George,

It's difficult for me to make a proper observation of the life and ways of Pakistan; I've been here all of two weeks, I'm staying in a luxury hotel, and it's in Islamabad, a made-for-government city that doesn't look a thing like real Pakistan. But here are some impressions.

Islamabad, Pakistan
April 1, 2007

It's Mohammed's birthday. It's also his death day. And it's Sunday which, unlike in some other Islamic countries, is the normal day off from the week's work here. This seems like bad planning all the way around. We Americans would make sure that we got one day off from work to celebrate our primary religious leader's birth, and another to celebrate his death, and if possible we would make them fall on Mondays to ensure three-day weekends. But alas, Pakistanis do not plan their holidays around their work schedule - and I imagine they would see this as yet another example of Western cultural decadence. (Before continuing, I must apologize for any blasphemy -- of Muslims or Christians -- that may be found in what is written above, or what is to come. I know I have at least offended by not speaking of the great prophet in the required manner, which is: "Mohammed (peace be upon him)" - but sometimes I just can't help my iconoclasm.) Anyway, Mohammed did meet life and death on the same calendar day, so Muslims celebrate in the morning and mourn in the afternoon.

I had dinner tonight in a Chinese restaurant in the middle of one of several "supermarkets" that dot the city. These are basically outdoor shopping malls that take up a block or more and double as night spots, especially for younger folk. No bars of course (though I ordered "strong tea" at the restaurant, which got me a teapot full of beer) but still a lot of people just hanging out and having a good time. I was outside the restaurant checking out the scene when all of a sudden there appeared about 100 young men wearing traditional robes and carrying bamboo poles about 6 feet long. They were chanting something and marching through the middle of the supermarket. They didn't look like my kind of guys; I ducked into the shadows and then headed out of there.

Who were they? I don't know for sure, but they were likely some version of the self-appointed vice vigilantes that have recently surfaced here. Newspapers have now reported that these roving bands have been going in to markets and forcing CD stores to shut their doors - music, whether Western or Pakistani, being anathema to their version of Islam. Just last week, baton-wielding teenage girls from a local fundamentalist madrassah attacked a woman they claimed was running a brothel. They beat her, kidnapped her and her child, held them hostage for a couple days, and released them only when the woman read a statement apologizing for her various sins, real or imagined. I don't know for sure what John Q. Public thinks of this incident, but the local English language newspapers were livid. The tenor of their response was "we might expect this sort of thing out in the tribal areas (their version of the Bible Belt), but not in sophisticated downtown Islamabad!" Mostly the papers were criticizing the local authorities - and by extension the federal government - for their inaction toward this sort of religious hooliganism, known in some corners as the "talibanization" of Pakistan.

But the federal government and its leader President/General Musharraf have a lot of other things to worry about these days. Right now the chief issue is Musharraf's suspension last month of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for supposed malfeasance in office. The press went nuts over this seemingly dictatorial action; the opposition party called for Musharraf's resignation (which they routinely do in response to nearly anything he does), and the country's lawyers started protest demonstrations, wherein several of them got beaten up by the police.

Aside from the "beaten up" part, there's something slightly comical about seeing hundreds of men in dark pin-stripe suits picketing and marching. The charges leading to the Chief Justice's suspension center around allegations of nepotism (well-placed phone calls to get his kid in the right college) and misuse of public funds (a few extra government-purchased cars in his driveway). They may be true, but they seem to me to fall a bit short of impeachable offenses - let's call them "nepotism lite." The lawyers/opposition claim that it's Musharaff's attempt to muzzle an increasingly independent court.

April 4, 2007

Yesterday there were major demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court in support of the Chief Justice. Hundreds of police were guarding, and sometimes blocking, all roads leading to the Court. I am told there were several thousand protesters (other than passing through the few streets which were open on my way to work, I kept clear of the area), but things stayed fairly peaceful. Some of the government's lawyers - those prosecuting the Chief Justice - got roughed up a bit upon leaving the court by the protesting lawyers. Ah, what a sight - lawyers dukeing it out. But on the whole this "crisis" remains just below the boiling point.

Not so the national reaction to Pakistan's loss in the first round of the World Cup Cricket Tournament. Cricket is truly a national obsession here, and people don't take kindly to a loss to a clearly inferior team. When a US team loses a big game on the road, the team is usually quietly but warmly welcomed home, or at worst there's no welcome at all. But when the cricket team arrived at Karachi airport, they were greeted by hundreds of fans throwing things at them and yelling at them to get lost. Talk about being kicked when you're down! And then of course there's the little matter of the coach - found strangled in his Jamaica hotel room the morning after the big loss. Speculation runs rampant as to what that was all about. I do feel sorry for the citizenry; they were revved up for a full month's cricket madness and now have nothing to look forward to, except lawyers dukeing it out. (My hotel's restaurant had installed one of those mega-plasma TV's and had decorated it with cricket uniforms, bats, balls, etc. It all quietly disappeared a few days after the big loss, though the World Cup continues on.)

But despite the country's collective depression over cricket, agitation over the Supreme Court justice, and revulsion (at least much of the citizenry) over the roving vice squads, there seem to be some good things happening. Most notably, we have a new series of rulings by the Council of Islamic Ideology. Now I confess to not knowing who this group is, but it seems to be sort of a Vatican for Pakistani Islam and they forward their decisions (rulings?) to the President. And apparently, based on their recent decisions, they represent a more moderate view of the Koran than their Taliban brethren. More notable decisions this week (verbatim from the press, except for my italicized commentary):

"Rape and adultery/consensual sex are two separate crimes. [Maybe this one was prompted by the Duke lacrosse boys.] A victim of rape should not be required to produce four witnesses to file a complaint. In cases of rape, the affected woman should be the complainant, not the defendant. [This is quite a big breakthrough.] The state should be bound to investigate, arrest the alleged rapist and punish him if the crime is proven. [This actually seems to move beyond the views of some US southern judges.]

"The death sentence is permissible only for the killing of a human being or in extreme cases of "fasad fil arz" [hard to find a definition for this, but it's something like "anarchy"]. It is clearly stated in the Quran that the death sentence is unworkable, except in the above cases. The Council also stated that terrorism is "fasad fil arz." And finally,

"The maximum penalty for adultery/consensual sex is 100 lashes and the amputation of hands, respectively." [For those friends hoping that I might be having a "really good time" here….sorry, I still have both my hands.]

All this gets me back to President/General Musharaff. Between the business forces looking for Westernized economic and cultural progress; the Taliban on the Afghan border; the vigilantes springing up in the cities; the Supreme Court dust-up; the US pressure to destroy the terrorists in the hills; and the cricket disasters, this man -- whether you love him or hate him -- is really walking a political tightrope. And his country watches to see if, or when, he'll make a fatal slip.

Jim Heilman (Electronic mail, April 4, 2007)