There is no getting away By Kamran Shafi

THAILAND is one of the most pleasurable places in the whole wide world to visit — now before any of you start sniggering, I am here with my twelve-year-old daughter, so there — everybody smiles at you, the food is great, the shopping affordable, and even the weather is cooler than that in the Land of the Pure at this time of year.

If you are travelling Thai Airlines, the feeling that you are in friendly and caring hands washes over you the moment you step on to the airplane. The attendants are exceedingly polite and helpful and nobody growls at you as they most times do on PIA, the exception being a good PIA flight now and again.

Our hotel in Siam Square, the Novotel, a 4-star establishment (it is at least 7-star when compared to most of the kitsch hostelries in the Fatherland almost all of which are actually shadi-ghars or marriage halls now), is a great hotel with excellent services. It is located right by the best eating places, cinemas, and spanking new shopping malls and department stores.

The comfortable and squeaky clean Sky-Train is a one-minute walk away and once on it you have the freedom of the city of Bangkok where one of the most helpful and hospitable and delightful people that I know, Prapa Smutkojon, lives. What a pleasure it is being with him and discussing the world with him.

But by God was it difficult to get a tourist visa to visit this great and gentle Kingdom this time around! I have been here tens of times (the first time in 1979), and there were at least three previous visas, one as recent as February this year, in the passport presented to the embassy, but what a palaver it was to get one. It was so difficult and embarrassing and demeaning that had it not been for Zainab whose holiday this was, I would have withdrawn my passport and not come at all.

And what was the problem after completing ALL the formalities such as attaching bank statements and air tickets (as if we might have swum to Thailand otherwise!), attaching a letter introducing myself AND naming Prapa as my contact in Bangkok complete with his address and telephone numbers? That since I had written in the column ‘Profession’ the word ‘Columnist’, there was not a letter from my editor saying that I was, indeed, a columnist with his newspaper!

I thought the Thai embassy had a press section that actually scanned the Pakistani papers! And who might have known that there was a columnist called Kamran Shafi in the English press in Pakistan who had been writing for not one or two or three years, but for 25! I mean, puhlease!

It was not as if I had asked the Thai embassy to pay my airfare, or my hotel expenses, that my editor’s certificate was necessary. I mean all I was doing was applying for a tourist visa so I could bring my little daughter to this beautiful country for a short holiday. That is all.

But wait. When I told Prapa about my tribulations at the hands of the Thai embassy in Islamabad, he told me of his friend’s at the hands of our embassy in Bangkok. Apparently some typically typical bureaucrat, and by golly do we have more than our fair share of them, had asked for a ‘FAXED’ copy of something or other document.

When Prapa and his friend went with an ‘EMAILED’ copy of the document, the Pakistani bureaucrat rejected it, insisting on a ‘FAX’. So, there it is, tit for bloody tat! One bureaucrat outdoing another. But, seriously, Thailand is a far better run, better organised country than the Citadel of Islam in every single way. Why, even the electricity doesn’t go off, not for a single minute, ever.

Its visa procedures, therefore, need to be made more efficient too. The Thai embassy in Islamabad is the only embassy that has asked me for a letter from my editor. And I travel rather a lot.Elsewhere now and there are reports that the Americans are ‘winning’ in Iraq. One million or so killed and maimed-for-life Iraqis; fully 15 per cent of the country’s population refugees; several trillion $s down the tube; Iraq’s infrastructure in ruins; the Turks bombing the daylights out of the Kurds; and America with many more enemies than before the assault on Iraq is winning, is it?

If it is, then why not an all-out assault on Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas? Indeed, why not nuke ’em out of existence? It will cost less and if there are no more Afghans and Pakistani tribals there will not be any problem, what?

Meanwhile, news from home is, as usual, bad and bad news follows you wherever you go, even in beautiful Thailand. The latest shenanigans of Rehman Malik aka The One Man Wrecking Crew and the evidently not-very-bright Yousuf Raza Gilani have delivered another kick in the nation’s teeth, sending it reeling another time.

I am no friend of a rampant ISI, let me say straight away, but to place it under an unelected person, particularly one whose name is Rehman Malik who has already distinguished himself not once, not twice, but three times putting both his feet in the government’s collective mouth?

Instead of trying to cut the ISI to size in several other ways, one being posting out the incumbent directors general, all of them, and reducing the ranks of their successors, these nincompoops go and issue a silly order as if Musharraf and his handmaidens who still hold positions of great authority would let them get away with it.

NOW does Zardari understand just WHY it was/is imperative that the Commando be got rid off at the earliest opportunity? NOW does he understand that the judges should have been restored to the pre-Nov 3 position months ago? NOW does he understand that Naek, Khosa, Awan and Company were/are exactly the wrong people to listen to?

I am still plumping for democracy; I am still hopeful that we will transform from an army-dominated dictatorship to a true democracy; I am still hopeful that the great coalition will stay and prosper. But will Asif Zardari do the right thing, even now? If he doesn’t it is his neck first on the block — he should know that much.

PS. More good news: Thailand beat Pakistan 29-0 in the Under-15 Asian School Football Championships in Bangkok this last Saturday. However, we are a nuclear power and have not one, but several bums.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

Source: www.Dawn.com