In a place where millions use small motorbikes for transportation, the country has banned carrying passengers, riding without a muffler, and popping wheelies.

But those are just the prohibitions for tonight. The Pakistani government has gone ‘ban-crazy’ recently, in the name of national security.

Especially egregious, say critics, has been the occasional ban on cell phone use, which they’ve done several times over the past year.

The first time the government imposed a cell phone ban was in March. It happened again in August.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, was matter-of-fact about it when he was announcing the seventh cell phone ban of the year in November.

“I had no option,” Malik said, “but to shut down mobile phone services in Karachi and Quetta from one o clock until late in the evening.”

That was during Muharram, a religious commemoration for Shia Muslims. In Pakistan that has become a time of violent sectarian attacks. The ban lasted during daylight hours for three days. It was imposed on more than 40 cities and towns. Malik said cell phones are an intricate part of terrorist attacks.

“One, they use them to detonate bombs” said Malik. “Two, the terrorists communicate among themselves with them. And three, they communicate with the masterminds behind the attacks using mobile phones.”

But its not just mobile phones that are prohibited. There has also been a ban on the use of motorcycles, because terrorists have used them.

In addition, the government banned YouTube – all of it — for three months after the release of the “Innocence of Muslims” video. The anti-Islam video sparked protests across the Muslim world, including in Pakistan.

Twitter and Facebook have also been banned at different times in previous years. And in 2011, the government attempted to ban a list of 1,700 phrases from text messages, it deemed vulgar. Phrases like ‘barf face’ and ‘cyber slimer.’

Furhan Hussain, who works for Bytes For All, a digital- rights organization that has recently started a new campaign to challenge online censorship, said the bans are having an impact.

“You have to see that the need to communicate becomes even more stronger in a society that has faced severe dictatorships over the past few decades,” said Hussain. “By blocking channels of communication for civilians, the democratic process becomes even more difficult to establish. In a way, its a way of sabotaging the entire system.”

Hussain said that although the right to information and expression are protected in Pakistan’s constitution, the legal language is ambiguous enough to be exploited.

“These words are very loosely constructed, explained Hussain. “They can be interpreted, and reinterpreted, and misinterpreted ad nauseam. And that is what the government does as well”

Dr. Nishat Fatima is a gynecologist and the wife of an opposition political leader. She is taking the government to court for violating her constitutional rights by banning mobile phone services. Fatima had a patient who was pregnant. The patient wanted to call Fatima when she wasn’t feeling well, but couldn’t because of a cell phone ban.

“When I checked I found that the fetus had died three days earlier,” said Fatima. “Maybe, if the phone network was working at the time then I could have sent her to the hospital and treated her, and she would have been a mother now.”

Fatima says there’s got to be a limit to what can be banned for the sake of security.

“Why don’t you just put a ban on everything?,” Fatima asked. “Don’t allow TVs as it could be that someone uses a TV remote to detonate a bomb? Don’t allow cars to run. Shut down everything. Stop people from breathing. Are the lives of the public so cheap?”

Fatima and others says these bans aren’t just about security, but are about reinforcing the idea that the government has the right to control people’s lives.

The Parsis are a community of Zoroastrians  that settled in South Asia. They are followers of the religion of ancient Persia.

In Pakistan they are concentrated mostly in the port city of Karachi. They have made quite a remarkable impact on the metropolis, but the size of the always small Parsi community in Karachi is in decline.

That’s just a drop in the ocean of a city that has a total population of over 14 million.

Zane Byramji and Tashan Mistree’s are a twenty-something Parsi couple now living in Karachi. Five years ago, they met at an international Zoroastrian youth event in Australia.

“I didn’t want to go at first,” says Byramji. “I was pretty hesitant because I thought it was more focused on religion than anything else. I wanted to make a holiday out of it. That’s where I met Tash.”

“We don’t have arranged marriages, but we have a lot of pressure coming from parents and friends,” explains Byramji.

Mistree chimes in: “We always say the grandmas and the aunties all have a club.
and they are all kind of in cohort together and try to hook people up.”

Byramji was born and raised in Karachi. He went to Canada for college and now works at his family’s brokerage firm. Mistree was born in Washington DC and was living across the border in Mumbai, India before their marriage.

“I didn’t realize it would really work out because a week after the congress we met in Melbourne,” says Byramji. “And from there we started talking and we flew back to India and Pakistan, and then spoke on the plane for ten hours and decided to be in a relationship.”

They got married in Mumbai last year. Mistree moved to Karachi to live with Byramji.

Her move comes at a time when the population of Parsis in Pakistan is dwindling. There are now fewer than 1,700, down from more than 7,000 several decades ago, mostly in Karachi.

The Parsi community is defined largely by their adherence to the Zoroastrian religion – the religion of ancient Persia.

Sometimes they are referred to as “fire-worshippers” because of the central role that fire plays in their rituals. Their temples each have a consecrated fire that burns continuously — some of the fires have been kept alive for centuries.

In a community center in Karachi, priests are gathered around a small fire, reciting a prayer in an ancient dialect of Persian.

The priests wear masks covering their mouths and noses so that the fire is not desecrated by their breath or saliva.

According to tradition, a group of Zoroastrians arrived in South Asia over a thousand years ago, fleeing the Muslim conquest of Persia. The community prospered, especially as merchants.

The Parsi community in Karachi has always been a small minority, but it’s left an unmistakable legacy. One of the most celebrated mayors of Karachi was a Parsi, serving for twelve years. Local buildings and schools named after prominent Parsi businessmen dot the old city.

But this legacy is now at risk.

Parsis have a lower birthrate than the national average. And there’s more and more intermarriage.

So Mistree and Byramji’s families were relieved that they both got married to Parsis.

Another major reason for the dwindling population in Karachi is migration to Western countries. Byramji says the majority of his relatives, for example, now live in the West – mostly in the US, Canada, or the UK.

“Everyone has left the country,” he says. “I wouldn’t even say that 10% are here now, and I would say 50% left in my life time.”

In recent years, the motivation to leave Pakistan has been compounded by the extremely volatile political and security conditions, a sentiment reflected among both the young and old in the community.

Alla Rustomji, a fifty-five year old home-maker, says she would be happy to stay in Pakistan for the rest of her life, except for her children.

“They are in their early 20s,” says Rustomji. “I am not very happy at all. I would like the first opportunity to get them out of the country. I’m sorry to say, though I love Pakistan, and I would like them to be here, but I do not see a very good future for them.”

More than half the Parsi population in Karachi now is over fifty years old.  The local clergy is aging, without anyone to replace them.

“At our fire temple, we have three priests. Two of them are more than 80 years old,” says Shahveer Byramji, Zane Byramji’s uncle and a managing trustee of one of the two fire temples in the city.

He says the only trained Zoroastrian priests are in India, and that they tell him they won’t move to Pakistan “for all the money in the world.”

Given the rate at which the population is declining, Shahveer Byramji says it’s entirely possible that there soon won’t be a Parsi presence in Karachi.

“Let’s face it, we are a declining population. There’s not much we can do about it, except for openly converting, which we’re all against.  So, it’s a fact of life that we’re a dying breed and let’s just try to do the best we can with what we have.”

Even for Tashan Mistree and Zane Byramji, the prospect of leaving Karachi isn’t ruled out.

Over the generations their families have moved from Iran, through India and Pakistan, to North America and Australia.

Making another move, they say, is something their stock is used to.

“We did it a thousand years ago, so its not so hard now,” says Mistree.

In Karachi, an Islamic group last Sunday attempted to storm the US consulate in Karachi. Police opened fire, and killed one person. Several others were injured.

On Thursday, gun shots rang out during violent demonstrations in Islamabad. The army was called in to protect the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad, as a crowd of demonstrators attempted to reach the US embassy.

The Pakistani government has gone on the defensive. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered Internet service providers to block YouTube — all of it, not just the offending videos. Interior Minister Rehman Malik has asked Interpol to take up the matter. And he wants the UN to develop international legislation to stop the circulation of material deemed blasphemous.

The government even declared this Friday to be a national holiday and named it ‘Love of the Prophet Day’ – a form of protest by the government.

Not everyone is happy with the government’s reaction:

“I totally disapprove this decision of the government to observe a strike,” said Iqbal Haider a former Minister of Justice. He’s currently the president of the Forum for a Secular Pakistan.

“What way would you serve your cause?” he asked. “Pakistan’s economy will suffer. Pakistani properties will suffer. Pakistani workers who are daily wage earners will suffer.”

The Pakistan Peoples Party that controls the government is regarded as a secular party. But when it comes to issues related to blasphemy, like all previous governments in the country, it has had to appease protesters — for the love and honor of the prophet, they say.

But it’s not just Islamist extremists and radicals who are offended by the video. One of the groups marching to the US consulate in Karachi on Friday will be the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf. The party is lead by Pakistani cricket legend Imran Khan, and boasts a significant following among the country’s Western educated upper class.

Arif Alvi is the party’s Secretary General.

“You can’t come in to a society and say ‘this should be painful and this should not be painful.’ What is painful to us is painful to us. And we expect countries to recognize that. We expect the Western world, the Christian world and all other countries to expect that,” Alvi said.

Indeed, even for many of those who aren’t protesting on the streets, images of the Prophet Muhammad being insulted are hurtful. He has a prominent role, supported by both the state and popular culture. His birthday is celebrated as a national holiday every year, and there is an entire genre of poetry and music devoted to singing his praises.

The US government has also gone on the defensive. Local radio stations are airing paid messages by the US embassy of Hillary Clinton distancing her government from the offending video. In the video, the secretary of state looks straight into the camera.

“Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious. The United States government had nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message.”

But for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Secretary General Arif Alvi, and many others like him, this statement is unlikely to affect their sentiments.

“Its not good enough to say the US government has nothing to do with it. I know they have nothing to do with it,” he said, “but it is their responsibility because a US citizen is involved in this. It has the responsibility to curb such actions and legislate in the US.”

Visualize tweets for this story: Click on the image below to see tweets

Cotton fabric "Lawn" is becoming popular in Pakistan fashion circles. (Photo: Fahad Desmukh)

It is for a cotton fabric called “Lawn”.

Reporter Fahad Desmukh tells us this material will be very popular on this year’s fashion runway.

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He suggests it’s about time the country got its own superhero. And he imagines what the movie trailer for a Pakistani Batman might sound like.

“In the city of Karachi,” he said dramatically. “Where darkness has spread through the land. A dark knight shall come forth to shine light… Alfred, start up the generator!”

The Urdu punch line – and much of Ali’s work – refers to the tribulations of everyday life in urban Pakistan – power outages, cell phone problems, and poverty. It’s a pain in the neck, to be sure, but it’s also great fodder for comedy.

“You just have to open the window and there’s humor everywhere,” Ali said.

Ali’s show was actually meant to happen two weeks earlier, but had to be postponed because of political violence.

“We’re sitting in an empty hall because my show got postponed because there was a riot in the city. Which other comedian has to deal with that on a daily basis?” he asked. “The last time the show got postponed was because of an unfortunate bomb blast. Tomorrow there will be another rally, another riot, corrupt politicians, scandals, one politician will say something absurd to the other politician, it’ll end up on YouTube for weeks. All these people give us a lot of humor.”

While Pakistan has a rich tradition of comedy – in theater and on television — the Western style standup format is new. There are only three comedians who regularly do stand-up shows in Pakistan. But the comedy form has grown a devoted following.

Sami Shah was the first of the three to put on a solo show. He explained how getting stage time is more difficult for standup comics in Pakistan than in other places.

“You don’t have nightclubs where you hone five minutes,” Shah said. “That’s what happens abroad, you write five minutes, you master it then write another five minutes. I booked an auditorium, sold 300 tickets myself and then did one hour of standup. And if that first hour had gone bad I never would have done it again, but it went well so I’ve been doing it since.”

One of the things that sets these stand-up comedians apart from other comedians in Pakistan is that they mostly use English, rather than Urdu or other local languages. On the one hand, English gives them access to a niche audience, but at the same time it can restrict the audience.

The language choice is a reflection of the three comic’s backgrounds. All are relatively well-off and at some point, have lived in the West. Shah is an advertising professional by day; Ali just graduated from med school; and the third stand-up comedian, Saad Haroon used to work in his family’s textile business.

A favorite topic for Pakistani comics is politics, whether its making fun of local politicians, or commenting on international affairs. This is Sami Shah’s take on Pakistan’s uneasy relationship with the US:

“Our relationship with America is so weird,” his routine goes. “Every few years, America comes back to us like an old ex-girlfriend who’s desperate and needy and says, ‘oh baby, come back, I miss you, it’s always been you, those other guys meant nothing.’ And we always say, ‘oh baby, I’m so happy, I’ve missed you too, I’ve kept all your old things, they’re still here.’ And then America betrays us again, it cheats on us again and we’re crying in the corner, cutting up pictures.”

This joke gets a huge laugh from the audience.

But Shah said doing stand-up comedy in Pakistan is not always a laughing matter. The bounds of the subjects that you can openly mock over here aren’t as wide as they are in other places.

“Religion is a no-go now. In the environment we live in you just don’t go there, because even though the audience is fairly liberal-minded, you don’t want to risk the one lunatic whose going to come and shoot you,” Shah said. “I mean, I’ve been threatened before. In the middle of one show someone just came up and said ‘you should stop now’. So I did – I took his advice that time.”

So comedians have to make a calculated risk in deciding which topics to cover and which to leave behind. This is comedian Saad Haroon.

“There’s self censorship involved because you can get yourself in trouble doing things you shouldn’t do,” Haroon said. “Obviously as a comedian our job is to keep pushing the boundaries as much as we can without toppling over. It’s more important to do comedy than to say something. If your idea is to make a point then you’ll be gone, that’s fine and then there’ll be no comedy.”

All three of the comics are eager to increase their audience not only within Pakistan, but also to get some stage time internationally.

“I’m trying to understand why people become suicide bombers. I can’t understand the virgins thing… I do not understand it. Like why 72? Why 72? Why not 71?” Shah asked in his act.

As Shah explained, sometimes jokes about subjects familiar to Pakistanis – like suicide bombings – don’t make sense to outsiders.

“We have a lot of the same cultural touch points because we also watched CNN and American movies and British comedies, the same as Western audiences. But little things. I have this bit about suicide bombing. And every comedian in the world has a suicide bombing bit, but mine had a detail, that I didn’t realize, only Pakistanis would know, which is that when the suicide bomber blows himself up, his head is always found. Every Pakistani knows that, they always find the frickin head,” Shah said with a chuckle.

“Like, will you look the way you did the moment you died?” Shah asked an audience at his show. “Because most suicide bombers you’re just a head at that point. Or will you look the way you do when you’re alive? Because I don’t want to meet virgins looking like this, without a head.”

“I did that bit for BBC recently,” Shah reflected, “and everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s such a random detail, that’s so Pakistani, that detail.’ And I was like, ‘yeah, I guess so’. So the things that make us different are our details are slightly more bizarre and maybe more morbid than someone else’s.

Morbid, perhaps, but Pakistani humor is growing ever more sophisticated, and popular.

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According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 1,400 people were killed in the city in violent incidents in the first eight months of 2011. At its peak in the month of July alone there were 358 killings.

And the violence is affecting businesses especially hard.

“They came with gunmen,” said Parveen Rehman, who heads a social development nongovernmental organization in Karachi. “Five or six went into the courtyard and they said that ‘today we will occupy this place no matter what.’”

Rehman said the armed thugs wanted to take over the group’s compound. Luckily, she said, a person in her organization knew someone more powerful. So they turned to him for help.

“He came and he said if you fire then we’ll fire many more rounds,” Rehman said. “So imagine, to save ourselves, we went to a bigger thug.”

This is by no means an isolated incident. Many organizations and businesses face similar problems. And it’s especially hard to fix because the violence goes right to the top, to city officials and political parties.

Karachi houses almost every different ethnic and political group in the country: Muhajirs, Pashtuns, Baloch, Sindhis… not to mention a range of Islamist groupings.

All of the different groups have political organizations that claim to represent them. And most of those groups have their own militias. Parveen Rehman said that grabbing land brings lots of power.

“There is continuous battle over various segments of land in Karachi between various groups of people who I would not say are given sanction by any one political party; but who as a strategy align themselves with political parties,” Rehman explained. “And police and of course all the government departments and the elected members are all partners in this. Because the money involved is so much, that overnight you can earn so much more.”

It’s a strategic mix of politics, crime and business. Once a political party’s thugs steal land, it’s divided and illegally sold to others. And that creates an instant – beholden – constituency.

This phenomenon of “land-grabbing” exploits the weakness of state institutions, as well as the ever-increasing demand for housing not met by the government. About half of Karachi’s estimated 17 million people live this way, dependent on one private group or another.

“It could be housing, transport, drinking water, even electricity,” said Haris Gazdar, a political economist at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi. “Most of all, all of these activities are underpinned by informal systems of contract enforcement. So contracts were then enforced by private people, sometimes in collusion with government officials who had all kinds of side deals with them. So you had a situation where the private use of violence was legitimate.”

Add to the mix a massive influx of arms to Karachi during the Soviet War in neighboring Afghanistan during the 1980’s, creating what is referred to locally as the “Kalashnikov culture.”

And today, everyone in the city seems to be armed. There are twice as many private security guards in the city as police officers, not to mention tens of thousands of private weapons.

Faisal Subzwari is a government minister from the MQM, a party that represents the Muhajir community and which is often accused of using strong arm tactics. Subzwari denied that his party has its own militia, but he admitted to carrying a weapon. He called it only normal to be armed.

“It’s my lawful right to have licensed armed weapons and people must have them. Why? I am quoting you specific examples of inaction from the police’s part, politically motivated targeted killings, and politically motivated ethnic cleansing. If the government isn’t doing anything, rather helping out criminals and gangsters then in order to save my skin at least I would acquire a licensed weapon which is not a crime in Pakistan today,” Subzwari said.

So everyone is armed because everyone else in the city is armed. As political economist Haris Gazdar explains, trying to change this “arms race” will be extremely difficult.

“The major kind of gaps in urban planning and political management, and the existence of military governments over long periods of time have led us there,” Gazdar said. “And realistically we shouldn’t expect any political party to give up on this model on its own.”

And until that happens, expect the seemingly unchecked violence in Karachi to continue.

Fireworks were set off when Musharraf announced that he promised to return to Pakistan some time between the 27th and 30th of January.

He was addressing a rally of about 8,000 supporters in Karachi, via a video-link from Dubai.

Musharraf ruled Pakistan as a military dictator from 1999 to 2007 and then as a civilian president for another nine months. He finally stepped down from office in August 2008 to avoid impeachment proceedings against him.

Since then he has lived in exile in London and Dubai spending much of his time on the global lecture circuit. But recently he has expressed an interest in returning to Pakistan to contest parliamentary elections as a constitutional leader.

In 2010, he set up the All-Pakistan Muslim League, a new political party that he leads.

The only problem is that there are arrest warrants out for him in Pakistan in connection to the killings of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti.

His opponents are also threatening to push for him to be tried for high treason for his 1999 military coup. But Musharraf remains defiant.

“There are many who are trying to scare me, but I am not scared,” Musharraf said during the rally. “I have fought wars. I have seen threats. I don’t fear, and I will come to Pakistan. These cases against me have no basis. I will face them in the courts.”

And while Musharraf has no shortage of opponents, he does also have supporters – as was evident yesterday in Karachi.

“I’m here to support Musharraf because I think we are a beneficiary of his era between 2000 – 2007,” said businessman Waquas Haider. “Haven’t seen a better time in Pakistan than that.”

Haider is part of a class of entrepreneurs and white-collar professionals that arguably prospered the most during Musharraf’s rule.

The former general’s supporters overwhelmingly refer to economic growth under Musharraf as his most important credential. Haider said businessmen like himself could count on growth back then – and they want that certainty back.

“And that’s what has been missing since he’s been gone, certainty. In a business environment that’s what we need,” Haider said.

Musharraf’s supporters are convinced he can bring back prosperity. They also don’t think the former general did anything wrong back in 1999, when he overthrew an elected government in a coup.

According to Ali Naqvi, an office-holder in Musharraf’s new political party, it was a legitimate act by Musharraf.

“I don’t call it unconstitutional,” Naqvi said. “At that time the situation was very grave. Pakistan was being declared a failed state. It was high time, he did a right thing. People supported it. People were distributing cakes and sweets. Especially in the urban areas. People were on the streets and dancing. How can you call it unconstitutional?”

That’s not how Musharraf’s foes see it. Which is why his most immediate challenge – before campaigning for parliament — is how to return to Pakistan without getting arrested.

Imran Khan made his name playing cricket, the most popular sport in Pakistan. In 1992 he became a legend after leading the Pakistani team to victory at the World Cup:

He formally entered politics in 1996, founding the PTI, or “Movement for Justice,” which promoted an anti-corruption platform.

The PTI attracted mostly urban educated professionals, but failed to get a mainstream following. In fact, in the 2002 parliamentary elections, Imran Khan was the only candidate from his party to win a seat.

But now Khan has managed to mobilize enough young urban professionals to become a rising political force. In the past, this demographic shunned politics as a dishonorable activity. But young people are coming out now out of frustration with the current leadership.

“This is the first rally that I’ve come to! I’ve never supported anyone before in Pakistan,” said Shazia Farooqui, who works at a shipping company. She came out to support Imran Khan at Sunday’s rally.

“The Pakistani want change. We believe that Imran Khan is probably the best person. He talks about respect. We’re getting tired of being pointed at.”

Uzair Dadabhoy also came out for the rally. He’s a recent university graduate, who works at an asset management company in Karachi.

“You can’t get justice, you can’t get safety. People’s businesses are getting affected. Our livelihoods get affected when the country gets in to such a terrible situation.”

Dadabhoy says he’s been a huge fan of Imran Khan since his cricket days, but only joined his political movement a few months ago.

“They might not have the best expertise to run the railways and Pakistan International Airlines, but at least they will be honest. They won’t loot,” Dadabhoy said, adding that anyone could do a better job of running the government than the people doing it now.

At the rally, you could see posters of Imran Khan with the slogans “hope” and “change,” a clear reference to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Some people wore t-shirts with the phrase, “Yes We Khan”.

Despite this new found enthusiasm for Imran Khan, not everyone’s so sure what he’s offering. Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald magazine, said that Khan’s ideology is continuously evolving, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

“Whether it is right wing, centrist, or some kind of liberalism, we are never sure about his own ideology. Where is he coming from? The moment he gets his hands on to some wonderful idea, he wastes no time in adopting it,” Alam said. “If you go to his party’s website you will see articles which praise how Hugo Chavez has turned around the economy of Venezuela, and then you hear him speak very fondly of how China has eradicated corruption.”

Khan’s political rivals question whether his party, the PTI, with its untested upper-class leadership, can really tackle the country’s problems of poverty, violence and conflict. Nasreen Jalil, of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement or MQM, a dominant political party in Karachi, said there’s no comparison between Khan’s PTI and MQM.

“We’ve been there, delivered and proved,” she said.

Until recently MQM was at bitter odds with Imran Khan. The rhetoric is less heated now, but the differences remain.

“The problem has been that people who haven’t really faced the problems, they don’t realize how to tackle them,” Jalil said. “It’s like saying if they don’t have bread let them eat cake. Imran Khan doesn’t seem to have the organization and doesn’t have the people at present. He might be able to develop them, only time will tell.”

Western governments might also be wondering what they could expect if Khan and the PTI make it in to power, particularly when it comes to cooperating on counter-terrorism. They might look to his comments following a press conference last Saturday.

“If Western countries and the U.S. are looking for a friend, Pakistan will be friends,” Khan said. “But if they are looking for a hired gun as it has been today, or a government that is pliant, a puppet, I’m afraid Pakistan won’t be that.”

In Pakistan, there has been a growing trend of using the Latin script to write Urdu, the national language of the country, instead of the official Urdu script.

This trend is still fairly limited, but it has left some Urdu purists concerned about what will happen if the trend continues.

While it may sound harmless enough, it’s creating some unintended side effects. Because the first generations of mobile phones couldn’t send text messages using Pakistan’s Urdu script, Pakistanis improvised and started transliterating Urdu phrases into the Latin alphabet. Even though Urdu-capable phones are more common now, many people have become used to using the Latin script.

Shaista Parween, who teaches math and computer studies, said texting-mad students are just as comfortable writing Urdu in Latin as they are using the regular Urdu script. In fact, she said they sometimes even do their schoolwork using the Latin alphabet to write Urdu.

“I’m facing this a lot in my classes,” Parween said. “Latin Urdu is being used so much, what can we do? We can’t say it’s wrong if they are trying. It’s used so much in the media and television, that’s why.”

Not the First Time

Officially, and overwhelmingly, Urdu is written in a variation of the Arabic script. But while the use of Latin letters for Urdu has reached unprecedented levels, it isn’t the first time it’s been done.

European missionaries and administrators transliterated Urdu into the Latin script back in the 18th century. And in the 1950s, military ruler Ayub Khan proposed officially writing Urdu in Latin letters, just as Ataturk had done for Turkish decades earlier. But religious leaders thought the Arabic script to be an important marker of Pakistan’s Islamic identity, so Ayub abandoned the idea.

Oddly enough, tech-savvy kids are inadvertently doing today what a military dictator couldn’t achieve 40-years ago.

And many Pakistanis aren’t happy about that.

“Trying to write a language in another script is like trying to drop off your skin and trying to have a new one,” said Rauf Parekh, an assistant professor at the University of Karachi’s Urdu Department. He’s concerned about the impact this will make on society if people stop learning the Urdu script.

“They will be cut off from their culture, from their tradition, their history, their classical literature. How are they going to enjoy if they cannot read it in the original. So it’s a kind of deprivation on cultural and educational side. They won’t feel it perhaps now, but maybe hundred years from now they will realize what a great loss they have incurred,” he said.

But while professor Parekh bemoans the loss of traditional Pakistani culture, a new kind of “text messaging culture” is emerging.

Pakistanis use text messages for just about anything, but especially for passing on political jokes, poetry, quotes and for flirting.

Urdu Alphabet with Devanagari and Latin transliterations. (Photo: Goldsztajn/Wikipedia)

One book is titled “Cool SMS”, another “Love & Love SMS”. Their notable feature is that each joke or poem in the booklet has both the Urdu script and the Latin transliteration.

“It’s been about 10 years that these books have been published now,” Shop owner Basharat explained. “There was a lot of demand for them initially. This is because the majority of our population is not educated, so Latin Urdu books were made so that every person can read the books and send SMSs. It made it so much easier.”

Nowadays, Basharat said, the SMS booklets don’t sell as much, in part because cell phone companies have caught on. And are sending out the Latin-Urdu text messages themselves.

U.S. Army Cpl. Joseph Rentie,1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment, concludes a search of a truck at a Pakistan border crossing in Paktya province. (Photo by: U.S. Army)

The attack sparked fury in Pakistan and led the country’s leaders to close a critical US supply route to land-locked Afghanistan.

Before 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan, cargo transport across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was minimal. But now, with over 130,000 NATO troops to sustain in land-locked Afghanistan, supplies had to come from somewhere, and the cheapest and fastest route is through Pakistan.

“The industry has grown from zero to a phenomenal size,” said Mohammed Rajpar, managing director of a major shipping agency based in Karachi. “The way the western countries sustain their troops is even the water they shower in is imported, forget the water they drink,” Rajpar said. “And all their food, drink, transport, surveillance, weapons. It spawned an entire industry.”

At its peak, some 500 trucks carried fuel and goods each day from the port at Karachi to Afghanistan. Today, that number is down to between 200 and 300, as NATO shifted some supply to what is known as the “northern route,” going through the Central Asian republics. Even now though, almost half of NATO’s supply travels through Pakistan.

But after last Saturday’s attacks on a Pakistani border post, the Pakistani government closed off its border crossings with Afghanistan. Private transporter unions issued statements of support for the government reaction.

Nawab Sher Afridi, secretary general of the Oil Transporters Association, said six of his trucks are involved in the transporting fuel to Afghanistan, but that he has always been against NATO’s actions there – a contradiction he readily admitted.

“We are against NATO, I’m telling you plainly,” Afridi said. “Our original home is in Afghanistan. We are ruining it ourselves. What kind of interview do you want from someone who is ruining his own home. But when our livelihood is at stake then the name of necessity is “thank you”. There is no limit. You have to accept the law that they have imposed, and that is the dollar. And in front of the dollar, my faith is nothing.”

But now, the truckers said they’re glad the government is taking a stand against NATO, and, for now at least, they said they’re willing to bear the financial loss.

Babu Jan Shinwari, a driver and owner of a goods supply truck, said the personal gains they have made over the past 10 years have come at a cost for society.

“Its true, we are making more money than we did before,” he said. “But if you look at it another way, we have also suffered a great deal. We have lost human lives, homes have been destroyed, there have been drone attacks and terrorist bomb blasts. It’ a huge loss.”

In fact, in 2005, Babu Jan’s cousin was killed in a bomb attack near the Kandahar Air Base, in Afghanistan, while he was sleeping in the cabin of his oil tanker.

While the truckers claim to be in favor of Pakistan’s action, the closing of the supply lines is having an impact. Many of the trucks that would normally be on the roads to Afghanistan are sitting idle in Karachi. And shippers have had to rent extra space at the port to store cargo that has nowhere to go for the meanwhile.

This isn’t the first time that the supply lines have been suspended. And most observers find it hard to believe that Pakistan will keep the supply lines shut permanently this time, because of both strategic and economic interests.

But shipping company director Mohammed Rajpar said the industry is already starting to think of what comes next, since NATO has already announced plans to leave Afghanistan by 2014.

“These truck drivers and truck owners are probably among the most clever commercial, versatile businessmen on the planet. They have operated in the roughest of environments and the most difficult of circumstances at great personal risk to their life and property,” he said. “They’ll find other avenues of business. And second they will transfer some of this knowledge to elsewhere in the business. How to secure cargo, meeting deadlines. Hopefully they’ll transfer this to the commercial side.”

It’s the fallout of a NATO airstrike on a Pakistani border post near the border with Afghanistan on Saturday which killed at least 24 Pakistani troops. Pakistan says the attacks were unprovoked, while coalition forces say they are investigating the incident.

It has brought the already strained relations between the US and Pakistan to a new low since they became in the war against terror after 9/11.

“Those who are friends of America and NATO are traitors.”

That’s the rally cry here at this protest demonstration in Karachi organized by the officially banned Jamaat ud Dawa Islamist group.

The turnout isn’t huge, just a few hundred people waving black and white Jamaat ud Dawa flag. But it’s just one of several such protests across the country on Monday, and follows a larger rally in front of Karachi’s US consulate on Sunday.

They are seething against Saturday’s NATO airstrike on Pakistani soil. And speakers like Navid Qamar are calling on the Pakistani government to take a stronger response.

“If US or NATO helicopters event enter Pakistan then they should be shot down even if that means following them back into Afghanistan, to take revenge for your martyrs,” Qamar said.

The participants at this demonstration are all associated with Pakistan’s Islamist parties, and do not represent the bulk of society. But this specific issue of cross-border attacks does resonate across much of the political spectrum in the country.

Many Pakistanis have long been uncomfortable with their government’s alliance with the US in its War on Terror.

“Today, NATO forces are spilling the blood of oppressed Muslims in Afghanistan,” demonstration speaker Nasrullah Shaji said. “We shared air bases and our intelligence with them. Today those same NATO forces are attacking the Pakistani military.”

Many of those at this rally, this is the last straw, and are just as angered by the Pakistani government’s weak response as they are by NATO’s attacks on Pakistani soil. Abdul Rehman, a spokesperson for the Jamaat ud Dawa, says the killing of uniformed Pakistani troops makes matters even worse.

“If your borders are being breached, your soldiers are being killed then there is no reason to apologize. You just go scramble your jets and raid their posts. That is the basic thing you have to do. Temporarily settlements like asking them to apologize or closing supply lines is not the solution. So there is no point in saying we have our sovereignty. Either give them everything you have, or defend it,” Rehman said.

Others, like Asadullah Bhutto of the mainstream Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, want the government to take this up with the international community.

“I think it is the right of Pakistan to take this matter to the UN security council and other international forums,” Bhutto said. “Because it is a violation of international conventions. They have violated our geographical territory. Govt of Pakistan should take it seriously.”

The immediate popular anger in response to this airstrike is likely to eventually die down, as has been the case with previous incidents like this. But what is unclear is what the incremental impact of all of these incidents will be on Pakistani-US relations in the long term.

They have compiled a list of banned words, and ordered telecom companies to filter all text messages containing any of them.

The order and the list of words have become a target of both ridicule and criticism.

The list is so bizarre as to be laughable.

“Ass Puppies, Axing the Weasel, Athlete’s Foot, Backdoor man, Barely Legal, Barf-Face, Big Butt, Cyber Slimer, Finger Food, Gonnorhea, Harder.”

Those are just the words we are allowed to say during our broadcast. There are over 1,500 English and Urdu words that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, or PTA, wants banned from text messages.

According to a PTA directive leaked on the Internet, the aim is to clamp down on bulk messages that are “harmful, fraudulent, illegal, or unsolicited.”

But the list has been criticized for its contents. It is, for the most part, a very comprehensive compilation of curse words – some actually very foul, others bizarre and beyond obscure.

The list of Urdu words is crazier than the English one. One of the banned Urdu phrases roughly translates to “The sweat of a lizard’s pubic hair.”

Another translates as “the outcome of a burst condom”.

No, there is nothing lost in translation here – the phrase sounds just as ridiculous in Urdu as it does in English. It’s hard to imagine why and how such phrases would ever be used.

The English lists also bans the use of the word “Wu-Tang”… as in the Clan.

With almost a 109 million mobile phone users in Pakistan, this directive could potentially affect many people, whether or not they’re fans of the Wu-Tang Clan.

“If you look at from a child’s point of view may be their needs to be some moderation of what or children are being exposed to. But overall I think no.”

“I don’t think we need to be mothered really. What else is freedom of expression all about? I think it’s really discomforting.”

“Who uses these in texts? Especially when you go over Urdu words. And people will just come up with more creative ways of cursing.”

“We just cannot understand where this madness will stop,” said Shahzad Ahmad, who heads Bytes For All, a human rights group that focuses on digital privacy and freedom of expression issues.

The group is planning on taking legal action against the move. He worries that, ridiculous as the list may be, Pakistani officials have an ulterior motive.

“Since 2006 when Pakistan first started censoring cyberspace, they used to claim it was in the name of blasphemous content, of national security, of fighting war on terror,” Ahmad said. “But, we always found a political reason underneath all these different bans and censorship that was imposed on internet or on digital communication sphere in Pakistan.”

The directive is set to start being enforced on the 21st of November.

Texters are already discussing how to get around the ban. One suggestion is using numbers instead of words. Each banned word has a number on the list.