face 2 face with terrorism

Terrorism takes away lives, unfortunately counted in numbers ” 100 dead, 200 injured“. We all stop for a second to see the flashing “news alert” on tv and then move one with our lives.

No one cares that these were 100 living people who are no more alive and who bothers about their loved ones. Loved ones who are living but their life is taken away! Loved ones who are so suddenly snatched away from them! They are emotionally shaken and worries of an insecure future (for women) do not let them mourn in a poor country.

200 injured gives a little relief and we thank Allah that these precious lives are saved but in what condition are they? Without a limb? half blown up? injuried all over? which may take months and thousands of rupees to heal. Who will support their families in the mean time? Who will pay for their medical expenses?

People who come face to face with terrorism, either they have lost someone or are physically injured go through mental turmoil. I just read the feelings of a husband who lost his wife in suicide bombing in the United Nations World Food Program country office in Islamabad. I am speechless….

He writes….

Reality (by Tahir Wadood Malik)

the call called me out
and i ran.
a scene of chaos
before me i saw
no one familiar
no one known
pell-mell running feet
stopping all from going in.

a hand held my arm
i looked at a face
worn and sad
she is taken from here
to the medical centre
or the hospital
hurry sir
he said.

i turned and ran
the medical centre was near,
first there i thought
and walked briskly
a voice called out
i turned
the medical centre sir
she is taken there.

a hop and i was there
running to the steps up
when another voice called
sir here
turning i saw him pointing
he came close and said
be strong sir
and turned his face.

down the slope i went,
entering a small room,
packed full with people
smelling of antiseptic,
gurneys covered in white sheets
a doctor looked at me
i took your name.

she looked at me
sad and sorry
pointing to the nearest
white sheet, she walked to it.
i stood as if riveted to the floor
is she gone i asked
she nodded,
and held the corner of the sheet.

leaden feet one after the other
just three steps
to see your face
drained of life’s color
the smile gone
nothing to give me hope.
just an endless dark tunnel,
with no light at the end.

you had left the world
you had left me, who you said
was your world,
i was left
without a thought
without any idea of next.
looking at your white face
closed eyes, look at me i said.

did you smile?
did you know i was standing there?
did you feel the tear
that fell on your cheek?
did you feel my hand on your face?
could you feel my willing you to wake?
or was it all cold, all dark,
and finished for you?

i stood there,
suddenly tired and racked with sobs
no one to hold me
no one to console me
no one to say hush
all alone.
not even you to say i am here.
together we will overcome.

and then the haze
people coming and going
a leg lay on the table next to you
supposedly of the bomber
people came and looked at it
no one bothered about us
but that leg was it for all then.
and i was frozen in pain, anger and angst.

ormalities
ambulance ride
people gathering
crying.
wailing
intruding in my feelings
despair, grief, anger,
and a loss infinite.

rituals,
more people,
waiting for the inevitable
arrivals
more and more
but where in all this are you?
lying cold and unconcerned in a bed
draped in a white coffin

i looked at you
wanting you to smile
wanting you to open your eyes
desperation
wishing for the noise of the wails
beating chests and prayers
to wake you
from the depth of death.

but your face
serene, calm
without worries at last
fresh like the morning dew
not even lines of any hue
eyes closed,
even the white cloth,
pale against your skin.

and they came also
who had not come before
all standing
some silent
some crying
all sad
all lost
no words no actions enough.

and then it was time
picking you up
one on each of the four posts
reciting the oneness of god
who had taken you from me
so cruelly,
still being exalted and called to succor,
knowing i had but to suffer.

and then the prayers,
and a ride to the last resting place
a pit dark and dreary
i shuddered
you would hold my arm
even to step a step up
and this was so much down!
how could i hold you now?

and it was all over
dust to dust
prayers
consoling words
a dirge
another prayer
dispersal
how could i leave you?

but i did leave you
alone
in a pit covered with fresh dug soil
put on there with my own hands
my prayers mixed with the rest
a feel of death, a pain, a void,
in my heart
where you lived.

and food was served
people forgot death
food, the source of life
for the living was being taken
no one bothered to say
sorry
the food was important
my loss was reality and not.

and then they left
leaving me to my self
my thoughts
my feelings
my emptiness
my fight with my god
my forlornness
and my grief

and good too that was
for there was too much
going on in me
fears
feelings
remorse
thoughts
nostalgia

and the night passed
just as you had passed from this
to another world
just as i had passed
from a happy man
to a sad being
wondering why
this had come to pass?

but then life reared its head
wanting to extract its pound of flesh
not wanting to wait for the next
but wanting me not to rest
and i shrugged
and i looked
and i picked up the shackles of life
and i went to put my shoulder to the plough.

Technorati Tags: Allah, life, love, News, terror, terrorism, tv, US, victim, WHO

hijab

The nation has heard plenty of debate over racial profiling. But there’s a form of religious profiling that some young Muslim women in America say they endure whenever they voluntarily wear the hijab. The hijab, also known as the veil, is the headscarf worn by Muslim women around the globe. It’s a simple piece of cloth, but it can place young Muslim women in Western countries in difficult situations.
She doesn’t want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she’s been degraded by her father. What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn’t wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive.
“It represents beauty to me,” says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. “My mom says a girl is like a jewel,” Abdelaziz says. “When you have something precious, you usually hide it. You want to make sure you keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found.”
Some hijab-wearers say that strangers treat them as if they’re terrorists. Others ask them if they’re a nun — or even allergic to the sun. In some cases, their worst critics are not Americans, but fellow Muslim Americans. The pressure on Muslim teenagers in the U.S. who wear the hijab may be even more acute. Their challenge: How do I fit in when I wear something that makes me stand out?
Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has written two novels about this question, says wearing the hijab can “exhaust” some young Muslim women in the West. “You can sometimes feel like you’re in a zoo: locked in the cage of other people’s stereotypes, prejudices and judgments, on parade to be analyzed, deconstructed and reconstructed,” says Abdel-Fattah, a Muslim who has Palestinian and Egyptian parents but was born in Australia. Abdel-Fattah says people should not assume that Muslim women who wear the hijab are being controlled by men. She, too, struggled with the choice of wearing a hijab when she was a teenager.
“When it comes to the hijab — why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it — there is theology and then there is practice and there is huge diversity in both,” says Abdel-Fattah, author of “Does My Head Look Big in This?”
The surprising history behind the hijab
Some women say the hijab makes them feel like they’re locked in a cage. But others say it leads to personal freedom.
Sarah Hekmati first wore the hijab at age 15 growing up in Detroit, Michigan. She is the daughter of Iranian parents who left Iran in 1979 during the Islamic revolution. Hekmati says the hijab liberated her from some teenage angst: Does my hair look good? Am I cute enough? Should I lose weight? “It gave me a sense of identity,” she says. “I really liked the purpose behind the hijab — a woman covering herself so that a man should know her for her mind, not her body.”
That purpose can be traced back to the Quran, Islam’s holy text, which encourages women to dress modestly, says Faegheh Shirazi, author of “The Veil Unveiled.” Some Muslims take the Quran’s advice as a command for women to wear the hijab, while others disagree, she says. “The Quran is very ambiguous about whether you have to wear the veil or not,” Shirazi says.
The hijab, however, actually predates Islam, Shirazi explains. The first known reference to veiling (Shirazi uses the term hijab and veil interchangeably) was made in an Assyrian legal text in the 13th century B.C., Shirazi says.
In the Assyrian, and later, the Roman and Byzantine empires, the veil was a symbol of prestige and status, she says. By the 12th century, the veil had been imposed on women in the Muslim world to exclude them from public life, Shirazi says. “A sign of distinction had been transformed into a sign of exclusion,” she writes in her book. People are still debating the meaning of the hijab today.
In 2007, British Muslim groups protested when schools were given the right to ban students from wearing full-face veils. In 2008, Turkey’s top court upheld a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves at the country’s universities. That same year, a Muslim woman was briefly jailed at a suburban Atlanta, Georgia, courthouse after refusing to remove her hijab in court.
Some moms against hijab wearing
The debate over the hijab can literally hit home for some young Muslim women. Those that wear the hijab in the United States can befuddle their mothers, who often immigrated to the West so they could be free from wearing the hijab and other rules imposed on women.
That’s what happened to Hekmati, the Muslim-American from Detroit. Her mother, Behnaz, was puzzled by her daughter’s decision to wear the hijab. Behnaz Hekmati grew up in Iran, where she did not wear the hijab. Young women who attended college in Iran like she did generally didn’t wear the hijab, she says.
Behnaz Hekmati warned her daughter that wearing the hijab would arouse the suspicion of Americans. “I said Sarah, when you cover your head here the people think you are political — they see you differently,” Behnaz Hekmati says. Most of the trouble, though, came from Iranian-Americans, who came to the United States to escape the Islamic fundamentalists who seized power in 1979, she says.
“The Iranians here bother her more than Americans,” Behnaz Hekmati says. “They say, ‘We got rid of you guys. We came here because we didn’t want to see you guys anymore.’” Hekmati was more concerned as a teenager about more personal issues, like her relations with boys. The hijab made it more difficult, she says. Few asked her on dates. Guys always seemed to put her in the “friend category.” She wondered if she was attractive.
“I wondered at times: Am I always going to be a guy’s friend and nothing more.” Strangers in public saw her as something else — a subjugated woman. They looked at her with pity, she says. Some were just baffled. “One guy asked me if I was allergic to the sun,” Hekmati says.
Abdelaziz, the New Jersey high school senior, also had her tense public encounters: angry looks, people feeling sorry for her or assuming her father ordered her to wear the hijab. “It’s not oppression; it’s not that I’m accepting degradation — it’s about self-respect,” she says. But it’s more about faith as well. She says the hijab affirms “Islam in the most respectful and purified way.”
“When you actually wear it, it opens your eyes,” she says. “It makes you want to explore your religious faith.” At times, Abdelaziz says she wonders what it would be like to attend her prom, get a tan at the beach and have a boyfriend. But she says her decision to honor her faith is already paying off. “It really feels good,” she says. “It felt like I was missing something and now I’m complete. I finally understand my purpose.”

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I am unable to think of anything else after the attack on the Sri Lankan players. I wish to point all my fingers towards India the way they forgot their pain and started blaming us. But we are not taught to blame others without proof! I wonder if any Pakistani can do such a thing to our friends, neighbours, guests. Then who are these people? They are perfectly trained and are operating according to a plan. Where are they getting the instructions from? There are unlimited questions but such a thing should have never happened and that too on Pakistani soil. My heart cries for the Sri Lankans who came forward in our time of need and we could not protect them. We salute them and should try and make it up to them in whatever way possible.

I grew up watching cricket in Imran Khan days and cricket gave us immense pleasure over all these years. What really worries me is that what is the future of Pakistan cricket now????

Check this link for details

http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2009/03/03/sri-lankan-players-attack-amid-a-political-security-lapse

Technorati Tags: attacks, blog, Cricket, friends, imran khan, india, Kids, lahore, pain, Pakistan, Pakistan cricket, Pakistani, security, sin, sri lanka, STR, tea, terror, terror attacks, time, US, walk, war, WHO

Kalava: A Yellow Saffron Band worn by Hindus

Before I begin this rant, I must out-rightly condemn all terrorism activities, be it from a ruthless terrorist in India or even in Pakistan wherever there is loss of life it must be condemned regardless of who is suffering The Mumbai attacks were shocking for everyone, for the three days the killers were on rampage killing over 200 innocent lives everyone specially in India was shaken to the core. While we in Pakistan sat watching in earnest prayer hoping that this bad dream would simply go away, we too are sick an tired of these terrorist and truly do not wish this plague to get worse

What followed soon after the dust settled in Mumbai, was an all out aggressive propaganda waged by the Indian Government against Pakistan trying its best to pin the blame on Pakistan. Generally the accusations were based on some scanty evidence that the bureaucracy could muster up in the short few hours, it was for us, as if the entire book of conspiracies were suddenly cracked open by RAW and brought into quick production simply to exploit this disaster for its own gains, all in an attempt to bring Pakistan on its knees and into Indian submission [being a patriot Pakistani, I assure you that will not happen, Indians would agree vice versa if they were in the same spot] To believe that this highly professional group of terrorist could conduct a fully coordinated attack while leaving a blatant bread crumb trail seems too dubious. A team of terrorists hitchhiking a boat ride from Karachi to land smack in the middle of Mumbai and take the city om a target shooting spree, seems all too James Bond’ish. To have a confession by a person allegedly a Pakistani, is definitely a poorly enacted video, as the accent completely defies all dialects spoken anywhere in Pakistan.
But the most funniest is the tale of the Versace dressed terrorist caught on a shooting spree was in my opinion the biggest blunder that the Indians failed to throughly analyze before the finger pointing session started. The so-called Amir Qsaba [if we are to genuinely believe the Indian government to be honest in providing us with the 'right' name] would wear an orange armband on his ‘right hand’ while going on a public killing rampage, all Indians must know that this saffron band called Kalava – is worn while performing Hindu rituals like Yajna or Puja. It is tied by a priest on the wrists of all the people attending the prayer ceremony. Kalava is tied on right hand of males and unmarried females, and on left hand of married females. Somehow the evidence is weak, simply to take accept these allegations on a scouts honor given by the Indian government is not going to cut it.

Many Indian’s might hurriedly defend my allegation to say Amir Azam Qsaba used this to distract and throw off the investigators while he was being photographed at the train station, I sincerely doubt the significance of such a small token in this larger plan, if he was so convinced to pin the blame on Pakistan, he could have very well worn a ‘Green and White’ t-shirt with Pakistan plastered right across the front, carried a Muslim skull cap and a foot long beard would have been more too the liking of RAW. So short of all that this saffron band does signify that he was a Hindu and not Amir Azam Qasba etc etc

The above rant was a light hearted poke at what the Indian government bases its entire set of publicly revealed allegations on Pakistan, rest is still under investigation [read is still being cooked up]. I truly believe India has enough extremists within its borders that outside elements don’t need to physically walk in and take them out, likewise Pakistan too has enough problems within its own borders that picking a battle with India is not a wise decision to make but even if the ISI or the terrorists were so committed to hiting out at India then the apparent bread crumb trail is all to suspicious. Do we believe everything the Indian government chooses to say, I dare say NEVER. In that same light would I believe every word my Pakistani government chooses to hit out at India, I also am first to say NO. Its all a game of propaganda played by both sides over the past 60 odd years but lets not have the people fall for this mesmerizing trap so quickly.

The nail clincher by India recently has been to ask the Pakistani government to hand over a number of terrorists have been residing in Pakistan, firstly even if we ever decide to play roll over and play dead, I would first like to try them in our courts before even thinking of handing our people to India. That said, while the Indians are busy contemplating on the Pakistani terrorists please have a look at this list recently compiled by Pakistan to hand over to the Indian, would you please cough up these 35 terrorists living in India in this international exchange program, after all they too are terrorists who killed hundreds of Pakistanis and are now conveniently living in India. A tit-for-tat reaction, sadly yes, We could do this endlessly but if wisdom were to prevail we both could take a gentle step back seize the baseless propaganda, fix our own internal threats and then reinforce our borders to prevent the other side from creating yet another havoc.

Technorati Tags: india, mumbai, terror, terrorism

The target of the attack, national assembly member Rashid Akbar Nawani, sustained injuries to his legs, according to a spokesman for his party. Nawani is a senior member of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party (PML-N).The entire province of Punjab has been placed under high alert after Monday’s attack, which is under investigation, police said.

Pakistan is burning–Pakistan is burning, blasts everyday, air raids on one part of Pakistan everynight are a routine here. HOw can we live normally? How can our kids go to school? HOw can they go and play in the parks? How can we go for shopping or outing?
OUr minds are gripped by fear, our thoughts are crippled. We can not live in present happily nor can we plan for our future. What type of life is this?
When we say we are at war, these are not mere words but is a reality we are living.
when we look at the faces of our children our hearts is filled with fear. What does future hold for them, fear, bombs, air raids, burns. Then why does the rest of the world children play with “toys”?

Technorati Tags: blast, Pakistan, suicide attack, terror, toy

‘Since you were so kind as to greet us in London at Downing Street last month, the President would like to return the favour,” announces Major-General Rashid Qureshi, President Pervez Musharraf’s PR man over the phone. Only in Pakistan could the government’s head of spin be a retired major-general. He is referring to my last encounter with the President on 28 January – when, along with a 2,000-strong, placard-waving, slogan-jeering mob, I protested on the main road outside 10 Downing Street while Musharraf discussed democracy with Gordon Brown over lunch inside. On the way in he waved at us. Clearly he’s a man who is not afraid of confrontation. Much to the justifiable fury of every journalist in Islamabad, he has now granted me an exclusive half-hour interview despite or perhaps because of the fact that I have recently described him as one of the most repressive dictators Pakistan has ever known.

On the way to the Camp Office in Rawalpindi, I cross the bridge and pass the petrol station, which mark the spots of two recent attempts on the life of the now deeply unpopular President. I have a horrible fear that, bamboozled under the spotlight of his renowned charm, I may start to simper. My ex-husband, one of the President’s most vocal critics, has already told me he thinks this is all a terrible idea. “It will be misinterpreted in Pakistan. Besides, you’ll be too soft on him,” he said.

The Camp Office turns out to be an old colonial building which used to be the HQ of the northern command under the British. With its delicately carved, wooden, double-height ceilings, sweeping central staircase, marble floors and ornate carpets, it’s not hard to see why the President chose this as his private office in Rawalpindi. His residence is just up the driveway.

A dozen straight-backed men in uniform – red waistcoats over starched cream kurtas – are ready to greet me outside. The President, I’m informed, is not quite ready so I am led to the staff office for a “tea break” with a group of army officers who make up his presidential office team. Musharraf’s personal assistant, a dashing, grey-haired, light-eyed naval commander, and a jovial head of security, also a young army officer, joke that the delay is just an excuse for them to do a little preparatory brainwashing.
My ex-husband,
Imran
Khan told
me “It will
be misinterpreted
in Pakistan. Besides,
you’ll be too soft
on him,”
A bright yellow cake, some intimidating-looking chicken vol-au-vents and chai (milky tea) are wheeled in. Major Qureshi, Musharraf’s Alastair Campbell, tucks in happily and regales me for an hour with stories about Soviet-era Pakistani military triumphs and the magnanimity and general excellence of his boss. “Any country in the world would like to have this person as their leader,” he tells us proudly.

After an hour I am shown into a huge sitting room, divided in the middle by a latticed wood screen to segregate ladies from men at more formal functions. Musharraf enters. The last time I saw him in the flesh he was in his full army regalia. Somehow his civilian clothes have diminished him. I find his brown business suit and dainty penny loafers which have replaced the sturdy army boots almost unsettling. He seems to have lost both height and swagger. And his body language seems just a touch defensive. The immaculate hair also troubles me. Boot-polish black, artfully grey at the temples, it shows signs of some work.

I start the interview on an unfortunate note. “Given that the last time you saw me, I was protesting outside No 10, I’m grateful that you’ve granted me this opportunity. It’s quite a coup.” Bad word. There’s a moment’s silence while it hangs in the air.

The President, it turns out, is very disappointed in me. For a moment I think I have been called to his office for a sound ticking-off. “I was disappointed. Very disappointed,” he says. “I was disappointed because you ought to be knowing our environment … what Pakistanis are like … what is our society. Well, it’s acceptable if a person has never visited Pakistan and doesn’t know Pakistan to have ideal views [presumably, he means idealistic views]. But I thought you ought to be knowing what Pakistan is … This is not an ideal society.”

He goes on. Mindful that I have only limited time and that there’s a man in uniform sitting at the back of the room already checking his watch before I’ve even asked my first question, I politely interrupt. I remind him that when I first met him he too was an idealist. There is strange symmetry to this visit. I last met Musharraf three days before the last elections in 2002. And now here I am, five and a half years on, three days before elections on Monday. Back then, especially when Musharraf first came to power, I was a somewhat naive supporter. Selfishly, I was relieved when he succeeded came to power by military coup on 12 October 1999. Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he deposed, had tried to have me jailed on trumped-up, politically motivated charges of smuggling – a non-bailable offence in Pakistan.

I suspect it was to intimidate my ex-husband, who at that time was a noisy critic. I had scarpered to London before I could be arrested and was able to return with my two children to Pakistan six months later only after Musharraf seized power and the charges against me were duly dropped. More importantly, though, Musharraf took over with the express aim of cleaning up Pakistani politics. He despised the corrupt politicians as much as anyone. He immediately set up his own national accountability bureau and declared that his mission was to hold the corrupt accountable.

I’m also disappointed, I tell him. The corrupt got off scot-free. And now it looks as though he will shortly be doing business with the very same politicians he wanted to get rid of.

Disarmingly he agrees – something he does a lot of. And I sense it’s genuine rather than appeasement. He argues that he had no other choice but to deal with the existing leaders of the main parties. This is a little disingenuous. The national reconciliation ordinance which he passed in October 2007 effectively guaranteed lifelong immunity from prosecution to corrupt politicians such as Benazir Bhutto, her husband Zardari and others, and enabled her to return to Pakistan to contest elections. He asks if he is being recorded. I say yes. He hesitates, then answers tellingly, “Yes, I agree with you [that charges should not have been dropped]. But then Benazir has good contacts abroad in your country, who thought she was the future of the country.”

I press him further. Surely even in spite of pressure from outside, given his feelings about the effects of corruption on Pakistani politics, those charges should never have been dropped. There should have been a proper judicial process.

I put this to him. “No,” he replies, “because they would have all joined and then I would have been out.” At this point he looks a bit wild eyed. He quickly adds that, of course, being in power has never been his ultimate goal. How much easier it would be, he adds wistfully and a touch unconvincingly, if he’d just resigned to play golf.

A uniformed bearer offers fruit juice and warm roasted almonds. I down my juice in one gulp, then worry it may have looked unseemly. In the past four years I’d forgotten that Pakistani women are expected to overplay their femininity. I’m lounging like a bloke and downing pomegranate juice like lager.

Often he fails to see the irony in his own words, which can be unintentionally comic. Several times I have to suppress a smile. When confronted with the suggestion, for example, that he will have to work with a coalition government consisting of some the most infamous crooks in Pakistan, he responds with great sincerity, “I’m not running a martial law here. What can I do?” He adds, “My role as a president is simply the checks and balances – the seatbelts … a sort of father figure to the Prime Minister but I won’t have to see him for weeks.”

The image he paints of himself as a benign, legitimised dictator is at odds with the recent Human Rights Watch report that accuses his regime of hundreds of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, harassment, intimidation and extrajudicial killings

Later when I point out that his old opponent Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), has vowed that if elected he will reinstate the judges who were unconstitutionally deposed by Musharraf, he retorts incredulously, “It is not a dictatorship here! How can you reinstate judges if you become prime minister? How?” This rhetorical question comes from a man who on 3 November dismissed 60 per cent of the superior court judges, including three chief justices, in anticipation of their ruling against his re-election as President while still head of the army. Many remain under house arrest.

He seems to be someone who feels painfully let down and misunderstood. This is particularly the case when he talks about my ex-husband, Imran. “You know, I liked him. But he is the most unrealistic person. I wanted to support him.” He mentions him a few times in the interview. And the strange thing is, I detect hurt. President Musharraf, dictator, despot, guardian of the West against al-Qa’ida – and all I can see are the wounded eyes of a betrayed lover when he talks about my ex. Under his regime, in the past year, Imran has been held under house arrest, jailed, then released and has had his movements restricted. Hell hath no fury like a general scorned.

I change the subject. Last time I visited him here in Rawalpindi he gave me a spookily accurate prediction of the imminent election results, which suggested information more than insight. Who will win this election? His answer is definitive. The PML-Q (the party otherwise known as the King’s Party, assembled by President Musharraf himself six years ago to legitimise his “managed” democracy) allied with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement will “certainly have the majority. Whether they’ll be able to form a government is a question mark.” This contradicts all the recent opinion polls, which have shown that the popularity of his favoured party is right down, at just 12 per cent. I point out this out to him.

He dismisses the polls. They are biased, conducted by local organisations that are against him. “They have been abusing me right from the beginning and you will never get good results from them.”

He seems increasingly paranoid. “The media have let me down … The NGOs are against me. I don’t know why. I think I have been the strongest proponent of human rights …” In fact, the only people who are not against him, according to him, are the Western leaders who he says are “absolutely supportive” and “express total solidarity”.

I don’t doubt Musharraf’s bravery or even his initial good intentions. Nor is anyone underestimating the scale of the problems that Pakistan faces today.
“It will be the saddest day for Pakistan if Benazir’s crooked widower is in power by Monday,”
I say. Musharraf reponds “At least we part on agreement.”
If anything, the impression is one of amateurishness and of a naivety that would be endearing if it had not been so profoundly damaging to his country. And in recent months he has become belligerent with local journalists. In London last month a respected Pakistani editor was castigated for asking about Rashid Rauf, the escaped terror suspect, and the fact that many believe he was deliberately freed by the police. Such impertinent journalists “should be roughed up”, he was alleged to have told the assembled crowds in response.

When I ask about the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who is still under house arrest, he denounces him as “the scum of the earth – a third-rate man – a corrupt man”. And the lawyers’ movement? The lawyers have vowed to continue protesting on the streets and boycotting the courts until the deposed judges are reinstated and the constitution is restored to its pre-3 November status. “With hindsight,” he replies solemnly, “it was my personal error that I allowed them to go and express their views in the street… We should have controlled them in the beginning before it got out of control.” To those more used to seeing beards and white robes at protests, the images of suited, bookish-looking lawyers fighting off police batons were a memorable spectacle.

Musharraf mentions democracy a great deal. He seems sincere. He is genuinely likeable. But it seems he just can’t help himself. You can take the general out of the army but not the army out of the general. It reminds me of the Aesop fable about the scorpion and the frog. The frog gives the scorpion, who cannot swim, a lift across the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him. “Why did you do that?” asks the frog. “Now we’ll both die.” “I’m a scorpion; it’s my nature.”

As I leave he presents me with a clock inscribed “from the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”. It seems an inauspicious gift from a man whose time may be up. He shakes my hand. “It will be the saddest day for Pakistan if Benazir’s crooked widower is in power by Monday,” I say. As the President walks away, he looks back. “At least we part on agreement.”
 

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