Barrister Aitzaz Ahsen has been recognized by the Foreign Policy Journal as the world’s fifth best public intellectual. Here is the link: The World’s Top 20 Public Intellectuals. Read it yourself.
There has surely been criticism too especially because the journal claims that top ten of the world intellectuals are Muslims. Yet on my part I have never doubted Barrister Aitzaz’s intellectual stature. Congratulations sir! We all are proud of you, as a leader and as a personal friend.

Here is his introduction by the journal:
President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, Ahsan has been a vocal opponent of President Pervez Musharraf’s rule. When Musharraf dismissed the head of the Supreme Court in March 2007, it was Ahsan who led the legal challenge to reinstate the chief justice and rallied thousands of lawyers who took to the streets in protest. He was arrested several times during the period of emergency rule last year. Today, he is a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, formerly led by Benazir Bhutto, and one of the country’s most recognizable politicians.

There is no gainsaying that the times are tough. I know that the capital is on the flight, that the changes once promised are not coming by quickly, that the country has to sink even deeper to emerge out of this cesspool. And the fact that everyone from the Persians to the Yanks and Afghans many want Pakistan either colonised or fractured is not going to help either. But remember we are good at surviving if survival you can call it. If you take a peek into our history our very survival, very existence, this national life seem nothing short of a big adventure. But if life is an adventure death was an awfully big adventure for Peter Pan. If we do not fear death or national demise what is it that is bothering us?

I know that we are a vulnerable nation. We are fully aware what chance can do to us. It is not very farfetched to think that just anyone can move in a bid to colonise us. Within our frontiers we are bickering and fighting among ourselves and two seriously blood stained operations already seem never ending. Money is getting cheaper and the daily household stuff very expensive. If only I start narrating my own troubles with my own worldview I assure you, you will get a nervous stomach. But despite all this folks, I must remind you that we badly need some patience and empathy. Is it not enough that we all are alive? Alive in this extreme weather. Should we not be thankful that the younger ones among us are keen to make some difference?

Like we need strategies for life we need some graceful ways to accept loss, defeat and if the moment comes death. In this context graceful defiance is perhaps the only way left. I for one hence liked Sarmad Khurram when he refused to accept the prize and walk out on the US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson. I know many would like to see it as a harsh slap in the face. But I do not. This is the most civilised way of registering your displeasure. There is a reason why the dynamics of a walk out are different from a real slap. Some of our friends in order to enhance their stature in the Western eye forget about that. Still others of the overzealous stock misconstrue that such instead of walking out the young chap should have started a boxing match or worse refused to go back to Harvard.

When I make this subtle difference I am certainly referring to the recently held long march by the lawyers. I was in Multan when I saw the crowds coming together. It was not a pretty sight. The marchers were less in number when they left Multan. But as they marched to Islamabad and the number was snowballed another fear gripped me. What will happen if such numbers just paralyse the state’s functioning? Yet I need not have worried. The show was very well organised. When some benighted ones from among the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) tried to assault the parliament, the veterans from within the lawyers’ movement stepped out to control them. I was much impressed particularly by the conduct of Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retired) Tariq Mehmood and the deposed Chief Justice.

It was clear from that day on that whatever the lawyers want they do not want anarchy. And that the Chief Justice is not keen to get politicised even though the problem of his restoration has become political in nature. Lawyers from the PTI and the JI were later to attack the integrity of Aitzaz Ahsan and Justice Mehmood. It was plain that they were intolerant of any semblance of moderation. The reasons are evident. Both these parties boycotted the elections and since they missed out in an otherwise windfall of representation they want to send the parliament packing so that they can garner further support. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is already being subjected to a subtle character assassination and propaganda. Once the parliament is no more and the PML-N refuses to form another Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) the same machinations will be applied to it too.

If I am saddened it is not because of the troubles this poor nation is facing right now. It is purely because of the utter hypocritical nature of the opportunism of these folks. And above all what really breaks my heart is that liberal men like Imran Khan and Achakzai are also allowing the discredited zealots to use their names to sabotage a system which eventually would bring hope to them too. But despite that I have reasons to be in high spirits and live with optimism. Not all hope is lost. Where is my hat of hope, that you see often with a magician? Wait and see!

Riaz Haq wrote on June 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm:

It is true that Dick Cheney, perhaps understanding his unpopularity and bad health, never showed interest in entering into the presidential race. This decision ensured that his neo-con friends would never get a serious chance of regaining power at the centre. But that is not where the real damage has been done. The radicalisation of politics is not a great issue for in a democracy that is always reversible. The actual threat of such deformation is usually to the state institutions which in nature are already quite hostile namely the bureaucracy and the armed forces. I am sure when the American armed forces have produced men like FDR, Colin Powell and Senator McCain there should be some lofty tradition in place yet soldiers the world over usually are taught to be supremacist both in profession and in nationalism. And that is not all. When you have Fox in media and neo-cons in power it is easy to open up to more radicalisation. It is Pavlovian really. When every kind of commendation and promotion for eight years is possible through reiterating the neo-con values it really takes quite a while to undo the damage. Two examples are already in front of us. One of the Indian establishment under the BJP and the Pakistani establishment under Musharraf.

Those who look at the Congress rule in India cannot understand the paradigm shift that has taken place already owing to the BJP rule. Bureaucracy during those days was stuffed with saffron clad bonkers who further radicalised the establishment. How can we forget that in uncountable public gatherings cow’s urine was served instead of water? Even after Congress rose to power the space it has lost to the extremists like Narendra Modi seems impossible to reclaim even though it has to pose radical contestants.

Likewise in Pakistan, the establishment under Musharraf lost all self-esteem and became almost a vessel of the US belligerence. When we pointed that Pakistan should calculate each and every concession made to the Yanks based on the national interest we were reminded that Washington was our paymaster. The slant we had to endure was almost obnoxious. The same retired army officers who are ready to gouge our eyes for advocating some patience towards Musharraf, used to skin us alive whenever we suggested that the army was enduring huge losses owing to its prolonged stay in politics. Unfortunately today when it is proven the same folks are over the top without paying any heed to what we say. The damage done to our establishment during the last military rule may not pose any serious threat to any of our neighbours but it has ensured a permanent risk to democracy in the country. For almost nine years now supporting Musharraf could take you to any coveted post. That ensured that quite a few servicemen inhaled the official propaganda of their chief being the promised Messiah and then regurgitated it whenever they got a chance. Now apparently the state of things have changed a bit and these men have stopped chanting pro-Musharraf slogans but almost a decade of service is quite a long time and the middle tier of the officers corps has to live with the same biases for its entire service life. The facts that the circumstances are daunting and that the democratic government is being pressured not to make fast paced changes are not helping even a bit.

We then cannot be too hopeful about the change in the US establishment. Those endowed with wisdom who have seen the peril without any spin are already fighting the establishments the world over. Again the fact that except for a lunatic fringe no one is averse to Senator Obama’s election to the coveted throne purely on racial basis shows that there might be some hopeful sparks in the air already. Obama’s own talk is also very impressive and promises hope and change. But I am afraid that whosoever is brought to power in November will have to endure almost an instant propaganda that the People’s Party had to face in Pakistan or the Congress in India. While we can tolerate the neo-cons, the BJP and in our case a dictator for almost a decade we are not ready to give the true standard bearers of democracy, moderation and humanity any chance to survive. Senator Obama my prayers are with you but you need to be please just as good as you seem for otherwise the future of the species hangs truly in balance.

As for the neo-cons I have this to say. It is wrong to consider them a group of psychopathic Dr Strangeloves. They are not mental. They are opportunistic and mean. I don’t know whether this contagious political disease of taking things to the very brink for personal gains has spread from India during the BJP rule or has evolved from Enron. Yet I have no problem in believing that all this global reign of terror is not merely for psychological issues alone. They are the prophets of crony capitalism. They want the world to be restructured so that the business on whose board they sit next may not have any problem in rising to the top. Their purpose of entering Iraq, Afghanistan and quite soon it seems Pakistan is not to crush some rising radical cult but to restructure the entire resource rich region. If you view carefully Osama bin Laden is equally an ambassador of the Saudi BinLadin Group as are Bush and company the standard bearers of the crony capitalism. If you can trust my drift it is Pakistan which should fear a likely invasion from the US in the coming days rather than Iran. They have not forgotten that a poor country like Pakistan equipped with the nukes and a professional standing army can really become a mid range power once it succeeds in establishing trade and strategic ties with the Central Asian Republics. This is where Musharraf and Karzai figure in. Musharraf during his rule paid considerable lip service to the idea but always vetoed anything practical that could give Pakistan some alternative breathing space. Karzai’s presence in Kabul has ensured that the Taliban insurgency never dies down and Pak-Afghan border is never peaceful. While I do not see how Pakistan, an almost slavish US ally, could pose any serious threat to the US had it succeeded in establishing strategic ties with the CARS, I am deeply concerned that the US establishment cannot see the most probable fallout of its blind policies in the coming days. The fear now is that the two band brothers across this border are now ready to stage a drama in the coming days which will lead to the annexation of Pakistan even before November. Before November because it will be far easier for the new administration to tolerate another foreign colony because then it becomes a management problem and not imperialistic. If not removed as soon as possible or his powers truly curtailed our man can prove to be another Gorbachev. You have already been warned.
(Courtesy The Post)