Twenty-one people were injured yesterday when a grenade hurled by suspected armed men went off among civilians in Kashmir. Three people, including a father and son, were killed in other separatist violence around the province, police said. The militants had targeted a bus carrying police going through Kulgam, but the grenade missed its mark and hit a bus carrying civilians, said a police official.

Meanwhile, armed men yesterday shot dead a police officer and his son in the village of Gundqaiser near Bandipora township, a police spokesman said. He said three armed men covered by veils barged into the home of assistant sub-inspector Mushtaq Ahmed at around 3:30 a.m. and opened fire. The officer and his son died on the spot, while the officer's nephew was injured in the shootout.

2002 was the year when the entire population lived in fear of a disastrous war with India for longer periods than before. The year began with the reduction of consular missions between India and Pakistan and the disruption of normal travel between them. For months, preparing for war along the borders affected Pakistan's economy, its politics and the people's state of mind. In the overheated rhetoric as to who was more to blame, little heed was paid to the growing realization among the people that without a quick solution to the Kashmir problem and normalization of their relations India and Pakistan had no future worth contemplating.

The human rights situation could charitably be described as uneven. Sectarian strife declined but terrorist attacks on Western figures and minorities increased. The brutal murder of a US journalist, the killing of French engineers who were helping the Navy, bomb attacks on a church in Islamabad, on nuns in Taxila and on a Christian school in Murree, as well as a horrifying massacre at a Christian NGO office in Karachi traumatized the whole population and brought the state abiding shame.

Explosions in houses and capture of desperadoes suspected of terrorist conspiracies kept the people in a state of mortal fear. Finally, the anti-terrorism law was amended to empower the administration to detain anybody on mere suspicion for a whole year, perhaps the most draconian measure in the country's history. Citizens were picked up and detained while authorities denied knowledge.

Towards the end of the year, a joint team of FBI and FIA captured members of a doctor's family. The chief of the ruling party, the Chief Minister of the biggest province and the Interior Minister protested ignorance. They should have resigned their posts if they were incapable of protecting the population's basic rights.

It was a particularly bad year for women, despite their advance in the political sphere. First, a woman was sentenced to death by stoning, then a woman was gang-raped under the orders and supervision of a so-called panchayat and finally a number of innocent girls were given away as a compromise in a murder case. No doubt post-event corrective and punitive measures were taken quickly, but there was little impact on the vulnerability of Pakistani women. Instances identical with the last two episodes mentioned above continued to be reported.

However, nothing epitomized the insensitivity of the Establishment to the civil society's rights more than the termination of the tenancy rights of a large number of tenants in Punjab, the launch of a scheme of corporate farming that threatens to remove the concept of social justice from the context of land rights, or the arrogant use of power in dealing with teachers and doctors seeking redress of their grievances. What made matters worse was the growing realization that civil society showed dangerous signs of indifference to its rights. It remained a largely passive witness to developments that decidedly reduced the freedoms of citizens and affected their fortunes adversely. The main exception to this dismal conduct was the resolve with which the lawyer community upheld democracy and the rule of law.

So 2002 began with hopes of change, but ended with the people's desire for change becoming stronger than ever.