appreciation they receive. He turned Pakistain into a laboratory of Islam, the kind that religious forces dreamed of: a laboratory that is under the control of bully boy groups and their sympathisers, who silence any voice remotely connected with modernity and liberalism. What crime did hundreds of Hazara Shias commit that they were killed by the scores in Quetta? What crime did Salmaan Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti and others commit that they were killed?
Meanwhile,
...back at the comedy club, Boogie was cracking himself up, but nobody else seemed to be getting the non-stop jokes...
Salmaan Taseer's killer was garlanded with flowers, not by people in the tribal belt, but by people in Rawalpindi, in the heart of Pakistain.
The gangs -- the Sipahs and Lashkars -- are so numerous that at times it feels like we have outsourced security matters to them.
When I see campaigns and banners demanding Jinnah's Pakistain, I ask myself: is today's Pakistain not, in fact, Jinnah's Pakistain, despite the confusion and disorientation of the founding leadership? The leadership lacked a clear vision of what kind of Pakistain it wanted: a theocratic state or a liberal democratic state, of the kind Jinnah advocated in his speech just before the birth of Pakistain. Unfortunately, his decision to declare Urdu the national language gave the oppressors a tool that set the ground for alienation and separation. The language was later used by the Punjabi dominated ruling elite -- led by Pakistain's military -- against the smaller ethnicities like the Pashtuns and Baloch. What could be more ironic than the fact that the millions who were uprooted from their villages, cities, their hearths and homes, their friends and dreams, the people who actually steered the Pakistain movement, are, to this day, called Mohajir and more derogatively Biharis?
Because of the poor vision and shortsightedness of our founding fathers, in our first constitutional document, the Objectives Resolution set the foundations of a state that would later embrace a particular group of oppressors like Zia who left no stone unturned in their quest to shrink the space for people belonging to other sects and religions, and free thinkers.
Bhutto can never be more relevant than today. When I say Bhutto I do not refer to the person of Bhutto or his party but the philosophy of modernity, liberalism and secular beliefs that existed in pre-Zia Pakistain. With the arrival of Zia, shadows descended on Pakistain. If change is the only constant in nature, then the time for change has come. What the shrinking majority of Pakistain wants is the Pakistain of Bhutto, clear in its direction and outlook, a modern, democratic and secular Pakistain that is, unfortunately, losing its ground to the onslaught of Zia's followers and sympathisers.