| Old sins, Agatha Christie once wrote, have long shadows. And the sins of omission of every Pakistan government since our own independence in 1947 and the facsimile independence we have allowed Azad Kashmir since then are returning to haunt us. |
| Azad Kashmir is as much a misnomer as it has been a political fiction, for it has never been free of Pakistan, nor more than its amputated other half - the state of Jammu & Kashmir - has been a voluntary part of India. The seat of government of our Kashmir was never Muzafarrabad, that nominal capital once perched in the lower mountain ranges of the Himalayas and since flattened by the earthquake of 8th October. |
| Nor was it the sumptuous building that lay hidden from public criticism in the recesses of Islamabad, next to the Federal Ministers' residential enclave, and one that houses the nominal head of the Azad Kashmir government, a cardboard monarch allowed to reign but never permitted to rule. |
| All its policies - whether administrative, socio-economic, political and especially its foreign policy - were controlled from the President/Prime Minister's Office in Islamabad, working in tandem with GHQ/ISI. It is therefore not surprising that the responsibility for the relief effort following the disastrous earthquake should have devolved on the shoulders of the Pakistan Government, rather than on its stringed puppet. [EXTRACT] |
| Published in DAWN 1 Nov. 2005, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
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