Daily Times

All one can safely do, after sitting and wincing through the latest pronouncement of judicial wisdom from Islamabad and the ensuing punch-ups, is to quote Oliver Hardy as he throws his hat to the ground and exclaims through gritted teeth: “That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into!” upon which, poor little Stanley Laurel fiddles nervously at his chest with his own battered bowler hat and starts to cry and blubber, “Gee, Ollie…”
Well, gee, Ollie, one really would have expected better than this in the auspicious year of the sixtieth anniversary of the creation of the Land of the Pure. Sixty years on and still no workable constitution! Good grief! And I certainly would have hoped for far fewer fisticuffs during the Holy Month as well. But then, holiness is often not all it’s cracked up to be. Unfortunately.
“Unity, faith, discipline” and “selfless devotion to duty” as advised by Quaid-e Azam in the early days of independence are all very well, but I wish he had added to these another more practical tenet: land reform; without which feudalism has continued unabated and shameless, even into the twenty-first century, leaving the terribly unfortunate masses at the mercy of the same old corrupt, self-serving feudal masters, or, just for a change every now and then, of the business or military élite who keep an eye on the shop until it’s the feudals’ turn at the counter once more.
Whatever, no matter who is in charge of the cash register, it keeps on ringing up zeros for the majority of the people of Pakistan; after sixty years, they still can’t read and write, they still have too few hospitals, their babies and toddlers are still dying; women and little girls are still raped by men of ‘good’ families whose ‘goodness’ allows them to pervert and laugh at the law. People will keep on using this word ‘good’ in wanton and immoral manner because that’s part of the feudal mentality which prevails. Nearly six hundred women were reported ‘honour’ killed last year. According to a recent report, there are 51 medico-legal officers, of whom only eight are women, at nine public hospitals in Karachi, serving a population of around 15 million. Fifty-one officers for fifteen million citizens! In Sindh! Shame on the leaders of Pakistan, past and present, ‘democratic’ or military, who are so busy polishing apples (to put it nicely) for America, and currently supporting its demented and self-perpetuating ‘War on Terror’ that the pain and injustice suffered decade after decade by ordinary people goes unaddressed, cynically and cruelly ignored.
And while I’m at it, I’d like to point out that democracy and feudalism cannot function at the same time. Until there is meaningful land reform, democracy in this country, as in many others, is a mere farce, nothing but whitewash. And all this twaddle about ‘the will of the people’, forever trotted out by one of the biggest landowners of Sindh, the province of the most enormous private estates and abused serfs, should be treated with the disdain it deserves.
None of the leaders of this hapless nation has been able to prevent the cream of the country’s intellect from brain-draining out en masse and taking up residence in the United States. I’ve taught some of the brilliant emigrants; I know. They’re not here. They’re over there. They tell me they can’t live in this corrupt environment which won’t allow them to work honestly, to be respected and properly remunerated for their hard work and talent. They would have to resort to skullduggery to be able to maintain their family if they were to settle, as many would like to, in their homeland near their parents.
Meanwhile, another fine mess: the War on Terror is going just as swimmingly for Pakistan as it is for the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan: they’re all losing it and losing it very terribly and tragically for the ordinary people, the victims involved. In Peshawar, two women named Maino and Malaki were kidnapped and beheaded by militants on September 6. In Swat, 63 shops were blown up by militants early this month (that’s an awful lot of shops); and scores of madrassas have been opened there whilst girls’ schools have been closed down. In South Waziristan, Taliban militants are kidnapping soldiers and locking them up when they ‘stray’ into enemy territory by mistake (Pakistan Army. Men at their best! Why are they straying?). But nothing daunted, the USA continues to make money out of its staunch Third World ally: it’s going to sell to Pakistan eighteen new F16-C/D fighters to be delivered in 2010 and then Pakistan has the option of purchasing eighteen more! And won’t they come in handy! Yes, they certainly will, Ollie.

The writer is a Londoner who has been teaching in Lahore for the past 24 years. She has directed a number of highly acclaimed stage plays