Daily Times

In Pakistan did I fall in love. With cats. For a time I found myself sharing a pad with 18 of the little furpots. Those who knew me before my move here were astonished. Not so much by the sheer number – but because I had always been a committed dog person.

Which may explain my initial soft spot for Gen Musharraf. I recall back in 2003 trying to track down an international freight company willing to transport my container from London to Lahore. It proved a mission in vain. None was ready to ship to Pakistan. After all, the coalition of the willing had decided that real men didn’t need United Nations resolutions. Thus had they gone off to bomb Iraq, while leaving unfinished what they had started in Afghanistan.

The newspaper where I was working took a playful poke at this animal loving enemy combatant. While on a state visit to China, the good general had been snapped holding a baby panda. The very next day our editorial cartoon devilishly boasted a giant panda with a tiny Musharraf nestling in its paws

And there was Pakistan, stuck in the crosshairs.

It was a testing time for this country. One that has yet to end.

I used to wonder, at times, if my dad might have seen in the Enlightened Moderate a kindred spirit of sorts. My favourite picture of this era is of Musharraf dressed in khakis – a look of unabashed delight on his face as he clutches one beloved Pekingese dog under each arm. We, too, used to have one. Named after the lion from the Chronicles of Narnia, an acknowledgement that ferocity isn’t always dependent upon the size of the beast. The newspaper where I was working took a playful poke at this animal loving enemy combatant. While on a state visit to China, the good general had been snapped holding a baby panda. The very next day our editorial cartoon devilishly boasted a giant panda with a tiny Musharraf nestling in its paws. Truth be told, I couldn’t be sure about my dad. He had, after all, once confessed to deliberately letting my mother think he was a true blue Tory voter. Whereas Labour always got his thumbs up, back when the party could claim a Socialist identity.

The hope that Musharraf had offered was not forthcoming. A bit of an embarrassment was he becoming at home and abroad, from his emotional outbursts to international media to missing persons to the killing of Bugti to the ill-fated sacking of the Chief Justice. And once Benazir was set to return – much of the western media jumped ship, leaving him alone to navigate the decidedly hostile waters.

It started with a black-and-white close-up. Three men in plain non-western garb. Mirroring each other’s angry gesticulations. At the bottom corner, miniscule text detailing reasons for the outrage. An indelible image for most Pakistanis. And how swiftly did it become the lens through which the rest of the world was bulldozed into viewing their country. It first appeared on the cover of a certain American weekly news magazine. The Most Dangerous Nation In The World is not Iraq. It is Pakistan. So ran the accompanying tagline. Yet the inside story proved a let-down. The near fatal attack targeting Benazir’s motorcade as it moved its way through the streets of Karachi was its central focus. Included was an outline of the rising tide of extremism in Pakistan. And none of it was untrue. Yet the disconnect between the photograph and the written narrative couldn’t have been more pronounced. The former served to paint the country’s poor as ‘fundos’, with no mention of those supporting and funding militancy. Why not put Musharraf on the cover? Or, indeed, Benazir, who was the first to differentiate between good and bad Taliban Or even the Pakistan flag. But no. The nameless poor were picked.

In a couple of months, Musharraf would doff his uniform and in less than a year step down as president. Yet the western media didn’t ease up.

This was a busy time on many fronts.

Less than two years after Pakistan’s return to civilian rule the geo-political term AfPak was removed from the US lexicon. The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act was inked, promising one of the largest US civilian outlays. Integral to this was support for a free media. In reality, this period coincided with relentless assaults on Pakistan’s global image.

Exactly three years after being crowned the world’s most dangerous – the same American news magazine ran yet another provocative cover tagline: Should We Invade Pakistan? This was how it appeared on US newsstands and online. Not so when it came to here, its in-country global partner. Even though those at the helm must have known how it would fly off the shelves, possibly being one of their biggest selling issues. This was a proud day for Pakistani journalism at its responsible best. And one where notions of government soap-boxing, foreign or otherwise, stood firmly rejected. By contrast, when, at the beginning of the following year, a cover image featuring a cartoon assassin draped in the American flag hit the Pakistani market there was upset. It was a distasteful pictorialisation of the Arizona shooting. Yet this was seen as evidence of local media fanning the flames of anti-US sentiment. Except that the received artwork had come not from Pakistan, but New York.

Yet as I recall those early years, those heady days of Enlightened Moderation – I can’t help but feel the twinge of nostalgia. For a time when all it took was a Pekingese dog under each arm of a swaggering commando action man to have the world buy our soft face. And when the US-led global media wouldn’t try and short-change us into towing their line.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, September 9^th 2017.