At the KLF, quality intellectual exchanges and political gunfire brought forth questions about Pakistan’s future. But where’s the solution, if the glass is even half full?

IT’S spreading. Free thinking brought temporary amnesia to Karachi, where outbreaks of extremism generally fuel a fear pandemic. Last weekend celebrity writers, publishers and readers made for a glowing literary cast in a city where these liberal thinkers clashed unknowingly with conservatives touting their best ideas as the Difa-i-Pakistan Council consortium. No one group went out of their way to smooth ruffled feathers : the right-wingers did their bit with abandon while at the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) writers and their audiences attacked the forces of religious conservatism and intolerance (most talked about: the Taliban, the military, the ISI, America, India).

This festival should perhaps ideally serve as an intellectually, energetic hub on literature/philo-sophy/art/culture but no longer is that the only option you have whether it’s Jaipur, Galle, or Hay. Here there was talk on regional politics, on education, on women’s legal rights, on the broadcast media and on US-Pakistani goals. With a select audience, KLF was an uncensored field for freedom of expression, thought and contact.

Often perceived (inaccurately) as a failed state — though, according to Anatol Lieven, “failed states don’t hold literature festivals” — Pakistan’s characteristic socio-political dichotomy, its resilience and its voyeurism in Afghanistan and how that continues to play havoc with its other ‘associations’ was key to sessions that I sat in on.

Journalist and diplomat, Maleeha Lodhi, a regular KLF participant talked of the winding down of the Afghan war and Pakistan’s troubled relationship with the US that has been “mired in history”. After an 11-year partnership [with the US], “we do and should take responsibility for all that we were and were not able to do,” Lodhi stressed, adding a disclaimer that went: “we’d like the others to also take responsibility for what they were and weren’t able to do. Heaping all blame on Pakistan is a travesty of history.”

As a former ambassador to the US after the 9/11 attacks, she was privy to the policies of the then Bush-led coterie; “history begins today” she was told by a US official two days after 9/11. Lessons must be learnt about what went wrong in Afghanistan, including Pakistan’s involvement, when stakeholders work together post-2012. An ideal way to disengage with the Afghan theatre would be for Pakistan not to ‘obsess’ about an outcome [to the war], although it is located on the geopolitical frontline but ensure a stable and peaceful country where Afghans chalk out their future.

For Afghan expert and writer, Ahmed Rashid, the preoccupation with Afghanistan has drained the economy, with key institutions such as the educational sector in visible shambles. With a book out next month, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of Pakistan, America and Afghanistan, Rashid reminded it took the Americans 11 years to open dialogue with the Taliban, something that should have been on the cards if the war was to end. The interim decade witnessed the Taliban movement regaining support. “You will have to talk with those you fight,” Lodhi explained how at the time Pakistan advised against going to war after 9/11. “Superpowers never acknowledge mistakes. They carry out ‘reviews’ of policy,” she added. This reflection on political history is engaging though routine at KLF.

Exploring the genesis of this current conflict and western interference in Afghanistan in his new historical treatise, The Return of the King: Shah Shuja Ul-Mulk and the first Anglo-Afghan War, William Dalrymple returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a region he had covered as a journalist and a travel writer in his early twenties. Narrating the story of the first British Afghan war (1834-42) Dalrymple, also the co-founder of India’s Jaipur Literature Festival, explained why it is critical for Afghans today to decide their fate. Similarities between the war in the last decade and past conflict that brought foreign intervention point out that the Afghans will not accept western dominance. When German-Iranian writer, Navid Kirmani explained that Taliban brutalities hadn’t ceased especially against civilians in the southern provinces, he also reminded that Afghans are apprehensive that their country will descend into internal chaos when western forces finally depart.

After hours spent listening to policy-makers share furious debate on the fourth ‘great’ Afghan war and how it has seemingly ended without any winners and few political gains, I craved for some stories, for how real stories read as harrowing tales or even create the happier moments of life (“Literature is more powerful than history and turns it into something bigger” — Arfa Syeda Zehra). KLF just isn’t about interacting with writers or books or listening to debate: it’s about story-telling that bring audiences to the edge of their seats, rooms heaving with disbelief and anger and laughter.

Speak to Mirza Waheed and he has a sense of clarity when it comes to stories on Kashmir. With The Collaborator shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 2011, Waheed, who writes fulltime, follows the news from the Valley. He told the audience about the story of a 22-year-old Kashmiri shot dead by an Indian army patrol. The boy left his house when he heard his sister screaming. He was shot dead only two minutes later. After an entire decade of arbitrary killings and random violence, “there will be an inquiry and they will say that they will look into it, but nothing happens. There is no process of justice.” Waheed’s family still lives in Kashmir where he was born and raised. As a former journalist with the BBC in London, his novel talks about a generation that took to militancy, and were brutally suppressed, tortured and killed by the Indian army. Growing up with the conflict, he knows the generation that went to Pakistan to train as militants: “You cannot kill 70,000 people and call it collateral damage.” Waheed was accompanied by Indian lawyer and author, A.G. Noorani and Pakistan’s former foreign secretary, Najmuddin Shaikh on the Kashmir panel where the central question focused on why the aspirations of Kashmiris remain unresolved.

In an interview last year Waheed talked about why it is critical for Kashmiris to be a part of negotiations. This year he reiterated: “It’s nice to talk about borders in hotel lobbies but unless you talk to the people how will you come to a meaningful resolution after all these deaths and all these years. The moment the prime minister of India calls for unconditional talks with all separatists, they will come. They all want azaadi… it’s a simple word, freedom.”

So what happens now? I’d like to think whether we are a nation at war, whether it’s the Kashmir conflict unsettling our exchanges with India, the spill-over effect of the Afghan endgame or the Taliban threatening our liberal shrinking space, there are solutions to fix Pakistan: action can be short-term with long-term fixes. Workable, real solutions for a fragmented but resilient country could be something for the KLF in 2013.

The writer is a staffer at the monthly Herald