Daily Times, May 21, 2006
POSTCARD USA: Bingo! Two stars replace four — Khalid Hasan
Gen Karamat said he wasn’t keen to come to Washington in the first place. He was happy living in Lahore (and who wouldn’t be!) and so was his wife. But when Gen Pervez Musharraf asked him for the third time if he would go to Washington, he agreed. Last year, he told the foreign secretary that he did not wish to stay beyond his two-year contract
One General departs: another takes his place. An American friend, when he learnt of the appointment of Maj Gen Mahmud A Durrani as our man in Washington, said, “From four stars you have come down to two.”
“That can’t be helped,” I told him, “we couldn’t have gone higher because we have no Field Marshal, otherwise we would have sent him over.”
The last holder of this office has long been gone, living in civvy street, up in heaven. However, next time we decide on sending another ambassador to Uncle Sam’s Court, I suggest we send a Field Marshal. American republican spirit flies out the window when it comes to titles and honorifics. You can lose your job in this country but not your rank. Anyone who has ever been an ambassador, remains an ambassador till the last breath in his body. A secretary remains a secretary. Even lowly assistant secretaries who are received by the highest when they visit our land (and by joint secretaries when they go to New Delhi) are referred to as Mr or Madam Secretary.
And the number of those whose names are prefixed with Hon (short for Honourable I take it) is legion. My best efforts to find out who can be an Hon. and who can’t be one, have produced contradictory answers. I have been seriously wondering if it would not be a good idea to put Hon in front of my own name when my current stock of visiting cards runs out.
Any number of people have asked me — they think journalists know everything when the fact is that they are about as ignorant as the rest — why Gen Jehangir Karamat is leaving and why Maj Gen Durrani is taking his place. In this baseball-crazy country (Take me out to the ball game), often complicated situations are explained in terms of the summer game.
“Durrani came from left field”, I heard someone say. Being into cricket rather than baseball, I can only deduce that means to came from an unexpected direction. Any baseball fan reading this is welcome to correct me, in case. Before I move from baseball to generals and ambassadors, let me add that “dead fish” in baseball means a ball — called pitch — thrown with very little speed. It is also called a “dead mackerel”, a “nothing ball” and “salad” (which shows you what the average baseball fan thinks of things green when compared with, say, thick sausages heaped with mustard). And a banana in baseball is a pitch that veers away from its intended target. I mention these two terms to make the point that Gen Durrani has neither thrown a dead fish nor a banana but a Yorker that pitched six inches from the middle stump and took it away.
When the news first surfaced about Gen Karamat’s return home, I did something shockingly un-Pakistani. Instead of listening to as many stories as there are Mr Know Alls in this town, I asked the General himself why he was leaving. He told me why.
Let it be added for the record that Ambassador Karamat is the only Pakistani of note I know who answers every single message, no matter how trivial, addressed to him. He can also be reached on the phone, which no important Pakistani can ever be, either on his mobile — which is kept switched off — or on his phone which is picked up, if at all, by some sidekick who first asks you your name, your parentage, your caste, the colour of your eyes and hair, distinguishing physical marks and, last but not least your phone number and why you are calling. The call, of course, is never returned.
Gen Karamat said he wasn’t keen to come to Washington in the first place. He was happy living in Lahore (and who wouldn’t be!) and so was his wife. But when Gen Pervez Musharraf asked him for the third time if he would go to Washington, he agreed. Last year he said, he told the foreign secretary that he did not wish to stay beyond his two-year contract, which ends in November 2006. He followed this up with a formal letter reiterating that Gen Musharraf asked him some time later, if that was what he really wished, and when he confirmed that this indeed was his wish, Gen Musharraf asked if in that case he should look for his successor. “By all means,” Gen Karamat told him, thanking him for his courtesy.
How Gen Durrani appeared from left or right field to fill the breach, I do not know since I have not asked him. And rumours — despite Ayub Khan’s classic observation that in Pakistan all rumours are facts and all facts rumours — I do not rely on. Gen Durrani, an Armoured Corps officer — the fourth to come here as ambassador, and the sixth uniformed man to do so — is no stranger to Washington, having served here as military attaché for five years before becoming Gen Zia ul Haq’s military secretary.
He is also well versed in American think-tank culture and has many, many friends in that community, including our own Shirin Tahir-Kheli, one of Warrior Princess Condi Rice’s most trusted friends and aides. Most people will be happy about Gen Durrani’s big break because like all important people he cannot be short of friends (though the number of friends must have multiplied overnight, with many in Islamabad and Lahore, I hear, throwing the doors of hospitality open to him before he left).
Comrade Abdulla Malik once said to me, “Maqbul Sharif has been made editor-in-chief of The Pakistan Times. I don’t like it but I went over to offer him my congratulations because success, no matter achieved how or by whom, should be acknowledged.” So, Gen Durrani happy times in Washington. I’m sure we’re bound to like each other!
Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net
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