What does one do with pumpkins?

Islamabad diary
And with empty heads and empty watermelons? As of this moment, what is Pakistan’s number one problem? It doesn’t take genius to figure this out. Our foremost problem is looking after the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children fleeing the military operation in North Waziristan. Government authorities are making efforts to help. But these are feeble efforts and the urgency that should be there is missing.
It is missing because the pumpkins we have, gifts from on high, just can’t get their focus right…and their concerns are different. They are still reeling from the Model Town killings and the mayhem we saw on the Sheikh-ul-Islam’s coming to Pakistan. If they couldn’t handle that – and we saw what a mess was made on that occasion – how on earth do they suddenly discover the organisational skills to deal with something far bigger in scope?
For a start the watermelons can focus on this problem and leave everything else aside. But that seems to be to ask for the impossible. We aren’t awash with resources but what little we have are being frittered away on what in this land are called ‘mega-projects’….and such supposedly eye-catching gimmicks as the Prime Minister’s Interest-free Loan Scheme. Mega-follies would be a more accurate description. But the education of the pumpkins – the weaning them away from these follies – how is this to be accomplished?
The PM’s daughter, Maryam Nawaz, has a very attractive personality and is said to be better-read than most of her kith and kin. She is the high-priestess of many of these interest-free gimmicks. Why doesn’t she leave them aside and devote her talents, if only for the time being, to the refugee problem? It will serve her and her family better than anything else.
The title of the old Tolstoy story – ‘How much land does a man require?’ – will have to be changed to ‘how many factories does anyone require?’ Sugar, steel, real estate, poultry, eggs….the list is endless and ever-expanding. And PM Sharif says that if given five years they’ll change the country’s fate. That is too heavy an undertaking. The country’s fate will take care of itself. Why doesn’t he just re-fix his government’s priorities…and go easy on the gimmicks as long as the internal refugee crisis lasts?
What princely sum has the Pakistani sarkar allocated for the NW refugees? 500 million rupees. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Far better more forthcoming than the sarkar is Bahria Town. Malik Riaz has announced a donation of five billion rupees. Our PM may be one of the richest rulers in the world, barring the oil sheikhs, the royals and the Sultan of Brunei. How much is he donating from his own pocket?
If nothing else, might he not consider returning the loans – from a consortium of seven banks – taken by the family in the 1990s? How about that other national redeemer, Asif Zardari? Can some of his money, kept in Swiss and other banks for charitable purposes no doubt, find its way to the displaced of North Waziristan?
And what about the cement and other mafias, sugar and the stock exchange, to name just these? Or is their mandate only to milk this hapless land without giving anything in return?
This should be a national emergency. To meet it we should be mobilising our best talent. The federal and KP governments should be in this together, politics forgotten for the moment. There are not too many people in Pakistan with a proven managerial record but here’s a short list: Imran Khan, Tahirul Qadri, Hafiz Saeed (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah), Prof Adeeb Rizvi of the Sindh Institute of Urology, and Malik Riaz of Bahria Town. The federal sarkar rep can be Maryam Nawaz; and the army could proffer the services of one of its brightest generals.
Give this committee dictatorial powers through a government notification. And ask all these high-powered people, who have their own work to do, to leave everything and spend the holy month of Ramadan in Bannu, Kohat or Lakki Marwat, to tackle the refugee crisis – forgive the cliché – on a war footing. Nothing less will do; nothing less is required.
If this is the battle for Pakistan, for the country’s future and its soul, it must begin by bringing a smile on the faces of the displaced pouring out of embattled North Waziristan. And if such emergency measures are taken and if the women and children of this war zone – for it is that – can be made to feel that the rest of the country cares for their plight half the battle is already won. In Swat and Buner when a million people moved out of their homes because of the military operation the adjoining districts came to their aid and rescue. The people of North Waziristan should not be made to feel that they are on their own.
In my humble opinion the order of national business should be as follows: struggling with himself, and it promises to be a mighty struggle, the PM should forswear empty gimmicks for the duration of this emergency. He should then immediately call a meeting of the aforesaid committee not in Islamabad but in Bannu or somewhere close to North Waziristan. He should ask the committee to choose a head. A sum of 10 billion rupees should be set aside at once for the work of rehabilitation. With Malik Riaz’s 5 billion this makes a respectable sum…at least to begin with.
Let tents be put up, water bores dug and electricity provided. Let Prof Rizvi be tasked to set up one or several hospitals at once. I saw with my own eyes the work the Jamaat-ud-Dawah did during the 2005 earthquake. It was stupendous. Let Hafiz Saeed step into the breach once more. The Sheikh-ul-Islam’s Minhaj-ul-Quran has tremendous organisational capacity. Toppling Nawaz Sharif can wait. Let that capacity be put to the service of the people of North Waziristan. Imran Khan wants to be prime minister (he said so in a recent interview). Let him first be a successful commissioner of refugees, summoning up the same drive and determination with which was set up the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital.
How did Pakistan make the bomb? By harnessing national resources and single-mindedly putting them to this task. Looking after the NW displaced is infinitely more important than the bomb – for if we tackle this problem successfully we shall be well on our way to defeating the threat from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. We shall then be in a position to say that yes, we can build a new Pakistan.
So let us cast aside our lethargy. Let us rise above the pettiness of our problems, the narrow spectrum of our politics. Let us give wing to our collective imagination. In the hard school of North Waziristan let our education be the education of Neruda’s chieftain:
He burned in infernal gorges./He was a hunter among cruel birds.
His mantle was stained with victories…/Only then was he worthy of his people.
We are not the chosen of mankind. Alas, there is little in our history to sustain this illusion. But is it written in our stars to be the most hapless of mankind? Perhaps this is an opportunity – the war in the north-west and the refugee crisis – to rise above our circumstances and take our destiny in our own hands. But a sober appraisal is also called for. How do pumpkins broaden the limits of their horizon? That’s a hard one to answer.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com