Tag Archive for ‘Jemima Khan’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Jemima Khan'

Jemima Khan’s broken country

Published

on June 7, 2009

in Conflict, Culture, Pakistan, Society and Terrorism

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Jemima Khan. former wife of Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan with whom she had two sons, in the Sunday Times:

The day I’m leaving for Pakistan a round-robin e-mail pings into my inbox from an address I don’t recognise, Wise Pakistan. The message reads: “It is important you watch this to see what’s coming.”

Ten men are lined up and each one is filmed talking inaudibly to camera. The first man is pinned to the ground by four others. His throat is slit like a goat at Eid and his head held aloft by his hair. The Urdu subtitle reads: “This is what happens to spies.” It’s a Taliban home video – to jaunty music – of serial beheadings. There are plenty of these doing the rounds nowadays.

I’m off to Pakistan for the children’s half-term. They visit their father there every holiday. I lived in Pakistan throughout my twenties. Now it’s a different place – the most dangerous country on Earth, some say – and my friends and family are worried.

For my last four years in Pakistan we lived at the quaintly named House 10, Street 1, E7. Two months ago a bomb exploded 100 yards from the house, killing four people; about 1,500 have been killed this year in terrorist attacks. More:

Mad and bad

Published

asianwindow

on September 7, 2008

in Pakistan

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In The Independent, Jemima Khan reacts to Asif Ali Zardari’s election as Pakistan’s new president, calling him both mad and bad. Dogged by allegations of crime and corruption he could lose power to the army if the people get restive, she warns.

Asif Ali Zardari flanked by his daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa

President Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, formerly known as Mr Ten Per Cent because of kickbacks received during his wife’s time in office, has become one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous men in the subcontinent. Mad and bad. And now omnipotent. He is head of state, supreme commander of the armed forces, has the power to dismiss parliament, appoint the heads of the army and election commission – and, as chairman of the National Command Authority, has the final say in the deployment of nuclear weapons.

Earlier Zardari vowed to relinquish the executive powers that Pervez Musharraf gave to the originally ceremonial presidency. Now he’s evasive. Despite the fact that he has little public support (14 per cent, according to a recent poll), holds no seat in parliament and has no mandate other than his association with the Bhutto name, he had every right to nominate himself or anyone else as President. His party – inherited from his late wife – was democratically elected in February and has the largest number of seats in parliament.

The godfather as president

Zardari is the worst possible choice for Pakistan. Tariq Ali in The Guardian:

Today, he is the second richest person in the country, with estates and bank accounts littered on many continents, including a mansion in Surrey worth several million. Many of Benazir’s inner circle, sidelined by the new boss (Zardari did rub their noses in excrement by having his apolitical sister elected from Larkana, hitherto a pocket borough of the Bhutto family) actively hate him. Benazir’s uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto (head of the clan) has sharply denounced him. Some even encourage the grotesque view that he was in some way responsible for her death. This is foolish. He is only trying to fulfill her legacy. He was certainly charged with ordering the murder of his brother-in-law, Murtaza Bhutto, when Benazir was prime minister, but the case was never tried. Characteristically, one of Zardari’s first acts after his party’s victory in the February polls was to appoint Shoaib Suddle, the senior police officer connected to the Murtaza Bhutto ambush and killing, as the boss of the Federal Intelligence Agency. Loyalty is always repaid in full.

Doting daddy and jihadi

Published

asianwindow

on April 28, 2008

in Conflict and Religion

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Rachel Johnson in the Sunday Times argues that the launch of the Quilliam Foundation last week is good news for the world

The crooning voice is soft. “Maryam, my little sweetheart, I love you lots and lots. You are my little baby with big fat little feet.”

The father of the little girl, cradled in the crook of his right arm, caresses her pudgy limbs as she squirms and babbles in his lap. “Remember me in your dua [prayers]. I will certainly remember you, and, inshallah, things will work out for the best,” he says, voice muffled as he buries his face in her downy hair. “Maryam, be strong, learn to fight – fighting is good. Be Mummy’s best friend. Take care of Mummy – you can both do things together, like fighting and stuff.”

As anyone who saw it on the television news last week will confirm, this diary-room-style home video reworking of the WB Yeats poem A Prayer for My Daughter for our modern era of suicide bombers and Al-Qaeda plots is, quite simply, off the scale.

An extraordinary encounter with Musharraf

Published

asianwindow

on February 18, 2008

in Pakistan

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Jemima Khan is granted a rare interview with Pervez Musharraf. In The Independent, UK:

‘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.

Pakistani elections are excellent value for the spectator. There are the huge, colourful jalsas (rallies) providing free entertainment; the raucous but generally good-humoured demonstrations at which effigy-burning is a staple; the slanderous mud-slinging between candidates who will soon be making expedient last-minute deals with each other; and the endless titillating conspiracy theories.

As the wife and constant Achilles’ heel of a hapless former contestant, I, too, have been in the line of fire. In 2002, I was apparently a Rushdie-loving apostate after admitting I had read his novel Shame. The previous time, I was a Zionist conspirator with a £40m election budget provided by my (half) Jewish father to further the cause of Israel. Yet the fact that Pakistan has become a nation of conspiracy theorists is hardly surprising, given the decades of fraudulent and mendacious politics.

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