From Michael Moore to Bill Easterly, from the polemical to the rational to voters from Obama’s own constituency who wonder where the healthcare plan will go in all this (can you spell ‘back burner’?), criticism about the troop surge abounds. Whether it’s people on the Right who think that Al-Qaeda are safely tucked away in Pakistan, or whether it’s people on the Left who believe that “Afghans know what to do with our destiny.” So who is Obama listening to?
History has been alluded to again and again in this debate. Comparisons to the Soviet invasion, the British Empire’s attempts to control the region, and America’s own failure in Vietnam are abound. But one man openly defies history, one man (and he may be one amongst many) encourages America to believe that THIS time, it will be different. His name is Abdul Rahim Wardak, and this is what he has to say:
I reject the myth advanced in the media that Afghanistan is a ‘graveyard of empires’ and that the U.S. and NA TO effort is destined to fail. Afghans have never seen you as occupiers, even though this has been the major focus of the enemy’s propaganda campaign. Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with an alien ideology you enabled us to write a democratic constitution and choose our own government. Unlike the Russians, who destroyed our country, you came to rebuild.
To be fair, I wouldn’t know what the Afghan Defense Minister thought if it weren’t for good friend General McChrystal, who possesses the kind of self-righteous sincerity that I find both frightening and rampant in good soldiers:
Our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces; our objective must be the population. In the struggle to gain the support of the people, every action we take must enable this effort. The population also represents a powerful actor that can and must be leveraged in this complex system. Gaining their support will require a better understanding of the people’s choices and needs.
Dear General McChrystal: Afghanistan spoke loud and clear two months ago when it voted against Karzai’s corrupt government. Did you listen? Or did you listen to commentators such as Ahmed Rashid who continuous depict Karzai as a misbehaved but ultimately harmless dog – one who only needs a tighter leash?
Ahmed Rashid is another one who constantly defies history, and logic. And barring a few brave souls, this warped logic has crept into the minds of sane people. Consider this one: corrupt governments need a little more money to sort themselves out. Asif Zardari and Hamid Karzai lack the resources to end corruption. As if to say “if only we give them a little more, they’ll want a little less.”
But Rashid is a master pragmatist. He will convince you that more pressure is actually less pressure: “under such enormous external and internal pressures, there are no guarantees that the (Pakistan) army will stay committed to a democratic system.” Let’s think this through. Troops increase in Afghanistan, driving most of the remaining Al-Qaeda network and militants into Pakistan. Suddenly the Pak Army finds itself with a full-on war and (possibly) another Afghan refugee crisis. How is this going to improve the civilian government’s ability to a) keep the army under control and b) fix internal economic problems? A war in Afghanistan (if Obama truly takes McChrystal’s report to heart) means more of all the wrong things: more money to be siphoned off, more guns, more movement along the border. Suddenly those in the Pakistan army who are even slightly sympathetic to the Taliban find themselves at the center of a very large, very lucrative war. How does Mr. Rashid propose we abet such seductions of power and money?
“Pakistan will have to be wooed, cajoled and bribed with aid and support to resist all forms of extremism.” Yes, that’s right. Let the corrupt and unaccountable governments of Karzai and Zardari remain and make sure the funds keep flowing. Rashid is more than the perfect analyst, he is every war government’s wet dream.
Finally, the last word on this hideous charade comes from Washington itself, a city-state that has been accused of being totally immune to opinions outside those that come from Virginia and its close friends in Kabul and Islamabad. E. J. Dionne might count as the voice of the American moderate-liberal, one that is fundamentally opposed to wars but sees no good way out of this. They will say that America waited far too long for this surge, that it needs to be done carefully and sustainably and, finally, that it’s the “only good solution.”
Which is ultimately the most dangerous thing Mr. Obama has to offer the world: the belief that yes, he can. Yes, he and America can “fix” Afghanistan. No, no, no you can’t. The right thing to do would be to announce a gradual pullout, to accept that America cannot always have things its way. It can ensure that money stops flowing into Karzai’s pockets, thus depriving the Taliban of rich friends in the region. It can keep closer tabs on oil, drug, and arms money and flows into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Other than that, not much.
It will suffer accusations from Pakistan and Afghanistan of “abandonment,” it may even face an Islamist government in Afghanistan akin to Iran. That government might one day acquire nukes from Pakistan. Or maybe by then both governments, having no one to support them but the revenue and enterprise of their own people, will have a real stake in non-proliferation, in peace, and the stability of their economies. The sad thing is that while an increase in troops may still lead to the first outcome, it will almost definitely never, ever lead to the second.
Newsline Magazine, 13th November 2009
Clearly, I’ve been away from home for too long. And I am almost certainly going to be accused of batting for the other team now. But why would a smart and politically savvy anchor like Asma Shirazi tell Hillary Clinton that Pakistan is fighting “your war, not our war?” Is there still doubt that the Taliban are very much Pakistan’s problem, notwithstanding anything the US or previous Pakistani governments had to do with creating the hydra-headed monster?
It’s difficult to fight a common enemy when you’re secretly convinced that you’re on opposite teams. While watching Clinton’s hour-long discussion with some of the top news anchors in the country, I realized, yet again, how uneasy a path the “liberal” forces in Pakistan tread. While all of us agree that that militancy perpetrated by extremists needs to end, we’re less sure about whether we support the United States’ campaign to put an end to the Taliban and other extremist forces. In fact, we’re not even convinced that the US is sincerely trying to end terrorist violence in the region.
Which is funny, because that’s what they secretly believe about us, too.
Three weeks ago, a closed-door discussion between Pakistani and American political analysts brought the degree of mutual suspicion between the countries to the forefront. A prominent lawyer who is currently working on several high-profile cases related to national security dissected the renamed Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill during his presentation. This isn’t about money, our journalists and analysts argued; it’s about respect. And when you insinuate that an army that has lost soldiers in a war is secretly funding militants, we consider it an insult. Secondly, implying that the civilian government does not already have complete control over the army (or its nuclear weapons) hit a raw nerve: it is simply not the business of outsiders to take speculative information and state it as fact. For one thing, intelligence agencies the world over infiltrate terrorist groups, but making spy tactics a public fact defeats the purpose of classified information. Members of the Pakistan delegation went on to point out that while the military and the ISI may be strong institutions in Pakistan, Americans tend to think of them as a parallel government. Which is, at best, a pretty tall claim and should be backed up by hard evidence.
Just moments later, a former US Ambassador articulated an analogous complaint. “There are people in your country, educated and informed people, who believe that US intelligence agencies are secretly funding Al-Qaeda. Or that the CIA actually orchestrated the 9/11 attacks… which is preposterous.”
I was suddenly left feeling just a little exposed.
As someone in the news business, or simply part of the “intelligentsia,” I’ve always found it far more comfortable to err on the side of suspicion. Which may be a safer position to take, but often makes me only a shade better than your average conspiracy theorist. For every myth the US is guilty of indulging in with regards to Pakistan, I have a few of my own: that the US ultimately wants to take over the country, one embassy at a time; that America is really just facilitating the breakup of the state and will divvy up the provinces between Afghanistan and India; and that they have imperial designs on our economy, trade and agriculture.
These may or may not be true; equally, it is anyone’s guess whether the CIA or ISI is secretly channeling funds to terrorists in Waziristan. But while conspiracy theories are comfortable “I-told-you-so” sticks to beat your opponents with, the mutual suspicion that follows certainly doesn’t make for very good military strategy. And that may just be the greatest edge that a rabble of intolerant and ruthless militants has over two powerful and democratic nations.
Pakistan is a nightmare of a country to be an expert on. They can never decide on whom to vote for, you can’t trust the news feed, it’s no fun to travel to, the weather is perpetually hot, they don’t serve alcohol and there’s always the thrilling chance of being blown to bits en route to pick up chooris for the begum.
Never fear. For all its unpredictability, Pakistan is a fantastically simple country to be an expert on. Here’s how.
1. It’s all over. Know this. Print it out, superglue it to your mirror. The Pakistani State Will Disintegrate… Soon. Very Soon. The exact details of how or when this will happen can be filled in at leisure. Politely listen to arguments on how the economy is actually stabilizing, how students are more interested in finding jobs than strapping on explosive jackets, how democracy may actually be taking off. This makes you at best, a low-level analyst on South Asian security. However, if you sidle up to the right people at the right time and whisper “you know personally I don’t think it’s going to last very long” you are suddenly catapulted into the elite category of Expert. It doesn’t matter if your predictions are off by a decade or so. As long as you’re there when the next big Pakistani politician gets shot at a rally to say “Aha. Told you so.”
2. Hold everything and anything in Pakistan accountable to the Terrorism Problem. Fashion shows, artists, rock stars. It doesn’t matter if the man you’re interviewing (see Noori’s interview for the NYTimes, for example) has smoked more pot than the entire freshman cohort of UC Berkeley, make a really big deal when he says things like “terrorists are a small problem in Pakistan.”
I cannot emphasize this point enough. Whether you’re talking to bondage gear manufacturers in Karachi, brewery owners in Murree, classical singers in Lahore or porn stars in Peshawar – ask them about terrorism. If they shrug and say “eh, it’s no big deal,” immediately conclude that Pakistan’s anti-Western pro-Taliban anti-Semitic radicalism is spiraling out of control and it’s only a matter of time before the entire country comes out on the streets demanding their nuclear weapons be used against US, India and Israel. Heap praise on supermodels for their bravery and valor in the face of Islamization, accompany blog posts with pictures of college girls in short shalwar kameezes texting on flashy iPhones: “Defying Death: The Pakistani Youth.” Remember, pretty women sell more copies.
3. Pakistan has a complicated political system. One Parliament, one Senate, one semi-politicized judiciary; two major political parties, four provinces… I’ve lost you already, haven’t I? Relax. Here are some key phrases that cut out the hassle of studying the country’s political or economic history.
Say “Mr Ten Percent” to anyone – anyone – and you will instantly be hailed as a true insider. “President Zardari, also known as Mr. Ten Percent” is a key phrase you must attempt to insert into every op-ed you write. Just in case people were under the impression that he’s going by some other alias these days. Hating on President Zardari is rivalled only by cricket as a national sport; even ex-pats get into it.
“Radicalized individuals within the Pakistan military/ISI” – another great phrase. Be vigilant – constantly look out for sound bytes from Generals in the Pakistan Army against sharing nuclear secrets, accepting civilian interference, or allowing drone attacks. Make frequent allusions to Zia’s Islamization campaign in the 70’s. Finally, insert the fact that the Pakistan army was/is trained to fight Indians. This is especially useful at press conferences: for example, the next time you see a Pakistani official ask them why the army doesn’t simply hand over classified information on nukes to the CIA – is it because they secretly hate America? Really, whats the big deal, they’ve only spent the last three decades and the better part of their GDP building a missile defense system against a country they’ve fought three wars with. It’s only nuclear weapons, for chrissake.
“Radicalization of Pakistani society.” Reuters has an archive titled “Bearded Pakistani Men Burning American Flags”. Use it. Call up Pakistan’s resident experts on “radicalization of Pakistani society” – Pervez Hoodbhoy, Nadeem Paracha, Shehzad Roy, Meera, whatever – and ask them what they think. Act surprised when they tell you that in fact, Pakistani society is becoming irreversibly radicalized. Frequently cite Zaid Hamid and the Jamat ud Dawa as prime examples. Because PPP may have swept the polls, but you know the silent majority really backed the fundos. Because they’re a bunch of rabid fundos themselves, they just don’t know it yet.
Remember these basic guidelines and you have a long, illustrious career ahead of you – as a political pundit in Washington. Or even, who knows, as a member of Holbrooke’s team. Just remember, complexity is for academic losers.
War is not a defensive game. If you read Seymour Hersh and then decide to write a hundred articles condemning his piece, you’re already in backlash mode. The first stone has been cast.
Before we move on to the New Yorker article, I’d like to thank The New York Times for reminding me why even the best – the most rational, critical, non-sentimental – amongst us feel the need to flip out sometime. Consider the hoo-ha over the Fort Hood killing. The obsequious presence of this piece of news is rattling: someone brought it up at a panel of Pakistani educationists yesterday.
Madam chair, I have a question. Why the fuck are three fresh-off-the-plane visiting NGO workers from Pakistan expected to know about a member of the US Army going berserk on his fellow Americans? Because they’re Pakistani and therefore Muslim? And because all Muslims should be held accountable for all other Muslims?
Media knows no proportionality. The preceding article is on Blackwater, the hired guns who mowed down 17 Iraqi civilians in broad daylight. They’re all still alive, thanks to the company that bribed Iraqi officials to hush up the incident.
President Obama speaks at the funeral of the 13 soldiers who died at Fort Hood. “Putting a face to the slain,” they call it. “Obama plays his role as national consoler.” Meanwhile, right wing groups call for a purging of Muslims from the armed forces – and shoot, why not, from the country.
Next article. Blackwater. The then president of the company, Gary Jackson, who approved the bribes? Not available for comment. The US Ambassador who had full knowledge of the bribes? Not available for comment. Meanwhile, Seymour Hersh wonders why the Pakistan Army can’t be persuaded to be just a little more pro-America.
Why would the occupation of Palestine provide fodder for right-wing Islamic groups? Why would someone like me, who works for a think tank in Washington, care about what happens to Iraqi civilians?
Money knows no proportionality. It has no conscience, no sense of justice, and no agenda. It buys off Iraqi officials with the same ease that it gently guides the eyes and ears of the media. 24 hours after it hits the digital newsstand, “Are nuclear weapons safe in Pakistan?” is picked up by over 300 news outlets. Google news reports over seven thousand links for “Fort Hood.” “Iraqi civilians” get 500 links. If money sets the tone and the amplitude of this vast, global conversation, then non-American media has no choice but to play a defensive game.
I hope that the outrage over Blackwater, and the disproportionate attention received by Fort Hood isn’t confined to Muslims, or non-Americans. I hope it extends to anyone who understands while capitalism is destructive and oppressive in its own right, to have to put up with American self-righteousness; Rome’s great need to be seen as the upholder of truth and justice, is a mind fuck. And that even the best of us (or perhaps only the best of us) snap.
Newsline Magazine, 2nd November 2009
Mina, my maid’s daughter, attends a private primary school in Karachi. Her parents tried sending her to a government school for a bit but found that the teacher seldom showed up for class. This wasn’t working for someone like Mina who is a fantastically bright kid. So they put her in a private school that charged them about 400 rupees a month, which is expensive for parents who each only earn 4,000 rupees every month. But Mina has flourished in the private school. She enjoys her lessons and consistently outperforms her peers. Her future is bright; she stands a very good chance of becoming a teacher, or lab technician, or shop assistant.
Of course, all children deserve to have high-quality education, free of cost. Whether it’s elite Cambridge board schools like the one I went to or the small set-up Mina goes to, the huge quality gaps between private and public education should not exist.
What can government schools learn from private schools? Is the level of learning success higher in private schools because teachers are more closely monitored for their attendance? Is it that the teachers are more qualified, and therefore paid higher? Is it that parents who pay fees are motivated to make their kids study harder? Are children who go to private schools richer, and therefore healthier and smarter? Or is it that private schools, because they are for-profit institutions, are investing more back into their organisations? But into what specifically? Is it books? Better infrastructure?
Say you survey 800 schools across Punjab, conduct tests for 12,000 children, survey 5,000 teachers and 2,000 households. What would the results tell you?
The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) did just that. They brought in some economists to gather and crunch the data, and they found, predictably, that education levels in Pakistan are quite low, both in private and public schools. Children cannot construct sentences in Class 3; they even solve math problems by rote. Enrolment may be on the rise since the 1980s, but this means nothing for learning basic math, English and Urdu. At the same time they found that children who attended one of the many private schools that have cropped up over the last decade perform significantly better than their public-schooled peers. By the time they are in Class 3, their test scores in English are equivalent to government school children in Class 5. In math and Urdu, a private-schooled third-grader knows as much as a government-schooled child in Class 4.
The next step was to slice the data. Do children from low-income households perform badly? Are lower teacher-to-student ratios the key to better test scores in private schools?
The team was in for several surprises. For one thing, a private school teacher in a village in Faisalabad is likely to be a local female, usually unmarried, and maybe a matric-pass. The public school teacher is usually male, and far more qualified. The young female teacher earns just over 1,000 rupees a month. The government school teacher earns nearly six times as much. So it’s not that private school teachers are better paid and therefore more motivated, nor are they more qualified.
This is what the economists had to say about their own study:
“Despite extensive efforts to isolate observable factors that could explain the private-public gap, the data collected by the LEAPS survey cannot conclusively explain why private schools outperform public schools.”
Economic regression models attempt to explain a relationship between, say, private schooling and higher test scores, by accounting for all the possible advantages a child who goes to a private school might have. A regression model would include child characteristics (age, gender, health status), family characteristics (availability of books and other media at home, parental education, income), school characteristics (infrastructure, location, student-teacher ratio) and teacher characteristics (absenteeism, age, education, gender, test scores, training). The list is exhaustive. The team found that all this explains only about 30% of the difference in test scores between private and public schools.
The numbers alone explain less than a third of the difference. In developed countries, though, factors such as having wealthier parents or better access to media are big influencers and often dramatically affect a child’s test score. So over here, why are these private schools “better” than their public-school counterparts?
The economists put their numbers aside to find out. They went and talked to the head teachers at a few private schools. This is what they had to say:
“In the first interview, the head teacher felt that one of his teachers was weak in mathematics, so he had arranged for her, together with other teachers from neighbouring villages, to go for further training in Hafizabad, 60 kilometres away from the village. The second head teacher felt that the lack of a boundary wall was distracting students (the school was next to a road), so he spent funds on building a wall and his impression was that children could now focus more as a result of this construction. In the third school, children from one settlement were frequently absent since they had to cross a small forest to reach the school. The head teacher decided to send a teacher every morning to this settlement to chaperone the children to the school, and attendance increased dramatically.”
Teaching requires imagination and creativity. So does entrepreneurship. Just as studies have found that there is no one formula for good teaching, there is no one formula for successful entrepreneurship. But in tiny villages across the subcontinent people who want to do, do – and in a surprisingly beneficial and non-exploitative way. It seems that private schooling allows a Matric-graduate who couldn’t find work in the city, or a young secondary-school-pass girl who can’t leave the village, to meet parents like Mina’s who need a place where they know the teacher will show up.
But more than that, it seems that private school owners have just that little extra incentive to make sure kids keep coming and parents keep paying fees. Not only will they fire bad teachers, they will provide evening classes in harvest season. Not only will they make sure it’s worth parents’ time to send their children to school, they’ll cope with large classes by appointing the smarter children to help the weaker ones. Every ghetto, every city and every household has its own problems. While Pakistan’s government schools would rather let the exceptions slip through the cracks, it seems that a good entrepreneur would see them as potential customers. Business-minded creativity doesn’t show up in the numbers.
For free-marketeers, this is good news. The challenge is for the rest of us. Can you train someone to think creatively? What incentives do you provide him/her? Are you putting really poor kids at a disadvantage? And we haven’t even begun to crack the really big question: how do you get teachers, government or otherwise, to put in more effort?
I’m no economist, but I have a feeling that it’s going to take more than an economic model to figure that one out.
The LEAPS report is available online here.
Newsline Magazine, 23 October 2009
We were forty people in a quiet room in DC: defense analysts, think tankers, Hill staffers. A delegation from Pakistan – journalists, military experts, former ambassadors – met their counterparts in DC for a private meeting, away from the eyes and ears of the press, in what turned out to be one of the best and most frank discussions on Pakistan-US foreign policy that I have attended during my stay here.
Around twelve o’clock, Ejaz interrupts his reply to a nuclear proliferation expert to comment that he just received a text from his son in Pakistan. Schools have been shut down for a week.
For all it’s worth, even the bourgeois have to cross the street to get their kids to school every day. In her article “Looking at the War” in the New Yorker (2002), Susan Sontag differentiates between those who watch and read about the war and those who live in its midst:
“To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. It universalises the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment… It assumes that everyone is a spectator. It suggests, perversely, unseriously, that there is no real suffering in the world. But it is absurd to identify “the world” with those zones in the rich countries where people have the dubious privilege of being spectators, or of declining to be spectators, of other people’s pain, just as it is absurd to generalise about the ability to respond to the sufferings of others on the basis of the mind-set of those consumers of news who know nothing at first hand about war and terror. There are hundreds of millions of television watchers who are far from inured to what they see on television. They do not have the luxury of patronising reality.”
In the past on my blog and elsewhere, I have commented, somewhat facetiously, that no one in DC actually wishes this war was over. And in more cynical moments, I understand that if it weren’t for militants in Waziristan I probably would not be privy to many exclusive and important meetings in Washington DC on the basis of being “familiar with the region” – I would not be “gold dust,” as one American described it, reviewing my job prospects. And yet when an eminent journalist from Lahore who gets no end of attention from important people in Washington stops in mid-sentence, picks up his Blackberry and informs the room that his son’s school has been shut down, I realise that while he and I may still be ridiculously removed from the violence, we desperately want it to end.
Later in the afternoon, a retired colonel of the US Army asked our journalist, “With the current volume of attacks in Pakistan’s cities, can we expect public support for the Pakistani Army to continue? How much are the people of Pakistan willing to sacrifice?”
Tactically, it’s clear that militants are trying to frighten the Pakistani public into submission, and make the government and the army operation extremely unpopular. Someone rightly pointed out today that the success in Swat had much to do with the army’s faith that the Pakistani public supported them. And while the violence across Punjab and Pashtun territory over the last month should provide a natural consensus point for the public, something is sorely amiss and is critically short of the kind of unequivocal support we saw for Swat.
No political party has spoken out, clearly and forcefully, against the Lahore bombing or the Shangla attacks. Twenty four hours after four students were killed by this war, no party has had the sense to openly condemn the militants and back the army operation in South Waziristan. Fifteen days and nearly 250 deaths later, no politician has the courage or even the good political sense to say, “This is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter if we or our opponents are in government, we will fight this war.” We are obsessed with sovereignty when it comes to America putting boots or bombs or diplomats on our soil. But the killing of civilians in Lahore, or soldiers at GHQ, or the young women attending a religious-based educational institution is a far greater and more outrageous breach of national sovereignty than anything America could do. This is a no-brainer: any political party that worries that by openly condemning militancy they risk alienating a part of their constituency for the next election are missing the point. Fail to end militancy and terrorism, and there will be no “next election.”
In many ways, this is a presumptuous claim, particularly in a forum where one is expected to be objective and impartial. I cannot count myself amongst those who have, as Sontag puts it, “put in time under fire and had the luck to elude the death that struck down others nearby.” But I do hope to send my sons and daughters to school without fear of them never returning home; I can no longer afford the news-consumer’s luxury of patronizing reality.
America is a country at war. Which would put it in roughly the same boat as the Palestinians, or the people in South Waziristan. This is interesting because growing up in Karachi, I knew that I was in a warzone – I knew how to say “curfew” well before I knew what it meant. And the kind of insecurity I feel in my hometown is a fraction of what people on the Durrand line must feel every time a drone flies over their homes. You feel unsafe, you constantly worry about your family, if someone is an hour late from work your mind begins to play awful games with you.
In America, the signs of war are everywhere. You’ll see young tough kids in crew cuts and fatigues stroll around downtown Chicago or DC, snapping photographs; you’ll see them at airports with their military-issued duffel bags and canteens. Airports are on high alert as a matter of routine, and roads in the capital are marked as “Emergency Exits.”
America’s a lot like Waziristan, just like watching a terrifying horror movie is roughly like living in one.
Except that it’s not.
These days, everyone in America is an expert on counter-terrorism. They all know what counterinsurgency is, and they all know what a drone is. Mostly because everyone watches a lot of 24 and NCIS. My roommate is addicted to both, so I began to watch old seasons of both shows recently. 24 is appalling in its own special way (Jane Meyer wrote this brilliant essay on the show in 2007).
In a recent episode of NCIS, the opening sequence was of a military officer commanding a Predator drone from a computer console. The drone is locked in target on a mock “militant” hideout but at the last minute misfires and ends up killing an officer on the site of the drill. Later the officer laments that he was trained as a fighter pilot, and was meant to be “out there” – in Afghanistan/Pakistan – not sheltered in his command station at the Pentagon.
This is ironic, because I’m pretty sure a news channel was simultaneously reporting about 100 people killed in drone attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks. Many of whom are civilians, several of whom are militants. But no one’s watching the news – they’d rather watch NCIS.
I want to say something about how much easier it is for us to kill when the enemy is faceless, but I think Levinas said it much more eloquently:
In relation to beings in the opening of being, comprehension finds a signification for them on the basis of being. In this sense, it does not invoke these beings but only names them, thus accomplishing a violence and a negation. A partial negation which is violence. This partiality is indicated by the fact that, without disappearing, those beings are in my power. Partial negation, which is violence, denied the independence of a being: it belongs to me. Possession is the mode whereby a being, while existing, is partially denied.
Terrorists are not simply faceless, but dramatized bad guys, determined to take over the world. And the world – specifically, America – is sitting on a ticking time bomb. The war is palpable, it is out there, every day draws us closer to doom, etc, etc. And it’s all over the place: from self-righteous high of terrorist-annihilating video games to the soap-opera grief of Army Wives. The very word “Eye-rack” has an element of heroic romance: characters are routinely described as being stationed in Baghdad (“Bag-dad”) or having just returned from it.
A Canadian friend who describes himself as an “Internet Culture” expert expressed horror at the idea that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reily were the way a majority of Americans receive their information. But why bother misinforming people when you can seduce them with a complete fiction? Why bother explaining the difference between Al Qaeda and Tehreek-e-Taliban when you can simply say “LA is about to be targeted by terrorists in the next twenty-four hours. We’re going to find them, and we’ll toture/kill anyone who gets in our way.”
Of course it isn’t real. And, one could argue, as the lead writer of 24 puts it: “I think people can differentiate between a television show and reality.” I know when I watch back-to-back episodes of television dramas, I find myself sympathizing with the Jack Bauers and Agent Gibbs of this world, and I sympathize with their ruthless desperation to beat the enemy and protect their families at any cost. If I didn’t know better, I’d say torture and Predator drones (and landmines and napalm, while we’re at it) are not such a bad idea.
Which is not the same as being desensitized to violence – anyone who stands in a news room for 10 hours every day will find themselves thinking in body counts. The fiction of war lends it precisely that valor and romance that enables us to think in terms of good and evil, freedom and extremism, America and Everyone Else. The terrorist is no longer faceless – he is evil incarnate. And only the brave men and women of the US Military, the ROTCs, the counter-terrorist experts, sophisticated weaponry and ruthless torture methods stand in their way. We Do What We Must, We Will Do What It Takes.
Following American pop culture, one wonders if there isn’t a certain relish to being a country at war.
I want to get rid of the news, just for a day.
Let me elaborate. I don’t want to not read the newspaper/blog/RSS feed for a day. I want there to be no news.
In Lahore, a kite got stuck in a tree. An unidentified man driving a blue Suzuki pick up realized that he had forgotten to buy milk on the way home. Fortunately, there was a stray cow with bloated udders parked outside his house.
At the Pentagon, the guy responsible for making sure the GPS coordinates for Predator drone strikes are updated on CIA intelligence overslept. In Waziristan, a cart carrying approximately twenty kilos of flour delivered its goods to a small grocery store. Meanwhile, fifty people including ten women and three children watched a soccer match.
Bo, the lovable puppy gifted to Malia and Sasha by their father chewed up the better part of the Kerry Lugar Bill, destroying all evidence of its existence. Barack Obama spent the day in bed with Michelle, Shah Mehmood Qureshi decided to ditch his flight to DC and hang out in Abu Dhabi and Hussain Haqqani nursed a hangover by watching the last season of Gossip Girl.
Ms. Tajwar Tashfin Awan washed her hair and braided it. She spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures of the pretty orange flowers that dot LUMS’s campus this time of the year.
That’s all for this hour. Have a great weekend, and remember that if you’re traveling by the DC Metro, it will be on time.
Pakistan is an unhappy country. And this doesn’t often come out in the doctor’s reports. Schizophrenia is the most common diagnosis – are we Muslim? What kind of Muslim? Are we democratic? Autocratic?
Sure, every teenager has an identity crisis. But think of Pakistan as a teenager with a bad case of acne. Women being paraded naked in the street, there’s a huge blemish. Corruption – whoops, our teenager is clearly overweight too.
Two weeks ago, a six year old was raped in Karachi. A friend messaged me on Facebook: “f- this country.” As a journalist it makes me happy that these things are being exposed by the media. It’s also gratifying that we are taking responsibilty for these crimes, even if it is just by using the collective “we”. A lot has been said on the treatment women get in this country, adding feul to the debate on the Pakistani identity. But more often than not, comments descend into unhappy self-flagellation.
Amber : Shame on us for allowing such abuses on women.
mohsin: this is redicules u just dont find words to critcises this how can such a thing take place in a civilised wormd first fo All islma donet allow to treat even non mulims or animlas like this such a thing taking place in th isliamic republic allah forbid us
Zaigham: It is a test case for Punjab government, Judiciary, Bureaucracy of Pakistan. /If they fail to take any action then Musharraf type government is the best suited style for Pakistanis.
Still, I wondered what was missing. We all agree that this is a great injustice, we’re not quite sure who to trust with the solution – Shariah? Military rule? Politicians? Courts? But something is still preventing this highly informed, responsive and morally-driven nation from moving forward. Scrolling down the comments, I came across this post from a reader using the moniker “Some_Indian.”
Hi folks
I have been a regular visitor to dawn and the news, of late I see readers being highly critical of the society and their whole nation at large. In no uncertain terms these incidents needs to be reported and the culprits and culprits only need to be reprimanded. Why the heck do you guys abuse whole society or for that matter or a whole nation, common guys you are far better than this …
I read an interesting thing about news papers in Israel what ever happens news papers there don’t cover terrorist violence on the front page. Newspapers in pak should cover atleast one good news in their front page ..why not about some good work by say a charity organization or some thing
This is not the time to be highly critical of yourself, you cant afford that now, instead look at life more positively. You guys are/will be a great nation you guys just have to believe
All the best, You guys rock
Cheers
Yeehaw
I’m not sure if this person is Indian at all. I certainly don’t think Israel is the gold star of fair and unbiased reporting. But the “Indian”’s comment in this forum was the equivalent of someone going up to our fat, pimply teenager and giving her a hug.
Here’s the dark cloud overshadowing the tortured women’s story:
Hearing about the release of women, more than 500 villagers gathered at Ada Jamber Kalan and blocked the Multan Road to protest the court decision and demanded immediate arrest of the accused women.
Amid arguments on arresting the “prostitutes” and arresting the perpetrators, are we also going to arrest these 500 villagers?
And here’s a silver lining: blogs like Dawn’s are generating the kind of feedback that no one had anticipated. More than anything that hits the headlines or is churned out of the editorial offices, the unpaid bloggers, photojournalists and independent writers from all over the world make this one of the most exciting live forums in Pakistan today. Blogging, however, is not the same as civil disobedience, or protest.
I need to tear myself away from my laptop and go out and create a ruckus in the streets every once in a while if I want this country to be run by people who agree with me, and not with the mob of 500.
Following up on yesterday’s post, our mole in Karachi has this to say:
As with most things, this dispute (in Sindh) is about money, power and land. It started off with the Sindh govt challenging the CDGK’s right to change the land-use status of plots of land, as the city council had been fairly regularly doing. Interestingly, the council didn’t stop, even after the judgment. Alot of the status changes were from ‘amenity’ to ‘residential’. Many others were done under ‘regularisation’, turning goths (shanty towns) into bonafide housing schemes. This, of course, raises funds for the CDGK, as you have to pay per square yard to get your plot regularised.
There’s also the issue of the CDGK continuously expanding, both in terms of personnel and in terms of scope of work. They essentially picked a fight with the police by creating their own ‘city warden’ department . . . staffed by MQM activists, mostly, these guys were given access to the power of the state to collect bhatta (bribes). They were also supposed to be carrying out anti-encroachment drives and enforcing ‘civic laws’, i.e. the CDGK’s rules and regulations. The phadda happened because they started acting like regular police, driving around in cars that were not differentiable from Sindh Police cars. The Sindh Police, of course, did not like this one bit.
To be fair, the police does come under the mayor’s office everywhere else in the world, unlike in Pakistan.
Finally, there’s the funding . . . the LG system decentralises the disbursement of funds to the local level, with union council nazims, who are, really, just regular people (not crazy senior politicians) and have direct accountability to their voters, responsible for approving or rejecting projects. In theory this is good, but the city council in practice works directly on party lines, and nothing else. If a treasury bill is moved, everyone in the MQM supports it, and because the opposition is so small, it invariably gets passed. The PPP forms the Awam Dost Panel, a small slice, and then there’s the Al-Khidmat Panel, who are the JI guys.
Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah moved earlier this year to curtail the CDGK’s powers on change of land-use, the Sindh Police challenged the City Wardens status (they have since been restrained by the SHC to only dealing with CDGK regulation violations) and the CM actually quashed two resolutions passed by the city council regarding the creation or upgrade of a massive number of new posts.
