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Flight of the Falcon: Story of a Fighter Pilot, |
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Nur Khan, Asghar Khan and Abbas Khattak at the launch in Islamabad |
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Haider signing his book |
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Sajad Haider with his squadron of Pathankot fame |
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Sajad Haider with his sister Kausar Haider who is an |
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Sajad Haider (extreme right) with children Zaeina, Adnan, and Zohare |
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“Butt, the prosecutor, had not an iota of self-esteem in his body or soul; he was the most pitiful human being I have seen crumble so quickly from such a high perch. I continued brushing my teeth as I heard him say the CAS had ordered my immediate release and a service car would be there to drive me home” |
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When Haider bid farewell to the PAF, he had Rs 17,000 as his total savings. No plots and other assets that we are now familiar with. He started from ground zero. But his lesson for men in uniform is: “If you serve with total dedication … nature rewards you for your pride in the profession” |
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This was a hot May afternoon when I found myself at the book launch of Flight of the Falcon. I had no plans to be in Islamabad until the author informed me of the launch, an event to be remembered in the culturally stifling environs of Islamabad. I have known Air Commodore (retired) Sajad Haider for years. He is an exceptional man, able to connect across generations. The articulate and hospitable Haider can hold forth on any subject under the sun without cavil. As a young man, I had heard the delightful, adventurous and sometimes sad accounts of his stint with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). In many ways, the rise and fall of the PAF is a mirror image of Pakistan’s institutional trajectory, depicting how good we are at making a hash of things and persecuting our heroes.
Flight of the Falcon essentially sums up Haider’s grand story of valour, tribulations and commitment to the country. As he told me, this book “is my endeavour to fulfil my small responsibility towards my country. During the 1965 and 1971 wars with India, which I participated in as a commander leading the No 19 Squadron of the Pakistan Air Force, and as head of the fighter tactical wing respectively, I was a witness to history in the making.” During the 1965 war, Haider had collected the best fighter pilots and put them under the “warriors” training regime. The results achieved by his squadron were spectacular: an unmatchable six Sitara-e-Jurats were bestowed on the pilots, including the fighter-author. The 19th Squadron carried out the most difficult missions of the 1965 war and these have been documented by British, Indian and Pakistani experts. Whilst most accounts recall the operational episodes narrated by second-hand sources, Flight of the Falcon attempts to provide a candid account of these two controversial wars from the cockpit of a fighter air craft. Interestingly the book challenges the conventional mantra of victory trumpeted by state histories: in both the wars, there was no clear winner, and the book chronicles that honestly.
Haider holds that after four decades, the truth about what happened must come out without any embarrassment. “We owe it to our future generations, particularly today’s young commanders and students of military history, to set the record straight,” he adds. Not surprisingly, reticence to carry out an honest analysis of the lessons of the wars against India is rooted in the effort to protect the incompetent and short-sighted leaders whose mistakes cost the lives of many gallant men, not to mention the tragic break up of Pakistan in 1971.
Flight of the Falcon is not just a dry historical account. It is an eminently readable autobiography as well. Sometimes, the episodes appear stranger than fiction, especially when Haider’s air chief framed him in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and charged him with treason and with inciting mutiny. We also learn how the Shahinshah of Iran, Raza Pahlavi, told Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to punish Haider for denigrating him. The sensational bits make the book impossible to put down. There is the incident where Zia ul Haq lectured the armed forces, trying to explain the reasons why he had carried out a military coup, and why the nation was not fit for democracy. The author retorted, “The pride with which I have worn this uniform and defended my country with my life has been denigrated to the point where I see contempt in the eyes of Pakistanis who had once adored the sight of this very uniform. As part of your constituency we are now the conquerors of Pakistan rather than its defenders.” Of course, Haider lost his career and Zia was reported to have said that he wanted to see Haider with a begging bowl in his hand!
The story gets more inspiring as Haider, instead of acting as a depressed careerist, does not look back, and rebuilds his life as a successful businessman. The message is clear: “never cave into coercion, nor surrender to the self-righteous.” These are words that are most relevant as we wage war against the forces of darkness in twenty-first century Pakistan.
We also read interesting anecdotes about Haider’s personal life. His father emerges as a role model, held in high respect by the Baloch Sardars; and his mother is revealed as a woman who emphasised education for all her children. From a ‘mama’s boy’, the author landed into the rough terrain of life and achieved success on merit, and through sheer dedication and hard work. The role of Air Marshal Asghar Khan in upgrading the PAF also gets illuminated through the text. But the sad events following Ayub Khan’s coup in 1958 get a detailed treatment. Indeed the author, many would say for the right reasons, is unsparing towards the 1958 coup – a “ midnight coup supported by second rate generals of the army,” to use Haider’s words. The only person to challenge Ayub was Asghar Khan. The Pakistan army since the 1960s has followed “a course of nepotism, corruption and cronyism that has been hard to rectify in all these years”, laments Haider.
Pakistan’s client status is also discussed at length when the author narrates how the Americans pushed Ayub Khan into creating a spy base at Badaber near Peshawar. Haider laments how this tradition was carried on by Ayub’s successors, especially Yahya Khan, who kept waiting for the 6th fleet in 1971, which was checkmated by the Soviets.
The false sense of importance that we have nurtured and polished as the core to our foreign policy continues unabated.
Haider tells us how Ayub feared his own shadow and constantly suffered the trepidation of coups and assassination attempts which was more of a phantom. Purges from within the ranks led to a situation where the army was starved of young captain and major level officers. In Haider’s words, the “not so obvious young Turks managed to survive.” Ayub pushed Pakistan into the 1965 war, which turned out to be a tactical debacle leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan. As we find out from Flight of the Falcon , the PAF was kept completely in the dark about the plan to annex Kashmir through guerrilla warfare, and Asghar Khan was deliberately kept out of the loop until the Indian air force rattled the rafters of Musa and Ayub’s bunkers. Tragically, the leadership thought that India would not react violently against Pakistan. The gallant men who infiltrated into Indian- held Kashmir were ill-trained. Some youths from the streets of Azad Kashmir towns were given as little as three weeks training to fight a guerrilla war of attrition. “There was no plan of exfiltration, and the secrecy of this plan met its Waterloo when two Muslim Kashmiris reported the presence of Pakistani Mujahid forces to the Indian police as well as to the local army headquarters. A tragic massacre of our valiant men followed,” says Haider. We have been bleeding due to the Kashmir conflict for decades, and brave men have shed their blood without knowing the power-games and megalomania of our leaders.
Tags: Air, Air Force, Ayub, books, Flight of the Falcon, Force, India, Kashmir, Khan, Lahore, PAF, pakistan, Pakistan army, Publications, Sajad Haider, Vanguard, War, Zia
Book Review
Name of the Book: Sacred Kerala—A Spiritual Journey
Author: Dominique-Sila Khan
Publisher: Penguin, New Delhi, 2009
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
The southern Indian state of Kerala has a unique population mix. A little less than half of Kerala’s inhabitants are Hindus, who belong to various castes. The rest are Muslims and Christians, in roughly equal number, and a miniscule number of Jews, who form India’s oldest Jewish community. In contrast to much of north India, inter-community relations in Kerala have always been fairly harmonious, although the situation is beginning to change today. At the popular level, economic and social ties and inter-dependence between Kerala’s different religious communities have given birth to a strong sense of Malayali identity that transcends religious boundaries. This has been facilitated by the use of the Malayalam language by all of the state’s communities as well as a long-standing tradition of religious overlapping or shared religious identities, which is what this fascinating book is all about.
Tags: boundaries, Christian, communal, Hindu, India, Kerala, Muslim, Religion, spiritual
My op-ed for The NEWS
Raza Rumi
On the face of it, the Pakistani state with the clear endorsement of political parties and the majority of its citizenry is fighting a battle against militant Islamism. However, it is not as simple a formulation as it appears to be. The state is also cracking under extreme pressure for having lost its capacities and effectiveness a long time ago. The central tenet of state policy and implementation is adhocism that keeps a mammoth, oversized, under-paid and snail-paced elephant going. With Mughal and pre-industrial social structures reflecting in a colonial organisation, the Pakistani state is an unattended patient lying on an Elliotesque table, waiting for a surgery.
The fact that ragtag groups have the audacity to challenge the state and its mighty armed forces speaks a lot for where we stand today. That a relatively small number of bandits can wreak havoc and make us look like pariah country with nervous neighbours is by itself a parable of our times. Add to this the dysfunctional police that simply cannot discharge their functions let alone tackle the suicide missions launched by jihad laboratories. Services – health, education, water and justice – are abysmally delivered to the lucky ones who have access to them. Otherwise, it is pretty much a jungle out there. In a context where insecurity and lack of faith in the state pervades the body politique, the current war can accentuate the pressures on the state, leading to a near-collapse situation: assuming, rather charitably, that it still functions as an arbiter between citizen interest and the legitimate use of violence. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Baluchistan, Civil Service, Constitution, delivery, devolution, Extremism, Islamism, Musharraf, pakistan, parties, perish, political, power, Punjab, reform, service, Sindh, state, Taliban, violence
I wish I knew what you wanted.
You block the road and won’t give me rest.
You pull my lead-rope one way, then the other.
You act cold, my darling!
Do you hear what I say? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ghazal, ode, poem, Poetry, Rumi, sufi
Tags: bomber, Neelum, pakistan, poem, suicide, Urdu
The Taliban phenomenon was erroneously, and rather dangerously, projected as a herald of a new dawn
The Pakistani state policy of nurturing jihad factories over the decades is staring back at its architects, supporters and sponsors. Zafar Hilaly, a close aide of the late Benazir Bhutto, recently divulged in his memoirs that BB had confessed how the support to the Taliban was perhaps her most regrettable mistake. She could recognise it was more of a function of being out of the power ambit for nearly a decade. The compulsions of exercising power and playing it by the rules set by the national security obsessed state are perhaps germane to Pakistan’s creation as an insecure postcolonial state that was neither prepared not committed to reverse the colonial modes of governance.
Tags: Afghanistan, Baba, Barelvi, Buner, Deobandi, Hangu, Islam, Islamism, Justice, military, NWFP, operation, pakistan, Pir Baba, Rehman, Shias, sufi, Swat, Taliban, terror, terrorism, USA
AJMER: The 797th Urs of the 12th century Sufi saint, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, commenced on Friday with the flag-hosting ceremony at the Buland Darwaza.
About 200 people from the Gori family of Bhilwara, headed by Fakrudin Gori, came to Ajmer. As per age-old traditions, the family is authorized to hoist the Urs flag.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ajmer, Chistiya, India, Khawaja Muinuddin Chishty, Khwaja, Muinuddin, sufi, Sufism, Urs
My piece that appeared in The Friday Times (May 29-4 June, 2009 issue). I have argued that the silence of Pakistani writers on terrorism and extremism is finally breaking
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‘Fallen Indus’, a painting by the author |
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‘Ignorance Is Bliss’, a miniature by Saira Wasim |
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Since the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and the global hysteria about ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’, Pakistan has faced the greatest of existential challenges after its dismemberment in 1971. As a frontline ally of the US in the war on terror, Pakistani society and polity have been engulfed by growing militancy and acts of violence. Whilst there is no single definition of ‘terrorism’, the mainstream media and policymakers – in the service of imperial rhetoric aimed to justify and perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq – have established terrorism as the major threat to domestic and regional peace in South Asia. Acts of premeditated and organised violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have thus assumed a central place in discourse on regional cooperation or its converse: the rivalries between the constructed nation states and their irresponsible power-elites.
In this milieu, South Asian citizens have been the victims of violence, uncertainty and acrimony that have only led to the exacerbation of poverty, inequality, ascendancy of militarism and the war-mantra. All of this is taking place when globalization is relentlessly seeping into domestic economies, cultures and social systems. Where does this leave the writers and poets of the Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Afghanistan, Agra, Asia, Bajaur, FOSWAL, literature, pakistan, Pakistani, SAARC, society, South, terror, terrorism, United States
Published in The NEWS
By Raza Rumi
This is a critical moment in our history perhaps unmatched for its severity and its brutal reality. The experiential nightmare that our country is passing through is perhaps unparalleled for the enemy is neither foreign nor fully identifiable. At the same time, never has there been a clear backing of a military campaign against domestic agents of subversion and anarchy. Forget the doctored samples of opinion polls, often conducted by foreign agencies. That by itself should make us ashamed for our proclivity to accept what others have to analyse and determine for us. Even ignore the fringe voices of dissent led by those who neither have credibility or sagacity to comprehend the existential crisis faced by Pakistan. The army has shown vision and displayed courage in tackling a menace that alas is a home-grown cancer due to our short-sighted strategies in pursuit of phantom depths. The battle to be won is now the country itself.
The political consensus of sorts that has accompanied the military action against the Taliban is also remarkable. Notwithstanding the spin doctors posing as analyst-anchors on the idiot box, the political class has recognised that its survival is embedded in the battle against extremism that predicates itself on elimination of sane, moderate and secular politics itself. This was the Swat model – blow the polity to bits and create a vacuum for a takeover. An age-old recipe employed by the hordes from Central Asia that invaded Muslim Delhi again and again during Sultanate and Mughal periods of our common histories which refuse to be partitioned.
Tags: American War, anti-americanism, Balochistan, Central Asia, democracy, Islam, misogyny, moderate, Muslim Delhi, Naeemi, NWFP, opportunism, pakistan, Pakistan army, People's War, Punjab, Raza Rumi, redistributive justice, Rural Pakistan, secular politics, Sharia, Sindh, suicide bombing, Taliban, terrorism, tribal justice
I am filled with splendor,
spinning with your love.
It looks like I’m spinning around you,
but no – I’m spinning around myself!
Rumi’s Quatrain 1118
– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992
Tags: Love, poet, Poetry, Rumi, spinning
all the precious words
you and I have exchanged
have found their way
into the heart of the universe
one day they’ll pour on us
like whispering rain
helping us arise
from our roots again
– Quatrain 1112
Translation by Nader Khalili
Rumi, Dancing the Flame
Cal-Earth Press, 2001
Published in The Friday Times (May 22 issue)
Raza Rumi discusses a new book on Sufism by Sadia Dehlvi
Getting a visa to India is a nightmare for ordinary mortals. My application was not very politely returned last month with technical objections. It was only when a letter from Harper Collins arrived that the High Commission rather efficaciously allowed me to enter enemy territory, that too with special instructions that cantonments were out of bounds. I guess the South Asian officialdoms have yet to discover that Google Earth has permanently altered the shape of boundaries and secrecy. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ALi, book, Dehlvi, Delhi, excerpt, harper collins, Hasan, heart of islam, Hindu, India, Islam, Khushwant Singh, launch, Mushirul, Muslim, Naat, Naqshbandi, Prophet, Sadia Dehlvi, sufi, Sufism, Vidya Rao
Before such spirit-bestowing Beauty, how should
I not die? How should I not go mad and seize hold of Thy
chainlike tresses?
When I drink Thy wine, how should I not be
obliterated? Thou art wine and I am water, Thou art honey
and I am milk. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ghazal, Love, mystical, poem, Poetry, Rumi, Sufism
David Gardner (New Statesman) questions if Can reform save the land of the Prophet from extremism?
At the end of last month, Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, son of the founder of Saudi Arabia and half-brother to its present king, made an astonishing call for reform. “We cannot use the same tools we have been using to rule the country [from] a century ago,” he told the Financial Times. “This region is roiling with turmoil and radicalism and the aspirations of a young population, and I’m afraid we are not prepared for that.” Read the rest of this entry »
Stop talking!
What a shame you have no familiarity
with inner silence!
Polish your heart for a day or two:
make that mirror your book of contemplation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: poet, Poetry, Rumi, Sufism
You call him a moon,
yet moonlight fades.
You call him a king,
yet kingdoms fall.
How often you say,
Wake up, you’ll miss the sunrise.
But His Sun always shines within me.
How can I miss the sunrise?
– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992
Tags: poem, poet, Rumi, sufi, Sufism
Makkah gayan
Gal mukdi nahin
Paven sau sau jummen padhaiye
Ganga gayan
Gal mukdi nahin
Paven sau sau gothey khaiye
Gaya gayan
Gal mukdi nahin
Paven sau sau panD padhaiye
Bulleh Shah!
Gal taiyon mukdi
Jadon sanun dilon gavaiye.
Umbrella organization “Hum Pakistani” launched in Lahore to provide relief to IDPs
Pakistan faces grave challenges today.
Over 3.0 million Pakistanis have been displaced in the NWFP and adjoining tribal areas. The lives of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been affected by the ongoing militancy and counter-insurgency operation underway.
To address this challenge, a group of individuals and citizen organizations have come together to form an umbrella organization called Hum Pakistani, the first of its kind, to unite more than 20 NGOs and thousands of people with the common purpose of providing relief and services to the IDPs in Pakistan.
Tags: IDP, Lahore, pakistan, Pakistani, relief, Swat, “Hum Pakistani”
On Khalwat, Misyar & Mutaah
By Syed Akbar Ali
In Malaysia we frequently read reports of Muslim couples being arrested for the offense of committing ‘khalwat’ or being in ‘close proximity’ to each other. For the benefit of all thinking humans it is best that we explain a little what is meant by ‘Muslim couples’ and what is meant by ‘khalwat’ or close proximity.
For the purposes of khalwat a ‘couple’ refers to a man and a woman who can lawfully get married to each other. The word used to describe such a couple is ‘not muhreem’. ‘Muhreem’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘raheem’ which means womb.
Tags: Islam, khalwat, misyar, Muslims, Mutaah, rights, women
A new biography explains how Jind Kaur, last queen of the Punjab, died in Victorian London
Monday, 25 May 2009
Maharani Jind Kaur, the beauty who fought the empire and reminded her son Maharajah Duleep Singh of his heritage
On 1 August 1863, shortly after 6:15 in the evening, a frail and partially-blind queen who had spent much of her life raging against the British Empire, died in her bed on the top floor of a Kensington townhouse.
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