Two days after the Peshawar incident, as I conducted a special Urdu program at Radio Pakistan Islamabad, I had renowned dramatist and artist Anwar Maqsood on the telephone line.

When asked about his reflections on the brutal massacre at Peshawar school, Anwar was simply unable to respond. His voice grew heavy and it sounded like he was crying; all he could say was: “On 16th December 1971, we lost our past in Dhaka, and on 16th December 2014; we have lost our future. It seems that my own children have been killed”.

Like Anwar Maqsood, there was a unanimous outpouring of sympathy and grief mixed with anger from across Pakistan.

As my mind struggled and repeatedly failed to absorb the dimensions of the brutal act, it felt like I had been robbed of my pleasant memories associated with this school; replaced only with bombs, bullets and blood now.

Also read: Inside Army Public School, once upon a time...

Thirteen years ago, I was one of the children studying at the same Army Public School, Warsak Road.

I was there from March 2001 to 2003 in grades 6 and 7.

'Brave Osama'

Like most children at that age, life was just about two things: work and play. Teachers were honest and capable, and studying with them was quite fun. Twice, I was awarded medals and certificates for my excellent academic performance.

It was during that time that the tragic 9/11 attacks occurred, followed by the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, with Pakistan joining the much trumpeted ‘War on Terror’. How much devastation this would mean for the region, no one had imagined.

In the days after the US attack on Afghanistan, when our classes resumed, my class fellows had mixed accounts.

The majority of my friends were infused with stories of Osama Bin Laden and his comrades' heroism, holding Al-Qaeda in high ranks.

Some even quoted their parents while narrating the heroic adventures of the Mujahideen dating back to the Soviet Jihad of early '80s.

A few had made-up stories of the weapons the Mujahideen possessed, and related these legends to an astonished audience in the class.

The teachers of our class, too, recalled the days of "glory" when the ‘fighters of Allah’ had ransacked the Soviet ambitions in Afghanistan. They prayed that they will emerge victorious this time too, against the US forces.

Some of my teachers even went to the extent of cursing the former Army Chief and President General Musharraf, despite being employed in an Army school, while others lambasted the US for vicious designs against the Muslims.

Also read: Our denial killed children in Peshawar

Religious sentiments have always run high in the north-western part of Pakistan, which has served as a springboard for Jihadis for many years. After Kabul, Peshawar, unfortunately is still regarded as the chief breeding ground of radical Islamist elements; the poison of radicalism still prevalent widely among people there, irrespective of their level of literacy.

I remember sharing the news of the US invasion of Afghanistan with my driver, on my way to school one morning. He said that the Pakhtun and Muhajideen would "teach them a lesson" as they did to the Russians.

It was the same with my Qari sahib (Quran teacher). He had a close affiliation with the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam and thus held the Mujahideen in high esteem. His support still continues.

This rampant spirit of extremism compounded with anti-US sentiments and the moral support for the Mujahideen later accounted for the victory of the coalition of religious parties Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in the 2002 general election.

I remember remaining quiet during such debates, with no stories to offer. That was so because I was not told any such stories at home. The only thing the 2001 Afghan war brought into our home was a feeling of apprehension and constant concern of what would happen in our immediate surroundings.

In retrospect, that day as we the students of Class 6 chatted over the ‘War on Terror’ with our teachers joining the ‘Jihadism’ debate, no one had the slightest idea that the flames of this deadly war would one day engulf the students sitting on those same chairs and desks that we sat on; that blood and bullets would mar the same walls we hung our class projects on.

I wonder what the conversations have been like, had someone from the future come in and told them what would happen 13 years later.

How old were the victims of this school attack back in 2001? Three? One? Just born?

Read on: From Peshawar, with tears of blood

Besides the death of children in my extended family as a result of the Peshawar tragedy, the death of Mrs Tahira Qazi – the courageous principal – was another shock. She was related to me in more than one way.

During my school days, she was the Vice Principal. I remember her taking rounds with the Principal and attending to students’ concerns diligently. Importantly, she was the mother of my childhood friend, Ahmed Qazi. We had studied together since kindergarten.

I recalled my childhood visits to Ahmed's house at the Army Flats, Peshawar Cantt. His mother was a welcoming lady with a pleasant personality and a beaming smile always present on her face.

After her sad demise, I visited Ahmed in their native village, Landi Arbab of Peshawar. He was as brave as her mother and received me with fortitude.

I had no words of condolence to offer.

As I sat with Ahmed and offered dua, I was still taken aback by the grave circumstances that had led to our meeting after so long.

Unfortunately, we are far from recovering from our greatest loss: the mindset which accommodates these radical elements.

Unknowingly, we have all been caught off-guard.

Overwhelming confusion leads to a chaotic societal setup as a barrage of different voices keeps clamouring from different quarters. Pocketing dollars while ignoring long-term consequences has brought us to a point where it is becoming impossible to tell right from wrong.

Take a look: 16/12/14: Never forget

Today, we have a group of people protesting against the Lal Masjid cleric while the heads of religious political parties are decrying any action against masjids and madrassahs.

The state has the toughest choice to make. The seeds of Jihad and Islamism sown three decades back have grown into trees so strongly grounded that they cannot think independently of it.

December 16 brought for me the stark realisation that Pakistan has indeed become a hard place to live in; that it is much more than a cliche. If I were born a decade later than I was, I would be among the victims of last month's carnage.

While all this goes by and the government and military work on the National Action Plan, work needs to be done on creating an alternative narrative and changing mindsets across the country.

More than military combat, we need ideological warfare, and on the right, clearly defined target.

Decisions, even when urgent, should account for long-term concerns and common interests rather than vested interests.

Consensus is required across all strata of society – not just among politicians and soldiers, but everyone from civil society and the intelligentsia to religious scholars.

Unless counter terrorism measures include a massive ideological shift, the desired results will never be achieved.

Already it is too late. We must not wait any longer.

One size doesn’t fit all; an important lesson that the Indian policymakers took only 65 years to learn.

The Indian government has decided to abolish the Planning Commission, a relic of the Soviet-style central policy mindset, and replace it with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), which will serve as a think-tank and a “directional and policy dynamo.” Instead of trying to govern India from New Delhi, NITI will adopt a regional approach. The Prime Minister will head NITI and its Governing Council will comprise States’ chief ministers and Lt. Governors of Union Territories.

The Planning Commission in India was established in March 1950. Over the years, the Commission became a tool to grow the public sector and made the state both the operator and the regulator. The Commission consolidated the control at the centre resulting in made in Delhi policies being forced fed to the States and Union Territories.

NITI, instead, is intended to be a think-tank for the central and the state governments with enough diversity in its central and regional bodies to provide “relevant strategic and technical advice” that will help the Central, State, and local governments deliver on their mandates.

Also read: Planning anew

While India experiments with bold new approaches for planning and governance, Pakistan should also take note. The current structure of Pakistan’s Planning Commission is similar to that of India’s now defunct Commission. Slightly younger than its Indian counterpart, Pakistan’s Planning Commission also adopted the five-year planning cycles that set lofty targets for growth.

However, seldom did the elected governments complete their tenures so that one may evaluate their performance against the five-year plans and the targets they set for themselves.

With 180 million people and almost 800,000 square km in land, Pakistan is a large and complex place. The diversity in cultures, languages, beliefs, climate, and terrain has contributed to the uneven development landscape, where some places are much worse off than the rest.

In human development terms, districts in Balochistan are at the bottom and those in Punjab are at the top. Many would argue that other biases might have also contributed to the disparities in human and economic development in Pakistan.

Explore: Power politics: 3 serious governance issues nobody is talking about

It is rather naïve to believe that Pakistan’s complex and diverse challenges can be met by planning done in the P Block of the Cabinet Secretariat in Islamabad. Pakistan’s development challenges are local, not necessarily national. The resulting stunted growth is more pronounced in certain rural districts of Sindh than elsewhere. Still, the indigenous players are neither consulted nor made stakeholders in the centrally planned development schemes.

Often, the planning exercises are merely the aftershocks of multilateral and bilateral donor agreements. Once it is realised that USAID, JICA, CIDA or some other agency has set aside some millions in development aid, work immediately begins on proposals to attract those funds to Pakistan.

The entire process follows a top-down approach where the intended beneficiaries or the local service providers are seldom made part of the negotiations, program design, monitoring, or the ex-poste evaluation. If the international interest fails to materialise, the planning team moves on to other projects.

The main flaw of central planning is that a small group of individuals who are unfamiliar with local needs and resources are handed the job to plan and deliver services and solutions at local levels. Historically, such projects rarely sustain themselves in the long haul. There is always one and often multiple disrupting factors that the outsiders did not account, and which later contribute to the development programme's failure.

Read on: New layer of super bureaucratic cadre planned

Even though Pakistan has made attempts to devolve control from the centre to the provinces (for instance, in education), Higher Education Commission and Planning Commission are two entities which are still running things centrally, and therefore, inefficiently.

Consider, for instance, a recent meeting of the CDWP committee at the Planning Commission in which several projects for investing in specific programs at individual universities – such as setting up of religious studies chairs in universities – were approved for funding. How this is a concern for a national-level planning body is still an enigma to me.

'Planning' the commemoration of Hali

When an organisation assumes a limitless mandate, it runs the risk of losing focus. A recent meeting at the Ministry of Planning Development and Reform (which oversees the Planning Commission), illustrates this point. Mr Ahsan Iqbal, the minister who also heads the Planning Commission, chaired the meeting. The meeting was held to find ways to commemorate the works of a 19th century Urdu poet, Altaf Hussain Hali.

Here are some of the directives issued by the Minister:

1. Pakistan Post was directed to issue a commemorative stamp to honour Hali.

2. State-owned television channel, PTV, was asked to telecast special programs to highlight Hali’s religiously-inspired poetry. Hali’s most famous work is a long poem in which he laments the demise of Muslim monarchs in the sub-continent.

3. The state-owned Academy of Letters was instructed to hold a special reference for Hali.

4. The provincial education secretaries, who do not report to the federal government, were still instructed to instruct the management of state-owned schools to hold special commemorative events to honour Hali. The Higher Education Commission was instructed the same for similar events to be held at the State-owned universities.

5. The prime minister will be requested to declare 2015 as the “Hali Year on 100th years of Hali’s death anniversary.” Never mind that Hali died in 1914.

6. Finally, the minister directed to hold an international conference to highlight Hali’s role in mobilising the Muslims of South Asia.

It is hard to imagine how any of the above directives are related to the economic development and planning of the nation.

Our country faces poverty, disease, illiteracy, and religious fundamentalism. What Pakistan needs its economic planning ministry to do is a concentrated effort to alleviate poverty, not a concentrated effort to commemorate the 100th death anniversary of an 18th century poet on what is actually his 101st anniversary.

Meanwhile, in India, the new goal for NITI is not just to alleviate but also to eliminate poverty.

See: Planning Commission hires staff from academia, corporate sector

In an earlier piece, I had argued that Pakistan does not need ‘a Planning Commission’, but a network of networks which would engage hundreds if not thousands of accomplished development professionals to meet the planning and development needs of the struggling nation.

In a separate piece, I highlighted how innovations in technology can help crowdsource the intellectual deficit and knowledge gap prevalent in Pakistan.

Pakistan does not need to carry the coffins of failed planning regimes of the Soviet era. The heavy-handed top-down planning led to the collapse of Soviet Union. Pakistan needs to embrace devolution in letter and spirit.

If institutions like the Higher Education Commission and the Planning Commission continue to function as before, any meaningful reform is highly unlikely.

Have you been watching television lately? There is a throng of good looking people all over that thing. When did that start?

All these beautiful people wearing designer clothing, modeling as common Pakistanis on TV. Well, acting, but let’s not get bogged down in minutiae.

This discovery hits you a little harder if you have not been watching TV regularly. Not to say there weren’t pretty people on TV before. Perhaps, these people are nowadays more visible because you can’t help but look past the beauty, probably because they bring the acting range of a ripe kinnow.

Read on: What 'Pyaray Afzal' did right

If you think about all the TV shows that came about in the past five years, who can you pinpoint as incredibly talented? Stipulation: you cannot name anyone who has been in this industry for over 10 years.

“Hamza Ali Abbasi!” you scream, not realising that I cannot hear you over the internet. Fine, I give you Hamza Ali Abbasi, I’ll even accept Hasan Ahmed (watch his “sar dard” Disprin ad and you’ll see what I mean), who else?

Who else can you think of who consistently delivers convincing performances on TV over and over again?

It’s not that we don’t have talented people in our industry today, the problem is that talent is taking a backseat to superficial casting. The older entertainers, writers and directors are from an era with different priorities and they are still outshining ripe kinnows.

To be fair, this lack of consistently delivering stellar performances is not limited to actors; we blame them because they are the first things we see. There are directors who are not doing their scripts justice; there are writers who can’t write coherent characters.

Look through: TV soaps: Is the 'shaadi' plot really that bad?

For reasons we will explore in just one paragraph; think about the following names and think of an equivalent in the current crop of people. Such as the writing of Haseena Moin – the classic Dhoop Kinaray– to the recent Shayad Ke Bahaar Aaye. Then, we have the always-consistent direction of Anwar Maqsood who sheds a light on sensitive subjects with incredible satire. We see stellar performances from Shehnaz Sheikh, Marina Khan, Rahat Kazmi, Shakeel, even today at times; the late Moin Akhtar was outclassing everyone on TV in a single 30-minute show.

Even the seemingly less accomplished Faisal Qureshi took the time out to alter his appearance for his role in Bashar Momin, Sania Saeed portrays realistic characters, each different from the other. Take Firdous Jamal and Saba Hameed in comparison to the rest of the cast in Pyare Afazal and you can see the clear difference in quality of work from the get-go.

The drama Teesra Kinara was an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. This was a consistent theme with Rahat and Saira Kazmi’s projects, as opposed to modern dramas inspired by that one time the writer saw a woman crying and wrote Humsafar around it.

Explore: The Crying Woman of TV: An inspirational history

All this can be traced back to when PTV required personnel to have appropriate qualifications for being on TV, there were courses and certifications that needed to be carried out before someone was handed a show. This criterion was relaxed around the Zia era (yes, unfortunately we have to go there for a second). After that, under qualified people became part of the process and it hasn’t been able to fully recover ever since.

Additionally, there is more money in advertising than there is on TV and our film industry is not nearly big enough give budding talent something to aspire to. So, they invariably turn to ads.

Advertising is a superficial industry. Because let’s face it, we’re not going to buy beauty soaps because a very talented actor convinced us to. We’re going to do it because we think we might look like the gorgeous people who are using the aforementioned toiletries.

Also read: A commercial break

If you were about to start a project, would you take your chances with someone who has something published or someone who just seems talented? I’d go with the former. Similarly, writers emerge from Urdu digests where sob stories are hot property and anyone with money can become a producer. Notice how specific experience in TV production was not a factor in all three categories? That’s why newer people are falling behind.

Not to say there aren’t talented individuals out there today, there is some incredible direction from budding talents like of Jawad Sharif (Islamabad), acting capabilities from Shah Fahad (Lahore), and just so many talented writers, I don’t even know where to begin. All of their work, however, is undermined by the need to put the aforementioned “up and comers” (pretty people) on TV.

This is why professional models get dolled up when portraying roles where their makeup alone could foot the monthly rations for the social class they are portraying. They have reputations as models to protect. Writers will not sway from their Urdu digest roots because they can’t risk alienating their core demographic for a drama.

This does not come with a one-size-fits-all solution unfortunately.

See: Pakistan's quiet gender revolution

In some cases, it is just a budgeting issue. In other cases, it is a marketing issue (wrong audience, wrong time, wrong channel).

Sometimes, the powers that be are working under the assumption that since international TV is full of pretty people who are also talented, we should invest in pretty for now, and talent can wait.

One hopes that this small diversion does not deter the talented actors from returning, because once the last of our talented crop fade away, we are going to be in the very unsafe hands of mostly untalented people. That is a scary thought.

People in Pakistan are always embroiled in a rat race against each other. So many diverse groups, so many opinions and such diverse backgrounds; in such an environment, I am glad we have an objective way of judging better people from the worse: how good one’s English is.

Spoken English is without doubt the ultimate criterion to judge a person here. Has somebody made an incredibly logical point on Facebook that you find irrefutable by their use of ‘there’ instead of ‘their’? Bingo, you win. Their point has been rendered moot and you have been declared the winner of this debate by virtue of you correcting them.

Your use of ‘there, their and they’re’ is far superior to theirs, so it logically follows that you not only possess more intellect but belong to a much more evolved strain of human beings.

One spelling mistake is all it takes to render any argument completely and utterly useless.

Also read: Jimmy nay socha: English

What is the point of even going out for dinner if I cannot laugh at the way the waiter says ‘Fajita’ or ‘Lasagna’? If I am in a particularly good mood, I make my best move: ask them if they have ‘hors d'oeuvres’, and then sit back and watch them struggle to repeat the word.

We should all go around asking people to say that and make videos of them. We could call it the hors d'oeuvres challenge.

If you’ve ordered the wrong thing but do not want to admit your mistake, you could simply shout at the waiter in English. What's he going to do? He can't argue back in English, right?

The technique works every time. I have even used it on traffic policemen. How else do you think I've been avoiding traffic chalaans all my life?

I thank the British for giving us the gift of language.

It has made the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ so apparent. No longer do I have to think about race, ethnicity or religion. I can make friends simply based on whether the person can spell ‘friendship’ or not.

Nothing makes me happier than reading somebody misspell 'friendship'. Even if I am having the worst day imaginable, one message from a ‘frandshapper’ can turn it around. In my benevolence, I often also take a screenshot and share it with all my friends. All of us laughing at that person’s inability to spell in English makes us feel incredibly better about ourselves.

Also read:The imperialism of language

The British ruled over us for over a century, they took away our dignity, our land and our pride, they even took away our spices but we are a resilient nation. We took something from them as well — their language.

I wonder who’s laughing now, the Briton getting his tongue burnt from eating Chicken Curry at Edgware Road in London or every Pakistani enjoying a cup of the white man’s tea.

It's true: we beat the colonialists by acquiring the ability to write out this sentence.

Your language is now our language, Britons. We can stroll into your colleges and universities and laugh at our foreigners struggling to understand everything. We feel we are a part of you. You do not only teach us science, medicine, art and business but also culture. We listen to your songs and we laugh at your shows. No more do we have to bore ourselves with the history of our local literature and culture; we can simply borrow yours.

We feel you are so much a part of us that we have even stopped teaching our kids their own languages. I mean is Karachi even a part of Sindh? I do not see anyone speaking Sindhi. It is right at the edge, can’t we just break it off and sail it all the way to England?

All I am saying is, ‘Simon, come back’.

If their agenda is to put a wedge between Muslims and the rest, the Jihadists are doing a pretty fine job.

The attack in Paris that killed 12 journalists and police at the office of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo occurred only a day after thousands of ordinary Germans marched in support of Muslims in Berlin and Cologne. The Germans came out in thousands in response to the earlier anti-Muslim rally in Dresden.

Despite the economic hardships seen since 2009, Europe has largely remained a welcoming place for Muslims.

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, however, have a different agenda. They want to define the relationship between Islam and the West. The Paris attack appears to be a retaliation against the caricatures of revered figures of Islam published earlier by Charlie Hebdo. The editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, also among the dead, had received death threats in the past.

Also read: Charlie Hebdo: attack followed years of confrontation

From Paris to Peshawar, a plague of intolerance has swept through parts of Muslim societies. The Taliban kill children in Allah’s name, and are unrepentant. The police even murdered an accused left in their protective custody. The man on the street turns to violence when his religious sensibilities are disturbed.

There are the lynch mobs in Punjab who burnt alive a pregnant woman and her husband after accusing them of blasphemy. The couple’s toddler witnessed the lynching and narrated the story that will haunt him forever.

If poverty is Pakistan’s excuse for wholesale fanaticism, what is the excuse for Iran, which is set to execute 30-year old Soheil Arabi for “insulting the Prophet” in his Facebook posts? A few decades earlier, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a death sentence to Salman Rushdie for similar accusations.

Would anyone care to stop and think why Muslims are killing in the name of the Prophet (PBUH) who always pardoned those who transgressed against his person?

The Islamic teachings we grew up with conflict squarely with what the armed, bearded, and hooded men proclaim today.

We were told as children how the Prophet (PBUH) looked after the same ailing old woman who used to throw refuse at him. We were taught how the Prophet honoured the agreements (Suleh Hudaibia) with his enemies, even if it meant hardships. Murder in the name of the one who pardoned his worst enemies in war makes little sense.

Also read: How deep-rooted are jihadists in Canada?

The attack on freedom of expression is likely to be more painful for the French who embody liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Only a week ago, we learnt from the International Federation of Journalists that Pakistan was the most dangerous place for journalists to work where 14 journalists lost their lives in 2014.

A single attack in Paris has killed several journalists in the heart of Europe and at the hands of Muslims. No amount of scapegoating by Muslims will succeed in shifting the blame to a ‘misguided minority’ among the larger Muslim body politic.

It would be naïve to assume that those who marched in support of Muslims against the rightwing extremists in Germany were unaware of the threats posed by the Islamic extremists. A Pew Research Global Attitudes poll in Spring 2013 revealed that 95 per cent of Germans considered Islamic extremists a threat to their country.

Still, when racist elements pushed against Muslims and immigrants, ordinary Germans marched in solidarity with Muslims.

—Source: Pew Research Global Attitudes Project Spring 2013. ©Murtaza Haider, 2015.

At the same time, 94 per cent of French and 88 per cent of the British felt the same about Islamic extremists.

Despite these reservations, European Muslims do live freely and pursue successful careers in academia, government, and the industry. This is not to deny the racial biases in Europe, but, is Pakistan or other Muslim nations free of such biases where ethnic, sectarian, and religious minorities face open discrimination?

The massacres in Peshawar and Paris, and the daily bombings in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq must provide the impetus for a tolerant and forgiving Islam to emerge in Muslim societies, where the majority needs to shun its justifications or silence, and loudly refuse to tolerate killing in the name of Islam.

The truth behind the kebab, its identity and its real face, as explained by various groups of people in our nation:

This kebab according to apologists/deniers…

This kebab according to terrorists…

This kebab according to Hollywood…

This kebab according to Indian media…

This kebab according to Imran Khan…

This kebab according to conspiracy theorists…

This kebab according to liberals…

This kebab according to Nawaz Sharif…

This kebab according to Shiekh Rasheed …

This kebab according to Munawar Hasan…

This kebab according to Fazlur Rehman…

This kebab according to Raza Rabbani…

To forget the pain of deaths past, we must do some killing of our own.

Executions are set to guide the plot of Pakistan’s latest episode of the War on Terror. Every day brings news of the numbers, 8,000 awaiting death, a few hung already, the ominous pictures of nooses plastered on the pages of newspapers.

So much hope and consensus exists around the idea of executions; their necessity, their justification, their absolute ability to curb the scourges coursing through Pakistan that one dare not argue.

There is no room to say that the problem with death by state sanction is not that the crime is not horrendous, the massacre not punishable, but that the possibility of a mistake, of killing the wrong man for the wrong crime is a taint no state can risk.

Then, there is the case of killing children themselves.

Shafqat Hussain belonged to this very category. Said to be 14 years old at the time of his conviction by an anti-terrorism court in 2004, the only evidence against Shafqat was his own confession, produced after nine days of detention in police custody.

In speaking to the human rights group Reprieve, Shafqat said that during those nine days he was kept in solitary confinement, blindfolded, beaten, electrocuted and burnt with cigarette butts.

After enduring that day after day, the boy not much older than many of the children who perished in Peshawar said that he was so broken and in such agony that he would have admitted that a “deer was an elephant” if asked to by the police.

Despite this, the Anti-Terrorism Court that heard the case against him handed down a conviction.

Also read: Not justice

After Peshawar happened and the death penalty for Pakistan’s over 8,000 death row inmates was reinstated, this past Saturday, the Ant-Terrorism Court issued a “black warrant” in Shafqat’s case and set the date for his death sentence after the Sindh High Court and President Mamnoon Hussain both rejected his mercy petition.

Shafqat Hussain was to be executed in Karachi’s Central Jail on January 14, 2014. He is now 23 years old.

Last minute rescue is not common in Pakistan, the bombs that kill hundreds always go off, the robbers always get away, the police never get there on time and despite the broken hearted lover weeping at the door, the bride always marries the wrong man.

So it nearly was in Shafqat Hussain’s case; his family had been told by the authorities at Central Jail in Karachi to get ready to meet their son for the last time.

It was then that the news came.

In response, to what were termed objections from civil society organisations who were calling attention to the errors in the case, the coerced confession and a death sentenced imposed on a boy who was still a juvenile, a stay was being granted on the execution. The Ministry of Interior would be conducting an inquiry on the boy’s case.

So, Shafqat Hussain is safe – for now.

It is like the condition of all other children, especially those from poor families, a precarious and unpredictable reprieve. If another grotesque terror attack occurs and the vengeful fires that burn in the belly of an angry nation are stoked again, it will be easy to sacrifice him to sate them.

Innocence and guilt matter little when revenge is the goal; and increasingly, in a Pakistan disinterested in the safeguards of procedures it is what rules.

With the new amendment under its belt, the Government may shove the case into the country’s newest military courts. There the poor family and the penurious advocates that represent them could try once again to point to the child’s innocence. The rules of that new venue, however, are as unknown as Shafqat Hussain’s fate.

There are many who support the death penalty in Pakistan. However, robust and dearly held their justifications may be in the case of adults, the case of Shafqat Hussain tried and tortured as a child should make them reconsider, consider more closely the architecture of victimisation that is behind them.

Even if juvenile suicide bombers are caught in the act, the mechanisms of brainwashing that are used to force them to commit such acts rely on the pliability of a child’s mind.

Even if this fact is disregarded, perhaps some other facts can convince them.

Research done at Harvard University and the University of California Los Angeles has suggested that the prefrontal cortex, the portion of the brain responsible for allowing humans to plan, anticipate consequences, control impulses, prioritise thoughts and think in the abstract, is the last part of the brain to develop.

This means that in many teenagers, the reasoning ability that would allow them to resist brainwashing is simply not yet developed. In many countries around the world, this research has been the basis of a ban on applying the death penalty to juvenile offenders even if they are rightfully convicted.

The children we could not save are already gone, their ghosts haunting the desolate playgrounds and deserted alleys of the country left behind. Sentencing even more children to death cannot honour the memory of those children nor can it bring them back.

It is after all not only the child that is killed by the suicide bomber that is the victim of a country that has lost its moral bearings; it is also the child that is the suicide bomber.

It was supposed to be all about terrorism, but somehow it seems more and more about democracy, constitutionalism and their nemesis – authoritarianism. And in a country with a disturbing history of failed spells of democratic rule and equally disastrous autocratic governments, this is precisely what was supposed to be avoided. But now that the Pandora’s Box of debate on civil-military trust deficit has been opened, thanks to the creation of military courts, it is time to build some perspective.

As I write these lines, two images keep haunting me:

The first, of a disheveled, heartbroken Senator Raza Rabbani losing control and bursting into tears on the floor of the house during passage of the 21st amendment. For years, Mr Rabbani has acted as my moral compass. While I have not nearly always agreed with his views, like the North Star, they have most certainly often guided me in the right direction. Now to see him so badly broken is something I will never forget.

The second image is of a young army officer that I met in a conflict zone.

“Sir, I wish was born in another country, had joined their army and died fighting for them. At least at the time of my death, I would have known that my country would own me as a national hero. In Pakistan, no one cares about a soldier’s sacrifices.”

This young man, I was told a few days later, died bravely fighting against militants for his country, Pakistan. His grievances were legitimate. We have lost count of how many brave souls have perished fighting terrorists in recent years.

What is more, quick as we are to accuse the army of being solely responsible for religious militancy in this country, of breeding terrorists in isolation; what we fail to consider is how this accusation does not apply to the young officers and soldiers who are confronting terrorists today.

Wars do strange things to people. For over a decade, we have fought an enemy that is not across the border but within us. We have bled profusely, old doubts and apprehensions have grown complicated beyond recognition.

But behind this fog of war, our old bitterness and old wounds still persist. It all happened so fast that we did not get the time to update our definition of the existential threat.

Now, there is a huge trust deficit which owes itself to the misperception of the enemy.

Over the years I have seen men and women in Khaki and civvies halfheartedly calling terrorism an existential threat. But in reality they are on the lookout for the old enemy.

Always on the lookout.

The khakis, the civvies and the troublemakers

It is about two narratives. One civilian, one military. Both incomplete. Both a product of a weak state’s inability to overcome its constant challenger – India, or to win the ultimate prize – Kashmir. But more of that later.

The civilian/pro-democracy narrative sees the army as the biggest obstacle in the way of democratisation, a force which hanged an elected prime minister and exiled another; the two leaders who rescued it from the most humiliating PR disasters – fall of East Pakistan and Kargil.

The military narrative sees political class in general and democratic leaders in particular, as a bunch of traitors responsible for:

1. The creation of Bangladesh

2. Selling out on the Sikh issue

3. Often embarrassing the armed forces in public

4. Being soft on national security matters like India and terrorism

And both sides see the other of sheltering the terrorists of their choice.

Not that there are no grounds for such apprehensions. There is plenty of plain and simple history to suggest there is. But owing to the fatigue caused by prolonged desperate attempts at survival, I would say the stories on both sides are certainly, grossly exaggerated.

Recently, two groups of detractors for their own selfish reasons have exacerbated the mistrust between the two sides.

The religious right, which remains deeply skeptical of the country’s decision to fight terrorism, has taken refuge in the democratic circles and keeps projecting a compromise between the two sides as a compromise on democratic values.

Meanwhile, an influential group of Musharraf fans deeply entrenched in the system, especially the media, is quick to highlight how politicians are soft on national security and ready to fraternise with the enemy.

In this insane environment, it is increasingly difficult to judge what is really at stake, and see how easy it actually is to put the mistrust in the past.

In any case, the time to make this assessment has arrived. And for that to begin, we have to understand when and how things went wrong.

Defogging the narratives

These days it has become a fashion to attribute radicalisation of the polity to that one man: General Ziaul Haq.

While the hideous policies of Zia era still haunt us, it is time to realise he did nothing new and only exploited the seeds of madness that have existed here since the very inception of the country.

It is claimed that in the fabric of time, there exist some fixed points which no amount of time travel can change. If that assertion is true, Pakistan primarily has two fixed points: India and Kashmir. A distant third is Afghanistan which is merely a side effect of the first two.

And it all started in 1947, when the nascent state of Pakistan, worried about Indian occupation ordered its army to do the same, and the army’s chief refused to oblige.

It was then that the worst decision of our history was taken – sending some of the soldiers disguised as the tribals and Lashkaris hailing from tribal areas to reclaim the Kashmiri territory that was about to be absorbed by India.

It is clear that the decision was taken without the knowledge of the army’s head or the country’s founder and first governor-general, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

That, in my view, was the original sin which created a precedent to be repeated ad nauseam.

The then Commander-in-Chief General Sir Frank Messervy lamented: “Politicians using soldiers and soldiers allowing themselves to be used, without the proper approval of their superiors are setting a bad example for the future”.

Perhaps even Messervy did not realise just how many bad examples those fateful days were setting.

One was the use of non-state actors (tribals) as a tool of security policy.

Second, the use of Islam as a slogan that seemed unavoidable at the time, given the nature of India-Pakistan conflict and involvement of tribal fighters from the country’s North West.

And finally, the slight distaste for established authority.

Once British officers had left, Pakistan Army was able to regain its inner discipline but it viewed with contempt the declining quality of political leaders. From repeated martial laws to disasters like Kargil and the country’s Taliban policy, this last development was to prove far too onerous.

Remember, Pakistan was born poor. The newly established state had a pittance in its kitty and daunting challenges staring in the eye. The pressures from India meant that it had invested heavily in defense of the country which it could not afford.

The only recourse was to unconventional, informal, alternative and often half-baked strategies.

Quite often, such plans blew in its face. As John Kennedy once remarked, "victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." Each time the country endured a fresh failure, both civilian and military sides would find ways to blame the other.

Pakistan’s security needs finally found a backer in 1954. The US Pakistan Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement was a breakthrough for a state and its army starving for arms and ammunition. But this support came at a terrible cost:

Ayub Khan, the army chief at the time, was instrumental in reaching the agreement. Ayub grew too powerful and eventually ended up overthrowing a weak and struggling civilian government in favour of martial law.

Ayub's prolonged rule not only paved the way for future coups, but also further weakened the federation. He was followed by Yahya Khan, another dictator, about whom the lesser said the better. It was during Yahya's time that the country lost its eastern wing.

Amazingly, the army has developed a blind spot about the matter, and every soldier I have met squarely blames politicians of that time.

This is in sharp contrast to what Lt Gen (retired) Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, the commander Eastern Command at the time of secession, chronicles in his book, Betrayal of East Pakistan.

Despite all these tumults, the character of the army remained professional and for most parts, secular. It was, however, during Zia’s time that the devices like military courts were thoroughly abused. People recall how dissidents were punished with public lashings for trivial crimes, no matter real or imagined.

Zia's reign times witnessed the introduction of radical elements in the lower cadres of the army.

Later, Musharraf tried to reverse the trend, but the man was the product of the influences he tried to undo. Before 9/11, most of Musharraf's supporters were the radical elements who liked him for his daring Kargil debacle.

During his time, the army’s strategic thinking fractured into two halves: one still willing to continue the old ways, the other brand new and quite averse to the idea of the radicalisation of the polity.

However, the top level was eventually purged of radical influences, as General Kayani and General Raheel Sharif were to prove later.

If truth be told, it is grossly unfair to judge the army for the misadventures of four generals.

It is a professional force disciplined to follow orders and while doing so, often manages to internalise the views of its chief, especially if he stays in position for a prolonged period of time.

But it is the force that has seen unending action for 13 long years and has no illusions about the enemy.

The bad blood created during the last days of Musharraf rule (and exacerbated by a belligerent media) will eventually fade away, for even an ordinary soldier is educated enough to use his mind rationally.

What is needed is a healing touch and a capacity to inspire confidence on the part of civilian leadership.

For politicians: be a hawk to be a hero

Before Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became a symbol and champion of democracy, he was known as perhaps the most hawkish of Pakistani politicians. His contribution to the 1965 war is now well documented. He parted ways with Ayub Khan because of Tashkent Declaration, which he considered an ultimate shame. This is how things are in Pakistan. If you want to be popular, you have to be a hawk.

Zulfi Bhutto was a hawk, so was Mian Nawaz Sharif at the start of his political career, and in his weird way, so is Imran Khan. Once the country’s narrative was firmly in control of the army this was to be expected.

But civilian leaders who rose to prominence through this route eventually realised that when it came to asserting themselves as the ruler of the nation, they quickly lost favour with the army. Hence, the country’s fortunes still did not change, the game of musical chairs between the civilians and the army continued, and the country continued to become more and more ungovernable.

Changing times leave room for hope

I think it is plain from the above discussion that the civil-military mistrust is a direct outcome of a fragile and paranoid state’s desperate attempts to survive. A lot of that is caused by the country’s inability to transform into a stable and growing economy.

That is about to change as the country explores its full potential as a trade route and invests in better infrastructure and industry.

Better economy will mean better governance and less scapegoating for assumed or real failures. It will mean, for a change, that the country will have to worry less about finding resources to finance its defences.

Meanwhile, the character of the army is changing with the change in its scope.

While originally India-centric in approach, it now knows that greater threat can come from homegrown non-state actors. If the country really manages to transform into a regional trade hub, the role of the army will be more focused on protecting our vital interests – economic corridors and trade activity – and all this debate about the army’s future and justification for its existence in a peaceful environment will go away.

In these changing times, the trust deficit between the country’s civil and military circles is bound to decline.

While Mr Rabbani might not be too hopeful, I am, as a citizen.

Already, politicians have demonstrated that democracy has come of age, that instead of always demanding more rights, they have learned to tactically surrender a few.

It is critical to remember that this parliament is no pushover, as we were reminded at the time of Imran Khan and Qadri’s sit-ins. It is a thinking parliament which knows that in the way of prosperity and further democratisation, the biggest hurdle is no more the army but the terrorism that threatens the state itself.

So while not justifiable in the broader context, the establishment of military courts too is a confidence-building measure that can end up strengthening democracy in the long run and bridging the trust deficit between the institutions.

Tu ghanti big ban di, poora London thumakda...
Oh jaddo nachche pehn di, poora London thumakda...

Kabhi kabhi mere dil me khayal aata hai, kee jaise tujhko banaya gaya hai mere liye…

Bollywood classics and the latest romantic pop songs blared against images of Imran and Reham Khan as a sense of festivity occupied most channels yesterday. As low-key and simple the marriage ceremony was, it managed to kick up an even bigger storm in Pakistan.

Jon Boone of the Guardian noted and wrote:

For Pakistan’s news channels, it was the equivalent of a starting pistol fired on a sudden royal wedding, but with no footage to satisfy the audience.

They did their best, overlaying with fireworks the few available stills of the couple, while traditional wedding music played over the video of impromptu celebrations thrown by Khan’s supporters around the country.

Also read: #ImranWedsReham – the media’s mysterious ways, on-air and online

Features on the new Mrs Khan and her biographical information ran as tickers on several channels, along with footage and pictures.

Astrologers were called in to foretell the future of the marriage; Imran and Reham’s faces were morphed onto pictures of gaudily dressed bride and groom, relatives of the couple were contacted and of course, social media also ran amok.

From following Imran Khan's sisters and issuing news of their absence at the Nikkah (journalist Shiraz Hassan aptly called it ‘Phupho Journalism’) to inviting astrologers to argue over the strength of the new union between the two individuals (going as far to predict when a khushkhabri will come); Pakistan’s media once again succumbed to the temptations of trashy sensationalism.

And once again, it has thrown light on the long way it has to go before being a beacon of real, responsible and mature journalism.

The judgmental comments on Reham Khan were expected, of course.

Privacy is an alien concept for us, ethics are only for other people to follow and everybody else's business is our business. Little wonder, then, that the marriage was made the subject of such a reaction and response.

See: Analysis: Conflict narratives and media complicity

But what was more shocking this time was how our characteristic transiency of emotions was put on display once again; a nation freshly out of the barbaric murder of 132 children less than a month ago found it easy to slip into joy. The celebratory mode espoused by the media and the obsession amongst the people was nothing less than abhorrent.

Pakistan seems to have completely internalised the norm of apathy in the form of temporary outrage and temporary grief, which are proudly flaunted in the glossy garb of 'resilience'.

I won't get into the 'how soon is too soon' debate around the Peshawar tragedy. We probably all have very different answers to that.

But is even this much not beyond debate that videos of people jumping with joy were, if not outright disgusting, at least in really bad taste?

KP, where the attack happened, is not just any province but the only province to have voted Imran into power.

Take a look: When will our news channels learn to cover tragedy?

Maybe it is too much to expect Pakistani institutions and people to put up a show of sobriety; to, for once, hold a monstrosity so close and alive in our heads and hearts, that we are able to drive a stake through it once and for all.

It is often said that USA had one 9/11 but Pakistan has one every day; yet such a spectre as was witnessed after Imran and Reham Khan’s wedding would never have been witnessed in America less than a month after 9/11.

They never forgot, and we, as always, already have.

For the past seven years, during my stay in the United States, my identity has undergone many transformations.

The journey started with feeling like a foreigner in the USA; the new, nervous kid-on-the-block to a more confident being – one who is proud of his strong connection with Punjabi culture and tradition and, at the same time, ready to be assimilated into a very vibrant and welcoming New York.

In the spirit of the recent holiday season, I wore a knitted green and red sweater with designs of snowmen, Christmas trees, and Santas. I also wore a Santa hat to amuse the children I was working with that day.

Quite casually, I posted a picture of mine with Merry Christmas greetings on my Facebook; and very soon I started getting messages lecturing me about how un-Islamic and pro-American I had become.

Look through: Identity crisis: The Pakistani Brits & the British Spaniards

The upshot of these unsolicited messages was that it was somehow un-Islamic to participate in Christmas celebrations. I was reminded of the similarly judgmental messages from friends and acquaintances in Pakistan when I posted a picture of the 9/11 Memorial on September 11, 2014 on my Facebook page.

This leaves me a little disconcerted. Why do we have to bring religion in everything and not accept that there are societies where multi-culturalism exists and is preferred?

When I arrived in USA, I was wearing a short kurta over a pair of jeans. I believe my subconscious was making a statement – that the kurta represented an effort to retain my Pakistani identity. I was breaking away from my culture but a part of me wanted to hold on to it.

At the same time, I was more cautious about divulging my Pakistani heritage whenever a stranger or an acquaintance asked me where I was from. It made me uncomfortable and I resented the question.

At times I gave a clear answer, “Pakistan.” On other occasions, I was evasive.

One reason was that each time I would mention Pakistan, people wanted to share everything they had heard on the evening news or read in a newspaper about Pakistani failings.

Then, the conversation would almost always lead to questions such as:

Is your family safe?
Are you going back there?
There is a war going on there.

... and so on.

I tried to avoid such discussions, but often found myself in the awkward position of apologising for and at the same time defending Pakistan and Muslims.

See: Changing times: Ijtihad and other questions Muslims must revisit

The more engaging friends, after sharing all their knowledge about the war on terrorism, would ask my opinion as an ‘expert’. To simply avoid all these questions, many times I would say I was from India.

It was usually followed by the question, “What part of India are you from?” I responded, “North Punjab!” I was not lying.

My parents immigrated from the Indian Punjab. I am a Punjabi, my mother is from Amritsar and my father’s family was connected to Jalandhar.

This became a little more complex when the subject of religion and culture would come up. Over the years, I have worked with many Jewish, Hindu and Christian doctors. Religion, faith and racial background were not problems I encountered in working with professional colleagues. The work environment in the US helped me understand other religions and ethnic perspectives. I believe in the professional world where I worked, I did not feel any prejudice.

At work, I am very comfortable with my racial identity and do not feel intimidated in a professional, overwhelmingly Caucasian world. Once I started my residency, I thought that I had to work harder and do better than other residents to earn respect. I was not so confident about my education in Pakistan even though I did really well on my United States Medical Licensing examination.

Racial profiling is a reality in the United States

People tell me that many who attend mosques in NYC are screened. I believe it is even worse at the airports. I have been pulled out of the lines, interrogated with additional bag checks and my luggage subjected to trained sniffing dogs. I don’t like it but accept it as part of life in this country.

Only twice in my career in the USA was I confronted by a situation where I had to give up the case when my religion and my Pakistani connection came in the way of the therapeutic relationship.

One case involved an older Jewish gentleman who was suffering from psychosis and believed that Muslims were out to kill him. Another patient with delusional disorders said that he was a sniper for the military and had a definite plan to kill Pakistani Muslim guys because they were planning to attack America.

I had to end the diagnostic assessment quickly for my own safety. But these are too few to define a trend.

Explore: Being a Pakistani abroad

Once, I was at a stand-up comedy show with a friend when a comedian decided to pick on me because of my race. What he said gives the stereotype of a 30-something South Asian guy in New York.

He said, “Let me guess who you are. Your father was an engineer when he immigrated here from India, he now drives a cab. You have a stay-at-home mom, who cooks all day long and your house smells like curry. Your parents never took you to Disney for vacations but you are a medical doctor?”

I simply laughed. He said this humorously but what he said holds true for so many immigrants from South Asia – they are hardworking and ambitious.

But, multiple identities work

In the last few years, I have participated in several marathons where I have worn a Pakistani cricket-team jersey to make the statement that Pakistanis are just regular people like anybody else. I am very proud of my Pakistani identity. I want to convey to an average American that we are not too different from them. A part of me also wants to stand up to Islamophobic people.

When I go to Pakistani theatre performances, art exhibitions or other such events, I proudly wear shalwar qameez to the show. I dated Caucasians exclusively, until recently when I met a South Asian, and that was a rewarding experience because we shared the same socio-cultural background. Living in the US and being in a cosmopolitan place like New York, I have realised that multiple identities work.

I have become more comfortable with my hybrid international identity.

I accept the shortcoming of the policies of Pakistani and American governments.

The freedoms here allow me to express my views without being labeled and I am comfortably immersed in Pakistani and American cultures together. There is little or no conflict inside me.

I wanted to tell my friends back home that being part of a plural society allows me to celebrate holidays, multi-faith festival and cultural events.

Look through: Being Pakistani in New York: Outside 'Shitzad', it ain't all bad

In Pakistan, instead of creating a more harmonious and tolerant society, we are breeding prejudice and denying our citizens the opportunity to live a fuller life.

When Shia processions get attacked or the Eid Miladun Nabi gatherings become an issue, it means we have gone wrong somewhere. It is time to recognise this. The burning of churches and Ahmadi places of worship belies the sad fact that we are not creating a pluralistic society.

People need to understand that celebrating Christmas or such other festivals is not always a religious experience. It is part of a larger human experience, and the gift of much broader human identities.

And it is time to embrace these identities.

—Photos by author

”We’ll always have Paris” – one of the most striking and memorable lines of cinema comes from the 1942 classic Casablanca. After the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's offices in Paris, there are apprehensions, however.

There are fears and questions; whispers and murmurs coming out of the European far-right camp are turning into mainstream discourse.

There is a question: “Will we always have Paris?”

Paris has always been there in the dreams of dreamers, in the imagination of artists, in the ploys of political activists, in the dissent of rebels, in the words of theory, in the ingenuity of ideas, and in the heart of revolutions. Much more than a mere city, Paris embodies the radicalism of that political and artistic activity in Europe which emerged from the Enlightenment and swept the whole world thereafter.

Such was the grandeur of the French Revolution in 1789 that the term 'liberty' – before 1800 merely a legal term denoting the opposite to slavery – acquired altogether a different political meaning and became the shibboleth of the wretched of the earth around the world.

Intellectuals, artists, and activists banished from their own communities flocked to Paris to ward off persecution and the city embraced them. It has been a tradition since then.

Only to give a few examples from our part of the world, Jamaluddin Afghani – one of the foremost modern Muslim reformists – published an Arabic newspaper The Indissoluble Link from Paris in 1884.

The first supreme leader of post-revolution Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, had to spend some time in Paris in exile.

Ali Shariati, ideologue of Iranian Revolution, conceived a large part of his revolutionary ideas while his stay in Paris.

Apart from that, the works of French theorists have greatly inspired the 20th century liberation movements in North Africa and Middle East against French colonialism itself.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo has widely been perceived as an attack on freedom of expression – an assault on artistic and political freedoms in France in particular and Europe in general.

This, however, is not the whole picture. There is another part of the story. There was another attack, in another part of the world, which went under-reported.

In order to contextualise what happened in Paris, it is important to understand the dynamics of the other attack.

Bloodshed in Ibb

In the western foothills of the Ba’adan Mountains in Yemen, there lies a city called Ibb. It rains there the whole year-round and the region has been given the nickname, ‘the green province’. The city was an important administrative centre during the times of Ottomans.

On December 31, 2014 around 500 people, mostly Zaidi Shias living there since centuries, gathered together at a cultural centre in Ibb to celebrate Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) birthday.

Around 11 am, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the congregation, killing as many as 49 people.

A soldier is seen outside a cultural centre following a suicide attack in Ibb, central Yemen December 31, 2014.—Reuters

There has been Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen since 2001, and the government has declared an open war on Al-Qaeda.

The Prophet’s birthday, called 'Mawlid', has always been an important occasion for the majority of Muslims around the world. From Cairo to Jakarta, there are carnivals, celebratory gatherings, and collective prayers on this particular day. Muslims in different countries celebrate it according to their respective indigenous cultural traditions.

Lately, however, the Mawlid celebrations have come under attack in different parts of the Muslim world by the hardline militants that consider this ritual incompatible with Islam. Recently, on January 2, 2015, Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz had pronounced such celebrations as sinful in Riyadh.

Read on: Fanaticism: From Peshawar to Paris

Thus, within a few days, people were killed in two different parts of the world – Paris and Ibb – both in the Prophet's (PBUH) name: avenging disrespect of the Prophet, and for celebrating his birthday.

But both attacks are an assault on values near and dear to the people.

The rationale is to coerce people into giving up their respective traditions, intimidate them, and impose a particular ideology through the barrel of gun.

The same fanatical ideology is at work in both attacks, which is thoroughly anti-people irrespective of their religion, language, or political affiliations.

History tells us that religions are never static, nor are they monolithic. They evolve over time, incorporate cultural values, and mean differently for different people. While blaming the whole religion and its followers for the deeds of a few is outright bigotry, it is also true that these terrorists invoke religious sources in defense of their actions. To brush aside this dangerous reality by the sweeping statement that they cannot be Muslims is tantamount to closing our eyes to reality.

Also read: Charlie Hebdo suspects killed as French siege ends

This is not the West vs Islam. It never was.

The tragedy that struck Paris and Ibb emanates from the same source.

It is Frankenstein’s monster swallowing our cities, our values, and our people everywhere in the world. It is militants using Islam to further their own twisted agenda.

The question 'if we would always have Paris' is interlinked with the question of whether or not we can go on living in Ibb in accordance with our values and our culture.

And all of that boils down to:

“Can we defeat the militants together?”

Lahore’s Naulakha Bazaar is one of the many shopping hubs of the provincial capital. In sharp contrast to the erstwhile necklace or the pavilion from which it drew its name, the bazaar is now known more for used foreign clothing.

The sheepish clients of second hand apparel haggle with the vendors, while rummaging through the scattered piles scattered around without much care for sizes or colours.

A part of the bazaar attracts another kind of sneaky customer looking for a strange commodity – an innocent looking colourless liquid called Sulphuric Acid or just ‘Acid’. The acid has variety of industrial uses, but off and on, a few citizens utilise it to dispense their own obnoxious brand of justice.

Kaneez Fatima was on the receiving end of just such an act of justice. But, unlike many others, she decided not to suffer in silence.

Explore: An Unforgiving Scar

A typical Pakistani courtroom is enough to intimidate even a casual observer. Unlike in movies, trials are painfully slow affairs held in cramped rooms, involving fatigued litigants and noisy lawyers.

Women are most usually seen only in cases of familial or divorce matters. The sight of a young, 17-year-old girl in the midst of a courtroom trial is a rarity.

Kaneez Fatima was that rarity.

Her exceptional presence was made more extraordinary by the freshness of her wounds. The teenager nonchalantly walked into the Anti-Terrorist Court Lahore and confidently narrated her trauma. Meanwhile, her onlookers and tormentors kept shooting her questioning, vitriolic glares.

In the lives of impoverished Pakistani women, life changing moments are mostly for the worse, bringing even more misery and pain than before. Kaneez Fatima's moment came on April 24, 2014.

She was about to get married, but no fairytale nor prince charming; not even the mundane yellow dress or green bangles; awaited her fate. All she got was a splash from a bucketful of concentrated Sulphuric Acid, causing immediate chemical burns.

Also read: Fear and Acid

The motive was an old, well-known one. Her hand was asked in marriage by a well-to-do family, but her parents turned down the offer. That did not go down well with the proposer’s father. They did not opt for the 'traditional way' of sorting the matter with a gun or an axe but instead chose a punishment befitting her insolence and refusal:

Being a man of means, the perpetrator hired two hooligans for money to exact revenge. The hired guns executed the plan deftly under the watchful eyes of the main culprit as Kaneez Fatima was returning home from shopping with her elder sister.

The acid did what it was supposed to do: burn, corrode, injure and disfigure.

Forty per cent of her body was burnt and she only miraculously survived on account of having fallen unconscious. The police caught the two hired guns, along with the main accused.

The main accused, Rizwanul Haq, did not seem to have any qualms about the barbaric act.

Defying expectations and withstanding pressure, Kaneez Fatima and her family chose to fight her case, despite the physical and social handicaps, as well as the ordeal of processing the case through the arduous legal system.

The attack did not dent Fatima's resolve.

She crossed the rubicon and narrated the whole episode while pleading for punishment for those responsible. The fear of fierce cross-examination or threat of further violence from the accused, who was out on bail, did not deter her. Neither did the pressure of having been labeled an immoral girl.

In a country, where the cases involving assault on women mostly result in acquittals due to non-prosecution by victims and witnesses, this is by no means a minor step.

Victims of acid attacks all over the country become destined to lead an unusual life of a pariah.

The calls of those handful courageous who knock the doors of justice almost always get lost in legal technicalities and loopholes. These people do not deserve to be left in the wilderness.

Take a look: 42 acid attacks in Punjab; victims await justice

The uneven and skewed fight for our hapless womenfolk continues day in and day out. The threat of being shot, axed, stoned, burnt, raped or bludgeoned any time by anybody from the other half of the population hovers over them perpetually; bucketfuls of prejudice, hatred, ignorance, narrow-mindedness and anger threatening to spill over at any moment.

The Kaneez Fatimas of this world will only get justice once these buckets are snatched from the half that hold them so proudly.

Say two words, ‘Multan’ and ‘winter’ in front of a foodie, and the next thing you hear will definitely be ‘Sohan Halwah’.

Sohan Halwah is to winter what mangoes are to summer, except it is not limited just to the winters. This famous mithai which has come to be the defining symbol of Multan is distributed all over the city (and even country) any time of the year.

The love with which it is prepared, packed, and presented to customers embodies the traditional hospitality of the people of Multan. When winters are just round the corner, customers prepare entire lists of people the halwah is to be sent to.

According to poet and historian Shakir Hussain Shakir, the tradition of sending Sohan Halwah to family members in other parts of the country and the world started when their daughters married into other cities.

Shakir says that Sohan Halwah used to be prepared inside homes. The item was commercialised only recently. Even today, Multan's residents continue to prepare it in homes and present it to guests at supper.

See: Sohan Halwa a gift of saints’ city

Legend has it that Sohan Halwah was prepared for the first time by a Hindu confectioner named 'Sohan'. The story is that this one time Sohan purchased some milk for his sweets, but the milk went stale. Instead of draining the stale milk, Sohan chose to experiment with it.

He put the milk on flame, and as the milk started getting thicker, Sohan added in some wheat flour to make it even more dense. Before long, he had on his hands a new, unique and delightfully sweet dish.

Sohan went on to distribute it among wayfarers and locals. Soon, the demand shot up and everyone thronged to Sohan's place for the new delicacy.

Sohan also presented the halwah in the court of ruler Deewan Sawan Mal, where his innovation was duly appreciated, lending even more popularity to him and his product.

Another popular narrative holds that Deewan Sawan Mal, appointed as Governor of Multan in 1821 by Raja Ranjeet Singh, was the inventor of the Sohan Halwah.

Yet another one says that the origins of Sohan Halwah go back way before Sawan Mal’s era; that the dish was prepared in huge quantities in the palace of Deewan Sawan Mal (a food lover), but it wasn’t invented there.

Read through: On the menu: The sweet side of history

Khaleel Ahmed, whose family is preparing Sohan Halwah on a commercial basis since decades now, maintains that Sohan Halwah has its roots in Iran, and the confectioners from Iran introduced it for the first time in Multan, from where it went to other areas of India.

Another commercial producer of Sohan Halwah, Noman Pirzadah, however, asserts that his grandfather learned to prepare Sohan Halwah from Delhi, and it would be inaccurate to say that Sohan Halwah was invented in Multan. But he agrees that no one can make as tasty a Sohan Halwah as the experts in Multan.

It may be that the halwah is no longer prepared in Iran, but it is still widely popular in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

‘Sohan Halwah le lein’ is a chant that you will hear at every bus stop in Multan. But the chant is not limited to bus stops and railway stations. You will find Sohan Halwah selling like hot cakes at the Multan Airport too.

In commercial brands, Hafiz Ka Multani Sohan Halwah, Hafiz Molana Abdul Wadood Ka Sohan Halwah, Pir Khasay Waalay Ka Qadeem Multani Sohan Halwah, and Rewari Walon Ka Sohan Halwah are known and loved across the country.

Explore: Multan: The city of saints

Hafiz Habeeb ur Rehman, who started his Sohan Halwah shop in 1945 in Hussain Agaahi, says that among the different types, the popular one includes the one with almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pistachios.

"We used to prepare it with saffron as well, but not anymore because good quality saffron isn't readily available."

With or without saffron, and invented by Sohan or Sawan, one thing is beyond debate: when made by expert chefs, this sumptuous sweet dish is arguably one of the most delicious of all local confectioneries.

—Photos by author

Translated by Bilal Karim Mughal from the original in Urdu here.

If you thought 17 dead in Paris was bad enough for one week, you were wrong. In Nigeria, more than 2,000 people are feared dead after Boko Haram launched it’s deadliest-ever attack on a strategic north-eastern town.

But, where are the solidarity marches, the passionate editorials and the international condemnations?

Some lives, it seems, are more valuable than others.

There are massacres and there are massacres. The Paris massacre was tragic, but it was hardly the worst thing that happened last week. Not even close.

Editorial: Bloodshed in Nigeria

For that, we must head to Nigeria, and to the town of Baga – or at least to the spot on the map where Baga once stood, because there’s not much left of it now.

Reports of the massacre are necessarily hazy; the nearest journalists are hundreds of kilometres away (even there, they are not particularly safe), and information comes almost exclusively from traumatised refugees and unreliable government sources.

Still, enough facts have emerged to know that something terrible happened here; something apocalyptic.

Baga, in north-eastern Nigeria on the border with Cameroon, is no stranger to massacres.

In April 2013, nearly 200 people, mostly civilians, were slaughtered by the Nigerian armed forces in a military offensive designed to push out Boko Haram. This, however, was just a teaser. A taste of the horror that was to come.

Over the course of five days, beginning on Saturday last week, Boko Haram fighters entered the city with Nigerian soldiers fleeing before them, and destroyed it and anybody that was too slow in escaping – men, women, children.

“The whole town was on fire,” said one eyewitness, while others speak of roads lined with corpses. The body count varies, but Amnesty International puts it at over 2,000 deaths– or the rough equivalent of 133 Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Whatever the exact number, it was Boko Haram’s deadliest attack yet. And one of its most significant: by taking charge of Baga and its important military base, Boko Haram effectively controls the Borno state in its entirety. These aren’t just terrorists: they are becoming a de facto state.

The Baga attack wasn’t the only man-made tragedy in the country, either.

This Saturday, a young girl – first reported to be 10 years old, but now thought to be mid- to late-teens – approached a busy marketplace in Maiduguri, the capital of the north-east. She was strapped with explosives, and as security approached her the device detonated, killing at least 16 people. It’s unclear whether she set off the bomb herself, or even whether she knew she was wearing a suicide vest.

Although Boko Haram have not directly claimed responsibility for this attack, there are no other credible suspects.

In normal circumstances, we could describe this as an act of astonishing brutality. But there’s nothing astonishing about it.

Instead, it’s all wearyingly familiar, and demonstrates yet again how little protection the Nigerian state is able to offer its long-suffering citizens.

Nor are the Nigeria attacks even particularly newsworthy.

Worldwide, the Baga massacre barely merited a mention alongside the flood of coverage devoted to Charlie Hebdo. It certainly didn’t generate any special edition front pages or passionate editorials.

Even in Nigeria, to the media fraternity’s shame, the 17 deaths in Paris got more press than the hundreds and hundreds at home, according to media analyst Ethan Zuckerman, who also pointed out that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan expressed sympathies to the French government but said nothing about Baga.

It may be the 21st century, but African lives are still deemed less newsworthy – and, by implication, less valuable – than western lives.

There are plenty of excuses for this, of course:

• There are no dramatic visuals from Baga.

• It is difficult to understand, and the situation doesn’t fall neatly into the clash of civilisations thesis that makes for such a compelling narrative (it’s inconvenient to acknowledge that, overwhelmingly; Muslims are the biggest victims of Islamic fundamentalism).

• It was not an attack on journalism itself, as Charlie Hebdo was, and therefore didn’t tug at the heartstrings of editors everywhere.

Still.

Still. More than 2,000 people died, and the world stayed silent.

Worse, Africa stayed silent.

There’s plenty of hypocrisy on this continent, but the worst egregious example of recent times was the presence of Gabonese president Ali Bongo Ondimba at the massive solidarity march in Paris on Sunday.

Here was an African dictator campaigning for freedom of speech in France, while vehemently and at times violently clamping down on a free press at home.

Here was an African leader taking the time to stand in support of the French victims, while ignoring the many more on his own continent.

Where are the African leaders condemning the Baga massacre?

Where are the African journalists obsessively analysing and reporting it?

Where are the African solidarity marches?

So, yes, we are Charlie. But we are Baga too, our outrage and solidarity over the Paris massacre is also a symbol of how we, as Africans, neglect Africa’s own tragedies, and prioritise Western lives over our own.

This post was originally published here.

Optics. Along with ‘collateral damage’, ‘doable’ and other such terms – this is a uniquely American invention. When applied to the political sphere, this essentially means “the way things look to the general public.”

Now politicians are much like any other product; they need to be marketed, to have a unique selling proposition, to be responsive to public opinion and also to take advantage of available PR opportunities in order to maximize sales. In this case, ‘sales’ translates into votes and goodwill, both of which are a politician’s lifeblood.

With that in mind, let’s examine what occurred on 1/12/2015, when the Army Public School reopened.

There was the COAS, meeting and greeting the students and teachers, his visage stern and fatherly at the same time, offering empathy and support.

At this point let me freely concede that those students and teachers possess more courage in their little fingers than I can hope to have accrued over a lifetime. The simple act of venturing into those rooms once again is inconceivable to me, and their bravery (courage is about overcoming fear, not being immune to fear) is now a thing of legend and a part of our collective national memory as much as the attack itself is seared onto our consciousness.

While the COAS was present and active on the scene, our civilian leadership was conspicuous in its absence.

Let’s also be clear that here I am singling out the Prime Minister and his representatives and also Imran Khan and his provincial party leadership which does, after all, govern KP.

While the COAS now has dozens of pictures of him at the scene, with all the goodwill they represent, the civilians only have increasingly lame excuses.

'Busy with Kerry' Nawaz

Nawaz Sharif, it seems, was busy in preparations for the Kerry visit. Fair enough, but surely a short stop at the school would have been possible? And if not, then perhaps a visit by his ever-energetic brother or, really, any family members or party officials (sometimes one and the same) would have sufficed.

Even if we buy the ‘busy with Kerry’ argument, what stopped him from, say, visiting APS on the day of the attack or a day later and making a speech, much like Hollande at Charlie Hebdo, to galvanise the nation?

Whether or not the nation would actually be galvanised is irrelevant. In terms of perception the dividends for NS would have been huge. It would have allowed him to play statesman, standing in marked contrast to Imran Khan, who was busy in other matters. At least, that’s how any PR agency worth its retainer would have played it.

'Yes sir' Imran

Imran Khan's tweets speak volumes:

Think about that for a moment: this is a man whose entire political career is built upon challenging the powers that be, of speaking out loudly, of being (apologies to Altaf Hussain) the ‘right’ man at the right time.

This is also a man who spent months loudly lambasting, lampooning and abusing politicians to the widespread applause of his devotees. Who threatened to hang policemen if they touched his followers.

And now he is told to stay away from an event as momentous as this, and he meekly says ’yes sir?’

This actually sounds like a good idea to him?

Note also that the attack did not take place in Lahore (woe to the Sharifs if it had) or Karachi (he would have called for Qaim Ali Shah’s head) or in that forgotten corner of Pakistan we call Quetta. It took place in Peshawar; the seat of his power.

Let’s also give credit where credit is due: the KP CM and various MPA’s did in fact spend the day visiting government schools and such, and have pictures to prove it. Imran Khan did also visit the APS at least once. But let’s also understand that this simply doesn’t matter.

Visiting a hundred, even a thousand government schools, does not come close to matching the importance of visiting the APS on this all-important day.

And ‘advice’ to stay away is no excuse at all, because last I checked leadership entails, well, leading.

It does not, in any definition, entail obediently doing what you were told to do. Moreover, was anything stopping anyone from visiting once the COAS had left?

Let’s also address another defence that is being made: that the KP govt believes in doing and not just in photo ops. Now that’s rich coming from a party that started a countdown every time there was a blast in KP during the ANP’s rule, counting the seconds it took for an ANP representative to reach the site or the hospital, and calling for resignations if they did not, all the while being fully aware that the ANP were the Taliban’s number one target.

Politics is about perception, and if any politician or political advisor did not see the importance of making an appearance at APS, then that person does not deserve to be in the game to begin with. In the corporate world, such an inept brand manager would have been fired long ago.

While we’re on this topic, lets also examine another deflection that’s being made.

Some have questioned, in a transparent attempt at distracting from this PR fiasco, as to why the PPP leadership is not being questioned as to their own absence. Where was the chairman and co-chairman, they ask? And why won’t you criticize that with as much passion?

The answers are simple: the PPP, in its present form, is a sinking ship; a spent force. The decline that set in long ago has only been accelerated by the multiple launches and withdrawals of the political product that is Bilawal, the one small hope the PPP had of an effective rebranding. It is also an object example of how, a flawed product cannot be made successful simply by adding new packaging and a new slogan. Sorry PPP, but PR and marketing can only enhance a product when you first fix the product itself. And to launch a product and then withdraw it (four times by my count) is just bad planning.

The second reason is, of course, that the PPP does not govern KP. Yes, it should have been there regardless, but the primary onus does not lie on them. Not that they displayed any particular sense of empathy, or sense, when they were in power.

Brand Imran

The man on whom the onus lies, however, seems bent on making it as hard as possible for his supporters to justify his behavior. When parliament was voting on the 21st amendment, he was giving a press conference on rigging, making claims without waiting for the actual NA -122 report to come out.

On the day APS opened he was doing the same. Those who talk about deflection may want to consider this as well, if they can lower their blinkers long enough to do so.

That he survives missteps that would doom any other politician is also a factor of branding. Brand Imran has immense goodwill and is buoyed by the fact that, on a national level, the other products (Brand PML-N, Brand PPP, Brand MQM, ANP and so on) are so very stale, have so many customer complaints to their name.

Note also that I say Brand Imran, not Brand PTI, as this is a party that survives solely due to one man and on the immense brand equity he brings to the table.

As for Nawaz, well, he’s already got his tenuous lease on life, as expertly set out in Cyril Almeida’s column. He doesn’t need to do more, even if he were inclined to do so; he isn’t.

Finally, many have decried the COAS’s move as being a ‘trap’ the hapless politicians have somehow fallen into.

Once again, if this is indeed the case, then it was an incredibly obvious one and one that even the long-extinct Dodo would not have fallen prey to.

If this was indeed a case of the military taking up civilian space then, sorry to say, it was an easy opportunity for our politicians and to miss it was criminal negligence.

No wonder then, that no one’s buying what they’re selling.

Of all the widely used social media platforms, Facebook not only remains the most populated, but also the most controversial. When it comes to Pakistan , a particularly warped environment is developing.

It is a well-known fact that accusations of blasphemy in a country like Pakistan are tantamount to incitement of violence. Also well-known is the fact that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws prescribe a death penalty for blasphemy.

Yet in one recent instance, a Facebook page making a case (in Urdu) for the punishment of a Pakistani woman for blasphemy was reported by a large number of users, but Facebook refused to take action against the offending page with a standard response that the page had not violated the platform’s community standards.

Consequently, the page and its vile messages remained accessible for days.

Facebook's message when users reported the page

In another case, an Islamabad-based female activist underwent severe harassment online, which included her being not only accused of apostasy (another grave allegation with potentially lethal consequences) but also having her private information leaked across the platform.

Predictably, all of her complaints against Urdu content were dismissed by Facebook.

Facebook has explained that its content control policy ensured adequate checks and balances, especially when it came to respecting local laws and traditions.

However, such a policy is highly problematic because in countries like Pakistan, local laws and traditions support human rights violations such as capital punishment, religious discrimination and persecution.

Also read: And now Facebook

Facebook's growing commitment to government authorities instead of its users' fundamental rights is thought-provoking, and exhibits how the influence of political economies is possibly at play.

Facebook’s latest transparency report – a document far from transparent in exhibiting specifics – makes this pro-censorship trend fairly evident.

Last week, in context of the unfortunate Charlie Hedbo attacks and rising intolerance against free speech, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, committed to building out of Facebook, a service where everyone could 'speak freely without fear of violence.'

In reality, how far such a commitment goes into being translated into actual practice is the real question. It appears that so far, amidst mind-boggling expansion, Facebook has not been particularly successful in securing freedom of expression or freedom from violence for its users.

Hamza's case

A recent example in this regard is the unjust censorship of a status updated by a local Pakistani celebrity, Hamza Ali Abbasi.

One may disagree with the argument presented in Hamza's message, but under no circumstances was the text in violation of Facebook’s community standards and asking to be deleted – an irrational move by Facebook’s censorship mechanism which Mark Zuckerberg accepted as a mistake.

Also see: The case of Pakistan's vanishing Facebook pages

Moving along the string of such ‘mistakes,’ Facebook has been known to actively censor content which does not violate its community guidelines. One would like to understand the rationale behind such behaviour. At best, it appears to be subjective judgment exercised by overburdened moderators who obviously have control over users’ content.

While Facebook makes content-censorship decisions either due to incompetence or the influence of powerful groups such as governments, users still waiting in line for justice from the corporation’s complaints management department question Facebook's lax response in helping those who are truly in danger of being persecuted through widespread incitement of violence or direct online harassment.

Aside from the earlier examples above, scores of pages and memes inciting violence against marginalised groups such as religious minorities or women continue to thrive in a country where mob justice is widely prevalent and legal systems are questionable at best.

A Facebook page inciting people to kill a minority group.

A Facebook page inciting people to kill a man here declared to be an apostate.

Speak freely...in Urdu

The situation gets progressively worse when the content is in local languages such as Urdu.

According to a study conducted by Pakistani activist group 'Bytes for All', Pakistan, at least 78 per cent of the hate speech observed on Facebook was expressed in Roman Urdu and Urdu script.

Another page declaring a religious minority as 'worthy of being killed'.

This is an important statistic, because comparing it with the observed number of complaints resolved on Facebook, it raises the question of Facebook’s capacity in dealing with criminal hate speech in Urdu and other local languages. At several informal meetings, Bytes for All, Pakistan raised this issue, to which Facebook’s representatives claimed that the company had human resource trained for dealing with such issues. However, it is clear that something is not working.

Take a look: Online hate speech study launched

Despite advocacy and concerted efforts to flag the foregoing issues directly with Facebook’s top management, Facebook’s commitment to free speech and freedom from violence beyond words is still required.

Indeed, Facebook needs to demonstrate a level of responsibility more commensurate with its corporate size and stature if meaningful change is to be brought about.

With the announcement of Australia's squad, all the teams for the approaching cricket World Cup 2015 have been finalised. A big question mark hovers over the chances of Team Green, though.

Judging from their recent performances, there isn't much cause for hope. Although I do think the selectors have done a decent job of exploiting a limited pool of resources, in realistic terms, the team's chances can be truly assessed only after analysing the individual players making up the unit; particularly the more vulnerable ones, who could potentially keep Pakistan from progressing into the finals and winning the trophy.

For me, these vulnerable players are none other than Younis Khan (batsman) and Sohail Khan (bowler).

Explore: Dawn.com survey: Fawad, Haris both make the cut in World Cup 15

The experienced weakling — age 37 and ave 31

37 year-old Younis Khan's recent performances are there for everyone to see. Despite illustrious credentials in the Test format, Younis has remained a more or less average ODI batsman in a career spanning a good 14 plus years.

With an average of only 31.75, Younis has long maintained an on-and-off ODI run, his performance flickering even more than that of the famously unpredictable team he is part of.

In the last World Cup, Younis Khan scored half-centuries against Kenya and Sri Lanka, and then dwindled away. In the semi-final, when his presence at the wicket was crucial, he returned to the pavilion after scoring a mere 13 runs.

Yet, his position in the team remained secure.

Then the 2013 tour to South Africa happened, and ever since then, the veteran batsman’s spot has remained questionable.

When selectors left him out of the recent series against Australia, Younis couldn’t help himself lash out at the board. A general outrage against the board ensued, and so, he was again picked to play against New Zealand, when he scored his first ODI century in six-and-a-half years.

Even then, the green shirts couldn’t win the match.

Take the quiz: How well do you know Younis Khan?

Now, with the next World Cup just round the corner, the only advantage Younis Khan has is his experience, but his performance in the grounds at Australia and New Zealand has not been impressive at all. He has played a total of eight matches in Australia at an average of 20. In New Zealand, he has played six matches to score 115 with an average of 23.

He is an ace test cricketer and although he appears to be ‘too senior’ now, there is no other batsman to possibly replace him. But still, that does not qualify him for a position in the ODI squad — just like Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who hasn’t played an ODI game after World Cup 2011.

Younis’s insistence on being in the team despite terrible performances is unfair to other capable and young players.

'Justice For Fawad Alam'

Despite his meek numbers, Pakistan has inducted Younis Khan into the squad once again while leaving out someone like Fawad Alam, who boasts an average above 45 in the last 35 ODIs.

Last year, Fawad batted with a whopping 69 average in eight ODIs. In the same year, he scored a century and two half-centuries. Four out of seven centuries scored by Pakistan in year 2014 saw Fawad Alam’s contribution. But he is being made to suffer for just one bad series against Australia.

In the year 2014, none of the Pakistani ODI batsmen scored with an average above 59 – that too, was scored by Haris Sohail in the year’s last five matches.

Explore: The curious case of Fawad Alam

Other players like Ahmed Shahzad, Umar Akmal, Muhammad Hafeez, Sohaib Maqsood, Shahid Afridi, Younis Khan, and Misbah ul Haq have averages of 39, 22, 30, 29, 27, 27, and 23, respectively.

All of these players are part of the World Cup 2015 squad, but Fawad Alam was deemed unworthy of it.

The unending search for a stable middle-order

A volatile top order means that Pakistan’s middle and lower-middle order need rock-hard stability. Back in 2013, an in-form Misbah helped to cloak this vulnerability, but now when the skipper is out of form, the weakness is more conspicuous and underwhelming.

The lower order has strengthened with the intake of Haris Sohail, and luckily, Shahid Afridi’s bat is also spewing runs after a long time.

But we all know that's merely luck. Imagine if Fawad Alam was in there with Umar Akmal; what a great duo it would be to knock the ball around in the middle overs.

See: 'Pakistan-India clash will be most watched in cricket history'

In the case that Misbah and Younis fail, all the burden will fall on Umar Akmal, Sohaib Maqsood, and Haris Sohail. And since all three of these players are temperamentally volatile, a batsman who could anchor the innings will be sorely missed.

Ehsan and Sohail versus Bilawal and Anwar

Now on to the bowling. Even though Pakistan is missing it’s two ace spinners Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez, the bowling lineup is not in shambles.

Everyone knows the wickets of Australia and New Zealand favour the seamers. The Australians themselves have opted for just a single spinner in their squad.

Hence, a fleet comprising of Mohammad Irfan, Junaid Khan, Wahab Riaz, Ehsan Adil, and Sohail Khan seems satisfactory enough. Then there are the two spinners, Shahid Afridi and Yasir Shah, to supplement the attack.

Ehsan Adil last played an international game a year-and-a-half ago.—Photo courtesy: PCB

Junaid Khan, who has been out of the team due to a knee injury, hasn’t played an international match since August. He has recovered now, though, and is back in action in the Pentangular Cup. Muhammad Irfan and Wahab Riaz played in the series against New Zealand, and are ready for international cricket after a mixed performance.

The problem, however, is that if Junaid Khan’s injury rears its head again, or if Pakistan opt not to play Irfan in all the matches, then will Ehsan Adil and Sohail Khan be able to do a good enough job on their own? Ehsan has played in only two international matches to date, the last one being a year and a half ago.

30 year-old Sohail Khan has not represented Pakistan since over four years. If instead of these two – or at least instead of Sohail Khan – Bilawal Bhatti and Anwar Ali were included in, it would have been a much better move. Both of them have sufficient experience of international cricket and can also be utilised as all-rounders. But the selectors didn't think of that, who knows why?

To sum up, it is fairly evident that if Pakistan get knocked out in the first round or the knockout round, it will more likely than not be due to a loose link within the middle order. The other factors will be miserable fielding and the absence of good bowlers.

But then, when have Pakistan ever been predictable? Their cup-winning 1992 outfit was actually their weakest one, whereas none of the strong squads between 1996 and 2007 managed to be crowned champions.

Take a look: Exclusive interview | One moment in Perth changed our lives: Aaqib Javed

In fact the ‘shaheens’ of Pakistan were sent home packing in the very first round in 2003 and 2007.

Reaching the quarter-final seems possible, but what is going to happen after that? That's anybody's guess.

Translated by Bilal Karim Mughal from the original in Urdu here.

Their place is in school and not in the factories. Still, millions of children work, many in hazardous conditions, to support their families.

A low-cost insurance innovation for the very low-income households in Hyderabad, Sindh, has been successful in limiting child labour. The National Rural Support Program (NRSP), Pakistan’s premier poverty alleviation agency, which focuses on rural development, devised innovative insurance regimes for those who borrowed from the NRSP’s microfinance schemes.

The results of a carefully designed experiment, which appeared in the Journal of Health Economics, revealed that households with the enhanced insurance reported lesser incidence of child labour than the rest.*

Pakistan gained notoriety for child labour with the unfortunate death of Iqbal Masih, a teenage boy who was shot dead in 1997. While he died in mysterious circumstances, there was nothing mysterious about him being a child labourer. His death led to a boycott of Pakistani-made carpets, which many believed employed child labour.

Also read: Those underpaid, underage workers of factories

Child labour continues to be ubiquitous in Pakistan. The high fertility rates among the very poor serve as an insurance policy when the breadwinners die suddenly or are incapacitated because of illness or injury. The children are shipped to work to support the family when the traditional support structure breaks down.

Banning child labour has been the preferred unthinking solution for many. However, such drastic interventions have seldom delivered. In fact, such bans condemn children to even worse outcomes, such as prostitution.

The NRSP came up with a novel solution that targeted the root cause of the problem, and not merely its symptoms. Knowing that children are sent to work when the support network collapses, the NRSP intervention bolstered the safety net against unexpected hazards.

The results of the intervention are interesting. Households with enhanced insurance options reported less incidence of child labour and lower school dropout rates than the rest.

NRSP's insurance experiment

Starting in 2005, the NRSP mandated insurance for those who borrowed from their microcredit schemes. The insured included the borrower, the spouse, and children under 18 years of age.

In order to offer improved insurance services, the NRSP in 2009 conducted an experiment in Hyderabad, Sindh. In nine branches randomly selected out of 13 branch offices, the NRSP offered optional insurance (in addition to the mandatory insurance) for other adult members of the family (that also included children over 18 years), for a nominal sum of 100 rupees. In addition, NRSP visited borrowers each month to determine if they needed help with filing insurance claims. The four remaining branch offices offered only the mandatory insurance without the two enhancements.

Also see: For child labourers, education still a distant dream

In total, almost 2,097 households (13,000 individuals) were part of the experiment, of which 1,320 households were in the ‘treatment’ group comprising the nine branch offices that received enhanced insurance options. Another 777 households were in the control group which was offered only the basic insurance.

The analysis revealed that despite the fact that the treated and control communities were comparable before the start of the experiment, the communities recipient of the enhanced insurance options reported significantly less incidence of hazardous occupations for child labourers than the rest did. Furthermore, child labour earnings were also lower for communities with enhanced insurance options than the rest.

A breakdown by gender presented even more pronounced results for boys, who are more likely than girls to be pushed out to work. In addition to lower hazardous occupation and child labour earnings, communities with enhanced insurance options reported higher school attendance for boys. The same was not true for girls.

Read on: Satyarthi — a campaigner against child slavery

The study in the Journal of Health Economics though, suffers from a few shortcomings. The primary concern is about the aggregation bias. Instead of estimating the empirical models at the household level, the authors aggregated the household data at the community level and did empirics on the aggregated data comprising 13 observations. The other limitation is that the authors focused on the communities, thus merging the results for households that bought the enhanced insurance and those who did not in the nine treated communities.

The result:

Still, the results obtained are based on sound reasoning. Child labour occurs when the social safety net is missing for low income households, who need support when the primary breadwinner could no longer provide.

The NRSP’s insurance scheme offers the buffer, especially when the interruption is temporary, to households that need help.

Given the tremendous burden of disease carried by the low-income households in Pakistan, there is merit in devising a similar national insurance scheme for the very poor.

*Landmanna, Andreas and Markus Frölicha, Can health-insurance help prevent child labor? An impact evaluation from Pakistan. Journal of Health Economics. 39 (2015) 51–59.

Too many people in our country have blood on their hands.

Too many avoidable deaths occur. Too many lives are lost with no one held accountable.

No, this is not about security lapses or healthcare negligence.

This is also not about street crime or honour killings.

This time it is about what’s going on on our roads, and how no one, once again, seems to care.

Also read: Highway tragedy: Bodies burnt beyond recognition

A petrol station employee from Shikarpur had come to Karachi to interview for a job with the Sindh Police. On his way back home in a passenger coach, his biggest concern may have been whether he gets the job or not – he may have been going over his performance in his mind when the crash occurred.

He did not consider a fate far worse than rejection awaiting him.

According to his friend, Saleemullah was one of the ill-fated passengers on the bus that collided with an oil tanker on Saturday on the National Highway. Sixty-two people were killed – burnt beyond recognition.

A nine-member family wiped out.

A woman with the remains of six children stuck to her – gone.

Accepting the death of a loved one is hard enough – trying to identify their charred remains must be far, far harder.

But, perhaps, what may be the hardest thing to deal with is accepting the fact that no one will be held accountable for this preventable road accident – until eventually, it becomes a matter of ‘God’s will’.

People look at the wreckage of the bus that collided with a tanker on the outskirts of Karachi. — DawnNews screengrab

While fighting terrorists and curbing deaths caused by them may be too complicated for our government to manage, enforcing transport laws should really not be that hard.

Aren’t the lives lost to terrorism enough for this country to deal with? Can’t other deaths be avoided? Especially those caused on the roads?

Also read: Bad road, no warning signs caused fatal Khairpur bus crash: police

The state of the majority of roads in Pakistan today remains deplorable and hardly any traffic laws are enforced.

Buses whizzing by are usually packed beyond capacity with half a dozen passengers hanging out of the vehicles.

Drivers always seem to be in a race against time and are often found competing with another bus or driving down the wrong direction just to save time or score more passengers.

Nobody other than a constable stops them every now and then while on the hunt for a little ‘chai pani’.

Just like the healthcare and educational sector of the country, the transport sector too needs a complete overhaul.

It needs to focus on building safer roads, creating emergency rescue systems for highways and most of all, enforcing basic traffic rules and fining drivers when these rules are broken.

Special training and instructions need to be given to heavy vehicles carrying oil and a system needs to be developed in order to keep the speed of passenger buses in check.

But this might be too much work for a department that probably is used to brushing incidents such as these under the rug.

Sixty-two people burnt in a matter of minutes is not a small tragedy. It is an enormous one – and it happens too often. A bullet may not have killed these people, but they too died because someone was not doing their job right.

Also read: Pakistan's traffic accidents - by the numbers

Natural occurrences such as landslides and rain can cause ‘accidents’ on the roads – anything else is usually someone’s fault.

Who is at fault when 62 people die on our roads?

The author in Italy (2007)

In the last decade or so, I have been able to travel extensively across much of Europe, Asia and the Americas. During my travels, I noticed how rare it was to find non-businessmen or non-pilgrim Pakistani travellers.

For example, in Europe, if you tell someone that you were a Pakistani on vacation, you are bound to get curious looks. They mostly (if not only) know about Pakistanis who have settled there or come only for quick business trips.

Every year, during my travels, I find less and less Pakistani rovers on the streets of Europe, the US and even in many Asian countries. The only ones you do see are those travelling to Dubai or maybe to Malaysia and Turkey.

Also read: Being a Pakistani abroad

However, I do come across a healthy number of Indian travellers.

It follows, naturally, that many of the people I meet across Asia, Europe and the US take me for an Indian too. This does bother me a little, because it brings to light the political and cultural perils of a nation and people that have just stopped travelling for leisure and for sheer travelling experience.

Wise men across history have rightly emphasised the need for travelling, especially in how it opens your mind to things, people and habits outside your own social and belief systems; and how this infuses an instinctive realisation in the traveller about the importance of plurality and tolerance; and how tiny, rigid and sometimes rather delusional the world of an isolationist is.

Famous Muslim author, historian and explorer Ibn Battuta (1304-1369): He travelled extensively all over the world to record how people in various Muslim and non-Muslim regions lived.

Of course, over the past many years, it hasn’t been easy for Pakistanis to acquire visas of a number of countries. Also, the economic situation of the country has made it tough for most Pakistanis to even think about taking a vacation abroad.

That is certainly a cause for concern. I say this because the moment you step into another country, you begin to realise that life can indeed be lived without constantly contemplating the fate of a government or the status of one or the other’s religious beliefs.

To know that is to realise just how narrow our worldview has become — we work and then come back home to watch political talk shows on TV or just talk faith, and nothing else.

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The human mind is far too vast to be stuffed with only cyclic political gossip (mistaken as political analyses), or with a rather unhealthy obsession with faith.

Slipping out from the confines of such a myopic existence (through travelling) will tell you just how quickly things like music, literature, sports, theatre, et al, are vanishing from our list of things to do and enjoy in Pakistan.

There is no doubt that as a nation, we face gigantic economic and political problems today; no doubt that we are in a state of war against ogres and Frankenstein monsters that we created or allowed to breed due to our short-sightedness and misplaced arrogance.

But think about it. Go through the histories of some of the most powerful reform movements and it is clear that none of these were complete without the inclusion of hefty cultural contributions by poets, playwrights, musicians, artists and even sportsmen.

Our entire standpoint on life or about what needs to be done has unfortunately shrunk to an extent where all we are left with is a constant need to make lofty moral and faith-based judgments and denunciations, believing that ‘positive’ change can only come in some form of a convoluted moral order.

That’s all we talk about now: Faith – the correct version, the wrong version, the distorted version, this version, that version …

In basic terms, there is only one version, spread across many different cultures.

We just have to accept it, live with that. One faith, different cultures. We are only one such culture (out of the many), and just different from the ones we judge to be better or worse than us.

See: In Italy: The art of doing nothing

The only other topic we love to talk about is what gets passed these days as ‘politics.’ The lesser said about this, the better.

Everything else has become unnecessary. It seems all of us have become myopic political animals with an extremely slender understanding of politics, something which now colours the understanding of our faith as well.

We’ve forgotten where politics ends and where faith begins (or vice versa).

Playwright, TV actor and author, Mustansar Hussain Tarar: He is one of the most well-travelled men in Pakistan and his travelogues (in Urdu) have been bestsellers.

'I am from Surinam!'

Whenever I travel now, I look forward to meeting people who are not always judging me through religious and ideological biases or figuring out where I stand politically.

That, however, can be a problem if you are a Pakistani, because then most non-Pakistanis seem to just want to talk to you about your faith as a Muslim. Truth is, I’d much rather talk about music, sports, food, drinks, and art — subjects one rarely gets to talk about in Pakistan these days.

Read on: Identity crisis: The Pakistani Brits & the British Spaniards

So what do I do? Let them call me an Indian? No way. Because then all they want to talk about is friggin' Bollywood! Don’t know much about that, I’m afraid.

So this time when I went travelling, I decided to introduce myself as a citizen of Surinam!

I got this idea way back in 2003, when, while travelling across Europe, I started talking to an Indian. He swiftly switched from English to Hindi when I told him that I was from Pakistan. I asked him where he was from in India, and he told me that he wasn’t from India at all. ‘I am from Surinam!’ he announced.

**As it turns out, Surinam, a small country in South America, has a huge ‘brown’ Hindi-speaking population.

So this time that’s what I told people in various European countries: ‘I’m from Surinam’.**

And lo and behold, I got what I wanted — lots of discussion on fishing, hurricanes, beaches and drinks. Absolutely nothing on faith, terrorism and wife-beating!

A fantastic time I had.

In the eye of the beholder: A ‘Surinamese’ in New York (2012)

Not that I don’t ever want to talk about such things, but not while I’m travelling. Especially not with someone who till a decade or so ago most probably thought Pakistan was a tiny Island west of Madagascar but only recently suddenly realised it was not near Madagascar but north of the burning oil fields of Iraq — a place where a majority of folks race camels, beat up their wives and blow up things. Like, all the time.

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But jokes apart, on most occasions, I found the majority of Europeans and Americans to be very tolerant and genuinely interested in hearing about how life was like in a nation like Pakistan. The real test comes when during a trip, foreign channels begin to report a terrorist attack in Pakistan and how not much was being done about such attacks.

That is when one really struggles answering a question like, ‘where are you from?’

I always say ‘Pakistan.’ And proudly so. But the truth is, it is getting increasingly tough to say it out instantly. Now I hesitate a bit.

And that's not a good feeling at all.