If looks mattered, Zareen Gul would have not be the best

Delawar Jan

PESHAWAR: From his looks, one might underrate him. He wears the traditional white cap that slides onto his forehead nearly touching the eyebrows. His unstarched waistcoat fits loose in his skinny body.

One of the residents of the far-off ‘black mountain,’ he has hardly learned strutting around, unlike his other colleagues. Simple and humble are the words to describe him in a nutshell. But when it comes to effort or competence and political know-how, he does not lag behind. In fact, he is a champion.

Zareen Gul is the best lawmaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, the previous parliamentary year records suggest. He brought the most non-legislative business to the provincial assembly and gave tough time to the government. With being vocal, he comes prepared; a combination that at times embarrasses the government.   

Inside a poky room of MPA hostel, he explains what made him a distinguished lawmaker in the assembly. “I work hard on preparing questions for the assembly,” Zareen Gul said, who brought 38 non-legislative activities, 35 filed queries about departments’ performance and three resolutions. The MPA said he visited different departments to learn what was happening wrong. He usually obtained some help from them to understand the issue before bringing it before the House in shape of a question.

A day before every sitting, he checks whether his question has come on the agenda. “If a question is on the agenda, I burn the mid-night oil to carefully read it to ensure that the answer furnished is not wrong or manipulated,” he said, seesawing between squatting and fidgeting on one end of a bolster. “Most of the treasury benches members are not happy with me for detecting wrong answers or misleading details,” he said, adding that some officers in the bureaucracy were also upset at his grilling of the departments.

Zareen Gul was elected on Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F ticket from Torghar, an underdeveloped district in Hazara Division. “It’s ‘Kala Dhaka’ in Urdu and ‘Black Mountain’ in English,” he said, hurrying up to add that it was called ‘Tor’ ‘Kala’ or ‘black’ because of its forested mountains.

What he calls a ‘cell’ is a team membered by his young son and nephew that provides technical support to the MPA. “My nephew Muhammad Ali Jan is a historian and my son Shakir Zareen is my political heir,” he said, when asked whether he gets technical assistance from someone. “After they have done their work, which includes pinpointing wrongdoings in departments, I prepare the questions in a professional manner,” said Zareen Gul, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy and who is a seasoned lawmaker elected five times to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in his patchy political career.

He was first elected to the provincial assembly in1985 as an independent candidate and still remembers a curt message from the then governor Gen (R) Fazle Haq that the military, not anybody else, would continue to run the government.

Before 1990 election, he joined Awami National Party and won consecutively three times in 1990, 1993 and 1997. He contested the 2013 election on JUI-F ticket and again made it to the assembly. However, his two attempts for National Assembly made in 1988 and 2002, both as an independent candidate, failed.

It’s frustrating for him that he has always remained in the opposition and could not do much for the development of Torghar.

He works hard to bring business to the assembly but does it pay off? To a certain level, Zareen Gul says. “The government machinery gets alerted and local administration swings into action to resolve a particular problem,” he said, but linked resolution of such problems to presence of the administrative secretaries in the assembly. “Real power is with the secretaries. These ministers and advisors are nothing, useless,” he said in desperation.

Zareen Gul is terribly disappointed with the ministers. “They come unprepared to the assembly,” he said, referring to their inability to answer questions in the House, often embarrassing themselves. “I am not satisfied with their level of intellect,” he put it bluntly and said they must be trained in the use of parliamentary language.

Nevertheless, Zareen Gul admires Chief Minister Pervez Khattak as good, uncorrupted and senior politician and the one who is unaccustomed to official protocol. But he sees no reason to conclude that his government even exists in the province. “It’s the worst example of bad governance when you fail to utilise the budget. It means the people did not benefit,” he argued.

Born in December 1952, Zareen Gul still has black hairs in his trimmed beard that border his sunken cheeks. He is super fit. Believe it or not, he says he has never caught any serious illness in his life. Not even a headache. What’s the secret of his health? His conclusion says less eating. “I hardly eat a roti in a whole day meals,” the MPA, literally scrawny, said, taking small morsels from a plate.

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PTI's Nato blockade protest fading out as lone camp wears deserted look

Delawar Jan

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) protest that has blocked Nato supplies has almost come to an unannounced end as it entered the new year on Wednesday.

The party has wound up four out of five protest camps set up in Nowshera, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat and at Peshawar Motorway Toll Plaza. The only sit-in on the Ring Road near Hayatabad Toll Plaza was deserted on the 40th day of the protest.

Has there been any understanding between the PTI and federal government or the US to lift the blockade silently? The Imran Khan’s party officially denies it and insists it is as committed as it was in disallowing Nato supplies through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

However, ground reality at the site of the lone sit-in tells a different story. Container-mounted trucks were hardly stopped to ascertain their destination. Two white chairs were placed at the roadside across the road from the camp. One was occupied by a 10-year-old child holding a Jamaat-e-Islami flag that was taller than him in size. Another was taken by a young boy with PTI flag in his hands.

The child stood and waved the JI flag to stop a truck that was approaching. It stopped for a few seconds and the child allowed it to go. Shipment documents did not go through scrutiny and the driver did not face quizzing. There were no chants against the US, no clinging onto the vehicle and no insistence to break the container seals. It did not seem to be site of the protest that has apparently blocked the Nato supplies to Afghanistan.

For several weeks after PTI and JI started the sit-in, the show was never so unimpressive. A crowd of charged workers would stop every container-laden truck and force the drivers to show shipment documents. Some workers would cling onto the front of the vehicles, others would force their way to the front seat, several would stand outside the driver’s window to quiz him and a number of them would rush to the back of the container to check the seal. Several drivers were roughed up for resisting producing the documents.

They returned vehicles on the slightest suspicion of being bound for Western troops in Afghanistan. And that too in triumphant manner as dozens of workers in front of the vehicles would chant anti-US slogans and others would triumphantly climb onto the vehicle to show it the way back. Everything like that was missing on Wednesday.

Most of the containers passed uninterrupted as if PTI did not want to block them. The containers coming from Afghanistan were not checked at all. The US is withdrawing its troops and military equipment and weapons from Afghanistan this year. It has used this route for taking back the military equipment and weapons for several months until PTI blocked it. Though the US has announced it has halted shipment of cargo from Afghanistan through Torkham, there is hardly any on-ground confirmation that it has stopped the reverse supplies.

Casting a glance at the camp from across the road gave a deserted look. All the banners that once buried the camp had gone. Only a few PTI and JI flags fluttered. And most importantly, only six workers from both parties manned the camp at 12:45. Only 10 chairs dotted the site. All the eight DSNG vans had disappeared.

If PTI and JI were not willingly allowing the trucks to pass, it showed the level of their seriousness in continuing blockade of the Nato cargo. It also puts to question the much-trumpeted PTI resolve to continue the blockade for an indefinite period. But even with the deserted camp, the PTI workers’ rhetoric remains unchanged. “Our resolve to continue the Nato supplies blockade stays firm,” said Fayyaz Khalil, an office-bearer of the Town-III chapter who was at the camp.

Provincial Information Secretary of PTI Ishtiaq Urmar shrugged off the question of any understanding to silently allow Nato supplies. “There is no question of that. The protest will continue until drone strikes are stopped,” he told The News. He wondered why the camp was deserted on Wednesday as they had around 40 workers on Tuesday and returned four or five meat-filled trucks. “We don’t take blockade of Nato supplies as a joke,” he said.

The PTI workers at the camp claimed they still stopped trucks and checked shipment documents. They argued the Nato trucks no more arrived due to the PTI protest. “The blockade remains enforced,” Khalil said. “There is no understanding to allow Nato supplies silently.”

The PTI activists said workers could not come to the camp due to some miscommunication. They said it was the turn of workers from Nowshera but they did not come. What about JI workers? They too did not come. “Ten to 15 JI workers daily come to the camp by turn,” said Farooq Khan, JI’s PK-6 president. “Today our workers have come but PTI workers are missing,” he claimed. One looked around, but could not find more than six people. Where are they? And loud laughter came in reply.

Younas Zaheer, PTI Peshawar chapter general secretary, said the Nowshera chapter of PTI could not get the message. “There was some misunderstanding,” he argued.