PIA and Airports

By Ghalib Sultan
Area 14/8

This is a true narration of facts. I went to the PIA website to make reservations for a flight from London to Lahore. The website indicated that only two seats were available in Business Class on the flight. I quickly asked my travel agent to make the reservations. He did so. Once the flight departed I looked around and found that half the seats in business class were empty. I casually mentioned this to the bursar on the flight. He informed me that a mafia controlled marketing and sales in PIA. The agents of this mafia booked all seats on the lowest fare well in advance and sold them at the last possible minute at the maximum fare at this time. If any seats remained unsold the loss was PIA’s and they were not bothered. The bursar asked me to look in the Economy Class too. I did and saw many seats vacant.

The drinks served on the flight were pathetic – just two types of juices and two kinds of soda. No one wants PIA to serve alcoholic drinks but surely they know about mock tails and tomato juice (Virgin Mary) etc. Raw salad was served in an uncovered bowl without any dressing. I asked and was told that there was no dressing available. I asked for Tabasco Sauce and the stewardess replied that they do not serve alcoholic drinks! I asked for nuts and was told that there were no nuts. The packaged butter was melted and had a rank smell. There was not enough food even for the few passengers in Business Class and the stewardess was constantly scraping the dish to serve food. In any case the food was pathetic – surely PIA can serve good wholesome Pakistani food and not blackened highly spiced concoctions that look unappetizing and are a disgrace. The dessert selection was restricted to one and that too awful. There was no fruit available. Bread was passed around when we had finished the meal or left it in disgust. Why should food be served from open dishes loaded on a trolley that is wheeled around from passenger to passenger? with yet another person serving condiments and pickles from open bowls? What about a prepared tray with everything on it and properly sealed. There were seven cabin crew serving the meal to twelve passengers and four more were wheeling the pathetic little two duty free goods trolleys.

Since Pakistanis prefer PIA it has a captive passenger list and need not even advertise. The mafias need to be broken. You need professionals inside and outside the aircraft – not sifarshis. The cabin crew needs intensive training to be efficient – they should not be apologizing and giving ingratiating smiles. Once the welcome drink has been served and the seat belts signs switched off a drinks trolley needs to be moved around to dispense a selection of drinks and nuts. PIA needs to revamp its food menus. Meals should be served prepackaged and on trays sealed for hygiene and freshness. PIA needs to be much more creative with salads and desserts – and salad dressing in a little sealed bottle could easily be part of the prepared meal tray. PIA needs to promote Pakistani cuisine not turn people away from it. If there are mafias controlling the catering then get rid of these. Maybe there are mafias controlling recruitment, spare parts procurement and crew training? And postings – another mafia?

With a little effort and attention to details PIA can be turned into a first rate airline not the scavenger that it has become. Airports also need attention – the lounges are a disgrace and the bathrooms are filthy. Enter Lahore airport and you are confronted with ASF checking to see if you have a ticket, take two steps inside and there are custom and security officials waiting to frisk you and check your baggage. Literally two steps further and there is the queue for the baggage screening machines with ASF carrying out a body search. All this BEFORE the check in counters that are another two steps away. Off to one side next to the check in counters is passport and immigration control and right behind it a single FIA checking counter. Behind this is yet another baggage screening machine with ASF doing another body search and just beyond is yet another counter where your cabin baggage tags are stamped. Imagine the state of affairs if there is more than one flight. A similar situation exists at the arrivals hall. Are we so stupid that we cannot have an airport with enough depth and space for all these arrangements? Do we need all these arrangements? Walk into any airport and you reach the check in counters without any check. Once you have checked in you are thoroughly screened before you get into the passengers only area. That is all and even these are spaced apart in depth so that there is no inconvenience to passengers. There is no passport check while departing – this is done at airline check in counters and on arrival at destination. Can we improve the experience without compromising on security?

One day we all will be terrorists!

By Dr Haider Mehdi

“Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.”

- Chris Hedges (in an article of the same title)

My generation grew up in a different Pakistan. A different Lahore, a different Karachi, a different Peshawar, a different Quetta, a different Islamabad and an entirely different country.

In Lahore, people sat in Pak Tea House and Coffee House and talked about politics, poetry, religion, culture and friendships gave birth, on a daily basis, to youthful romanticism of our times: the mutual seduction of kindred spirits within the confines of our cultural values and the gentleness of Urdu poetry, songs, geets (lyrics) and the Lahori humour. We celebrated basant (the kite-flying festival), maila-charagha (the festival of lights) and Urs Data Gung-Baksh (the festival of a saint). We observed Muharram with great reverence.

Karachi used to be alive 24 hours a day all year round. It was a city of “lights”, “fashion”, hustle-bustle of a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. Ethnic diversity and tolerance was the hallmark of this city.

Peshawar was a beacon of hospitality, a tribute to human gentleness and an affirmation of a rich community life.

Quetta’s apple-laden trees decorated its roads everywhere and the Balochis colourful existence found its spirit in its music, songs and even in its cuisine. Moreover, Pakistan’s rural society existed in purity, simplicity and the zealousness of hard working people.

Pakistan was a different country then: we lived in relative peace, tolerance and mutual harmony. A delicious puri nashta cost one rupee, petrol was Rs 2.50 a gallon, schooling was cheap, sugar and food were plenty, and a round-trip by PIA from Lahore to Karachi was Rs 250.

The majority of Pakistanis were poor even then, but there was no mass starvation, deprivation suicides, forced prostitution, massive collective depressive communities, agonising socio-psychological conditions, economic collapse, and no one knew of crippling demoralising inner fears. We did not know of institutional violence and extensive state terror – though police brutality and legal system atrocities were common, bureaucracy was horribly cruel, corrupt, inefficient and unbelievably powerful vis-à-vis the citizenry, commerce thrived on black marketing and the political class wholly and completely indulged in vested interests, inappropriate use of political power and mismanagement of state affairs.

Even though we lived with a million vices as a nation, but strangely enough, life was not as painful as it is in today’s democratic Pakistan. Neither was the entire nation, every one of its citizens, gripped with such forceful, depleting and paralysing fear – a fear that the management of the survival of this country has gone out of control. A fear that we all may be blown away from existence the next moment, if not literally then at least in a metaphorical sense!

Do you realise the seriousness of our contemporary political crisis?

The present state of our deplorable existence is the work of our decade long political leadership inclusive of Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship and the incumbent political dispensation in the country.

The fundamental failure of our national policy is this country’s ruling elite’s destructive all time political-economic-military alliance with the US and its allies (now India included).

Even at the time that I have described as the “golden days” of Pakistan’s past, our ruling elite was fully and comprehensively politically engaged with the US and its allies. However the US was in a different political mode then: it was fighting its own self-invented “demons” – the communist ideology and the communist nations (though communism was not a threat – it was a political experiment to solve mass poverty). The objective of American foreign policy was global political-economic and military domination.

In the present day world, the policy objectives of the US and its allies remain same: worldwide imperialist hegemony and exploitation by the west’s multi-national corporations.

However, in the contemporary equation, the west’s enemies have been redefined: Now we are the “demons”. They have declared a war against Muslim nations, their people, their faith, their culture, their traditions, their values and customs, their history and even against their existence as we know it today. Huntington in The Clash of Civilisations warns that if we do not transform our civilisation to a western model, then we must be prepared for an ultimate obliteration through successive wars at the hands of the west: we are given no choices.

Seven hundred Pakistani citizens died in American drone attacks in 2009 alone. It is not accidental!

What the US and its western allies do not understand is that their present war is not against an economic-political ideology (communism). This war is against a people, a faith, a history, an existential reality, an entirety of a civilisation, an actual formidable historical presence and an enduring spiritual entity. They, the US and its allies (which include collaborating political elites in Muslim countries), cannot win this war. Indeed, they can unleash havoc, a wave of destruction (as they are doing now), but they cannot and will not win!

Coming back to the context of Pak-US relations, consider the following most plausible scenario in the immediate future:

Through covertly managed organised violence, collaborations, propaganda, bombings and political manipulations, the US succeeds in destabilising Pakistan to an extent of complete political chaos, limited anarchy and a near civil war situation. Under the pretext of threat to international security, American and NATO forces are moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Pakistan’s nuclear assets are seized, a puppet regime is installed: Pakistan is de-nuclearised, India (the newest US ally) becomes a dominant regional power, Iran is contained, China-Russia growing political clout is checked, the US/west’s historical global dominance is achieved – the world is saved!

Is that what the Pakistani nation wants and deserves?

Imran Khan’s perspective on Pakistan’s foreign policy and domestic priorities is correct: we need to politically-militarily disengage Pakistan from the US/west’s global objectives. We need to immediately end this so-called War on Terror against our own citizens. We need to negotiate peace with political dissidents in NWFP, Balochistan and in every corner of Pakistan. We must appreciate the fact that political dissent is not terror!

We ought to, by engaging our own citizens and political dissidents, quietly and secretly do a complete “cleansing” of the foreign elements and local collaborators involved in organised violence in our country. This can only be accomplished by a determined, independent, nationalist and highly efficient political leadership that can make the national policy without American influence and interference. And this is the ultimate requirement of our times.

At last, Mian Nawaz Sharif said something right the other day: the public in Pakistan needs to think in revolutionary ways now.

Allow me to go one step further: what we need is a revolutionary political leadership in this country. We deserve a change in the political mindset and political conduct of this nation’s leaders. We need fresh leadership in Pakistan.

We all do not need to be politically loyal to our contemporary political dispensation or to our present political allies. We must completely reject a global political system of US/west’s dominance.

We all ought to be political dissidents! After all, dissent is a vital element of the democratic political process. It is a duty of an engaged citizenry!

One day we all might be considered terrorists by our western “friends”.

Never mind. So be it!

The writer is an academic, political analyst and conflict-resolution expert.
Email: hl_mehdi@hotmail.com