The Review - 19th June, 2011 - Pakistan Today

Sunday, 19 June, 2011

Expose on

By Aminullah Chaudry Oxford University Press

the review

Political Administrators: The Story of the Civil Service of Pakistan

Civil Service of Pakistan ‘With all due respect, the concept of an apolitical civil service is a contradiction in terms. Given the powers that they were equipped with, members of the ICS/CSP could not but act to perpetuate the status quo’

Excerpts from the Preface:

ICS and the Indian Political Service (IPS) in the India Office Library & Records (IOLR)… From this treasure trove, I tried to reconstruct a picture of the role played by these officers in what was united India.

While there is a surfeit of material on the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the successor of the ICS in India after independence, comparatively little has been recorded on the role of the CSP after 1947… …Time and again, civil servants have been accused of ‘playing politics’. As would be expected in a country ruled for a major part of its history by military, administrations, the word ‘politics’ has ugly and distasteful connotations and those accused of indulging in it are said to be acting in a disgraceful, dishonourable and perfidious manner. The apolitical nature of pre-independence ICS officers is often quoted as an example to be emulated by post-1947 members of the service. CSP officers who had served for a significant part of their tenures under military governments tend to glorify their ‘independent’ and ‘neutral’ stance during service.

The ICS, drawn primarily from the pro-British

The intimate detail by someone who has been part of the system, especially in the most cataclysmic last 40-odd years, and has seen things first hand both under the military and civil dispensations, makes it a seminal work

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By Agha Akbar

minullah Chaudry, one of the bright sparks of the Civil Service of Pakistan of the mid 1960s vintage, in his second book since he was eased into retirement in 2004 after acting as approver under duress in the famous hijacking case against Nawaz Sharif, has not said anything that we didn’t already know.

That Pakistan’s civil servants from the word go after independence were neither civil nor servants, but in Khalid Hasan’s flippant phrase, civil serpents.

Lords and masters they certainly were, monarchs of all they surveyed.

As a class they were trained, and trained well by the imperialists, to rule over the natives, in fact to civilize them,

what was wearily known as the ‘white man’s burden’. And unlike the Indian National Congress, which included excellent administrators such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhai Patel and could also count on a glut of people with vast administrative experience, the state of affairs with the Pakistan Muslim League was quite the opposite in 1947. The ailing and exhausted Quaid’s death soon after Partition and the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951 started the rot in the bureaucracy, as indeed in other spheres. In the absence of a firm hand at the helm to stem the anarchy and rot things went from worse to intolerable.

Taking advantage of the naivety and inexperience of the politicians, and also the many schisms that came to the fore almost immediately in the new-

born nation, with the military, feudals and mullahs jostling for their share in power, the elite coterie that formed the Pakistan Administrative Service (later the CSP) had its own ideas of divide and rule.

Such was the Muslim League’s plight that for the federal cabinet none from its senior ranks qualified to man the critical foreign and finance ministries.

It was necessary to pluck Sir Zafarullah Khan and Chaudhry Mohammad Ali from the Federal Court, where the former was a judge while the latter worked as secretary-general under the Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to fill those vital positions.

Our bureaucratic echelons not merely had disproportionate clout in formulating policy and implementing it, they also succeeded in co-opting the

army as a junior partner in the early years – a costly mistake. They found out, as others had before them, that it is easy to ride but difficult to dismount from a tiger, and by 1958 the army had assumed primacy in the power corridors.

All this has been described by Aminullah in great detail. By his own description, he has “made an attempt to record the historical perspective of the CSP from its birth to its eventual demise. As would be obvious, this is not an exercise undertaken by an academic, but the real life experience of one who has lived the system from within”. And herein, this being an insider’s view, lies the value of the book.

The intimate detail by

Illustrated & Designed by Javeria Mirza

Reflections of an insider

2 How to put the Humpty Dumpty together again? 4 In Dyer’s footsteps

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fter Pakistan’s fourth military coup in October 1999, I was incarcerated in Karachi Central Jail, accused, along with an elected prime minister, of attempting to ‘hijack’ the aircraft carrying the army chief back to Pakistan from Sri Lanka… …My minder was an agreeable lieutenant colonel of the Pakistan Army on secondment to the Pakistan Rangers… Since I could, both literally and figuratively, be described as a captive audience, I had no option but to patiently hear the profound statements of this army officer.

His favourite theme was to criticize the ‘politicized’ civil service. He repeatedly asked me why I, and other civil servants, would not take a ‘stand’ against orders emanating from what he referred to in contemptuous tones as ‘bloody politicians’… …The utterances of this rather naive and artless officer set me thinking about the role of civil servants

in general and of my parent cadre, the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP), in particular. Was the CSP deeply politicised? If yes, was this a recent phenomenon or did it come about after independence? What were the origins of the Service and why was it created?...

To answer these and other troubling questions that continued to perturb me, I decided to explore in some detail the pre-independence origins of the CSP, its conduct after 1947, its partial decimation by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973, and its final extermination by a military regime through its hatchet man, Lt.-Gen. Tanvir Hussain Naqvi in 200l. …I had to go back in history and acquaint myself with Thomas Macaulay’s concept of a generalist civil service, of the Covenanted Civil Service under the East India Company, the formation of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), its original elite British composition, its gradual ’Indianisation’…, the formation of a successor Pakistan Administrative Service, later rechristened the Civil Service of Pakistan.

Between 2001 to 2005, while visiting London… I found a wealth of material on the

the review

How to put the Humpty Dumpty together again?

Though democracy has been restored, maintains the author, the decline in administrative standards is so palpable that delivering to the people is only a mirage

By Javed Asghar

A

t the fag end of his career spanning over 35 years as a CSP officer, Aminullah Chaudry was a deeply disillusioned man. What he had seen and experienced during all these years was that loyalty to the rulers, to cater to their demands, just or unjust, was more important towards the advancement of one’s career than serving the people and the state by doing one’s job well.

How did the priorities become so lopsided? How deeply was the CSP politicized? Was that a recent phenomenon or did the process begin soon after independence? The upshot of his efforts to find the answers is the publication of the book under review.

India, under the British Raj, was a well administered country. The credit for that went to members of the Indian Civil Service, who were neither amenable to political pressure nor were they corruptible. How were they so good? Mr Chaudry explains thus.

The best educated people, whether English or Indian, offered their candidature. The ICS officers were given constitutional protection so that matters regarding service conditions and promotions were not left to the capriciousness of the rulers. Hence the ruling party couldn’t influence the decisions of ICS officers to obtain short term political gains at the expense of long-term. This ensured good governance.

Furthermore, ICS seniors protected the juniors from the machinations of the ministers. They were promoted on the grounds of seniority (re-adjusted on the basis of annual confidential reports). This prevented out of turn promotions based on the vagaries of the ruling party. The officers generally remained stationed in one province throughout their career. If they had to be posted at the centre, it was only

on deputation. This was in conformity with the fact that 60 percent of their service period was spent at the district and divisional levels, where they were best placed to serve the people, and in so doing, the country as well. This experience also held them in good stead when working in the provincial headquarters.

Why didn’t these officers misuse their authority for personal gain? Mr Chaudry doesn’t provide an answer.

However, the answer can be found if we remember that the imperial government in India reported to the

Loyalty to the rulers, to cater to their demands, just or unjust, was more important towards the advancement of one’s career than serving the people and the state British Cabinet and the Parliament, which institutions reflected the will of the British people. It was in the interest of the British citizens, that the ICS deliver good service to the masses so that they remained satisfied, and the British continued to benefit from its Indian colony without fear of uprisings.

The successor to the ICS in Pakistan was called Civil Service of Pakistan.

According to Mr Chaudry, the armyCSP nexus derailed democracy.

However, facts show that the CSP was not a party to this conspiracy. The politicians had succeeded in giving the country a democratic and workable constitution, and just a few months were left for the first elections to the national assembly to take place when

the army struck.

This conspiracy a g a i n s t constitutional government was hatched by President Iskander Mirza and Gen. Ayub Khan.

Gen. Ayub became the president in October, 1958.

From then onwards, the CSP, later called DMG/Secretariat Group, began to be run on the whims of the rulers, and one by one the glorious traditions of the ICS began to detach themselves from the service. The nadir was reached during the reign of Gen. Musharraf when the posts Title: Political Administrators: of assistant The Story of the Civil Service of Pakistan commissioner, d e p u t y Author: Aminullah Chaudry commissioner Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi a n d Pages: 379; Price: Rs895 commissioner were abolished, and there was virtually no government at the done to restore the prestige of the civil grassroots to deliver essential services service. to the people.

A commission on administrative Mr Chaudry further maintains that reform is already in place but appears though democracy has been restored, to be sleeping over the matter. the decline in administrative standards However, if there is a will, the task has been so palpable that delivering to is not insurmountable. There is no the people is only a mirage. need to reinvent the wheel: all that The writer has quite elegantly put the commission has to do is to study together the big picture and the pieces the civil service in Britain and India, of detail, like a completed jigsaw and use that as a fulcrum to devise an puzzle, leaving the reader with the administrative dsystem for Pakistan conclusion that something needs to be that has the capacity to deliver.

Of literary evaluation

02 - 03

Sunday, 19 June, 2011

These two books augur well for a milieu where perhaps the only palpable literary activity is compilation and publication of poetic collections This overview of the two publications would introduce the reader to their format and contents.

Adab Aur Asar

By Syed Afsar Sajid

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dab aur Asar and Ta’iyunat lately published from Multan and Lahore respectively have engaged the attention of literary circles for their authors’ critical insight and the vast heterogeneity of their themes and subjects.

This augurs well for a milieu where perhaps the only palpable literary activity is compilation and publication of poetic collections!

Based in Multan, Dr. Shamim Tirmizi is an eminent teacher, scholar and critic of Urdu. Adab Aur Asar is his second publication following Adab Aasar, his first. The instant work comprises some 75 of his critical essays on literary writers and books.

He has divided it into three parts viz., evaluation (tanqeed), perception (ta’assur) and comprehension (tafheem) of literary books.

Shamim Tirmizi is an accomplished critic. The immensity of his critical acumen is seemingly a product of his education, experience and vision. His critical pronouncements are often quite judicious and balanced.

In the essays contained in the present book, the author has discussed

the style and selected work, among others, of Ghulam Jilani Asghar (inshaiya-nigari), Anwaar Anjum (Shakh-e-Nihal-e-Ghum), Hameed Shahid (Jahannum Jahannum), Allama Talib Jauhari (Pas-e-Afaq), Anwar Ahmad (Aik Hi Kahani), Asi Karnali (Na’aton Kay Gulab, Lab-eKhandan, Awaz-e-Dil and Chehra Chehra Kahani), Latifuzzaman (khaka-nigari), Mohsin Naqvi, Dr. Ali Shariati (Ma Wa Iqbal), Taseer Wijdan (Na Maloom Ki Piyas), Fayyaz Tehsin (his poetics), Anwar Jamal (khakanigari), Naushaba Nargis (nazmnigari), Jabir Ali Syed (Mauj-e-Ahang), Qamar Raza Shahzad (his poetics), Shakir Hussain Shakir (Malbay May Dabay Huay Lafz), Rashid Qaisrani (Faseel-e-Lab), Riaz Hussain Zaidi (na’at- nigari), Afsar Sajid (Wujud Ek Wahima Hai), Raziuddin Razi (Raftgan-e-Multan), Dr. Asad Areeb (Bachon Ka Adab), Najm-ul-Asghar

Shahiya (Dozakh May Pahli Baarish), Saqiba Rahimuddin (Tehzib Kay Zakhm), Safdar Salim Sial (Paish-eNazar), Azhar Salim Mujoka (Shamate-A’amal), Dr. Shabbir Ahmad (Doosri Dastak), Hamidullah Sheikh (Qat’at-e-Hamidiya), Humaira Rahman (Indemal), Dr. Jamil Jalibi (Pakistani adab), Ghalib (his psyche), Moulvi Abdul Haq (literary theory), Ibn-e-Insha (humour), N.M. Rashed (La=Insan), Ehsan Danish (Jahane-Danish), Dr. Akhtar Hussain Raipuri (Gard-e-Rah), Imtiaz Ali Taj (Anarkali) and Kh. Moinuddin (Lal Qilay Say Lalu Khait Tak).

Shamim Haider Tirmizi bears a catholic approach in literary matters.

These essays serve to provide a bird’s eye-view of the traits and trends in the contemporary literature of Urdu.

The dust cover and the quality of the printing too is commendable.

Reflections of an insider From Page 1

someone who has been part of the system, especially in the most cataclysmic last 40-odd years (the author was inducted into the CSP in 1967), and has seen things first hand both under the military and civil dispensations, makes it a seminal work. So does the comprehensive, research-based work on the genesis of the Indian Civil Service – the precursor of the PCS, and the fount of the ethos.

In places Aminullah has given graphic detail of the people and events because of which the CSP first aligned itself with the army to dent and derail democracy, and with the Army gaining ascendancy in the power structure through the 1958 Ayub Khan coup, played second fiddle to the military under him and Yahya Khan.

They found out, as others had before them, that it is easy to ride but difficult to dismount from a tiger, and by 1958 the army had assumed primacy in the power corridors.

And how in the last four decades, it first kowtowed to ZAB though he made the CSP subservient to the political power by removing the constitutional guarantees and diluting it further by introducing lateral entry.

From then onwards, it was down the slope during the Zia years, and, according to Aminullah, the politician’s decade with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif taking turns at power was no improvement.

Thus, the acerbic comment: “After coming to power the politician had to show his clout. A favourite tactic was to kick bureaucrats around”.

And Musharraf, along with his other sins, delivered the death knell to the bureaucracy.

Though this is the work of a man so thoroughly

disillusioned, despite its candour one finds but only rarely a hint of rancour. Most of Aminullah’s ire is directed at his own colleagues, present and former, for reorienting the service as the handmaiden of the powers-that-be to ultimately bring the service to this sorry pass, but politicians like the Sharif Brothers also find a (dis)honourable mention in manacling the (only too willing) bureaucrats for their personal ends.

Pakistan, with its numerous problems, also urgently needs to revamp the colonial outlook, deep politicization, widespread corruption and cronyism in the bureaucracy to steer the ship of state now floundering in muddy waters.

How to do it, remains the big question.

Expose on Civil Service of Pakistan From Page 1 Indian elite, was set up essentially to help the British consolidate and perpetuate its vice-like grip over India. In the words of Thomas Babington Macaulay the effort was to ‘form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’. The structure of government in India ensured that the ICS was both the maker and executor of policy.

To any dispassionate observer, the Raj and ICS meant the same thing. When Phillip Woodruff wrote about The Men Who Ruled India, he was spot on when he described ICS officers as ‘rulers’ and not ‘servants’.

Was the CSP any different? After independence, power equations in Pakistan and India evolved in contrasting fashion.

Pakistan saw its civil service aligning itself with the military, an institution that repeatedly violated the Constitution and ruled through martial law. The Indians in sharp contrast adhered to the rule of law, and clearly demarcated the role of the IAS in a sovereign democratic culture. Notes and diaries maintained by Muslim ICS officers convey the impression that before independence they preferred to keep the Muslim League at arm’s length in sharp contrast to their Hindu counterparts who associated themselves more or less openly with the Indian National Congress.

After 1947 the roles were reversed. While the successor of the ICS in India went about its role as a relatively apolitical institution, the CSP allied itself with the Pakistan Army, and

between the two of them they ruled Pakistan to the exclusion of the politicians. The CSP took the position that it was only filling the political vacuum as the Muslim League leadership did not have genuine roots in Punjab, NWFP (now Khyber Pakhrunkhwa), and Balochistan. The military-bureaucratic axis reached the zenith of its power in the reign of the self-styled ‘Field Marshal’ Ayub Khan. The good times ended with his departure in 1969, and following a disturbed couple of years in which General Yahya Khan misruled and then dismembered the country, the CSP faced a new challenge, with

It surprises me to see colleagues who have more than eagerly carried out orders of military, civilian and political bosses, piously hold forth about how they took a ‘stand’ the assumption of power by the Pakistan People’s Party under the charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The year 1973 marked a watershed in the

affairs of the CSP. The Bhutro government introduced radical administrative reforms by withdrawing constitutional guarantees…

Unlike other streams of the services, the CSP was abolished and trifurcated into three components. Some of its members were allocated to a country cousin, derisively called District Management Group (DMG), others were lumped together with section officers in the Secretariat Group, yet others went to the Tribal Areas Group. A system of lateral entry outside the purview of the Public Service Commission was introduced. …Feeling somewhat exposed and unprotected by the Constitution, civil servants now openly looked for political patrons. What they did not realise was that in so doing, they had converted themselves into expendable commodities, exploited, used and discarded by the politicians at will.

There was a partial reversal of this strategy with the arrival of yet another military ruler, General Ziaul Haq, in 1977, but the former CSP now had to play the role of a junior partner to the army which now was the source of patronage.

The year 1988 saw the return of political governments led, alternately, by Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif... Although both tried to reverse the trend of military intervention in civilian governance… For the next eleven years, the two created and fashioned their own lobbies among former CSP officers purely for promoting their own interests. A change in regime meant a wholesale transformation of the administrative set up… In a sense this was understandable. After coming to power the

Ta’iyunat (Mazameen) Dr. Syed Shabih-ul-Hassan is a known Urdu writer with research and criticism as his forte. This book carries a total of seventeen critical essays on the person and chosen work of Mustafa Zaidi, Syed Aal-eRaza, Dr. Agha Sohail, Dr. Sohail Ahmed Khan, Hafeez Taib, Dr. Salim Akhtar, Dr. Kh. Muhammad Zakariya, Talib Jauhari, Ghazanfar Abbas, M. Mumtaz Rashid, Iqbal Haider, Dr. Muhammad Haroon Qadir, Urfi Hashmi, Dr. Nadimul-Hassan Gilani, Dr. Abul Hassan Naqvi, Sajid Pal Sajid and Ejaz Saqlain Bokhari In his prefatory remarks, the author avers that Ta’iyunat is basically an extended dialogue with his peers. His focus in the work lies on the sociological interpretation of literature which, as he views it, should incarnate Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age.

Shabih writes in a lucid style, relies mostly on the text and formulates opinions or conclusions in the context of the classical literary standards. It is hoped that the book will be useful for both the casual reader and his academic counterpart.

1. Title: Adab Aur Asar Author: Dr. Shamim Haider Tirmizi Publisher: Beacon Books, Gulgasht Colony, Multan Pages: 480; Price: Rs.480/-

2.Title: Ta’iyunat (Mazameen) Author: Dr. Syed Shabih-ul-Hassan Publisher: Izhar Sons, Urdu Bazaar, Lahore Pages: 272; Price: Rs.250/-

politician had to show his clout. A favourite tactic was to kick bureaucrats around…

While the older CSP officers may have resented such double standard, the younger ones found adjustment easier, and in many a case, to their advantage.

The period under Gen. Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008) saw the civil bureaucracy relegated to the role of a junior and subservient partner of the military. Hordes of army officers were inducted into the civilian sector in complete disregard of the rules and regulations. It was a virtual free for all, with connections to the ruling junta being the only requirement for induction into the upper echelons of the federal and provincial governments. …the civil service was reduced to a dithering mass of nervous individuals, constantly trying to forge relationships with senior military officers and always looking over their shoulder at the whimsical exercise of power

by Musharraf’s favourite instrument of terror, the National Accountability Bureau. An otherwise competent body of individuals was reduced to worthless paper pushers.

One had hoped that the elections of 2008, generally acknowledged to be fair and transparent, would throw up political leadership that had learnt from past mistakes. …While the governments in the Federation, NWFP and Balochisran dealt with personnel issues somewhat even handedly, the PML (N) in Punjab and the PPP in Sindh went on the rampage.

It appeared that the 1999 coup continued to dominate their thinking. The PML (N) would do well to remember the words of one of its own, Ayaz Arnir, now a member of the National Assembly from Chakwal. Writing in ‘Islamabad Diary’, of 20 April 2001, in Dawn, Arnir on the tone of the pre-1999 administration headed by his mentor Nawaz Sharif: ‘The Sharifs’ notions of government were intensely private: which is to say, have your own man at every key post. They began with the Commissioners and the DIGs, the dregs of both services pandering to their whims and enriching themselves in the process’.

In April 2008, younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, not yet chief minister of Punjab, brought in a junior officer as chief secretary and initiated surgery from the top. A former chief secretary prepared lists of loyalists who were to be rewarded and those who were to be ‘sorted out’. Loyalty was again at a premium. The inescapable conclusion that one comes to is that politicians as a class are not ‘comfortable’ with neutral civil servants.

They want loyalists – competence be damned! What lessons could I draw from 35 years in the civil service?... On balance it would not be wrong to conclude that civil servants rarely display the sort of apolitical mindset that we are so keen to glorify. This is a fact that civil servants should willingly, if reluctantly, acknowledge. It surprises me to see colleagues who have more than eagerly carried out orders of military, civilian and political bosses, piously hold forth about how they took a ‘stand’… The civil service is as politicized as the armed forces, big business, lawyers, doctors and educationists, the feudal and trading classes.

With all due respect, the concept of an apolitical civil service is a contradiction in terms. Given the powers that they were equipped with, members of the ICS/CSP could not but act to perpetuate the status quo. The authority available to federal secretaries, chief secretaries, commissioners, deputy commissioners, inspectors general of police and other state functionaries under primary and secondary legislation gives ample opportunity to these and other individuals to play an aggressive political role. How else can one explain the intensely political posturing of Iskander Mirza, Ghulam Mohammad, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, Qurban Ali Khan, Sardar Rasheed, Zakir Hussain, Shamsuddoha, Altaf Gauhar, Rao Rashid, Sheikh Akram, Saeed Ahmed Khan, Vaqar Ahmed, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Roedad Khan, Ijlal Haider Zaidi, Usman Ali Isani, Saeed Mehdi and the versatile Tariq Aziz Waraich, an income tax officer who rose to the position of Gen. Musharraf’s chief political advisor while still a government servant?

Sunday, 19 June, 2011

Pictures by the Author

The cottage where Reginald Dyer once lived

In Dyer’s footsteps

By Salman Rashid

I

f it were not for the copper mines, Saindak, way out in the backwaters of Balochistan, would never have appeared on the ordinary Pakistani’s mental map of the country. The old town with its collection of scattered huts looks little different from any other Baloch village. But the industrial part is new-fangled with plenty of concrete and metal, clanking lorries and huge dump trucks, the hum of machinery and chimneys with their plumes of ash-white smoke that marks a factory.

Over six hundred kilometres west of Quetta by the railway called the ‘Lonely Line’ by the British engineers who laid it, and about twenty north of Koh e Taftan, the last station in Pakistan before the line enters Iran, Saindak lies virtually on the edge of the country. All around it in an arc from the northeast through to the southwest there spreads a desert of wind-sculpted crescent-shaped sand dunes and rocky wastes devoid of all but the lowliest vegetation.

In this wilderness there stand isolated cones of extinct volcanoes and jagged peaks burnt to sterility by sulphurous deposits. The bleak grey-brown hills that loom to the west of Saindak are the southern end of the Kacha Koh range which stretches a full one hundred kilometres to the northwest.

Here in the remote west of Pakistan, there was one historical item that led me to Saindak. Four years before he won notoriety by that savage massacre of innocent, unarmed civilians in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Reginald Dyer had been here for eight months.

As the First World War got underway, Germany covertly

attempted to arm the Damani Baloch people straddling the border with Iran and to incite them to an uprising against the government of India. In August 1914, a small force was dispatched from the 4th Quetta Division to quell the rising nuisance. Within the year however it was expanded and named the East Persia Cordon.

In March 1916 Dyer, then a lieutenant colonel, was sent out to command the Cordon.

Over the next eight months he remained in this region struggling to bridle the untameable Damani tribesmen.

Although he operated mostly around the Iranian towns of Khwash and Ladiz, his range extended all the way north to Rabat. But his exertions bore little fruit and with the Damanis refusing to submit, Dyer asked for transfer to Simla from this region of blistering summer heat. His petition records that he was ‘very near the end of [his] tether’ because he suffered from colitis. In plain speak that would mean he had the trots.

His getaway from Saindak in October 1916 was jinxed, however. As he drove out thinking he was looking back on the barren, uninviting loom of Kacha Koh for the last time in his life, he would have thought also of reaching the railhead at Nushki in two days’ time. Then

Nushki was as far as the Lonely Line had reached and it was not to make it the Iranian border until 1918. Dyer did not get very far: his car (he had one in 1916!) broke down near Mashki Chah.

The direct road from Saindak to this tiny village is unpaved to this day and winding as it does through a waste of sand and rock-strewn desert, it can only be negotiated by a modern four-wheel drive vehicle. Small wonder then that the car made it as far as it did. Dyer returned to Saindak waiting for the car to be repaired. When he set out a second time, it broke down again. This time Dyer was not returning and he completed the journey to Nushki by camel.

Back in the present, I had arranged to travel with a Baloch acquaintance. But for some curious reason he backed out. The worst part being that he did his vanishing act after I arrived in Quetta. I have always maintained that among all the peoples in Pakistan, the Baloch are the most reliable and so this associate, to my mind the only exception to the rule, shall forever remain unnamed.

Had it not been for a very good friend in a high place, I may never have made it to anywhere outside of Quetta and so there I was in first-class transport bowling down the newly resurfaced road westward to the

border.

The Kharan Rifles wing commander Lieutenant Colonel Rizwan, for his rank a rather boyish man, saw to it that I was comfy in Saindak.

Did I know, he asked, that his office is housed in the bungalow used by Dyer? I had no clue that Dyer had been in Saindak long enough to need accommodation any more substantial than a tent.

The pitched-roof house with verandas front and back and buttressed outside walls, sits in the shadow of Saindak Fort. Comprising of a bedroom (now the wing commander’s office) and a sitting room (clerks’ office) with a bathroom in the back and a kitchen that serves as a repository for the wing’s official record, the cottage (scarcely a bungalow) is a smart little structure.

There is no date of construction on the cottage, but the legend above the main entrance of the fort gives the year as 1903, that is, twelve years before the East Persia Cordon was established.

Long before the Germans attempted anything, and just as McMahon’s Boundary Commission was completing its delineation, British authorities having established their presence in this remote part of the empire, raised the fort as a

symbol of the Raj’s outreach. It naturally warranted an officer for the garrison, therefore I presume the house was also built about that time for the commandant and not later especially for Dyer. But surely in that bedroom this soon-tobe monster would have writhed groaning with the cramps while the cleaning man waited outside the toilet to empty the thunder-box for the umpteenth time and wishing the sahib would return to Ladiz.

Perhaps the much-bullied cleaning man who may well have been from Sialkot or some other place in Punjab, wished for Dyer to be done in by the Damani Baloch. That never happened, however.

Dyer returned to the Punjab plains to perpetrate his dark deed of Jalianwala Bagh.

–Salman Rashid, rated as the best in the country, is a travel writer and photographer who has travelled all around Pakistan and written about his journeys.

Over six hundred kilometres west of Quetta by the railway called the ‘Lonely Line’ by the British engineers who laid it, and about twenty north of Koh e Taftan, the last station in Pakistan before the line enters Iran, Saindak lies virtually on the edge of the country. All around it in an arc from the northeast through to the southwest there spreads a desert of wind-sculpted crescentshaped sand dunes and rocky wastes devoid of all but the lowliest vegetation