Almost a Week in Pakistan

October 07, 2013

Almost a Week in Pakistan

I spent almost a week in Islamabad, Pakistan: from 30^th September to 4^th October 2013. I stayed at the Best Western Hotel and attended the 27^th Asian Association of Open Universities at the Allama Iqbal Open University. If I was to state what I liked best about the trip, I would have to say it is the individuals that I met. I met a few very interesting and friendly Pakistanis. On the way to KLIA, I met a young Pakistani who was going back to Multan to get married. He even invited me to the marriage ceremonies but I was not staying long enough, nor was I going to Multan. I made friends with a few unlikely Pakistanis too. One was the police sergeant who led the group of policemen on protection duty at the Best Western Hotel for the four days that we were there. He was from Peshawar. In our conversations, I learnt that in Peshawar, there is at least one AK47 in every house, it is a must. The assault rifles are locally made and they cost between 80,000 rupees (RM 2400) to 160,000 rupees (RM 4800) each depending on the quality of the make. The bullets are also locally made, both by the Pakistani ammunition factory and by arms makers like in the towns near the Pakistani – Afghani border. They were always happy to answer my questions but one gets the immediate impression that life is hard there.

Pakistan is a country in trouble. At first glance, one would not realize this but take a closer look and many inconsistencies begin to appear. It is these inconsistencies that led me to conclude that all is not well in this country. The confirmation of this impression came on the last day of my visit, at the airport. When we arrived, we were whisked away to the VIP arrival hall so we did not see the actual arrival and departure hall. On the way back, we got to see the departure hall. There, the shops all only traded in USD. I was initially unimaginable to me: the very traders who serve the entry and exit point to the country, it was the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, do not have confidence in their own currency. They even insisted in the USD and would not accept the Pakistani Rupee. This saddened me. Elsewhere, they not only traded in the local currency, they labelled their goods in the local currency and they often preferred it over the USD because it saves them having to exchange it later. Here, the local currency was not welcome.

There was paranoia and fear here: its signs were visible everywhere. There were concrete barriers placed in the middle of the highway to enable the military and the police to check cars. There was a metal detector at the entry of the hotel. The hotel was surrounded by barbed wire. There was a wall built outside the windows of the hotel rooms obscuring any possible view. These were built as a defence against snipers, according to one hotel staff. There were security checks and metal detectors everywhere: at shopping mall entries, at the conference hall entry… everywhere. On the night of the conference dinner, no phones and cameras were allowed into the China-Pakistan Friendship Centre because the guest of honour was the President of Pakistan who was also the Chancellor of the University.

I was told that we were actually experiencing more security checks than normal because were the only group of foreign delegates in Islamabad at the time and that made us the juiciest terrorist’s target around. That thought made my sleep somewhat restless. The fear was real, it seems, because there were recent explosions with multiple deaths, but I thought maybe there were times when the fear might have been imaginary. I guess they were not taking any chances.

Another reason I think that Pakistan is a country in trouble is because the behaviour of its people. Disorder seems to be the rule there and there was rampant non-compliance to even the simplest of rules. I guess like everywhere else, they also have problems with people parking haphazardly but with when the people do not respect the law and probably ignore parking fines, they had to come up with a more immediate solution to the problem of cars left unattended where they are not supposed to me: they use forklifts to lift the cars onto the pavements which are nearly a foot higher than the road. Thus the offending cars cannot be simply driven off.

They have wide roads in Islamabad and bus stops too but I guess the busses are not so good at stopping for passengers. So, I saw them waiting for the busses on the busy roads and not at the bus stops.

I suppose there are dozens of other things that I could complain about but I guess its just the way things are over there. There were points when I heard some say that they would go nuts if they were to stay there but we seem to forget that this was home for the people there. Perhaps, they are used to things that would normally infuriate others. At the conference registration, they made a big fuss about registering our fingerprints at the biometric registration desk. They told me that we would not be able to enter the conference building if we did not register our fingerprints.

I registered later on the first day and they seemed to have forgotten about the fingerprint registration. It wasn’t until the last day that they registered my fingerprint, in the meantime I was going in and out of the conference hall without even seeing any fingerprint checking device. In fact, they never actually used the fingerprint identification system at all.

Another thing that made me sad was my visit to the Centaurus shopping complex. They told me that this was the newest shopping complex in Islamabad and it was only opened earlier this year. Well, judge for yourself, look at the roof. Wouldn’t you agree that it looks old?

There was much confusion there. Even at the airport on our way back. I could possibly write pages and pages complaining about everything that is wrong but everybody else will be doing that. Let me concentrate on something beautiful: Monal.

Monal is a hilltop resort overlooking Islamabad and the Faisal masjid which is, supposedly, the world’s biggest masjid. We went there for a dinner.