Ever since Musharraf dismissed the chief justice and the lawyers and all manner of dissidents took to the streets, the focus has been on the General and his uncertain future, and on whether or not he should shed his uniform.

But now, as reality makes itself felt, the focus has shifted to where it should have been from day one, namely, Pakistan’s nuclear area and their security. The General himself has been alarmingly contradictory on this subject.

He has assured us that both the arms and the laboratories are absolutely secure, only to concede that if chaos prevails, they could fall into the wrong hands.

America has similarly dithered between reassurances and deepening concern, while revealing that it has been financing a “highly classified programme” to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Yet it claims to not know where the weapons are or details of how the Mushraff administration has protected the warheads.

According to the US, Islamabad remains as secretive on this matter as in the past. All of which in a country that is today the most vulnerable to Al Qaeda and the Taliban has caused an increasingly higher level of global unease.

Dubious game of democracy

How much of what both governments have publicly said is the truth? Is it conceivable that, with all the resources America commands, it doesn’t know more than what it has admitted?

Could Abdul Qadeer Zhan have organised the nuclear “leaks” from 1980 onwards without the knowledge and connivance of the Pakistani and US authorities? Are the concerns which both governments register from time to time related to their changing political interests?

Are Bush and Musharraf engaged in a charade in which the one registers district of the other and the latter goes through the motions of resisting demands for a restoration of “democracy”?

How is it that, given the close relations between the two countries, America, with its vast resources of “pressure”, has allegedly not been allowed to question Khan?

So the possibility, though not as yet the probability, is that Bush’s “pressure” on Musharraf on the uniform and “democracy” question is intended to appease some segments of Congress and the general’s justification of the emergency is to burnish his image as an independent Pakistani leader, who, though increasing isolated, is valiantly struggling to save his country from disintegration.

The point which both leaders are taking and with which it is difficult to disagree is that, as things are, Musharraf’s removal is a sure recipe for chaos, and the democracy claptrap which Bhutto is producing by the day is just that.

Assertion vs  authority

As is usual about public quarrels in our country, neither side is completely right or completely wrong. And since it is tiresome to separate one from the other, “pro” and “anti” factions are formed and an unproductive confrontation replaces the quiet, positive, behind-the-scenes dialogue that should have taken place.

What prevented the BCCI officials from consulting the already selected selectors about what their role should be?
There is a distinction to be made between the assertion and the exercise of authority. The BCCI, like most politicians and others with patronage at their disposal at all levels in both the public and private sectors, usually opt for assertion.

How rare it is that one comes across an individual or an organisation that exercises the authority it or he or she has been given without the ego factor stepping in. So,  there is merit in the BCCI proposal on the restrictions it has imposed on selectors about holding press conferences and writing cricket commentaries.

There is arguably less merit in banning selectors from watching matches played abroad. The trouble here is that nigglingly detailed restrictions unilaterally decided by the governing body are not a substitute for an unspoken, unwritten, adult, mature understanding between the selectors and the BCCI. Everyone associated with cricket has his or her opinions on selections or anything else but the ability to rise above them due to a sense of collective responsibility has yet to emerge.

The good, bad and ugly

Slightly more than half a century ago, Graham Greene took a hard look at the American scene and produced his novel — The Quiet American, after which people began to speak of the Ugly American and the loud American without in fairness conceding that one of the quintessentially humane beings on earth is that warm, affable, relaxed American, who has no interest in reforming the world.

To put this as it were, imbalance right a body known as the Business for Diplomatic Action,  a characteristic would-be American remedy was created, instructing its members not to be “so loud and to listen more”.

The general in Iraq who said that “it was fun to shoot some people”, though he probably did not intend to mean what the words said, was representative of the Ugly American. Yet,  both the ignorant, ugly and Loud Americans, as Greene shows, do not threaten the world, though generating a dislike that is at its peak today.

It is the quiet, well-meaning, in his way sincere, reforming, preachy, American who tends to bring the world to the brink of global disintegration. Of him Greene wrote: God save us from the innocent and the good. He was absorbed in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West and was determined to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world”.

Here is a mix of tragedy, comedy, weltschmerz and menace that defines what is going on in the world today and, in particular, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,  North Korea and Iran. Novelists’ opinion on world affairs are seldom taken seriously but Greene is as topical today as he was in 1955.