The political APCs on the other hand contain besieged politicians who are hoping for occasional protection. Take it from the Lyari cops in Karachi — if you underplay what you are up against, APCs don’t work.

The all-party conference emerged as a tool when the region was ruled through Westminster, redundant now that we have a parliament. Since the political parties outside parliament, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf and Jamaat-i-Islami, did not attend the Awami National Party APC anyway, all the parallel platform did was reduce the representation to core power elites of already elitist political parties. Consensus-building tools to directly involve the public would have helped more.

Deliberating on Pakistani Taliban negotiations without consulting women who are more than half the population is not just exclusionary but criminal neglect, since they are directly an aggrieved party. This is the cue for routine responses pointing out that the women of Swat supported the Taliban’s rise to power. But taking that at face value is akin to a modern-day diagnosis of drapetomania.

Drapetomania was a mental illness diagnosed by American physician Samuel Cartwright in the mid-19th century, affecting only black slaves. The chief symptom of the disease was described as the uncontrollable urge to run away, blocking off the exploitative context in which the trend emerged.

Across Swat, women say Fazlullah offered them the opportunity to become actors shaping their environment. His earlier sermons insisted women were stakeholders who would play an important role in creating an Islamic society that would be a conduit for justice and representation.

Once the Taliban started torture and beheadings, women were terrorised. The Taliban’s violence against women and their misogynist ideology are well-known if not well-documented. Instead of a drapetomanic pathologising of support for the Taliban, we need to deconstruct it to see what it represented. For women in Swat, it was the promise of inclusion.

Insurgents everywhere target the state and its institutions, but the Taliban have openly taken responsibility for bomb blasts and suicide attacks leading to mass casualties among ordinary civilians in markets and mosques across the country. The current headcount of terrorism victims in Pakistan is estimated to be between 45,000 to 50,000 people. Each has a story of unspeakable anguish. And now we want to negotiate with the perpetrators. On what?

Nothing in Pakistan is black and white. The ANP contradictions — of the party with the highest number of the Taliban’s victims proposing peace talks with them — read in context warrant some sympathy. In private conversations, people across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa state their firm belief that the army both colludes with and protects as well as attacks the Taliban based on its calculus of expedience, and had it wanted it could have finished off the militants in the decade since the ‘war on terror’ began.

People lace this narrative with specific examples, such as the pitched battle Pir Samiullah fought against the Taliban in Matta. He had raised a force of 500 people after promises of state support but when he needed backup during five days of continued assault, official assistance never came. Not only were his supporters massacred, his dead body was exhumed and hung from a tree for four days and his village burned down. There are numerous such accounts of tribal lashkars and aman jirgas promised state protection and then abandoned.

If there is truth in the claim of the security apparatus’ double game, then it leaves the ANP in the untenable position of the frontline party with cadres routinely assassinated in a war it cannot win without state support, which it doubts it has, hence its push for reconciliation. If such claims are not true, then beyond Swat, the security apparatus has not done anything to warrant people’s confidence.

Public criminal prosecution of Taliban accused of brutalities would go far in restoring people’s trust in the system to deliver justice. Instead, peace talks will result in the imprisoned ones getting released.

No democratic dispensation can sustain high levels of violence against civilians. Without public support for operations, negotiations are the only alternative. A previous attempt at peace talks resulted in Sufi Muhammad declaring human rights, politicians, the constitution and democracy itself as against Islam. But is there public support for negotiations? In return for ceasefire, what is it that the Taliban are being offered?

The Taliban will be negotiating from a position of strength, and that in itself is an indictment of the army and the intelligence agencies and a spectacular failure of the ‘war on terror’. The Taliban have not been weakened enough for them to bargain for only clemency or amnesty, and will place demands for systemic change. And they have less legitimacy than even Tahirul Qadri to do so. Let’s hear that the constitutional guarantees will not be overridden, human rights will not be eroded, freedom of cultural and personal expression will be protected, there will be no further roll-back on freedoms of minorities and women’s concerns will be paramount, as a prerequisite to even heading to the negotiating table. Then see if they turn up.

These peace talks connect to what is unfolding across the border. It is simplistic optimism to assume that the warriors will either leave in an exodus or put down their guns and pick up their cropping tools once the Americans leave Afghanistan in 2014. The security establishment and seasoned politicians know that. The rest of the citizens better fasten their seatbelts.

The writer conducts research and analysis in the social and development sector.

nazishbrohi.nb@gmail.com

Never mind that the federal government was hostage to the issue for three years; never mind that no country had presented its head of state before an international court for over a century; never mind that the constitution and international laws were clear about presidential immunity while in office; never mind that we lost an elected prime minister to this drama; never mind that Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan among other analysts had predicted exactly this outcome.

The irony of the situation is lost on us. Those most invested in and outraged by violations of national sovereignty, whether over the US drones or the Raymond Davis case or the Kerry Lugar Act, are the most vehement that national sovereignty must be overridden and the fate of a sitting, elected president be decided by courts of another country.

Never mind, we have moved on.

Snide though that sounds and deliberately so, we have in fact, moved on. The distance covered between the Mansoor Ijaz saga of memogate fame and the Tahirul Qadri saga of topi-dharna fame is significant. In the former, the then ambassador Husain Haqqani qualified for treason for allegedly requesting US assistance against the military, while the judicial establishment reserved the right to ask for Swiss assistance against the current president.

But whereas in the media and opposition political parties there was little questioning of the motives and credibility of Mansoor Ijaz and they fell in with the establishment line, when Tahirul Qadri emerged, the same groups showed more political maturity by not letting shockwaves convulse the system.

Of course, this may be because Qadri poses an electoral threat, however remote, unlike Ijaz who was clearly a time-bound interloper in the political field.

There are other signs of seismic shifts in Pakistan. In terms of legislation that changes structures, the 18th Amendment and devolution, the NFC agreement, extending the Political Parties Act to the tribal areas, amendments to the Frontier Crimes Regulation, the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act and the status change of Gilgit-Baltistan will have a far-reaching positive impact that will start to show within a few years.

The Aghaaz-i-Huqooq package for Balochistan could have been included in this list had its kneecaps not been shot off by the security apparatus.

While it is possible for laws to remain unimplemented, the more fundamental sign of change is the power tussle unfolding across Pakistan.

While back-to-back political upheavals have led to urban despair and kicked the country’s perpetual and pathological countdown to apocalypse into overdrive, this turmoil can also be read as a breakdown of status quo.

The old power equilibrium had the army at the helm with a steering committee of the military and civilian bureaucracy defining a particular perspective as ‘national interest’, and through it arbitrating and distributing slices of the power pie.

After the Asghar Khan case, at least this is no longer up for debate. Now, this civil-military establishment matrix appears to be a contender for power, albeit its mightiest one, but not its arbitrator.

The judiciary’s recently asserted autonomy has meshed with its newfound populism, even though it is neither representative of nor accountable to the people — it is a non-elected body accountable only to the law itself. Judicial overreach now veers into judicial usurpation of politics, signalling a ‘juristocracy’ as labelled in other countries, even as it offers people a new hope.

The other contenders include the news industry, with the owner/talk show host nexus in the electronic media, in addition to the usual contests between traditional rivals for further carving up the political party slice of the power pie.

Occasionally, the old guard half-heartedly positions other old guards like Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Pir Pagaro and will continue to do so, but the sense of change is palpable. It is one thing for newspaper editorials to critique the armed forces, it’s another for such critique to enter the ultimate barometer of the vernacular — the writing on the rickshaw.

These seismic changes can be attributed to all of or a combination of various factors — the Abbottabad raid and the drying up of dollar pipelines; the US exit from Afghanistan; Gen Kayani’s perimetered professionalism; a politically defensive army fighting militants; the spectre of the completion of a political term and democratic transition; judicial activism; the lawyer’s movement; a privatised free media and the consequent higher levels of informed political consciousness.

Whatever it is attributed to, it is a productive chaos in that it has disrupted the old order that gave rise to the current crises.

Pakistan is in the liminal. Where the old order could be restored, new ones are also a possibility.

But this doorway to change may be open only temporarily. Democracy will not magically create a blissful garden outside. It is just the doorstopper that allows us to go out and do so ourselves.

The writer conducts research and analysis in the social and development sector.

nazishbrohi.nb@gmail.com

This year marks a full decade since attacks against ethnic Hazaras in Quetta started. In July 2003, a Hazara mosque was attacked during Friday prayers leaving 50 dead. The police defused two bombs that would have otherwise killed those trying to flee.

In the month prior to that, 11 Hazara police recruits were shot dead while travelling in a van to their training centre. In March 2004, an attack on an Ashura procession of Hazaras combining bombing and firing led to over 40 deaths.

Since then, Hazara leaders, politicians, businessmen, labourers, vendors, sportspersons, artists and youth continued to be targeted and killed with 2012 the bloodiest year so far.

All the educated Hazaras I know have either left the country or are trying to leave, whether through asylum applications or as economic migrants. The women I work with are on a countdown to leaving, refusing marriage proposals and studying internationally marketable skills like foreign languages.

In response to Hazara community demands, governor rule has substituted the provincial government. Any resident or observer of Balochistan would admit that the provincial government was non-existent in any case.

The assembly was plagued by issues of quorum as parliamentarians would not attend sessions; hardly any legislative work was done and the writ of the provincial government was tenuous in Quetta and irrelevant everywhere else. In any case, it was unrepresentative.

The nationalist groups had boycotted elections, and all other ‘players’ of the Balochistan realpolitik are not a part of electoral politics. A vote of no-confidence should have been moved much earlier, but then there was no significant role of opposition in the provincial assembly either because of the boycott.

After Nawab Bugti’s assassination, the boycott logic was that polls under Gen Musharraf were unacceptable. But electorally engaged political parties got rid of him in less than a year after elections. A provincial political presence of nationalist groups could have led to legislation or commissions instituted to act on allegations against the security apparatus. All checks and balances available in a democratic, representative set-up were unavailable simply because it was not one.

But there is need for caution regarding the demand for army intervention in Quetta. Though the desperation of the Hazaras is valid and understandable, it must be considered alongside the other struggle in Balochistan — that of Baloch to rid the province of Frontier Corps and army control.

It is not about privileging one struggle over another, but a reminder that the Baloch have also been targeted and killed, scores of student leaders, politicians, academics, writers and youth have disappeared or their dead bodies found dumped across the province, and that they accuse the intelligence and security apparatus of these brutalities.

The Supreme Court has investigated this, the political parties have decried it and analysts commented on the war-like situation and people’s testimonies have caused national shudders. Farooq Mengal’s deposition in court still remains an inconclusive reference point.

In this context, inviting the army in could possibly result in historically unprecedented friction and conflict between Hazara and Baloch ethnicities. And the problem of needing a legitimate, effective government in Balochistan would remain unresolved.

The role of the security apparatus is a substantive contributor, and many would say the creator of the Balochistan crisis.

Additionally, open-ended governor rule has not worked before, not in Sindh and certainly not in East Pakistan. The best case scenario is of 2009, after the Sharif brothers’ disqualification by the Supreme Court, when governor rule in Punjab was imposed but was time-bound for two months. Mature political parties will understand the criticality of reverting to and strengthening the democratic process while addressing the equally critical security concerns without relying on non-civilian formulas.

At the national level, Pakistan is inching towards its most significant historic milestone — that of an elected government completing its term. Democracy has in-built measures and pressure valves to both absorb challenges and redress dissent.

Either we revive the doctrine of necessity and accept that the army must intervene everywhere that terrorism is present — which is pretty much the whole country — and ignore the Swat experience that shows army presence is no assurance against terrorist acts.

Or we start asking some tough questions, such as what happened to the billions of dollars of Coalition Support Funds that were meant to enable us to fight terrorism; what happened to all the police training and equipment that was meant to bolster civilian institutional capacity, when policemen in Peshawar still do not have bullet-proof jackets and police APCs in Karachi are made of tin and their mobiles run out of petrol.

That may also explain why Lashkar-i-Jhangvi leaders, who routinely accept responsibility of Hazara and other Shia killings, are running around rampant, and when arrested, manage to escape from jails located inside Quetta cantonment.

The writer conducts research and analysis in the social and development sector.

nazishbrohi.nb@gmail.com

Though the presence of parliament should eliminate the need for APCs, ironically it is still relevant in Balochistan because it still is governed from elsewhere.

Consider the players in its complex matrix of violence: the security apparatus (army, MI and Frontier Constabulary), Baloch militant separatists, Baloch nationalist political parties, banned sectarian organisations and the Taliban and Al Qaeda — none of them are part of the political process. Neither one is accountable or answerable for their acts. The provincial assembly has little legitimacy and even less efficiency: rarely does a session maintain quorum and everyone is in the cabinet.

Political atrophy has given rise to unprecedented trends, such as Baloch cadre recruitment in militant sectarian groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. The traditional political leadership of the sardars has met intense challenge from young radicals such as Dr Nazar, leaving the former no choice but to radicalise or become redundant.

Addressing the crisis requires a three-tiered approach. First, the relentless human rights violations and law and order in the province; second is the need to renegotiate the terms of relationship between the province and the federation; third, the Baloch nationalist separatist militants and the call for independence.

To create terms for a renewed social contract, the current federal government has made overtures for redress of structural asymmetries such as the NFC award, payment of back dues of gas royalties, devolution through the 18th Amendment, an apology by the president for past wrongs, and the Aghaaz-i-Huqooq package.

Even if the latter went nowhere, conceptually each was a solid symbolic and practical contribution. But these did not and could not have worked with parallel disappearances and mutilated corpses. The political solution was negated by the targeting of citizens, an untenable template of guns and roses. The political process was trumped by the security apparatus — yet again.

People in Balochistan accuse the army in general and the Frontier Constabulary (FC) in particular for the disappearances and killings. This newspaper has carried stories detailing forms of violence inflicted and the suffering of victim’s families. The testimonies of those who have survived imprisonment have yet to be officially recorded.

The FC denies any ongoing operation in Balochistan, backing their claim by ludicrously stating ‘no gunship helicopters are being used’. Even if allegations against the FC are disregarded, the institution is still responsible for either stopping the carnage or explaining why it is unable to do so.

Proponents maintain that the FC presence is critical to the province as police are not equipped or trained to deal with security challenges, including proxies of international actors. Well, this is what the US-funded security assistance was supposed to have been used for, that along with Coalition Support Funds amounts to $11bn since 2001.

According to the FC inspector general, 50,000 personnel are deployed in Balochistan. Using the 1998 census gives a ratio of one FC jawan for every 131 people in the province. Compare this to the ratio of doctors (1,564 registered doctors as of 2005), which is one doctor for every 4,198 people in the province.

Nationalist separatist militants, on the other hand, are targeting politicians amenable to democratic politics, indiscriminately killing suspected ‘informants’ and ‘settlers’, creating an exodus. People across Quetta testify that the businesses and properties the settlers are leaving are being bought out by Afghan mohajirs as the Baloch cannot afford them, so it is not as if nationalist militants are triggering radical wealth redistribution via decolonising violence.

The separatists have yet to prove that the majority of the Baloch are in accord with their demand, although it is increasingly the narrative and vision of Baloch youth. One possibility is if ultra-nationalist parties contest elections and win with a majority, they may be able to hold a provincial referendum on the question of Balochistan’s structure.

Options can range from implementing devolution to the declaration of an autonomous region or a special administrative region to other propositions, of which independence is just one, if extreme, option. India, China, Iraq and various other countries have such spatial arrangements.

If operable within a specified time period for public debate ranging from two to five years, it would shift the discourse to a reasoned evaluation of the pros and cons and a comparative analysis of options. Political forces, meanwhile, will need to create incentives for people to opt in — consent to be governed is after all the bedrock of democracy.

This may be one of the few ways of bringing separatists in the electoral fold. The next elections will be critical to Balochistan.
The previous one was boycotted by nationalist parties, and if a repeat of this is allowed, a decade out of electoral politics will cement their position, making return to it highly improbable.

Underlining the importance of the political process in Balochistan is not to obscure its nexus with criminal syndicates, smuggling mafias, security apparatus and militant nationalism that underscore it. Yet it is the only possible avenue.

Recently, we saw Blackwater behind every urban tree and Kaala Pani behind every rural polio vaccine. Our positioning in the regional neighbourhood ensures that we will always be under surveillance, whether as an asset, liability or wild card, depending on how the game is played, so in a sense condemned by geography.

Global strategic irrelevance is a remote civilian dream. But external intervention can only build on local grievances, not create them. ‘India did it’ didn’t work in the then East Pakistan just as ‘US did it’ will not work in Fata. Outside influences capitalise on national weaknesses, and let us not obfuscate that.

Unless of course, the interior minister informs us that jilted serial killer girlfriends have migrated from Karachi to Balochistan and have taken to writing ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ on dead bodies.

The writer conducts research and analysis in the social and development sector.

nazishbrohi.nb@gmail.com

I knew even as I clicked, that neither of these captivating photographs would be The One. - Photo by Hasaan Haider/Dawn.com

Nigredo: Blackening, putrefaction, dissolution

The flow of effluence into Lyari river where women congregated with their matkas; the child on the street with two flies copulating on the blood splotched bandage on his forehead; the young man sleeping on top of his onion cart in Al-Asif square; the old man in Saddar promising the stamina for five rounds per night with his virility capsules; the twenty burqa-clad women learning programming at the computer training center off Sakhi Hassan – I knew even as I clicked, that neither of these captivating photographs would be The One. I needed a one picture cynosure of Karachi, the photograph worth the proverbial thousand words; a visual as the city’s self statement. All of the ones so far seemed like anthropological exercises of mapping the other, the very ghetto tourism that now irritated me more than bubbles of oblivion that obfuscated ghettos. Like when we would cut school and have halwa puri at roadside dhabas and celebrate having a native experience. The priapic million-dollar fountain the middle of the sea shoreline; the glitzy designer car showroom opposite a sewerage canal behind Boat Basin; the beggar woman outside the Sheraton; the diamond retailer at Park Towers – blunted juxtapositions that reeked of drawing room revolutions, so not those either.  The mad leg elevations and stomping of boots at the Quaid’s mazaar: the state-sponsored postcard. Barefoot kids playing in dirt: the repertoire of banal saviours. The Pir’s crocodiles with allegorical tears? Or zoom into Waheed’s katakat as a metaphor? Submission deadline tomorrow.

Albedo: Whitening, purification, burnout

I remember you, hiding your camera, and your friend, hiding his fear. You came home with my husband, calling him bhai, me, bhabhi, until you saw the bruises, then whispering to me in the kitchen, you called him an animal, told me about womens’ shelters and protection laws. Sweet. You gave me your sister’s number, she was someone people paid to talk to, and would keep everything confidential. Like privacy mattered where bedrooms were separated by bed sheets and the only boundary walls that existed were between the community and the outsiders, and where talk was the only thing that was free. You really were sweet, searching for evil to fight and victims to portray. You were horrified that I never left the house, except when with him, covered forehead to foot in black. I couldn’t quite tell you then that it was because I feared that someone would recognise me as the drug carrier who spent two years in jail and had Chharra’s child out of wedlock. See, my husband thought I was the widow of an imam. So a photograph was out of question. I remember hoping that the daughter I gave up for adoption would find someone like you to care for her, but then, someone like you but without your money wouldn’t last a week here, so it was not the best thing to wish for her. You want chai?

Citrinitas: Yellowing, spiritualisation, the sun

Crazy night. First he takes me for a photo shoot in a graveyard, the sun had set. It was weird, I felt like a politician, trying to get mileage from the dead – did you know Da Vinci was a grave robber? Anyway, you wanted to know about what happened with him. So there we were, all psyched, the guy we were with had hidden both of us behind these drums to observe the deal, and he switched the flash on his camera off, when his phone rang. It was his mother, in complete hysterics, his father, he did that to the maid, you know the gory story. Couldn’t believe it, his father was a cool guy, we’d hangout, have a drink together, that he would do that to a young girl, a maid his daughter’s age, it was insane yaar. We ran, drove back like maniacs. He wanted to kill his father, dude saw it as betrayal of his mother, of all the dumb reactions. Anyway I tried to calm him down, said we would deal with it, with the maid’s family, pay them off or whatever. But he was like, over the edge.

Rubedo: Reddening, unification of the limited with the unlimited

He swiped at the rivulet of blood running down his temple with his sleeve, as his vision blurred. His telescope to the city had become a kaleidoscope looking in. He didn’t feel the abrasions on his knuckles yet, though the bruises on his face were already swelling. He staggered then braced himself, feeling drained with the violent convulsions of rebirth.  He trudged, uncertain whether he was dragging himself away or towards. He looked up as a car screeched away from the pavement ahead; the sign above the shop stenciled in neon green tubes said ‘Ali chemist’. As he stared, the ‘i’ in Ali slid and dangled upside down, its florescent light fusing out. Stopping, he focused on the remainder of the lit up sign. Medieval philosophers hadn’t gotten it, that the process could work in reverse. He pulled out his camera and clicked.