A Life Half Lived

by Andrew MacLeod

  I put a proposal to Zorica that the Australian government could fund a trip to Australia for Farooq and the UN could pay for me to accompany him, in order for Farooq to get ideas on the establishment of the National Disaster Management Authority. Zorica agreed. I took Farooq to Canberra to meet the relevant political leaders and visit EMA headquarters. We also decided to visit the main EMA training facilities located at Mount Macedon outside Melbourne. Farooq took many lessons to consider for Pakistan.

  While in Melbourne we met my great friend Chris. We also went to see my Dad. Farooq was the first of the army generals to recognise my Achilles heel. The relationship between me and my father had broken down many years before. Dad didn’t understand or accept my career choice.

  Farooq and I went to my favourite hamburger place, Andrew’s Hamburgers, a few hundred metres from my father’s house.

  “Andrew, we have been here two days now, and not met your father”, said Farooq. The relationship between father and son is the most important in Pakistan and for Farooq it was unthinkable that we had not paid a visit. “Where does he live?”

  “200 metres that way”, I indicated.

  “Let’s go”, he said. We went inside, but Farooq had laid the groundwork for Nadeem to build on.

  General Nadeem: Love and Marriage Nadeem and I had become very close. We had got on very well from that first 2005 meeting and had developed a stronger bond as the earthquake relief unfolded. We shared many good times and some truly fascinating and uplifting discussions. I believe that one of the reasons Nadeem kept me around was for our discussions, but also for the odd time when we would disagree. Our first disagreement was about two trees in Abbottabad.

  If it was not for the fact that Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad in early 2011 perhaps only those who had been to Pakistan would ever have heard of the town. It’s a pretty location nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s also the home of a number of Pakistan army training facilities including the medical corps. It is on the grounds of the medical corps and the local golf course that the United Nations helicopter hub was placed for the entire period of the earthquake relief. Yet it very nearly wasn’t on account of two trees. One of General Nadeem’s many strengths is a great passion for the environment. When he was a brigade commander in the northern parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, he ensured the clearance of walking trails up toward K2, including the installation of environmentally-friendly latrines in some of the world’s most remote locations.

  After our meeting at General Headquarters in October 2005, the United Nations and the Pakistan army determined that Abbottabad would be a good location for the helicopter hub, if enough space could be found. The United Nations was to bring in quite a number of MI-8 helicopters, a Soviet-designed, rotary-wing workhorse. We were also going to bring in the MI-26, the world’s largest helicopter. This helicopter fleet would move an enormous amount of food and non-food items as part of the relief effort. The army band school and Abbottabad golf course were chosen as the main hub for the United Nations helicopters; however, there were two large trees in the middle of the flight paths.

  People assume that helicopters can take off vertically (i.e. straight up and down). While this is true, it puts far less stress on the airframe for a helicopter to take off horizontally, in a similar way to an aeroplane. When carrying cargo it is particularly important to take a horizontal take-off path, if possible. Two trees grew in the middle of the horizontal take-off path. To move around the trees would take extra time and decrease the number of flights the helicopters could take. Nadeem and I had one heck of an argument about the trees as he swore we could do as many flights as we planned and still leave the trees in place. Nadeem was a helicopter pilot and had a view about the flight paths. I was taking my advice from the United Nations experts who insisted the trees needed to be removed. Nadeem won the argument. The trees remained and we still achieved the flights. Nadeem was right!

  Nadeem and I did a lot of learning together, principally about gender planning, which led to the success of increasing girls’ enrolments in schools in Kashmir. After Nadeem saw that success and understood the need for age and gender-desegregated data, he saw the issue as being one of effective planning. We both saw the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender as an issue throughout all parts of the relief and recovery operation.

  We both learnt that the issue around ‘gender’ is not the same as issues about ‘women and girls’. For example, many may look at the problems associated with female-only households when all the men of a family have been killed in a natural disaster. Yet few think of the problems of male-only households when all the women in the family have been killed. Regardless of what one may think of different cultures, when there are specific tasks in the family assigned to the different genders in different cultural environments, then a family unit becomes dysfunctional if one or other of the genders is removed from the equation. Those planning relief and recovery operations need to understand the various issues regarding gender and plan the response to those issues.

  Both those who look at gender issues merely through a feminist lens and those who are straying down the path of male chauvinism, are equally as distracting to a comprehensive response. Nadeem learnt this very quickly.

  At an emergency planners’ conference in Geneva during 2006 I listened to a presentation given by a gender adviser (the vast majority of whom are female) speak on issues regarding women’s evidence in rape trials in Islamic countries. In some Islamic countries women’s evidence is not accepted as equal to that of a man’s evidence.

  At this conference the woman presenter outlined the program she had been running in Sudan to have women’s evidence accepted as equal. She had persuaded approximately 100 women who had been raped, and two of whom had wished to put the episode behind them, to pursue a prosecution of the male perpetrators. This woman saw it as a great success that after 100 attempts she achieved the first prosecution of a man based on the equal acceptance of women's evidence. The majority of the people in the room applauded her.

  I put my hand up to ask what had happened to the other 99 women. The presenter informed us that there had been no conviction in the previous 99 cases and the men had walked free. I again asked what happened to the women. After having admitted a sexual act took place in the course of a rape trial, the man was found not guilty and the women were then charged with adultery. They were convicted and stoned to death.

  When one becomes too blinded to an ideological goal one can lose sight of their impact on people. This presenter thought it was a great success that after one hundred tries they received one conviction for rape, however I thought it a great tragedy that 99 women had been charged with adultery, convicted and stoned to death. This would not have happened to them if not for the neo-academic feminist wanting to prove a point.

  In a similar way, when gender issues are confused with feminism in issues regarding sexual and gender-based violence in conflict environments, similar distortion can take place. Rape as a weapon of war is abhorrent. Yet if one looks at the issue of rape in war through a feminist lens then the result is the creation of a large number of programs supporting the victims of rape. When one looks at the issue of rape as a weapon of war through a gender lens then two things become apparent. Firstly, it is appropriate to put in place as many programs as you can to look after the victims of rape.

  Secondly, however, when looking through a gender lens and analysing who the perpetrators of rape are in many conflict environments, often it is young boys and youths forced into the acts as part of an initiation program implemented by some of the world’s worst warlords. Would it not be best to have a cohesive policy in place to respond to such violence rather than employ random people, each with their own agenda?

  In many ways the boys who are kidnapped, enrolled into the guerrilla military forces and forced to perpetrate these heinous crimes are also victims. When understanding this dynamic, a lot of programs can be put in place to try and protect the boys from k
idnapping and thereby reduce not only the number of child soldiers but also the number of perpetrators of crime.

  When looking through a feminist lens one deals with the consequence of rape. When looking through a gender lens one can deal with both the consequence of rape and the causes of rape. It is always best to stop the event from happening than to deal with the consequence afterwards.

  In March 2007 my younger brother Ben was to get married in Melbourne in the same week as the World Swimming Championships were also taking place in Melbourne. Four swimmers from Pakistan were going to go to Melbourne, including two of the girls whom I had been helping to coach. A day or two before I was due to leave I was in Nadeem’s office to get three quick decisions on issues involving the recovery effort. As I was leaving the room I asked:

  “Sir, you know how you always say I should get married and you know how I’m going to my brother’s wedding next week? Tell me this, why should I get married? What am I missing out on?”

  Nadeem picked up his phone and called in his assistant Major Mushtaq and asked for some food to be brought in. We had a very long conversation about the meaning of life and love. He shared with me some of his deeply personal thoughts and issues regarding his experience in life, marriage and love. At the end of the conversation he summed up his view.

  “Andrew, if I have had a very bad day, when I go home my wife will put her arms around me and tell me that everything is okay. That’s what you’re missing out on. That’s why you should get married.”

  This isn’t the sort of advice that you expect from an army general in Pakistan.

  When my time in Pakistan was drawing to an end, Nadeem told me that he thought I’d done a lot for his country and in return he was going to do something for me. He said he was going to try and fix the relationship between me and my father. I’d shared with Nadeem some of the problems of my childhood and the fact that part of the problem was that my father didn’t really understand what it was that I did for a living and why.

  “So let’s show him,” Nadeem said. “Bring him to Pakistan and I’ll show him what you’ve done.”

  Dad took some persuading to come to Pakistan. I tried a number of times to convince my father on the telephone, but each time he was about to agree, a suicide bombing in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad would make global headlines and Dad would reconsider.

  “Well is your father coming or not?” Nadeem asked me in exasperation one time. I said to Nadeem that I’d tried to persuade him and that my father changed his mind each time a suicide bomb went off.

  “Andrew, I’m the Vice Chief of General Staff of the Pakistan Army, I’ll make sure he has protection,” Nadeem said.

  “I know that Sir, but Dad doesn’t.” I paused. “Heck, Dad was in the military, he understands generals. Just ring him up and order him to come won’t you?”

  “Give me his number?” said Nadeem.

  I left Nadeem’s office, giving him my father’s phone number and after half an hour or so on the phone Nadeem had persuaded my father and my stepmother to come and visit. He was on a mission!

  Nadeem had organised for VIP treatment for my father and stepmother when they arrived in Islamabad. When I went to the airport to meet my parents, an official from the Department of Foreign Affairs ensured that there was no wait at the customs queue and that another official would be responsible for collecting their bags. By the time we arrived at my accommodation Nadeem had delivered flowers for my stepmother. Next morning Nadeem personally flew us around the earthquake-affected zone as part of his regular inspections and took the time to explain not only the size of the challenge we were confronted with, but my role in helping meet the challenge. I have to say that, if anything, Nadeem oversold my role!

  Landing in Chakothi was particularly meaningful. Nadeem had the local military detachment set up a picnic under an old parachute. We ate a beautiful lunch in sight of the Line of Control between Indian-controlled and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Given that Nadeem had been posted as a brigade commander in Chakothi, he shared with my father stories of life as a senior commander in the conflict zone.

  We drove down to the primary school. On my first visit there we saw blood-stained school books, destroyed desks and chairs and evidence everywhere of innocent young lives that had been taken by the natural disaster. Nadeem shared these stories with Dad as we walked around the rebuilt school, with new equipment and evidence of happy children recovering from the disaster. We showed my father the first A-framed construction built after Matt George’s idea which resulted in the building of 400,000 emergency shelters and saving countless lives.

  We flew over Muzaffarabad. In 2005 I had huddled around a small gas heater on Christmas Eve. In 2008 it was a town well on the way to recovery with a brand-new luxury hotel opening. It was somehow fitting that my first night in Muzaffarabad was in a tent, and my last visit saw me inside a luxury hotel. If nothing else, it convinced me that we had completed a job well. After landing back in Islamabad and spending a night in the capital, we drove to Lahore. Outside Lahore is the Wagah Border. Each evening at sunset there is a formal military ceremony beautifully choreographed between the Indian and Pakistan military forces on duty. Flags are ceremoniously lowered as soldiers bid to outdo each other in the highest of high kicks, loudest orders and the most well coordinated act of defiance that you could ever see.

  The Wagah Border crossing divides the Grand Trunk Road between India and Pakistan and was the only road link between these two countries before the opening of the Aman Setu in Kashmir in 1999. The ceremony starts with a blustering parade by the soldiers from both countries and ends in the perfectly coordinated lowering of the national flags, and a brutal slamming of the two sets of border gates. This ceremony was toned down in 2010, a shame since it provided great entertainment and an attraction for national and international tourists.

  As it was a military ceremony, Nadeem was anxious for Dad to enjoy it. He had instructed the rangers in charge on the Pakistan side to treat Dad, ‘not as a VIP, but as a V-V-VIP’. Not only did we have the military escort from Lahore out to the border area, complete with out-rider police motorcycles, but Dad received formal gifts and was asked to inspect the Pakistani troops. I began to nickname Dad ‘the Governor General of Pakistan’ because everywhere he went he seemed to inspect troops.

  Nadeem’s daughter was married in the week my father was visiting, so we were invited to the wedding. At most Pakistani weddings men and women are separated in different rooms. While my stepmother joined the women’s room, my father and I joined the men. The guests were made up of the Who’s Who of Pakistani military and government. While we were enjoying the ceremony, senior official after senior official all introduced themselves to my father and thanked him for allowing me to be in Pakistan. Each one finished off by asking why it was that I wasn’t married.

  In Pakistan most marriages are arranged by the parents. It is the father’s duty to find an appropriate spouse for his son and for the father and mother to find an appropriate spouse for their daughter. This often seems unusual to Western eyes.

  In the West, marriage is about joining individuals. In the East, marriage is about joining families. In that context it isn’t unusual that families should be involved. Most of the people I met in Pakistan were in the middle or upper class. The process of arranged marriage is very different for the upper classes than it is for the lower classes. With the middle and upper classes, a proposal came about when the family of the son proposed their boy to the family of the daughter. More often than not it is the daughter who gets to choose more than the son. Far from being an attack on female independence, arranged marriages in that context are often a family discussion in which the girl gets more choice than the boy.

  There is no doubt that this is different in some of the lower classes and it is the horror stories of young daughters being sold that often makes TV news, thereby creating an inaccurate perception of the practice in the West. In my entire time in Pakistan more often than not p
eople didn’t defend the arranged marriages as much as feel desperately sorry for me that I didn’t have one. The fact that I was a bachelor in my early forties was, to them, proof that there was a role for parents to get involved. As one army officer told me, “After all, parents often know their children better than the child themselves.”

  In Pakistan I made incredibly strong friendships. Given that Pakistanis believed in arranged marriages and that they believed it was my father’s responsibility to find me a wife, it was too big a temptation for them to let the opportunity pass without them telling my father what they thought of my single status.

  After several iterations of the same story my father finally said to Brigadier Waqar, “I just haven’t found the right woman yet.” Waqar simply pointed to the women’s room and said, “Pick one.”

  My father was later to say that it wasn’t how much the Pakistanis had said about what I had done in the country, it was how far out of their way so many senior people went to explain what my role was. My Pakistani friends genuinely wanted to reconcile my father and I.

  I can report back to my Pakistani friends ‘mission accomplished’. What Farooq had started in Melbourne in 2007, Nadeem finished in Islamabad in 2008. Between the two of them, these two generals had fixed a broken relationship. They did so because they cared. I will forever hold in deep affection not only Nadeem and Farooq but the whole range of friendships made with some incredible people in very difficult circumstances.

  Closing Thoughts on Pakistan Despite what you may be led to believe, via the media, Pakistan is a country with many hidden pleasures and great treasures. It is, without doubt, let down by its politics. The political situation should not hide from the world the fact that Pakistan is a country with many great people. I have made stronger friendships in the two and a half years in that country than in any other. I found the honesty, compassion and interest of the people to be genuine and strong.