The battle for Pakistan’s survival is being fought right here, on these very catwalks, reports Tim Bale. —AFP

London Extra reports from Pakistan

By Tim Bale (reporting from Karachi and Lahore for the London Extra)

I boarded an Emirates Airline plane from Dubai to fly to the Pakistani city of Karachi. It was my first visit to Pakistan where I was assigned by this newspaper (The London Extra) to cover two cultural events in the country: A books festival in Karachi and a fashion show in Lahore.

The majority of the passengers on the plane were Pakistanis. The women were veiled, men had beards, children were crying, and they were all speaking in Pakistan’s national language, Urdu, that is a fusion of classical and contemporary Arabic, bits of Hindi, colonial Portuguese and modern-day Swahili.

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Just as we were about to land in Karachi, I saw from my window seat, something fly in the opposite direction at great speed. Our cameraman, Rod Sterling, believed it was a missile of some kind, but a Pakistani passenger insisted it was just an eagle.

Planes landing at Pakistani airports are often targeted by missiles either fired by religious extremists hiding in the toilets of the airports; or by target killers from the rooftops of the mud huts that are lined across the runways of Pakistani airports; or by groups of men firing missiles to celebrate a wedding or the birth of a healthy baby camel.

A series of mud huts built along the runway of the Karachi Airport.

The Karachi Airport was teeming with bearded men, veiled women, crying children, cops and soldiers. In fact, I think some cops and soldiers too were in long black veils because I saw one veiled person body-searching a 2-year-old kid.

A Pakistani later told us that it was just a mother changing her kid’s nappy. But there was something about that veiled person that wasn’t very motherly. It was more fatherly in nature, rather step-fatherly, considering the fact that Pakistan is an entirely patriarchal society where sometimes fathers usurp the role of mothers, especially on the issues of morality, child discipline, polio and stitching suicide vests.

Rod and I were received by our Pakistani host, Akram Muradabadi. We were soon whisked away towards a waiting bullet-proof van that had a missile-launcher on top, an IED detector near its axel, a heavy machinegun in the front and a series of chains running across the van’s back, holding various instruments of torture.

Our transport.

Akram is a manager at the cultural organisation that is organising the book festival in Karachi. He was in his 20s and was wearing Pakistan’s national dress, the Kameez-Shalwar.

The Kameez-Shalwar is a loose, flowing dress, usually made from discarded parachutes or cloth from old hot air balloons. It was first introduced in the deserts of Arabia in the 11th century by Bedouins, who then introduced it to the Muslims of South Asia in the 18th century.

The Kameez-Shalwar that the Bedouins had created was made from camel and goat skin, but in Pakistan, where camels are hot property, men and women began to sew Kameez-Shalwar from parachutes discarded by the Pakistan Air Force and from hot air balloons that were once used by the Pakistan military to spy over Afghanistan.

On our way to the hotel, the muddy roads were jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic that mostly consisted of camel-carts, horse buggies, single-engine bicycles, buffaloes, sheep, goats and a couple of rickety 1940s automobiles.

In Pakistan only a handful of rich people can afford to keep automobiles but most of them usually use helicopters for their daily commuting. The rest of the country is dependent on camels, horses and buffaloes.

Two men driving to their office in Karachi.

We were headed towards the hotel where we were booked to stay. Karachi does not have any 5-star hotels. The largest one is a 3-star resort in the city’s Abdullah Haroon Road area and that is where our van came to a halt.

The area is named after Haroon, an Arab soldier and conqueror who fought against the Christians during the Crusades and then travelled to what today is Pakistan’s windswept Sindh province.

Here he fought the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Sikhs and then after fighting the Zoroastrians and the Jains, he became a Sufi saint before launching Sindh’s first English language daily, DAWN.

The hotel we were staying in hardly had any guests. No foreigners come to Pakistan anymore and the Pakistanis cannot afford to stay in 3-star hotels. So, for example, this hotel becomes a wedding hall in the evenings and a mosque on the weekends to earn some much-needed cash.

The rooms were small and had separate beds and we were told that no women were allowed to accompany us to our rooms (not even if they were our moms).

The fine of being caught talking to a woman in the lobby or in an elevator was a minimum Rs. 50,000 (approximately £ 432). The maximum penalty for this supposed offense included a public flogging in the swimming pool area!

Well, there were no women at the hotel to start with. Nor was there a swimming pool.

And nor were there any women on the roads and in the markets that we drove by in the van. Women are usually shot at sight if found in a market without a male attendant. The attendant has to be an adult and bearded, and the woman has to be in a veil and entirely silent.

Karachi’s only 3-star hotel (there are no 5-star hotels here). It is hit by missiles and bullets on a daily basis. It doesn’t even have a swimming pool.

Pakistan is a country in turmoil. It is one of the most conservative, crime-laden, corrupt, backward and violent countries this side of Rwanda and Somalia.

Its armed forces are busy fighting an extremist insurgency in the anarchic wastelands to the north of the country that are dotted by snow-capped mountains, tropical forests, rolling deserts, raging volcanoes, rising seas, drying rivers, frequent hurricanes and tornadoes, elephant and rhino poachers, and most disconcerting of all, groups of fanatics that travel to and fro the rugged Afghan border on camels, horses and buffaloes, all strapped with explosives and cheered on by the multitudes who, too, are all fanatics.

But there are also some islands of hope here. For example, I got a glimpse of some brave young Pakistanis who were defying extremism and religious militancy by singing, smiling and jumping with Coca-Cola bottles in their hands and mobile phones stuck to their ears.

I asked Akram where I could find these people. He said: ‘On TV, in commercials, 24/7.’

Pakistanis are thus fighting religious extremism and terrorism on many fronts. The military is battling them with guns, but many young, enlightened Pakistanis are fighting them with cola and mobile phone ads, and with bestsellers and fashion weeks.

A group of Coca-Cola fans rejoice after defeating extremism.

The book festival was a perfect place for this kind of a fight. Here, I actually saw non-veiled women and men buying books. Some Pakistanis can actually read!

But, what’s more, by buying books at a book festival they were standing up to the threats of extremism. After all who knows, some books might have even been rigged with explosives.

But this concern did not deter book lovers who came in droves to the festival, not knowing whether they will be able to return home in one piece or not.

In Lahore, a city that is slightly greener than Karachi but has a lot more buffalo-carts, I saw the same anti-extremist sentiment and resolve at a fashion show.

Lahore is one of the oldest cities in the world. Very few people speak Urdu here. Most of them speak Punjabi that is a South Asian dialect of Arabic, and means five camels.

Here, I attended a colourful fashion show at a 21/2-star hotel where I met a group of designers who told me that they were on the front lines of Pakistan’s cultural battle against extremism.

Tooba planning her next anti-extremist move on her Iphone6.

Tooba Sheikh is a 28-year-old model/actress/TV director/columnist/caterer/restaurant-owner/designer, who was also one of the main organisers of the fashion show.

Though the show was entirely about introducing the spring collection of some of the country’s leading designers, Tooba Shiekh told me that by default, such shows are challenging the extremist mind-set proliferating in the Pakistani society.

‘I love my country. I can do whatever it takes to help it become a great place,’ she proudly added.

Later that evening she left for London where she spends most of her time. We decided to meet again in London where she promised to elaborate more on how she plans to make Pakistan an enlightened country.

Another designer, Nadir Gul (popularly known among his colleagues and fans as Eddy), complained that the Western media was more interested in showing the ‘negative aspects of Pakistan’.

He said: ‘You should be showing events like these fashion shows. This is real Pakistan!’

The battle for Pakistan’s soul, sovereignty, survival, sports, economic well-being, political stability, scientific advancement, education, schooling, environment and agriculture are being fought right here, on these very catwalks.

Later in the evening Eddy left for Thailand for a vacation, from where he will return to Canada of where he is a citizen.

Ready for battle: A Pakistani fashion model.

My assignment was to report on avenues of cultural resistance against extremism in Pakistan and I’m glad I found two such events where I was lucky and honoured to find young men and women braving the threats of book-bombs and slippery catwalks to challenge religious militancy.

Akram suggested we also visit some areas of Sindh and the Punjab to cover a few festivals held to honour Sufi saints and Pakistan’s folk music. He said there would be a lot more people there.

Yes, but would they be as defiant?

I have covered wars in Iraq and Yemen and reported on the deadly drug mafias of Mexico. So I was okay with visiting the folk music festival. I also knew a bit about Pakistan’s folk music because back in London I have a few CDs of some of Pakistan’s leading folk music artistes, such as Junoon, Noorie and the Vital Signs.

But, unfortunately, I came down with a bad case of diarrhoea which, in Pakistan, is an airborne disease.

Akram said diarrhoea too is a powerful expression of anti-extremism in Pakistan.

I’m not sure if he was being entirely serious. But I just might pitch this to my editor as my next story on Pakistan: How airborne diarrhoea is repulsing extremism in Pakistan.