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COVERSTORY: PAKISTAN
Portrayal Politicians' Image
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FACE LIFT: Author Tehmina Durrani (left) makes public the
story of 20-year-old Fakhra at a press conference in Islamabad.
An acid attack by her husband has left Fakhra badly disfigured.
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In search of political
answers I call on my old friend Aitzaz Ahsan at his lovely Lahore home.
He was home minister in Benazir Bhutto's government and is still an active
and senior member of the Pakistan People's Party. I ask him if he thinks
ordinary Pakistanis have lost faith in politicians because of the bad
experience they had with Bhutto and Sharif. He tells me that there is
a certain disappointment but most of it is on account of the fact that
politicians have been deliberately painted as the villains of the piece
by the "establishment". He explains that what he means by the
"establishment" is the civil and military bureaucracy, which
has been responsible for a sustained propaganda campaign against politicians.
"This has been so successful that people have been led to believe
all politicians are bad. They forget that the Quaid-e-Azam was also a
politician." He admitted that the civilian governments of the past
10 years had failed to live up to the promises of democracy but said this
was also because "we got government but we never got power".
There were always limits to what civilian governments could do.
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EVENING IN LAHORE: A Pakistani couple dine at Food Street in Gowalmindi
(Milkman's Colony), one of the trendiest hangouts in Lahore. Once
a dirty little street, it now attracts both residents and visitors.
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These limits have often been subtle and hidden
from public view so politicians have been blamed for things they have
not been responsible for. The Kargil misadventure, for instance, or the
Taliban. It was the army and not the civilian leadership that was responsible
for these things but General Pervez Musharraf seems to escape public censure.
It is Sharif who is blamed for the economic downslide and when it comes
to "looting the country" he shares honours with Benazir. General
Musharraf seems to be more popular by comparison but when I mention this
to Aitzaz he says I am wrong. If this were true then the military should
have been able to get their stooges to win the recent local body elections
but they did not. It was candidates backed by the political parties that
did well and if there is a general election, as promised, by October 2002,
the political parties will be back in the reckoning. It seems to me hard
to believe. With Sharif in exile and Bhutto trying to stay politically
alive from distant London, there appear to be few civilian candidates
for prime minister around. Imran Khan is keen to be considered a possible
candidate but his Tehreek-e-Insaf party has so far not had any luck electorally.
The political vacuum is filled at the moment
quite fully by General Musharraf. I met businessmen who said he was doing
more to revive the economy than either Bhutto or Sharif had, and in less
fundamentalist circles in Lahore and Karachi they are delighted with his
having ticked the maulvis off. The occasion they refer to is a religious
meeting Musharraf addressed at which he warned the maulvis that their
loose talk about India and Kashmir was detrimental not just to peace,
but to the safety of Indian Muslims. Musharraf is also seen by many Pakistanis
as a modern leader who seems determined to put the country on the road
to modernity. The interesting thing, though, is that his support comes
mainly from the English-speaking elite. Musharraf is praised for having
made a serious attempt to control corruption when he came to power but
the attempt seems now to have petered out without signs of any real change.
He also seems to have a personal appeal that comes from intervening to
prevent injustices being done and lending an attentive ear to those who
see him as a sort of final court of appeal in a country where other institutions
have proved to be weak and malleable.
On my last day in Lahore I went to see my old
friend Tehmina Durrani. I have known her for many years, from the time
when she was still married to her "Feudal Lord". She is an exceptional
woman by most standards, but particularly by those of Pakistan because
she has dared as a woman to break the rules. If in her first book she
took on what she called the "feudalism" of her husband, but
which anywhere else would be seen as primitive tribalism, in her second
book, Blasphemy, she dared to attack a pir. She painted a horrifying portrait
of a depraved, brutal and loathsome man who sheltered behind religion.
Even in India this would be a difficult book to write without some group
or other leaping up and claiming offended religious sentiments. Tehmina
has managed to get away with it in Pakistan.She now has a new cause-Fakhra.
A year ago Fakhra, a dancing girl who was married to Tehmina's stepson
Bilal Khar, had acid poured on her by her husband. She had tried leaving
him and he considered this enough of a crime to sneak into her home while
she was asleep, yank her up by her hair, and pour a bottle of acid over
her face and body. The acid burned through her face to disfigure it completely
and burned half her body away. It left her blinded in one eye and barely
able to breathe because her nostrils fused together. She was just 19 years
old when her life was made no longer worth living except for her small
son, now aged five. She registered an fir with the police naming her husband
as the attacker but Bilal whisked her away to a lonely farmhouse where
he continued to abuse her sexually and physically. Finally, desperate,
she contacted Tehmina and asked for help. Tehmina brought her to her own
home and set about raising enough money to pay for the three years of
treatment it will take to make Fakhra look human again. But when she approached
the Pakistani Ministry of Interior for a passport she was told that she
could not take Fakhra abroad because it would "give Pakistan a bad
name". Tehmina went public with the story and it was the intervention
of General Musharraf that finally got Fakhra her passport.
Fakhra's story brings out poignantly the differences
between our two countries. It is not that Indian girls do not get disfigured
by brutal husbands or lovers but rarely do the perpetrators of these crimes
manage to get away with it. In Pakistan the institutions do not exist
to protect a Fakhra from a Bilal and that is only part of its tragedy.
Even as an outsider it is hard not to be despondent about Pakistan, hard
not to come away feeling that so many things have gone so badly wrong
that what seems to have died for the moment is hope. Mayoosi is dangerously
infectious.
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