Ignorance takes a front seat

ALL is grist that goes to the US mills. The July 21, 2008 issue of Time magazine carries a picture of a conventional government-run school with the caption, ‘A madressah in Peshawar. The authorities say some madressahs breed militants’.

The picture attempts to complement a feature warning of rising radicalism in Pakistan. It shows miserable struggling schoolboys in their black militia uniforms taking exams under the watchful eye of invigilators while sitting cross-legged on the pebbles-strewn surface.

This is not an unimportant episode in the war against terror. Whatever is reported in the US media is taken at face value. One can, therefore, hardly afford leaving such serious matters to chance. The attention of the editor of the magazine was drawn towards this glaring incident of misreporting with a request for a correction but it remained unheeded. They say in Pashto that lies may destroy several villages before the truth is revealed.

The picture could send a very bad image of the wretched students and their city to the outside world despite the fact that unlike their peers in the US these boys may never have indulged in a shooting spree in any institution of the land.

Unfortunately, however, ignorance is all-pervasive or perhaps the truth is being stifled for ulterior motives. Imran Khan, the chief of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, was recently heard on a private television channel putting forth a bizarre rationale for the ongoing insurgency in Swat. Mr Khan argued that militancy was the natural reaction of the people of Swat against the non-implementation of the promised Sharia in the area. Nothing can be farther from the truth. To draw such conclusions and to then stick to them vehemently is to do so at great cost not only to the facts but also to the memory of scores of innocent victims who have fallen prey to militancy.

The six districts and one provincially administered tribal area of the defunct Malakand division constitute 40 per cent of the territorial area of the NWFP. Of the over 20m inhabitants of the province, approximately 30 per cent, or more than six million, live in the Malakand region. Significantly, these figures make Malakand the Balochistan and Punjab of the Frontier in terms of area and population respectively.

Since cricketers are fond of statistics, Imran Khan needs to correct his information. In the beautiful vastness of Malakand, the insurgency is restricted to Matta and a few surrounding areas in the Swat district where some hardened militants have entrenched themselves. The rest of the area of Malakand and its six million people — minus 1,000 or so — are merely bearing the brunt of the orgy.

Many confuse the present insurgency with the Sharia movement launched by Mullah Sufi Mohammad in the 1990s. Can Imran Khan be excused for being so ill-informed? The old mullah subsequently made a laughing stock of himself by leading thousands of people armed with sticks and axes across the border into Afghanistan to fight the US-led forces.

A youthful mullah called Fazlullah, said to be the son-in-law of Sufi Mohammad, is leading the present insurgency that erupted more as a reaction against the storming of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad. Before that, Fazlullah had catapulted to fame courtesy his sermons on an FM radio station through which he is said to have deprived hundreds of households of their prized belongings. But people in the know of things believe, and the people of Malakand testify to it, that Fazlullah is the make-believe face of alien forces. People in Swat keep pointing out that they have not heard of any of the deceased militants being owned by the locals or buried during solemn funeral rites in the area.

Despite a larger following, the Sharia movement led by the old patriarch, Sufi Mohammad, was by and large peaceful. Sufi’s misadventure caused very few casualties and negligible loss to state property. On the other hand, the present-day militants are focusing on eliminating barbers, video shops, government servants and of course girls’ schools and colleges. In an apparent attempt signifying ‘mea culpa’, Sufi Mohammad can now be seen unsuccessfully trying to cool down tempers. But the level of fear has reached such a pitch that it has pushed the voice of reason to bottomless depths. None of the very highly educated past and present parliamentarians of the religious right have come out in defence of their alma maters.

The worst example of ignorance, in fact of deliberate disinformation, makes barbers central to the war on terror. On a lighter note, the attacks on barbers’ shops show the level of utter frustration among the militants that has brought them down from the dizzying heights of the Twin Towers to the mud-built shacks of barbers in the Frontier. In more serious terms, it portends the disastrous lengths to which the militants are prepared to go to paralyse normal life. If nothing else, this aspect of the militants’ benighted zeal should have alerted those who have been calling for a dialogue with the ‘holy warriors’.

The Frontier is at the crossroads. British chronicles of the times in the area are replete with examples of engagement with tribesmen in the rough terrain of the province. But none of those skirmishes could be likened to the ongoing eccentric hostilities. Statistics showing the number of widows, orphans and the maimed, whenever they are made available, will go a long way in shaming the perpetrators. The landlocked province of the Frontier has a very high rate of unemployment which is worsening from year to year as has been noted in census reports. By depriving thousands of self-employed people of their livelihood, the militants seem to be working according to an agenda designed to swell their ranks.

The government needs to take stock of the situation from this perspective and come out with a tell-all story. Lack of verifiable information helps the cause of militants as they succeed in enlisting the sympathies of less caring people and their leaders. The government must step in and equip people with the kind of information that would help stem militancy. Truth is the weapon that the government should not hesitate to use.

The madness is here

REVENGE can be sweet, but not if it is someone else’s. Asif is learning that lesson the hard way. He thought inheriting the country’s largest political party made him one of the big boys. His perma-grin suggested he had a plan to save the day. Turns out he didn’t.

In fact Asif is nothing more than a pawn in an epic, vicious, protracted political break-up. First Musharraf tied him down; now Nawaz has bullied him into switching sides. Never mind what the gloating media, the crowing Musharraf-haters and Asif himself are saying; impeachment has exposed Asif’s political non-strategy.

How can it not? First Asif was against impeachment; now he’s for it. What justifies the flip-flop? Nothing. Unless being checkmated by a junior coalition partner counts as a justification. Nawaz might as well have dragged Asif by his collar and flogged him in front of the cameras until he whimpered his consent to impeachment.

Impeachment or no impeachment, by forcing the issue Nawaz has made the People’s Party hostage to the party of the people — the N-league. No 2 is calling the shots. Junior is the new senior. A pathetic Asif was reduced to publicly pleading with Nawaz to let his men rejoin the cabinet. Nawaz has baulked at full reinstatement, offering Asif the crumbs of a railways minister, amongst others. The finance minister will stay out. So look beyond the PPP co-chair’s bravado and nothing less than the surrender of his party to outside interests becomes obvious.

Asif’s political ineptness has been devastatingly exposed by his amateurish mistakes. To great media acclaim he put his signature to the Murree Declaration, which he never intended to fulfil. Then, in the run-up to the latest summit, he inflicted a grievous wound on his party’s image by trying to slip the ISI into Rehman Malik’s hands. If impeachment was coming it made no sense to annoy the ISI chief, Musharraf’s buddy, Nadeem Taj. Finally, exposing Asif’s catastrophic lack of control over events, news of some judges being reinstated was leaked in the middle of talks. The PPP’s credibility was zero.

The talks themselves were a public relations trap that Asif walked right into. By holding the summit in the glare of the cameras, Asif didn’t realise failure wasn’t an option. The N-league had played its cards perfectly: it was the principled, wounded interlocutor coming with clean hands. The frenzied, breathless media played their part, salivating at the thought of Musharraf being thrown to the wolves.

Once Asif had been battered into submission, Nawaz, mission accomplished, sat smugly while Asif read out the communiqué. Much has been made about the way Asif snarled out “General Musharraf”. Few have realised it could have been the frustration and humiliation at being forced to read another’s words.

For Asif could not have wanted this. Astute PPP watchers will not have missed that Nawaz ‘I will not take dictation’ Sharif is dictating to the PPP co-chair. Only a few months ago, the party was Asif’s new, reluctant bride, worried about what her master would do to her. Few would have dreamt he would so quickly make her a mistress of others.

So what if Asif was bludgeoned into submission, some may argue. History will look kindly upon him, an accidental hero who ended up slaying a dictator. History will salute him. Perhaps. But what if you are more concerned — rightly — about Gen Kayani and his band of generals continuing to salute the prime minister?

What will the military do, the media asked innocently after goading the politicians into this confrontation. Yes, indeed what will the born-again democrat Gen Kayani do? Even as they line up to throw stones at the ISI, the politicians have fallen over themselves to praise Kayani. For the record, Kayani’s last job was the ISI chieftainship. But since everyone knows this, they must be assuming that Kayani was just doing his job, being a good soldier and following orders. In which case you must necessarily wonder about career ambition: corps commander, ISI chief, COAS, full stop — or next stop?

Nobody mentions this because, well, it doesn’t fit into the narrative of a democrat in uniform. But remember the last great hope of a democrat in uniform? He’s over in the presidential camp office fighting off the pols.

So what do our politicians do with our born-again democrat Kayani? They poke him in the eye just to make sure he’s asleep while they paralyse the country politically. Impeachment will not lead to martial law. But it won’t be a surprise if some months later it is referred to in another special address to the nation.

What purpose does impeaching Musharraf serve? For one, it will satisfy Nawaz whose bitterness is palpable. But beyond that? Nothing. A good precedent? Musharraf is Dictator No 4. One was blown out of the sky; the other two were chased out of office. We have had powerful presidents before who have been chucked out, their careers ending in tears. We have had army chiefs turfed out and Supreme Court chief justices sent packing.

The belief that this time it will be different, that this particular ouster will be a game-changer is pabulum — nonsense that appeals to the romance rather than the reality of grimy politics. To say this invites opprobrium. But those trying to punish Musharraf for confusing the individual with the office are themselves guilty of obsessing over the individual at the system’s expense. Whether Nawaz gets his man or not will not make the coalition’s decision right. Knowing what we know — and especially what we do not know — it is dangerous and irresponsible to try to unseat the president right now.

Does the country need Musharraf? No. We didn’t in 1999 and we certainly don’t today. Can this country afford a political crisis in order to push out Musharraf today? No. That is the gap between hope and reality. Zardari was right when he originally chose to coexist with the president. Now it’s clear that he was not doing so out of any strategic understanding — he just did it because Musharraf leaned on him enough. When Nawaz leaned on him more, he swung the other way. But Asif must at least be relieved that no one has noticed his mistakes. Indeed the more he unleashes against Musharraf, the more the people cheer. But that’s what we do when politicians lead us up the garden path — we cheer.

As the country hurtles towards the climactic confrontation between Nawaz and Musharraf, the politicians may well win. The country, however, may learn that a politician’s victory can be the people’s defeat.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Who is a Sindhi?

‘You are not you and I am not I

What are you and what am I?’

I HAVE been reading the poetry of Shaikh Ayaz, who, the writer and critic Asif Farrukhi says, is for Sindh what Garcia Lorca is to Spain, Pablo Neruda is to Latin America, and Nazim Hikmet to Turkey.

As I perused Farrukhi’s excellent translation of Shaikh Ayaz’s work, I came across the couplet which resonated with a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time now: who, exactly, is a Sindhi?

When I was young, the only marker of Sindhi nationality I was aware of was that one had to speak Sindhi. Having grown up in America, I returned to Pakistan still quite young and was always asked by curious relatives: can’t you speak Sindhi? Their shock and horror when I replied in the negative (in English no less) has always stayed with me, and most Sindhis today take it as a point of pride that they should speak, understand, and promote their own language. So at the very basic level, a Sindhi is someone who can speak Sindhi.

Then we come to issues of ancestry and bloodline: if you, your parents, and so on, are natives of the interior of Sindh, then you can count yourself as a Sindhi. This is clear-cut for those of us who have ties to the villages and towns of rural Sindh.

Pakistan is a very tribal society, for all its aspersions to modernity, so it becomes vital to know who your people were a hundred years ago, along with all the accompanying associations, friendships and enmities. Sindhis participate in this mindset with pride, asking each other with gleeful curiosity: what is your caste? I must admit the first time I came across this question I was very confused; because I’d been taught that caste was a marker of the Hindu religion, and as Muslims we had thrown off the shackles of the rigid caste system. I can only look back on this and think how naïve I used to be.

The issue becomes slightly murkier considering that Sindh is a province in which there has always been mass immigration and integration: Balochis and Pathans and Punjabis have settled in Sindh generations back, flowing into the province like the waters of the River Indus, and have put down roots, raised children, been born and lived and died in this province. Their descendants speak better Sindhi than I do: so, can we call these people Sindhis? Some achieve compromise by calling them Sindhi-Pathans, Balochi-Sindhis, and so on, while others are happy to call them Sindhis, seeing that they have integrated into the province, have no problem marrying their children to people in the greater Sindhi community, and have thrown their lot in with the province of Sindh. So far so good. But now we come to the trickiest question of all: what about those people settled in Sindh who can neither speak Sindhi nor have any association with the interior? Are these people Sindhis? Are we unpatriotic to Sindh if we regard them as such? Are we unpatriotic to our country if we don’t?

I don’t wish to stir up any controversy by going into the history of Partition or the racial and ethnic tensions that have torn this province apart since 1947. Nor do I wish any reader to assume that this group consists solely of Mohajirs, because Sindh is made up of a mosaic of Pathans, Afghans, Punjabis, Memons, Parsis, Christians and other ethnic groups who live and thrive in the province but still regard themselves as non-Sindhi (That I regard Karachi as an intrinsic part of Sindh is best left to another column). The question still remains, though: who is a Sindhi?

I received a wonderful letter from Zaheer Kidvai, an immigrant from India whose parents settled in Karachi on deciding that it was the cleanest city in India, and who I have been friends with for over 10 years now. He states: “Just as the personal plural pronoun ‘us’ does not take away from the individuality of its components, ‘you’ and ‘I’, only if the term Sindhi could be broadened to encompass all the people settled in the province — regardless of their origins. A purely ethnic usage of the term (though acceptable in specific contexts) will continue to divide its people and make it easy to exploit the differences by parties only concerned with their own benefits at the cost of a great loss to our province.”

Mr Kidvai’s letter reminds me of the Pledge of Allegiance which all children in America learn to make when they start going to school. It’s an oath of loyalty to the country that goes: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

From the very beginning of their lives, no matter what country their parents or they came from, what colour, religion, or ethnicity they hold, they are taught that their first priority is America. That doesn’t mean that they forget their cultural heritage, or the country of their ancestors, and they are free to celebrate that in any way they choose, as long as it does not impinge upon their loyalty to the country in which they now live.

Perhaps we can learn something from the sentiments of so many people settled in this province, no matter where their parents came from, who wish to live in Sindh in peace and prosperity. In that sense, I would love to see the definition of a Sindhi to be broadened: to encompass all people who live and die in Sindh and work for its betterment. In that case, I would want our oath of allegiance to be the following verse from Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai: ‘Oh God! May ever You on Sindh bestow abundance rare;

Beloved! All the world let share

Thy grace, and fruitful be.’

The writer is a Pakistani novelist.

binashah@yahoo.com

Rituals of connectedness

A POWWOW, an assembly of aboriginal communities in North America, can be best described as a jirga, mela and tattoo show (as in police tattoo), all rolled into one. To the tribes, the powwow is a ritual of connectedness that gives a chance to those coming from scattered abodes all over North America and beyond to reunite annually and strengthen their ties to ancient customs and beliefs.

There is great emphasis on the integration of the young into the culture. They are taught the ways of the tribe through communal interaction based on song, dance and ceremony that acknowledge the ancestors, animal spirits and the Creator. According to some, it also provides a healing experience to a people confronted with systematic fragmentation.

On entering a powwow it is difficult not to be moved by the dignity, hospitality and the spirit of continuity that the diverse tribes bring to the event. To repeat the experience, I travelled once again to Onondaga, two hours outside Toronto, to attend the powwow of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. The six include the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora.

To the outsider, a powwow is not dissimilar to a ‘living museum’ experience that combines history, tradition, craft and cuisine. Surrounded by reverence for tradition and well-defined protocol and etiquette, few tourists give in to the temptation to treat it like an alternative Disneyland.

The gathering in many ways can be seen as ‘the ancestral home’ that pulsates with religious and cultural customs, one where families interact through organised and casual exchanges. Pivotal to the occasion are traditional performances like dancing, drumming and singing. Incentives are provided through competitions that drive them to excel under the guidance of mentors giving an opportunity for generations to bond.

Walking through a powwow can bring back memories of the exotic costumes seen in Westerns, probably most people’s only exposure to them outside a museum collection. These costumes embody a tribe’s beliefs through symbolic icons. The layered costumes are an assemblage of inherited pieces and new additions. They are often inspired by animals and birds as feathers, skulls and hooves become a part of it. The religious significance of a costume requires the wearer to carry it with gravity and poise. Photography is discouraged without the dancer’s permission.

Native women keep outside most religious and warrior rites wearing less ceremonial regalia.

In keeping with tribal tradition, the elders are given a place of honour and acknowledged for their contribution and the ceremonial procession is led by elderly dancers from each nation even if age has robbed them of vigour and surefootedness. As this powwow is one with least commercial overtones, it lacks the exhibitionism that has fast become a part of carnivals.

Judging by the skills used to create the regalia, one was not surprised by the range of crafts but by the fact that they have been able to retain them in the face of radical changes. Silver jewellery, weavings, leatherware, beadwork and basketry made from quill feathers are truly indigenous to the people as one finds the ability to adapt natural material effortlessly.

Weaving myths into craft is the ‘dream catcher’, a spider’s web made from fine gut twine decorated with beads and coloured stone and leather swatches. The bigger ones are stretched over antlers that make spectacular timeless sculptures. Legend has it that the ‘dream catcher’ hung near a bed can ward off bad dreams.

Also selling her ware was a herbalist, who in Hollywood film parlance would be called ‘medicine woman’. Urbane and articulate she freely shared her knowledge with the people offering advice on the medicinal value of her herbs. A place of special interest to me was the Indian Nation bookshop which carried a cache of serious literature related to the ongoing struggle of the aboriginal people against the white colonisers. Humorous yet provocative were the T-shirts with a historical image of a group of aboriginals with primitive muskets. Its slogan read ‘Homeland Security’, evocative of their own defence of North America two and a half centuries ago.

One current issue under discussion is the land rights of the Haudenosaunee people. Since the aboriginal people do not believe in selling their land, in the past they have had to lease it out for money. Due to the degradation of the leased land, the tribes have set up the Haudenosaunsee Development Institute (HDI) to establish a legal process and structure that will go beyond this generation to protect the tribe’s rights in times to come.

To fight the land-grabbers, planned resistance like the HDI is a mechanism that needs to be studied by all countries. If such awareness and timely legal help had been available in Pakistan, the Potohar region where a system of joint ownership was set up by the local people’s ancestors not to let land pass on to outsiders could not have been so systematically violated to turn fertile valleys into concrete holiday homes in the scenic landscape. The Gwadar fishing coasts and the margins of Lahore with expanding suburbs are all facing similar threats as people are dispossessed of their land legacy.

The powwow with its opportunity to interact closely with the aboriginal people dispels many stereotypes and introduces them as a people with rare aesthetic sensibility that informs their entire existence. Their rich craft tradition informed by a civilisational spirit is born from the land. A people whose drums speak the language of hope and dance of healing have not been forgotten.

asnaclay06@yahoo.com