The flooding in Pakistan this July has created a situation that still perplexes the government and the NGOs engaged in helping millions of displaced people. Eight weeks on, the emergency is far from over and people in Sindh still need to be airlifted to safe places where they can get food and shelter.

“The monsoon rains may be over, but the floods are not,” says Andro Shilakadze, head of the local office of Unicef. “And once the floods are over, we must stress that the most dangerous phase of this emergency is yet to come. We must all work together in a concerted manner to avert a health crisis, prevent further malnutrition, and combat the effects of food shortages.”

After initially criticising the NGOs for what the prime minister called their extravagant overheads, it seems now the government has realised the importance of working with them closely. The opposition’s rhetoric about imposing regulations on the working of the NGOs has died down as well.

The unfolding disaster and rapidly approaching winter present new challenges which call for sharing responsibilities and garnering as much help as possible. The fate of at least 10 million people, still without shelter after displacement, hangs the in balance, for they have neither tents nor warm clothes nor sufficient food and water.

Keeping these challenges in mind the UN revised its call for aid, estimating that it would need more than $2bn over the course of a year. So far contributions have been received for $615m – 31 percent of what is required – and pledges for a further $52.6m.

Many believe the uncertain political situation in the country is hampering the flow of aid, forcing aid organisations to revise their strategies and the government to abandon its commitments. In southern Punjab, the government backed out of an agreement to provide farmers with seed to cultivate their land after floods washed away their crops.

Stacey Winston, information officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha) believes the country’s political woes may not be responsible for the slow pace of aid: “It is the slow onset of disaster, which is totally different from the 2005 earthquake and tsunami. Disasters which unfold quickly and where the death toll is higher, like the one in Haiti, click with the media, which in turn helps generate funds and support through its coverage.”

She says that Unocha was coordinating with 156 national and international NGOs to help mitigate the suffering of the people, besides maintaining liaisons with the National Disaster Management Authority. The authority, formed after the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, provides logistics to the UN and helps avoid duplication of relief work.

A survey of relief work in far flung areas reveals that even if duplication is avoided, problems could still arrive when local NGOs and district administration join hands in relief activities. Hyat Fayyaz of the Participatory Social Network, a local NGO working in Layyah district in Punjab, says that even cooking and distributing food at the camps for the displaced became a problem when the district government appointed a local official to streamline the process.

Fayyaz also worries about the looting of relief goods by mobs and their siphoning off to political allies. “That’s where you need to have community networks on the pattern of what we have in Gilgit-Baltistan,” says Fazl Karim, a social worker associated with the Aga Khan Foundation.

Karim says they were able to resolve the problem of distribution on political grounds when the aid agencies coordinated with the Aga Khan Development Network, an umbrella organisation that oversees local support organisations at the union council level.

Karen Brown, an international trustee with ActionAid, says they could improve relief work by developing community networks and creating a board of trustees in Pakistan along the lines seen in India. She acknowledges that with wider networks of private organisations and local NGOs comes the need for ensuring transparency and accountability.

She says that the way to ensure transparency is to introduce downward accountability among local partners and empower them to have a say in decision-making. ActionAid is busy raising more funds for the flood hit people of Pakistan, especially with winter approaching.

But with the focus currently on relief, the task of rehabilitating 20.25 million people and rebuilding 1.9 million homes in an area larger than England could prove insurmountable.

I’ve had extraordinary access to the inner workings of many organisations and how they handle multiple obstacles that would astound those of us used to the working environments and structures in the UK.

For example, art tutors organising end of year degree shows have to manage – to put it delicately – unwanted active input from political and religious organisations.

Later, I sat in on a private meeting of members of the Ahmadi community. In the wake of the recent horrific attacks in Lahore, the experience was one of the most upsetting I have ever had. This is one of the great human rights issues in Pakistan, that of equal rights for all minorities, groups and traditions.

So what have I learned so far? There is a Pakistan we rarely see in our wall-to-wall blanket coverage of the country, a relentless negative narrative involving radicalised madrasas, conflict, corruption and political turmoil. This is true – but it is not the only Pakistan.

There is the Pakistan that is the Indus Valley art and architecture school, a flourishing institution producing work of the highest quality. I spent a morning there with Professor Adeela Suleman. The work and commitment of the staff and students is of the highest standard, galvanised and informed by its environment which is reflected in work of great depth and substance. Picasso would have loved working in Pakistan.

Then there are the journalists at Dawn and their peers at The Herald, The News and many other independent media, whose in-depth knowledge and high quality reportage of the region is brilliant, a crucial balance to the reductionist and intolerant voices of some in the West who see Pakistan through a myopic anti-Muslim agenda, and of course the right wing elements in Pakistan.

There are the welfare organisations of Pakistan, miracles of aptitude, perseverance and the decency of the human spirit and traditions of this region. Two of the finest and largest examples are the Edhi Foundation and the Citizens Foundation. There are countless localised welfare groups as well.

There is also real urgency in the work of the human rights and social activists here, openly challenging the political elites and establishments in this country, from the state within a state that is the Pakistani military, to the failure of power suppliers to keep the lights on and tackle corruption.

Then there is the big issue itself – India. In Pakistan there is hope that imminent peace talks could herald a thawing in the relentless cold war that has existed between the nations since 1947 and all the conflict and hurt that came with it.

Older, wiser heads counsel that we’ve been here before, with neither country reaching out to make the crucial first step.

One does not need to study Pakistan long or know it in any depth to realise that there is a huge need for reconciliation with India and a lot of unfinished business for both sides. Both sides must acknowledge the mutual hurt that still exists from the bloodshed of partition, and accept the shared culture, soil, peoples and history of the huge land mass and civilisations that make up India and Pakistan.

I spoke to a retired minister of defence who acknowledged that the majority in both establishments want this; it is how they get there that is fraught, given the above and of course the issue of Kashmir. This region needs as much attention as Israel and Palestine. The solution to Afghanistan is in large part also to be found here.

The more I speak to people here, the more I feel this issue is the one that needs focus and effort from all those who have a concern for Pakistan’s people and future as well as the current instability. Fix one and the other can also be resolved, inshallah.

Published on 16th July 2010

The Commission report blames the Musharraf government for Benazir's murder, underlining several flaws, ranging from inadequate security on the day of the incident to a comprehensive, post-assassination plan to spoil vital evidence.

On two occasions Bhutto, forewarned by a friendly country of the perils of returning home, stated in her book that people in the inner circle of Musharraf’s government posed a threat to her life.

Where she made no bones about her meetings with Musharraf during the negotiations preceding her return, she also provided details of the strange occurrences swirling around the caravan carrying her from the Quaid-i-Azam Airport in Karachi.

She wrote a letter to Musharraf with the names and even addresses of the potential plotters and assassins. Some of the details of the letter were published in daily newspaper Dawn.

She believed the deliberate power outages on the route of the caravan were an attempt to blindside the security for the launch of a deadly attack. And then the attack did occur, maiming innocent people and young men, who had formed a human chain around the armoured truck. The friendly country’s warnings turned out to be true.

Later, in Rawalpindi, Bhutto was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack. The material in her book and later the hosing down of the scene of her assassination formed sufficient basis for initiating an investigation to catch the killers.

But for some reason it was not done until the government requested the UN Commission to initiate a probe.

The commission’s mandate had been to ascertain the facts and circumstances leading to her assassination, but it did underline certain irregularities which could easily have been spotted by an investigator at home.

Why then bring in the commission? One obvious reason had been to create a justification for launching an investigation to offset the influence of the ‘establishment’, which the UN commission refers to in its report.

Pakistanis know the establishment as a mix of intelligence agencies, military officials and bureaucracy - the elite that rules the country from the front after grabbing power, and never desists from hatching conspiracies against democracy to return from the dark.

As soon as the report came out, columnists started interpreting it way beyond its context. Different articles appearing in newspapers stretched their imagination to the point of absurdity in an attempt to prove their diction and outsmart Sherlock Holmes.

From declaring it an attempt to politicise the establishment as a hideous pack of conspirators to a derision of the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, the report has become a basis for churning out theories.

The report says what it says. It says the security at the venue was lax and deliberate attempts were made to remove the killers’ trail. It says even those within Bhutto’s party acted suspiciously.

It is a fact that her party members - Babar Awan, Rehman Malik and Farhatullah Babar - left the venue before the attack on the black Mercedes, which was following the former premier’s vehicle as an alternative in case of emergency. Mr Awan and Mr Malik are now federal ministers while Mr Babar serves as the spokesman of President Asif Ali Zardari.

The very fact they were not investigated makes their role even more suspicious. Mr Malik, now Interior Minister, was tasked with supervising the security of the former premier killed in cold blood.

The series of ‘mistakes’ in the whole assassination affair serves like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which could be put together almost effortlessly. The investigation, lodged after the commission report noted the hosing down of the scene of the assassination, is continuing with intriguing twists.

A senior police official, Saud Aziz, who was responsible for collecting evidence from the crime scene after sealing it off, admitted during the investigation that he ordered his sub-ordinates to scrub the spot clean.

He denied allegations that a senior military official, Maj General Nadeem Ijaz, ordered him to hose down the crime scene. Instead, he said his act of sending the evidence down the drain was an error of judgment, arising from the need to control the crowd. What a classic excuse!

Police officials are trained to preserve evidence, not waste it. Strip the case of the follies and excuses and you have the killers.

The stage is set for another round of confrontation between parliament and the judiciary over the constitutionality of the newly-passed 18th Amendment.

While parliament is ecstatic over the changes it made, the Supreme Court Bar Association and a group of lawyers are visibly upset over certain changes in the amendment.

Parliament says it made the amendments to the constitution because it wanted to purge the document of changes introduced by Pervez Musharraf while president.

However, at least three petitions have been moved in the Supreme Court to declare amendments on the appointment of judges unconstitutional.

Debate over the changes, especially those regarding judicial appointments, has polarised the lawyers who once united to campaign for the restoration of the judges deposed by former president Musharraf.

The arguments coming from both sides suggest that tensions will mount once more after the judges take up the petitions for hearing.

The last tug-of-war between the Supreme Court and the government, over the appointments of judges, came to an end after Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani made a surprise appearance at a farewell reception that Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry hosted for a retired judge.

The unexpected and surprising visit helped cool the rising temperature of the debate, with the chief justice reciprocating by accepting the prime minister’s invitation to meet him and discuss the issue.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a stalwart of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) who spearheaded the movement for the restoration of the judiciary, has said the Supreme Court would stir disaster if it declared the amendments to be unconstitutional.

Ahsan believes the judicial commission, which comprises the attorney general, the law minister, a lawyer and three judges as its members, would not dominate the chief justice’s recommendations for appointment of judges.

Ahsan, who may be seen as a traitor by his colleagues campaigning against the amendments, does have a point – after all, it is parliament which amends the constitution and lay down procedures. Why and how do you challenge what parliament decides?

Lawyers opposing the move say the amendment negates the basic structure of the constitution, which cannot be interfered with at any cost.

They argue that including the attorney general and the law minister in the judicial commission will allow the executive to exert undue influence in appointing judges.

The constitution of Pakistan speaks about the separation of powers, allowing every state institution to function independently and preventing them interfering in each other’s affairs.

The court should keep in mind parliament’s power to make amendments when deciding the petitions. A confrontation between judiciary and the parliament is likely to spell disaster for the state, which is already staggering under militancy and a shattered economy.

The court, following its restoration, has been seen to have exerted its authority in an unprecedented manner. It is in a state of finding its functions afresh after the people brought the judges, deposed by Musharraf, back to their duties.

Perhaps the judges are still adjusting to their new role and need time to realise they too do not enjoy unfettered powers.

The talk about who is supreme and who is not should be brought to an end with a realisation that the constitution, prescribing roles for every organ of the state, is supreme and should be adhered to in letter and spirit – and that parliament is sovereign and exercises its authority in the name of the people of Pakistan.

If parliament falters, the people will take care of it when they exercise their right to vote.

For some, politics may be like a game of chess that requires time, focus and a certain level of devotion.

But in Pakistan it is seen more like theatre, where action, comedy and tragedy are rolled into one for everyone to watch for free – though there are hidden costs.

If you have any doubts, please consider the popularity of shows on news channels: the most watched are the ones in which comedians mimic politicians and explore the hollowness of their statements. People love it. They love it because the performances reflect the personalities.

Who is to blame for this tragicomedy? I guess the responsibility lies with the politicians, who not only scheme and hatch conspiracies against each other, but also give people a chance to laugh at them.

They should realise it is about time they shunned making empty promises, opposing for the sake of bargaining, and deliberately stirring up a fuss to take people’s attention away from issues of greater significance.

One current example of this wanton politics can be seen in the protests over the renaming of one of the provinces of Pakistan. At least eight people have been killed and several dozens injured in the clashes, which erupted after the National Assembly passed a bill to rename the province.

What does this exercise about changing the province’s name mean? You ask this question and you get people staring back at you with blank faces.

The main opposition leader, Mian Nawaz Sharif, who heads the PML-N, recently opposed renaming Sarhad (also known as North West Frontier Province) to Pakhtoonkhwa.

Although Sharif’s party had been part of the parliamentary committee, hashing out details to rename the province and to propose other constitutional amendments, he chose to bypass the process agreed upon to settle disagreements between parties on the committee.

Sharif’s opposition was seen as a deliberate attempt to sabotage the process of purging the constitution of changes made by former dictators. When people could not understand what the disagreement was about, they conjectured that Sharif does not want President Asif Ali Zardari to take credit for removing the changes that Pakistan’s dictators introduced.

As well as the other parties on the parliamentary committee, the media lashed out at him for attempting to forestall the process of making amendments. Baffled by the reaction, Sharif held three press conferences in three days in an attempt to clear his position, but no one could really make out his rationale.

Finally, the ANP – the largest party in the NWFP – had to amend the proposed name for the province from ‘Pakhtoonkhwa’ to ‘Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’ after holding negotiations with Sharif. The word is that Sharif agreed to the amended name after ANP agreed to help him become prime minister for the third time at some point in the future.

But now other politicians hailing from the NWFP have also started expressing reservations about the new name on the pretext that ‘Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’ denies the presence of ethnic identities other than the dominant Pakhtoons. The voices of disagreement turn into dissent, which sparks street protests in Abbottabad and elsewhere.

But the idea of renaming the province carries little significance in the face of issues like excruciatingly long absences of electricity, unabated price hikes, devastating militancy and the sinking levels of water reservoirs in the country.

Karachi’s reputation as a relatively safe city was shattered again as terrorists detonated two bombs and wreaked havoc on the conclusion of Ashura, a religious event observed by the Shias. A little over a month back another Ashura procession was bombed in the same city in an apparent attempt to fan sectarian violence.

The merchants of death took 25 lives in the latest bombings, which coincided not only with Ashura but also the brutal killings of political workers, mainly from the MQM and PPP parties. Those behind the bombings obviously wanted to increase the chaos at a time when politicians had been breathing fire against each other over their respective workers’ killings.

The politicians from the ruling PPP party, appearing on television screens soon after the blasts, were quick to accuse the Taliban of executing the bombings, although the police were yet to cast suspicion on any group. The possibility Taliban involvement in the attacks should not be ruled out, but casting aside the possibility of someone else’s hand in the terror attacks could be a fatal mistake.

There are patterns behind bombings in different parts of the country. In Rawalpindi, attacks were carried out at the General Headquarters and inside a mosque where army officials prayed regularly. In conflict zones, falling under FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and the NWFP (North West Frontier Province), suicide hits are carried out on security personnel deployed at various checkpoints. Such attacks reflect the intentions of the attackers: kill the security personnel or be killed.

In other attacks, like those carried out in the busy markets of Peshawar, men, women and children were killed in their hundreds. Some of these attacks were the result of planted bombs and inflicted death upon unsuspecting civilians on a large scale.

One can draw a clear distinction between the two sets of bombings: one, intended to scare the security forces; the other, aimed at causing fear among the civilians. But in both the cases, business activity had been a natural victim irrespective of the target.

It is about time the law-enforcement agencies investigate the roots of every terrorist act and their local and foreign links. Unless the groups behind every attack are identified and their links established, it will be impossible for the government to wipe out terror and reactivate business activity.

The surge of violence, coupled with the bombings in Karachi, the financial hub of the country, should be seen both with and without the ongoing spate of terrorism in the country. Whoever is responsible should be made public and punished.

The revelation by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates that notorious security firm Blackwater, now known as Xe, is operating in Pakistan did more harm to the sitting government than anything else. The media zeroed in on his admission and beamed across the country the previous statements of US and Pakistani officials denying Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan.

The admission dealt a heavy blow to a government already reeling from the Supreme Court’s verdict that restored corruption cases against the president and some of his close confidantes. The decaying popularity of the government has now sunk to a new low.

The media accused Gates of creating more problems for Pakistan after arriving here from India, instead of bridging the widening gulf between the two partitioned neighbours. Why do a u-turn and send your ally in the war on terror hurtling off a slippery road?

Is it possible that Gates did not know how sensitive the issue of Blackwater is for the Pakistani media, people and government? Is there any chance that the criticism the private security firm drew because of its role in Iraq had eluded him?

The stories in the US media about the presence of Blackwater and the stance of the US and the Pakistani governments over the issue are as clear as daylight. Besides, it is hard to swallow that neither Gates nor the officials, who must have briefed him before his visit to the frontline state, knew that the US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already denied the firm’s presence.

It is important to know what truth the officials had been trying to conceal in their lies about Blackwater’s role in Pakistan. One reason is the notoriety the firm earned during its stay in Iraq, where it was tasked with providing CIA officials with security in their special operations to pick up terror suspects. According to the US media, the firm, which employs former US special forces personnel, changed its role from providing security to executing complex operations.

Later, in an incident widely publicised in local and international media, Blackwater guards were accused of killing Iraqis without any reason. Their exoneration in a US court on account of inadmissible evidence has raised a furore in Iraq, with the Iraqi government pledging to try them at home.

In Pakistan, people generally believe the firm is engaged in clandestine operations to destabilise the country, while others believe its presence intrudes on the sovereignty of the country, already under fire from US drone attacks.

Gates’ statement has revealed what the government had been trying to brush under the carpet for a long time. It will be difficult now for the government not to ask the US to pull Blackwater out of Pakistan, or else it will dip further into the mess it is finding itself in at home.

Slowly, the trend of diplomacy seems to be setting in on this "War on Terror", moving away from the gruesome Bush Doctrine that said so clearly "we don't negotiate with terrorists". Not only has the Obama Administration changed the original mission of eradicating all "Talibanised" elements, it seems to have instructed its Af and Pak counterparts to do the same.

This recent report in Dawn is curious albeit eyecatching. The headline states, 'Pakistan reaching out to "all levels" of Afghan Taliban', to which my initial reaction was, "What! Even the Grand Master Jedi and the members of the Jedi Council!?" What about the third degree Black Belts? And those Illuminati Ninja Talibans, those higher ranks that must only be spoken to without making eye-contact lest they pluck your reconciliatory eyeballs right out of your skull in one swift move.

Indeed, talking to all levels can be a tricky and testing ordeal. These higher ranks not only become more mystical and enchanting, but also more illusive; they tend to disappear in a flash, and reappear as a group of Klingons in a 60s Star Trek transporter to have a negotiation-style chit-chat with Captain Kirk, the Starfleet Command of the United Federation of Planets. I wonder if these talks also allow access to the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi? Perhaps the "deeply spiritual" Bajorans of Planet Bajor are not included in the Afghan Taliban categorisation. Perhaps such a mediation would only be enabled through The Oracle.

And how exactly does one go about negotiating with the higher orders of the Master of Karate Black Belt Illuminati Taliban? Or does one have to go through the Jedi Council's high jigra to gain access to this illusive brand of high ranking Afghan Taliban? Clearly you can't just pick up the phone and call them up, or look them up in the Yellow Pages listed under "illusive higher-order cult". I don't know, maybe they're on Skype? Heck, if I was involved in the government's plan to reach out to "all levels" of Taliban, I wouldn't know where to begin looking. Are they perhaps situated on the Dark Side of the Force? Is that how the Af-Pak border is divided? Does that mean the Pak side is the Light Side of the Force? On which side are the deadly Sith located?

And more importantly what about the high order of the Quetta Shura? Which side of the force are they on? Are they in fact Dark elements on the Light Side of the Force? This complicates things immensely for the Pak administration; not only do they have to invent creative ways of dealing with complex ranks of ballet dancing, ninjitsu wielding, space-time warping Talibans, now they have to search far and near to discriminate between Af-Talibans and Pak-Talibans on either side of the Force.

According to the Dawn report, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggests that Af-Taliban are using the Pak side "northwestern border enclaves" for "orchestrating an intensified insurgency in Afghanistan". The situation looks like it's only going to get more and more complicated. Maybe the government should set up a Taliban hotline with an easy UAN Number, where the Talibans can call in and negotiate. A computerised voice should say:

If you are an Afghan Taliban and would like to negotiate with the government, dial 1,
If you are a Pakistani Taliban and have information on Afghan Talibans in Pakistan dial 2,
If you are a Taliban and are unsure whether you're Pak or Afghan, dial 3,If you would like to hear this recording in a range of other languages including Klingon and Dari, then stay on the line.

Of course the call will have to be routed through an Indian based inbound call centre, because Pakistan probably doesn't have the complex call centre logistics to take and re-route calls of such diversity and importance, from so many different and clandestine sources. Negotiation indeed will be a tough undertaking.

As Pakistan's ministry spokesman Abdul Basit has so aptly noted, “We are trying at all levels but where we succeed is another matter”.

You can easily spot the passenger vans engaged in headlong races on the busy roads of Lahore. The passengers, who aren’t strapped into their seats, swing at every twist and turn of these raucous roller-coaster rides, and must fight continuously to retain their balance and their seats.

Driven solely by the race to pick up more passengers, the drivers pause only at the next bus-stop. The winner takes more commuters than the van’s capacity and makes them bend – not sit – like a quarterback on the narrow strip between the two rows of already-occupied seats. And the cutthroat run begins afresh.

The conductor, who keeps his head sticking out of the van’s window, signals the driver to slow down on spotting a passenger anywhere along the route. Before the van has even come to a halt, the conductor grabs the passenger by his arm and helps him jump in.

You don’t have to be a stuntman to board a moving van, but an ordinary Pakistani living below the poverty line. Why do people opt for such risky rides? The answer lies in the dearth of public transport and successive governments’ lack of focus on improving this vital sector. Private bus-stops have cropped up at every nook and cranny of the city in the absence of official ones.

The official bus-stops, which existed years back, now appear to be huge garbage bins and a shelter for junkies. There is little hope the situation will change anytime soon as the government is focused on fighting the war on terror. The terror war is the latest justification for all Pakistan’s perennial problems.
But it doesn’t seem that the war on terror has had any impact on the government. Despite announcing austerity measures, it continues to spend lavishly on official functions. The recent ceremony at Gwadar Port was a complete negation of the claimed austerity.

In Islamabad, officials and ministers have beefed up security for themselves. That means more personnel and vehicles guarding the servants of the people of Pakistan. While citizens are left at the mercy of a crumbling transport sector, ministers have added siren-wailing vehicles and gun-toting personnel to their convoys. Nobody dares come near such a convoy as policemen and rangers, assigned to protect these officials, wave their guns to warn drivers of other vehicles to keep their distance.

When a journalist at a press conference asked a minister to justify all this, he said that in such situations people would have to make sacrifices.
The minister compared himself with an army general, who sits back and directs his troops to fight on the frontline.

The United States’ Transport Service Authority (TSA) has drafted a list of 14 “countries of interest” in the aftermath of the failed “underwear bomber” plot to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day. It seems airport security personnel around the world are on the lookout for weapons of mass destruction in people’s underwear (which may have its own implications of course).

What with being felt up and having risqué pictures taken as part of the package, travelling to the US has become more akin to visiting a sleazy nightclub on a bad night.

The new policy is supposed to replace earlier security measures which subjected all travellers to the United States to additional screenings and hand luggage restrictions, while forcing passengers to stay in their seats during the last hour of the flight. Also removed from the list of security precautions is the dreaded “full body pat-down”, which sounds a lot like a new-fangled dance move, but really isn’t.

Much to the relief of most passengers travelling to the US from the civilised parts of the world, only passengers flying through the “countries of interest” – including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen – would be subject to more stringent security measures.

And to think that Arab countries were relieved that the underwear bomber wasn’t from their part of the world, or that Pakistanis actually took a deep breath thanking the lord that he wasn’t ‘trained in Pakistan’. The short answer from the US Department of Homeland Security is: “It doesn’t matter, you’re still on our list”.

The list of countries of interest, which also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, is basically the list of what someone at Homeland Security would call “terrorist countries”. Now that’s a bit unfair to the populations of these countries, being labelled as citizens of terrorist countries, and especially unfair to the citizens who travel regularly; God forbid they have to go to the US.

And to think the US prides itself on its democratic ideals. How undemocratic is it to label a whole country based on the actions of a select few who might have just happened to stop by there? I mean, how would the United States feel if the “developing world” got together and made a list of proto-colonial imperialist countries hegemonising the world? Oh wait, I stand corrected – wasn’t that the G7?

For now, it seems travellers coming into the US from all the non-terror holiday hotspots will be spared from mass humiliations such as the “full body pat-down”. According to a report in USA Today, Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association said: “The 100% pat-down was not sustainable in the long-term”. Damn right it wasn’t sustainable, because its 100%, right?

Now I’m no expert on security, but isn’t it likely that Al-Qaeda or whoever it is sending people with explosive material in random parts of their clothing would adapt to this new measure, and have their operatives avoid travelling through these “countries of interest”? And since the 100% pat-down isn’t that sustainable in the long run, what about a 65% pat-down of all the passengers travelling to the United States? That might be a safer and more democratic option for everyone.

Asif Akhtar blogs at e_scape from nowher_e