The wizards and criers

THE town crier of the kingdom of Id (the cartoon strip that this paper carries everyday) was recently shown announcing: “There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that we have no good news.” The monarch of the kingdom of Id is a midget, his ways are funny or irksome but his subjects dare not defy him. The monarch of Pakistan is a full-stature general in uniform, still many defy him.

Pakistan comes close to the kingdom of the cartoon in its news bulletins, the ghosts its wizards conjure up and the poverty of its peasants who grumble but are content with their fate. The latest news to come on our own strip is the code of conduct for the elections. The Election Commission has issued the code knowing that it cannot and will not be implemented. It is ambiguous, riddled with contradictions and, above all, worded in a manner that leaves many doubts where it is mandatory or just advisory.

Elections in western democracies are a bland and routine affair. A visitor to London on polling day may notice no change in the normal rhythm of life. In Pakistan, as in India and other countries that were once British colonies, the elections are more like a street fest.

Sadly, the festive excitement this time is overshadowed by forebodings of street fights and ballot tampering. Just 72 days to the polls and it is not yet known whether the leaders of the two largest parties — the PPP and Muslim League (N) — will be permitted to contest and, secondly, whether it would be at all possible to hold the polls in the vast swathes of North and South Waziristan, Khyber, Bajaur and Swat and in parts of Balochistan where the Bugti, Marri and Mengal sardars hold sway under a titular Khan of Kalat.

Then there is the overhanging fear that elections may not be held at all if the Supreme Court rules that Gen Musharraf’s election for the second term was illegal. In that event, nobody would be sure when elections will be held again, if at all. Polls if held are likely to be marred by violence. The violence could be worse if they are put off.

The common run of the people have no doubt that political parties, whether in government or the opposition, will do whatever they possibly can to manipulate the ballot. The worst suspicion naturally falls on the Q League with its diminishing status and ranks in the face of the arrival of charismatic Benazir Bhutto and the looming prospect of Nawaz Sharif, too, coming back.

The Q League cannot be blamed for the loss of its image and support. It is hard for any party to win at the polls after eight years in power. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Pervaiz Elahi have made it harder for the Q League to win by their hubris, fumblings and crude self-projection through paid publicity at a cost put by some at four billion rupees — an amount enough to buy all the long-awaited CNG buses the cities of Lahore and Karachi need.

A redeeming feature of the shady deals made, or in the making, is that Gen Musharraf is unlikely to be a party to rigging as he is bending over backwards to seek the trust of parties more vigorous than the worn-out Q League or the collapsing Islamic alliance. The indications are that even Nawaz Sharif may soon decide, as Benazir has already, that if he cannot get rid of Musharraf he should try working with him.

In the absence of Nawaz Sharif (that is if he is barred from the polls) Shahbaz Sharif should make a credible, in fact better, candidate for the top job in Punjab and even at the centre. All these possibilities, however, hinge on the verdict of the Supreme Court on the petitions before it.

The absence of popular trust in the political leaders, more particularly those in power, as also in Gen Musharraf, to conduct elections fairly is understandable. What is to be regretted is that it is equally lacking in the impartiality of the Election Commission. The code of conduct it has issued, in no manner, dispels that impression.

The code begins with a ban on propaganda against the undefined ideology of Pakistan. As a test case the commission may have to clarify whether Mumtaz Bhutto will be disqualified, or censured, if he were to campaign for a confederation in which the constituent units are ‘autonomous and sovereign’ as was envisaged in the Lahore Resolution. Or if the Khan of Kalat were to contend that for the Baloch to remain loyal to Pakistan, the authorities (implying the army and Punjab) must honour the covenants under which he had opted to accede to the country.

The code seeks to compel all political parties and candidates not to do certain things and then goes on to say what else they should avoid, scrupulously avoid, or altogether refrain from doing. The code also seeks to tell them to exercise control, follow orders (sometimes strictly) assist the authority, or cooperate with it, and work under a comprehensive plan (how the commission is concerned with party plans is incomprehensible).

All these directions or counsels are preceded by ‘shall’. That makes them mandatory but leaves one wondering whether the parties and candidates who do what they were told to ‘avoid’ would be held less culpable than those who do what they were told to ‘scrupulously avoid’ or to ‘refrain from doing’.

The Election Commission goes to an extent bordering on the ludicrous when it lays down the size of the posters, hoardings, banners and handbills. Then the code restricts election expenses to amounts — one million rupees for provincial assembly seats and Rs1.5mn for the National Assembly — when the expenses usually incurred are 10 times of that. Not recognising the practices that exist will not make them go away. The code does it all the way.

Laughably, the code bars parties and the candidates from enlisting public servants in support of their campaign or to hinder that of their rivals. It would be absurd, indeed outright foolish, to expect the nazims not to use the officials in their districts to facilitate the campaign of their party candidates or even to rig the vote. The polling booths will be all manned by officials who come under the nazim.

The jobs of teachers, inspectors, doctors, engineers, etc. are now on the auction block in thousands after years of embargo on appointments. The police officials are being promoted ‘against future vacancies’ as if they were the personal servants of the chief minister. Most people and parties hold that rigged polls (even when some tribes and communities are altogether disenfranchised) are better than no polls. But the wizard of Islamabad has conjured up the ghost of postponement and the crier, Sheikh Rashid, has already proclaimed the bad news.

Combating extremism

IT is being said that extremism, the death and destruction it sponsors, the fear and gloom it spreads, endanger the country’s security and stability. This is true. Extremists have attempted to kill Gen Musharraf, Mr Shaukat Aziz, and more recently Ms Benazir Bhutto.

They were sought to be eliminated because they were seen as managers of political and social systems that the extremists regard as perverse. But their drive goes far beyond a few selected individuals. It targets the present system’s symbols and agencies and, more than that, it aims to encompass the people at large.

The extremists go around forcing people in Swat and other parts of the NWFP to order their lives according to their version of Islamic law and morality. They are setting up their own judicial organs and apparatuses of administration. They have flogged, even beheaded, men and women whom they perceived as being immoral. Maulvi Fazlullah, a self-appointed enforcer of Islam, has become a virtual king in parts of Swat. Reports in this newspaper (Oct 26 and 27) say that a suicide bomber hit a bus near the police lines in Mingora and killed 17 and wounded 34 men belonging to the Frontier Constabulary. The next day a group of militants beheaded four government functionaries (security personnel) in a nearby village.

Another report told us that Amir Siddiqui, whom the government had recently appointed as deputy imam of the Lal Masjid (Islamabad) under orders of the Supreme Court, announced his support for Maulvi Fazlullah’s doings in Swat and declared that the soldiers killed in Mingora the day before had died as ‘infidels’. (I hope the judges who ordered his appointment are now regretting their decision.)

Referring to the beheading of two women in Bannu in the first week of September, a writer in this newspaper (Oct 26) expressed her amazement and dismay at the fact that while some NGOs and human rights advocates did condemn the act, the general public did not protest. This was not uniquely the case with the Bannu incident. The public takes little notice of the unspeakable atrocities that men and women commit against one another. It may be that the ‘common man’ is desensitised, or that he does not regard the acts in question as particularly reprehensible. Perhaps he assumes that such is the way of the world.

We would not want to think that those who go about as leaders in our society were as cynical or insensitive as the general public is. Yet it is a sobering fact that Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and heads of other Islamic parties do not wish to condemn the Taliban, their coercion of the people, or their design of dismissing democracy and its attendant values in the name of Islamisation. They seem to believe that extremism in the cause of Islamisation is a virtue. They would do the same as the Taliban do if they ever came to power. Until then they would let the Taliban do what they can to advance their common cause.

What does all this mean? I think it means that a large section of our society approves of the Taliban’s goal and their resolve to achieve it by all available means, (including force). An even larger section is tolerant of their modus operandi. If this is a correct reading of their attitudes, one may ask if there is anything that can be done to reverse the tide of extremism. In this connection one can think of action that will have immediate impact and that which may be begun now but whose results will unfold over time.

The present government does not know how to combat extremism except by resort to force. There is little or no sympathy in Pakistan for this venture. The recent deployment of troops to stop the wave of Talibanisation in Swat may be the first case of its kind. Whether it will achieve its mission remains to be seen, but judging from the bloody attack on these troops in Mingora, one can be sure that it will meet tough resistance. In any case, eradication of the Taliban and the likes of them by force in the country as a whole is going to be extremely difficult. If resort to force will not work, what will?

It seems to me that a much larger enterprise, that of remaking society, is involved here. Ms Bhutto is calling attention to ‘political madressahs’, which are the training centres for militants and repositories of weapons. She distinguishes them from the ‘deeni madrassahs’ (seminaries) which she says are a valued part of our civilisation and culture. In making this distinction she may be trying not to offend the religious establishment. For she must know that the seminaries, even when they are not training their wards in the arts of war, give them an extremist mindset. They are not in the business of imparting open-mindedness and tolerance.

The problem the madressahs pose cannot be resolved unless the governments concerned allocate funds to provide an alternative, which would be public schools that offer the children of the rural and urban poor education, healthcare and maybe even free lunches. If public authorities are not willing to make this kind of investment in the nation’s future, their talk of reforming the madressahs and defeating extremism is nothing more than airy-fairy rhetoric.

Spokesmen of various political parties insist that the restoration of democracy will, by itself, take care of extremism and militancy. They claim that the extremists will be pulled into, and made part of, the political system. They will sit down with those whom they had been considering wicked until then, and reason with them instead of wanting to break their bones.

This, to my mind, is a pipe dream. It assumes that the extremists will stop being extremists. No such thing is going to happen. Instead of giving up their convictions, they will want others to give up their ‘un-Islamic’ goals and ways, and come to the ‘right’ path. Consider also that moderation and civility do not have many takers in our current political culture. Surely it is not civil or moderate on the part of Ms Bhutto to accuse Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain of complicity in a suicide bomber’s attempt to kill her on Oct 19. Nor was it any nicer of Chaudhry Sahib to allege that Mr Asif Zardari and other PPP leaders had, with her concurrence, engineered the attack. If this is their way of waging politics, it is entirely unrealistic to expect that they will transform the extremists and militants.

Democracy can be relevant to our concern here in that the people, who are politically deprived and estranged, may begin to embrace the system because they have become participants in its workings. Poverty alleviation, spread of education, expansion of the job market and more adequate access to the amenities of life would also work to keep the people from extremism. These too are long-term measures which, if adopted, will gradually help defeat extremism. Let us hope that the governments of tomorrow will choose to fund and implement them.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Nowhere to live — nowhere to return to!

SAMAR Minallah, the intrepid human rights activist and filmmaker, screened her recent documentary, ‘Hidden Colours: Tangible and Intangible Heritage of NWFP’ in Peshawar and Islamabad to rave reviews.

The documentary opens with a scenic Swat valley of bygone days — a clear rustling river amid a lush green landscape, the sound of the flute and rubab.

It shows images of Swat’s Buddhist sites, the second main Buddhist centre of learning after Pushkalavati (Charsadda).

Ironically, when this documentary was reviewed, the heartbreaking news of these protected Buddhist rock carvings being blown away by the insane Taliban (mimicking their equally deranged brethren who brazenly blew away the historic Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001) made headlines.

No doubt art imitates life — or it did previously as now it seems that all those breathtaking valleys of Swat, Chitral, Dir and many others shall, sooner than later, come under attack from the firebrand Islamic militants and the equally unsparing Pakistani security officials. If matters continue to worsen as rapidly as they are at present in these forsaken parts of our jinxed country, very soon these heritage sites and tranquil lifestyles the documentary has so painstakingly captured may turn into an inferno.

As the US-inspired and Saudi-funded jihad raged during the early 1980s, the holy warriors were feted in the corridors of western capitals. But most soothsayers and sages — foremost amongst them Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan on his way from the raging fires of Kabul to Peshawar — had declared: “This is not a jihad but a fisad and it will soon envelop the entire subcontinent and then the world.”

Many patriotic Pakistanis and their scheming sponsors in the western capitals sneered at the aging pacifist leader. Having drunk deep from the well of knowledge of non-violence during the Indian freedom movement, he knew well why the bloody scars of Partition would not heal even after several decades. The repeat of the same folly of pitting religion as a convenient tool for realpolitik sounded the death knell for nationalist voices.

The rest as we know is history. The Afghan war has been ‘declassified’ by western experts. Afghans and Pakistanis being their ideological (war) fodder is no longer a secret. What Pashtuns have lost during this protracted war is their rich traditions, values, culture and heritage.

Once again they are pitted against the ruthless, marauding Taliban on the one hand and the equally sinister market forces destroying their serene livelihoods on the other.

Pashtuns find themselves at the crossroads of history once again. Having suffered the aftermath of the so-called jihad, their pastures and green valleys denuded, their traditions disfigured and livelihoods overwhelmed by the Afghan refugees, just as they were trying to recover from the 20-year internecine bloodletting, 9/11 happened.

The tables have been turned on their fortunes. The military establishment has again trained its guns on their pristine valleys. Having shamelessly abetted, funded, trained, armed and provoked the most violent, ruthless ideological forces to sponsor their so-called ‘strategic depth’ nonsense, they have conveniently mended fences with their arch enemy (India) on the eastern front. There is an endless stream of Indian delegates and dignitaries partying in major Pakistani cities while the NWFP and Peshawar have been rewarded with being turned into the war frontline once again. This time they have been gifted a new surname: Al Qaeda.

Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, who threatened nationalist forces, their re-emergence in the tribal and settled districts of the NWFP threatens to pre-empt the development of a peaceful political process. The military, in the guise of ‘security’, will strengthen its tentacles. Political and economic reforms will take a backseat.

The hidden hands behind these ruthless religious forces can only be ignored by callous appeasers. Consolidating the political space conveniently given to them, unchecked during the four-year MMA government, these double-faced leaders have now turned a somersault to elect the “commando in chief” as president.

Now these same extremist forces have been given the mandate to broker ‘peace’ in these volatile regions. Appeasement and power politics will not deliver any long-time remedy. If peace and tranquillity have to be restored, the foreign sponsors of this/enlightened moderation regime should ensure that the engineered turmoil is rooted out once and for all.

During the spring of 2001, a remarkable protest was held against the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas on the premises of the Alliance Francaise in Peshawar. Michela Gall (Sandy Gall’s artist daughter) had painted a stunning 20-metre large canvas of the Bamiyan Buddha put up in the garden under bright spotlights. Many Afghan, Pakistani and expatriate activists pledged their support for the worthy cause.

Sadly, civil society is now a distant memory like all beautiful things in Peshawar. Gone are the days of art exhibitions, musical evenings, cultural events — even the luxury of visiting the British Council and the Alliance Francaise. Whom to turn to when the ‘upholders of freedom and democracy’ fail the test when it comes to Peshawar?

To sum up our shamelessly horrendous being, Quratul Ain Hyder’s beautiful piece from Chandni Begum comes to mind: ‘Main apne kal ke khwab ke tabeer kis se puchoon? Main ne khud ko Nooh ki kishti main dekha hai!’ (Can someone decipher my dream? Last night, I was sailing in Noah’s (sinking) ship.

Tailpiece: Only the other day, the organisers’ request to screen Samar Minallah’s documentary and to launch Fauzia Minallah’s ‘Glimpses of Islamabad’ was declined by the Alliance Francaise for ‘security reasons’. Nostalgically, QUH’s lament springs to mind: ‘Yahi bahar ke din the/ Yehi zamana tha/ Yehi jaga thi/ Is jah par ek ashiana tha/ Aye baghban tujhe kiya kiya nishan batlain?’ (Those springtime days are things of the past/ Oh! what ruins remain of my abode in the garden!)

The writer is general secretary of the Sarhad Conservation Network.

scn_pk@yahoo.com