Friday, November 16:

Hello from sunny Quetta, where the Friday sermons echo from loudspeakers atop local mosques and where I am about to make some hummus.

Though the emergency rule imposed by President/General Musharraf on November 10 is still in effect across Pakistan, this frontier-style town has been carrying on mostly as usual.

Jules and I are safe and not much affected by the events that, if you've even just skimmed headlines recently, you know are taking place in Pakistan.  Some of you have written and expressed concern; thankfully we've felt no threat to our personal safety and Jules has been able to carry on with her work largely as normal.

To give you a feel of what is happening here, I thought I'd string together some journal entries and sent emails from the past two weeks.

Saturday 3 November (from journal)

Around 7 pm today, just after getting back from running at the track on the military base, Jules’ phone dinged twice, the sign of a long incoming text message.  Two dings usually means a security announcement of some sort; we looked at each other as if to say, "What now?"

Sure enough, it was a security message.  “State of emergency has been declared in the country.  All staff to stay indoors and watch for local news update.  Mobile networks likely to be closed shortly.  Detailed advisory after President's speech.”

"There go our plans to get out of the house and try the China Café for dinner," I thought.

We immediately turned on the TV to see what was happening.  Dawn TV (a Pakistani English-language news station), however, was not on the air.  Neither was BBC, CNN, Sky News, Fox News, or Al Jazeera.  No, they were all blacked out by the government during these first few crucial hours of the suspension of the constitution.

Thankfully our internet was working fine; we went to the BBC website to get the scoop.

Only PTV, the official Pakistani government news station, was broadcasting.  Around 8 p.m. a newscaster appeared and read out the formal proclamation of emergency while a faxed copy of the document slowly scrolled down the screen.  Priceless.

Around nine o’clock we read the news from the PTV English-language ticker that the chief justice of the Supreme Court had just been replaced.  Opposition are already calling for national strikes and protests.  Perhaps I will change my initial assessment that not much will happen.

Of course, it depends on what one means by “not much.”  There might be plenty of street activity, but will it be localized and in the hundreds or widespread and in the thousands?  Will a few shops simply close for a few hours or will essential systems shut down for days?

The BBC is reporting that Benazir Bhutto (one of Musharraf's main challengers) flew straight back from Dubai on hearing the news of imposition of emergency.  She is landing in Karachi without knowing whether she will be allowed to leave the airplane, be arrested, or be sent back.



Sunday 4 November (from journal)

The sky, when we emerged from our house to go to a local hotel for brunch, was almost completely covered in clouds.  This was a new and welcome development – I get tired of sun all the time.  When we emerged from the brunch at the Serena (all was quiet overnight so we had no worries about going out) it had begun to rain, which made me jubilant.  I danced a bit on the way to the car, drops of water finding the top of my head.

Last night we stayed up waiting for General Musharraf’s speech to be broadcast on PTV.  He did not come on till nearly midnight, then spoke in Urdu while English banners like “Judiciary overstepping its boundaries, Musharraf;”  “Islamabad overrun with terrorism, Musharraf,” ran across the bottom of the screen.

By the time he started speaking in English “to our friends in the Western world” I was falling asleep.  Jules kept listening until, when he started to quote Abraham Lincoln, the power went off and the TV went blank.  Jules looked at me in mute appeal to go tell the guard to start the generator, but by the time I had done so and the generator came on, the moment had passed and the speech was over.



Mon 5 November (from email)

We are enjoying fall here.    After I discovered pumpkins at a local vendor we've had pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin and potato curry, and two carved pumpkins from Halloween on our front stoop.  The applesauce I made from a whole crate of fresh, local apples that someone gave us is just about all gone.

It looks like emergency rule may complicate our lives more than I thought.  I don't think anything huge or dangerous will happen out here in Quetta; they seem more concerned with local problems than with national in this out-of-the-way spot.

But today, for instance, we can't get any fresh veggies because many shops are closed, on strike in protest.  I can't help thinking about how ill-prepared we are to weather any long shop shutdown or respond to any prolonged communication (phone, internet, etc) losses.

Who knows, maybe everything will rebound in a couple of days and emergency rule will be over in a week, or maybe things will spiral downward yet from here.  Will the nation heel over like a chastened child under the strict discipline of the general, or will thousands take to the streets in defiance of the no-gatherings-over-three-people order?  Will the lawyers, who have lately been very vocal in their opposition to Musharraf, band together again and successfully lead mass protests? I don't really want the nation to grovel in chastened obedience, being for democracy and all, but that might honestly be the most stable future scenario.  Only time will tell.

Just hope I can get some vegetables tomorrow.

And we want our BBC and CNN not to be blacked out any more!



Tuesday 6 November (from journal)  

The papers here are declaring that the current emergency rule is not much different from martial law and calling it a “second coup” with General Musharraf taking over the government from President Musharraf.

Presently Musharraf is both President and Chief of the Army.  He has been promising for months that he will "doff" his army uniform and shun the vestiges of military dictatorship for a democratic stint as simply the president.  That is looking less and less likely now.

Here's a small gem from an article in The New York Times, by Jane Perlez and David Rhode, published November 6, 2007:

"In Multan, a city in the same province, Punjab, as Lahore, two new judges who had taken the oath of office under the emergency rule were forced to leave the courtroom by hundreds of angry lawyers.

'We threatened them, saying: "You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath; if you don’t go we will throw eggs at you." They left,' said a lawyer from Multan, Riaz Gilani."

Does throwing eggs count as nonviolent protest?

Also, in a November 7, 2007 Washington Post op-ed titled "In Pakistan, Echoes of Iran," a few words of wisdom from writer David Ignatius:

“The abiding truth, about Iran then and Pakistan now, is that outsiders don't understand the forces at work in these societies well enough to try to manipulate events. The disaster of Iran happened partly because of American meddling -- in installing the shah in the first place and then enabling his autocratic rule. Pakistan, too, has suffered over the years from too much U.S. intervention.

"Pakistanis are in the streets this week protesting Musharraf's gross assault on democracy. I hope they succeed in creating a Pakistan that is more free and democratic. I pray that the reformers can work with the Pakistani military to suppress al-Qaeda and Taliban movements that would destroy any semblance of democracy in that country.

"But changing Pakistan is a job for Pakistanis, and history suggests that the more we meddle, the more likely we are to get things wrong.”

Doesn't mean we can't try to do good things for the people of Pakistan and help point the country in a positive direction, but he is absolutely dead on about foreigners not understanding other countries very much at all.  In my opinion, we'd better do more of the helping-hand reaching out and less of the coercive diplomacy and underground manipulation that has gotten us in trouble down the road time and time again.



Tuesday 6 November (from email)

Wanted to let you know that Jules and I are safe, in case you've seen the news.  And the news is that on Saturday evening General Musharraf, who is both President and chief of the army, declared emergency rule throughout Pakistan, basically suspending the constitution in a move that is just short of imposing martial law.

He is also trying to rig the supreme court, who were rumored to be about to rule against him in a crucial case challenging his eligibility for a third presidential term, in his favor.  News channels have been taken off the air.  Lawyers and others have been protesting in favor of reestablishing the constitution, putting ousted judges back on the bench, and completing the promised transition to full democracy.  These protests have been met with supressive force and thousands of arrests.

Thankfully most of the action has taken place in the major cities of Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi, and little is different about daily life here in Quetta.  Other than the extra police and army troops deployed around the city and the armored personnel carrier in front of the Balochistan Assembly building, of course.  It's like being in, say, El Paso if something were going down in DC - there'd be a reaction but a lot of people just wouldn't care that much and daily life would mostly continue.

Jules' work day yesterday was pretty normal, she said, full of the usual office concerns and not much affected by the emergency.  I didn't go out of the house on my own yesterday and probably won't today, which is actually fairly normal.  We did go out in our green pickup truck to the market to stock up on a few things.  If nothing major happens this week in the city, and I don't think it will, I'll return to normal patterns next week.

I'm pretty optimistic that we'll be able to stay in Quetta and that Jules' work will continue to go on as normal.  The three things that could stop that and make us hole up, as I think of it, would be: a government crackdown all over the country that shutters nearly everyone indoors; so much tough rhetoric from the US that the Pakistan government decides to kick out all foreign NGO's in reaction; militants seizing this unstable time to get even more extreme and start expanding their activities outside of the tribal areas and/or start threatening foreigners.

When emergency rule first happened I was optimistic of the possibility of it all blowing over in a week or two.  The recent "preventative arrest" of opposition members, however, along with the arrest of anyone who even thinks about protesting, as well as the sacking of lots of judges and attempts to replace them with more compliant judicial appointees, all this I see as much more sinister and an indication of the seriousness of the current crisis.

All my bets are off now - it could be over quickly or it could drag on for forever, and I won't hazard a guess as to which, too many factors to consider.  Though I can tell you with certainty that the saying "never a dull moment" will continue to apply.

The military has recently been moving against militants in the Waziristan and Swat areas.  This is cause for concern in the northern parts of the country, but we are well out of the way of that conflict now.  Any strife that comes near to us continues to be political and internal with no violence directed against foreigners.  In this we feel safe.

One of our friends recently summed up the warnings given to us by the US embassy and others as "Avoid wrong place, wrong time."  Random crap can happen to one just as well in Washington DC or elsewhere as in Pakistan, so I feel no need to fear.

decoration from a Quetta tuk-tuk (motor rickshaw) 

Thursday 8 November (from email)

Was reflecting yesterday on how different it is to be in a foreign country while things like this are happening.  If it was the US I'd obviously be outraged and feel compelled to respond in some way.  Here my first instinct is to keep my head down and avoid becoming a target of any sort.

Still, at some point I realized, hmm, military dictator, suspension of human rights, arrests of anyone who opposes - I'm living right in the middle of one of those bad political situations that we read about in the States and think, "How awful!"  But when you are so close to it it's just what happens, a part of the fabric of daily life almost, and it doesn't seem like such a big deal.

Tomorrow is a Friday, the holy day and usual day for protests.  It is also a holiday in celebration of Pakistan's national poet.  We'll stay inside and see what happens.  'Course all the news channels are still blacked out, so we pray our internet keeps working to get news...



Monday 12 November (from email)

Quetta is in Balochistan Province which is pretty independent from the rest of the country, so there's not been a whole lot of reaction here to the recent well-publicized political moves in Islamabad.  In fact they might send the ousted chief judge here because it's so out of the way.

The national strife has actually meant relative quiet in this city - there's usually an active Balochi independence movement that spawns some violent local attacks, but I think they are delighted now to see the rest of the country in upheaval and so they don't feel like they have to stir things up as much.

Hosted our first party last night - very successful.  There is so little to do in Quetta that all ten expats we know and contacted not only showed up but came on time.

Expanded our Quetta horizons a little this weekend with an exploration of a nearby park that has a few carnival-type rides (working bumper cars!) and a visit to a valley and lake outside of town.  The valley is pretty cool, irrigated so it is probably the greenest place around (though still pretty dry).  A little fall color there, some paltry yellow on a few poplars and around the edges of scraggly orchards.  Mostly it was just nice to see some landscape outside of the city proper.  And the lake is nice.  It's in a secure area and you can take what must be a couple-mile walk around it, so that's good news for our pent-up feet.

And now we're back to Friday, November 16, with me wishing I could understand what the mullahs are preaching about from their local loudspeakers.

The TV news channels came back on yesterday, so we can watch BBC and CNN to our heart's content.  They didn't come back on soon enough, though, to keep us from catching a pretty anti-American show on the official PTV station.  It was titled "America Breathing Down On Our Neck."  The host kept decrying "unprecedented interference" into Pakistani politics from the US and other Western countries.  Though I might agree with some of the sentiment, it was hilariously expressed and made Jules and I laugh.

Another facet of this emergency rule that I have not talked about yet is the presence of Benazir Bhutto.  She is a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile.  Her return to Pakistan a month ago has put pressure on President Musharraf and helped galvanize popular opposition to his rule.  She has tried to lead several large protests since imposition of emergency, but the government has each time prevented her from even leaving her house.  Her statements as the most visible and Western-savvy opposition leader have been making national and international news on a regular basis.

Quetta has stayed relatively quiet, though this past week saw a small resumption of the local violence that is usually motivated by tribal/familial feuds or the Balochi independence movement.  Militant activity in the northern district of Swat also continues to be a concern.  There are reports that a few foreign fighters, combined with locals loyal to conservative leader Maulana Fazlullah, have taken over several towns.  Despite army presence they seem to be expanding their area of operations.  This week they came close enough to the northern town of Besham, where Jules' organization maintains an office, that staff was evacuated to a safer locale.  Hopefully things will settle down there in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile we are entertaining a few work guests, getting some of my photos printed to hang on the still-bare house walls, and eating lots of cheese, a can't-get-it-in-Quetta luxury good that our visitors brought from Islamabad.

Ok, gotta run make that hummus!