There are some battles in Pakistan that will always be fought but never be finished. The military versus the civilian set-up, the cricket captain against the rest of the team, Imran Khan and an electorate that just won’t vote for him. As 2010 has shown, however, a spat doesn’t have to be intractable to be entertaining, baffling or just downright weird.

Note: This post was written in December 2010 and originally published in Newsline‘s Annual for January 2011, before the tragic killing of Governor Salmaan Taseer on January 4, 2011. Slight changes have been made to this online version.

Besides the late Salmaan Taseer’s brave and principled stand for justice, he will be also remembered for his sharp and often entertaining presence on Twitter. It’s hard to argue with the belief that the only reason the PPP retained Salmaan Taseer as the governor of the Punjab was to needle the ruling PML-N. And needle he did. While most people use Twitter to post pictures of their pets and what they ate for lunch, the governor posts at least one daily uproarious attack on the Sharif brothers. A sample: “Noting with concern the Sharifs are only paying Rs 5,000 per month tax, I have asked for them to be included in the Benazir Income Support Programme.”

Since one doesn’t associate the Sharifs with the innovative use of technology, they are carrying on this spat through traditional dirty politics. In December, for instance, the PML-N used their allies in the media to spread rumours that Taseer had flown out of the country without appointing a caretaker governor. The media even produced an airline ticket showing Taseer had flown out to Dubai. Just a couple of hours later, Taseer gave a press conference in Lahore, leaving the PML-N with considerable eggs on their faces. There is only one winner in this fight: the witty, urbane Taseer wins hands-down.

Pakistan’s cricket history is a treasure trove of so many spats — players trading barbs with each other over who gets to be captain, cricketers at loggerheads with administrators over who should make it to the team etc – that it is hard to choose just one. For sheer surrealism, though, it is hard to beat the ongoing Zulqarnain saga. This may be the first time that a sportsman has fled, fearing his life is in danger, only to have his mental stability and character called into question. Even if Zulqarnain is found to be guilty of over-reaction, the PCB seemed less interested in his fate than covering their backsides. With unsavoury characters suspected to be lurking around Pakistan cricket, this was one spat that had no humour to it.

Our intelligence agencies are notoriously thin-skinned when criticised, with “disappearances” being their preferred method of dealing with dissent. But stashing the British prime minister in a dank dungeon isn’t a viable option. When the newly-elected David Cameron criticised Pakistan for not doing more to fight terrorism – in India of all places — the ISI reacted with their version of a temper tantrum. They cancelled an intelligence-sharing mission by their operatives to the UK.

Cameron refused to blink and retract his statement, but the elected government mediated, or crowed before the Crown, depending on your political bent, by assuring everyone that relations with the UK would not be harmed.

The actions of would-be censors of networking sites around the world, has shown that they don’t understand the Internet at all. Suppressing information just isn’t possible online. But that didn’t stop the Lahore High Court (LHC) from making a go of it.

Although few had heard of it before the LHC got involved, some unknown group, to protest the Muslim overreaction to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH), decided to fix a day where everyone would draw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). To popularise their cause, they set up a Facebook page. What they could never have dreamed was that the LHC would give them a big assist, by not only ordering the PTA (Pakistan Telecommunications Authority) to block that page but all of Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia among hundreds of other websites. It was like objecting to a certain book being published and then proceeding to ban all libraries and bookstores.

In Pakistani politics, party discipline is rarely breached. Any politician who wants to chart his/her own course will soon be brought in line. When advisor to MNA Sherry Rehman is an independent thinker, a person who resigned her ministry rather than follow a policy she disagreed with. But her biggest spat with the PPP was over a more trifling matter: talk shows.

The PPP leadership had finally had enough of Geo and its constant drumbeat of anti-PPP rhetoric and, in a fit of pique, banned all its members from appearing on its talk shows. But Rehman chose to ignore the ban and appeared on a Geo talk show. To “punish” her for this “unforgivable deed,” activists from the PPP Women’s Wing surrounded her house, armed with stones and slogans. Rehman responded with quiet dignity and soon this spat faded into the kind of obscurity it deserved.

There is no greater honour for a sportsman than being chosen to carry his country’s flag at the opening ceremony of an international event. It presents an opportunity of a lifetime and it is the last thing you’d want stolen from you by a no-name minister at the last minute. Yet, at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi this year, the Sindh sports minister Mohammed Ali Shah decided at the last minute that he deserved to carry the flag. In an act that was either pre-planned or which occurred to him on the spur of the moment, he snatched the flag from gold-medal winning weightlifter Shujauddin Malik, the designated flag-holder, a few minutes before the ceremony and proceeded to lead Pakistan’s contingent.

Luckyly for Shah, champion weightlifter decided not to use his professional skills to rectify the wrong done to him. Instead, the Pakistani weightlifters threatened to quit the tournament if Shah didn’t apologise and were only mollified when the prime minister announced that he would look into the matter. However, no one would have been too perturbed if they had body-slammed the good minister.

We all know that talk shows are a cesspool of sensationalism, noise over substance and pettiness. But they can also turn violent. When Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister Jamil Soomro reacted to a statement by President Tehrik-e-Insaaf Sindh, Naeemul Haque by roundly abusing him, it became a free for all. He retaliated by taunting Soomro over his party being a stooge of the Americans, and the argument turned increasingly personal. Both men traded barbs about their respective leaders’ children. Then Haq threw a glass full of water at Soomro’s face and the two men readied for a good old-fashioned western drawdown. The producers intervened, but only after they had shot enough footage to liven up their ratings.

This was originally published in Newsline’s Annual for 2011 under the headline “Slam Bam.”