The symbolism of terrorism

CAUSING devastation and mayhem with a view to inspire awe and terror does not always constitute the motive of terrorism.

Sometimes terrorism is couched in symbols to drive home a far wider and subtler message by targeting the monuments that represent specific values, political norms or simply the power and confidence of a nation or even the world.

The most vivid expression of such symbolic terrorism was the assault of 9/11. All the monumental symbols of American power — corporate, military, administrative — were simultaneously attacked and the myth of US invincibility was shattered once and for all.

In July 1946, Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organisation, carried out a symbolic bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people — among them Arabs, Jews, Britons, Americans, Armenians, Russians, Greeks and Egyptians — who represented different cultural, religious and political values. The attack was carried out (under the leadership of Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister and co-recipient of the 1978 Nobel peace prize) not because the hotel was the headquarters of the British Mandatory Authorities. Rather, it was a well-timed and well-executed symbolic message to the British authorities: pack up, your time is up.

At the time of attack, the Zionists were well aware that the British mandate in Palestine was unpopular in Britain; that Britain was in dire financial straits and it stood financially obliged to the US, the champion of the Jewish cause. Therefore, the bombing was meant to further alienate public opinion and spur the British withdrawal from Palestine.

The message was promptly received. Soon after the attack, Prime Minister Atlee wrote a confidential letter to President Truman: “the inhuman crime committed in Jerusalem on 22 July calls for the strongest action against terrorism but having regard to the sufferings of the innocent Jewish victims of Nazism this should not deter us from introducing a policy designed to bring peace to Palestine with the least possible delay”.

In two years, the Zionist state had emerged over the lands of thousands of innocent Palestinians who had been killed or driven away by the Zionist terrorist organisations Irgun and Haganah. In July 2006, the Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of the bombing of King David Hotel.

The bombing of the Islamabad Marriott was also a symbolic act. The hotel was the ‘face’ of Islamabad, something like Delhi’s Taj. For decades, it provided the only venue for political conferences, corporate workshops and international seminars. It was the haunt of diplomats, foreign and local businessmen, politicians, NGO officials, socialites, the liberal intelligentsia and the press corps. Its destruction was a symbolic wresting of the natural habitat of these rich and powerful people, many of whom had advocated denying sanctuaries to the extremists in Fata.

Two, by audaciously targeting a venue that hosted people representing varied cultural, religious and political values, the extremists sent a symbolic message to the world that liberal and multicultural values are no longer acceptable even in the most secure tavern of the Pakistani capital.

In this highly connected and infectious world where multiculturalism is already under fire, such a message could boomerang on the interpersonal and intercommunal relationships of the Pakistani diaspora living in multicultural western societies. It could make Pakistanis face even more discrimination, if not the antipathy of the locals.

Three, the horrible fate of a safely ensconced hotel was also symbolic of the threat to the safety and integrity of this nuclear state. Though the prime minister and the interior ministry adviser issued conflicting statements vis-à-vis the purported target of the terrorist act, there is no disagreement as to its objectives, which is to harm the nascent democratic order and destabilise the state.In a way, the terrorists have achieved both objectives. At home, the nascent PPP government received universal flak for the security lapse and mishandling of the rescue operation. Abroad, a new debate ensued as to the state’s capability to deal with terrorism and retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Indeed, the destruction of the Marriott smothered whatever hope that had been generated by President Zardari’s rhetorical yet promising debut address to parliament. All his promises — good neighbourly relations with other nations, revisiting controversial constitutional provisions, giving provincial autonomy, boosting the economy, empowering women and, above all, stamping out terrorism — meant little to the public when blazing fires and shrieking ambulances dominated the TV screens.

Four, the timing of the attack was also symbolic. It occurred as the president was preparing to leave for the US, a country which hedges our economy and defences. Had he flown there buoyed by the spirit of unity as well as the respect for the head of state that was seen across the aisles in the National Assembly after a long time, he could have shown the world a different face of Pakistan; a confident, democratic and united Pakistan.

But what the world saw as the Marriott burned was a bruised and bleeding Pakistan, making it extremely difficult for its stewards to entice investors and their capital. In this sense, the attack was also symbolic of our economic vulnerability to terrorism.

This brings us to the basic question: how can we deal with such sophisticated symbolic terrorism? The answer provided by nations that have dealt with terrorism can be summed up in two words: leadership and unity.

In 1984, the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton to sabotage the Tories’ annual conference and probably to kill its entire leadership including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Notwithstanding the hotel being badly mangled, the conference was held. But what made the conference a huge success was the fact that scrapping her ‘bipartisan’ speech, Thatcher delivered a truly ‘national’ address and the entire British political leadership closed ranks behind her.

The threat militancy and terrorism pose to Pakistan is of course far graver. But if our political leadership can rise above its factional squabbles, it can send an equally reverberating symbolic message to the extremists: pack up, your time is up.

shahabusto@hotmail.com

Capitalism’s crisis, lessons for Pakistan

A CRISIS is usually considered something bad that either needs to be averted or overcome. However, a period of crisis can sometimes be an ideal opportunity for soul-searching and finding creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

A crisis may be necessary to bring about much-needed change in taken-for granted assumptions about how we order our collective existence as a nation.

The current global economic crisis can be viewed as an opportunity to rethink, re-evaluate and reformulate our political and economic policies. The looming collapse of free market, unbridled capitalism appears to spell doom for global economic systems as it threatens to envelop the countries that depend on the US for their exports. The prospect of a prolonged recession in the US means the potential loss of markets for several less developed countries, and this is causing concern and fear among exporters and governments in these countries.

The nationalisation by the US government of housing industry giants like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the insurance company AIG, coupled with the collapse of investment banks like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, exposes the limits of deregulation, a creed that has been preached by the gurus of a free market economy for the last three decades. In the Reagan era, car manufacturer Chrysler was rescued by the government as the company was engaged in the manufacture of tanks for the US military. The military-industrial complex had to ensure that armament capitalism was saved so the state had to intervene.

In other instances too the state had to intervene in the market to help out the likes of Chase Manhattan and Citibank — all this in a country where state intervention in the market is considered a cardinal sin against the ‘sanctity of the free market’.

Now that the controversial economic rescue package has been approved by Congress, and promptly signed into law by President Bush, a US administration committed to promoting a market unencumbered by regulation and state oversight will be spending over $700bn to bail out an economy in dire straits. It will be buying out sub-prime housing loans with taxpayers’ money. In other words, the money owned by middle-and lower-income America will bankroll the bailout of super rich Wall Street America.

The US government and giant engines of global capitalism, such as the IMF and the World Bank, controlled and dominated by Europe and the US, never ceased to hawk the virtues of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation to the less developed economies. The latter economies were informed that the only way to eradicate poverty was to let the markets operate freely as they were subject to self-correcting and self-regulating mechanisms. The state was demonised as a hindrance that distorts markets.

So subsidies were to be withdrawn, production was to be oriented towards exports, trade barriers were to be lifted and the free flow of capital, goods and services was to be allowed. Now the state in the US has moved in to regulate and nationalise — the exact opposite of deregulation and privatisation.

It seems that no lessons were learned from history. The capitalist crisis of the early 1930s had led economists to argue for regulation and state intervention to protect the weak against the strong. The construction of the welfare state was partly the result of a historical compromise between capital and labour, and partly the consequence of the fear generated by a workers’ revolution in Russia in 1917.

State intervention logic promised that people’s economic, social and political rights would be guarded against exploitation by ruthless markets. However, in the 1970s, when the Arab-Israeli war disrupted the regular flow of oil to the developed capitalist countries, the state became an evil that had to be removed from the market. The mantras of deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation began to be preached with the certitude of a religious belief.

Two inseparable spheres of existence — politics and economics — were ideologically separated into the state and the market. It was argued that the state should simply conduct politics and leave the economy to the vicissitudes of the market. This obfuscated the deeply intertwined nature of politics and the economy and led to the false illusion that exchange is conducted among equals in a market. The essential inequality of market actors — those with only labour power to sell and those who own the means of production — was denied in the proposition that markets have the capacity to ultimately lower prices and create equality.

The current crisis has brought the state back to the heart of the issue. As the US state steps in to rescue the rogues of the market, the irresponsible CEOs who are getting away with so-called golden parachutes, George Bush has been forced to admit that the entire economy is in danger. The bailout, he added, will finally benefit Main Street and not only Wall Street. The limits of capitalism have been exposed in that the very state which is offering to pour in trillions to rescue banks riddled with bad debts had failed to provide $6bn to ensure healthcare for nine million children. This shows the essential heartlessness of an unfettered free market economy.

There are lessons here for Pakistan which has been under pressure from its bilateral and multilateral donors to deregulate its services, financial and labour markets, open its borders to the free movement of goods and services, end protectionism of all kinds, privatise national assets and liberalise the economy. In the name of good governance, the state’s role has been redefined as the creator of a conducive environment for foreign capital and MNCs rather than the provider of basic rights and protection to its citizens. Our state has been restructured to cater to private rather than public good by giving massive incentives to foreign capital to invest freely, repatriate all profits, and use cheap credit and cheap labour which have been provided by changing our laws and labour regulations.

Most of the political parties in power, including the dominant PPP, have veered towards a right-wing ideology and are now pro-privatisation and pro-liberalisation. They need to remember that they have been brought in by the people and are accountable only to them. Given the ravages of unbridled free market capitalism, they must rethink their economic policies to make them serve the citizens to whom they owe their power.

The genius of Jhang

EVERY October, the Nobel Academy announces the names of individuals whose genius has earned them its coveted prize.

The winners are awarded the prize by the King of Sweden in a formal ceremony. The prize in physics garners much attention, focusing as it does on the fundamental forces of nature.

So it was with great wonderment on Dec 10, 1979 that those who were gathered to witness the physics award saw a tall, bearded figure walk towards the stage. The very antithesis of western formalism, the man was draped in a long fully buttoned black suit with a closed upright collar, white baggy pants and white turban. Decorative shoes that could have come out of the Arabian nights completed the profile.

The man was Prof Abdus Salam. He had the honour of being the first scientist from the Muslim world to get the Nobel. His presence was a visible reminder of how far the young boy from the obscure town of Jhang on the banks of the Chenab had come.

Abdus Salam had shown evidence of brilliance at a young age by scoring the highest marks ever in a matriculation examination in Punjab. After studying at Government College, he went to Cambridge University (St John’s College), where he scored a double first in mathematics and physics and later obtained a doctorate. He would later teach at Government College, Imperial College (London) and the International Centre for Advanced Physics (Trieste, Italy).

Even though he had started out as an experimental physicist, he quickly turned into a theoretician, citing his lack of patience for accumulating data and working with “recalcitrant equipment”. His focus was on subatomic particles and the forces of attraction and repulsions that existed between them.

A century earlier, British scientist James Clerk Maxwell had shown that electricity and magnetism were two manifestations of a common electromagnetic force. Others had shown in the early part of the 20th century that a ‘weak’ nuclear force existed between subatomic particles and was responsible for phenomena such as beta-radioactive decay. This happens when a neutron in the nucleus spontaneously shoots off an electron as it turns itself into a proton, hence transmuting the element. However, the best available theory of weak force reactions by Enrico Fermi was known to be only valid at low energy levels.

In the 1960s, Abdus Salam, along with two Americans, put together a theory that described the weak force and electromagnetism as low-energy manifestations of a single ‘electroweak’ force. This theory agreed with all the observed data and behaved nicely at higher energy levels, unlike Fermi’s.

But there was a catch. It relied on the existence of several new particles that had never been seen in any prior experiment. One of these implied a set of ‘weak neutral current’ reactions, a brand new concept.

The Nobel was awarded to Abdus Salam and his co-researchers once the existence of the particles implied by their theory was confirmed by experimental scientists at CERN, the European test facility in Geneva. Prof Salam’s Nobel lecture, ‘Gauge unification of fundamental forces’ was a model of scientific eloquence (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1979/salam-lecture.html).

Almost three decades later, his electroweak theory still stands, despite an extraordinary amount of testing. It has led to the development of the Standard Model in particle physics (quantum chromo-dynamics), which combines the electroweak theory with the ‘strong force’ theory.

However, from the days of Einstein onwards, no one has been able to integrate gravitation with the other three forces. Grand unification of the four fundamental forces remains an aspiration for future physicists. In science, theories are only interesting if they can be rejected. In his Nobel lecture, Prof Salam quoted from Einstein to affirm his belief in empirical testing: “Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.”

One of the loose ends in the Standard Model is the existence of the Higgs boson, which is still to be observed. Physicists around the world are anticipating that once the multi-billion-dollar Large Hadron Collider at CERN that runs under the Franco-Swiss border is operational again, it will be able to test for the existence of the Higgs boson.

It is fitting that the life and work of Prof Salam have been celebrated in a new biography by Gordon Fraser, Cosmic Anger (Oxford, 2008). In the book, Abdus Salam emerges not just as a world-renowned scientist but as a humanist committed to the advancement of the developing world and as a humble man with a tremendous sense of humour.

During the Ayub era, he served as chief scientific adviser to the president and was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. In those days he inspired countless students in Pakistan to pursue the physical sciences.

Unfortunately, serious policy differences between him and the country’s top leadership surfaced when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ascended to power. Bhutto was committed to bringing a nuclear weapons capability to Pakistan even if that meant, as he famously put it, that Pakistanis would have to eat grass for a thousand years. Prof Salam disagreed with Bhutto’s idea and felt it was ill-suited to a country as poor as Pakistan. Further difficulties arose with the passage of a law that excommunicated people of his faith from Islam.

A deeply religious man, Prof Salam was heartbroken. That year, with much anguish, he left the country for good.

He came back only once, at the behest of President Zia who wanted to recognise his achievements to the cause of science in Pakistan. He continued his work in the years that followed and travelled widely to compare notes with scientists around the world.

In 1996, at the age of 70, Prof Salam passed away in Oxford after a prolonged illness. But his legacy lives on. Many centres and professorships are named after him across the globe. His work continues to inspire new generations of graduate students to seek out the mysteries of particle physics.

But one would be hard pressed to find much evidence of his legacy in the land of his birth. That is a genuine tragedy since Pakistani science attained a high-water mark during his tenure that has yet to be surpassed.

The writer is the author of Musharraf’s Pakistan, Bush’s America and the Middle East.

faruqui@pacbell.net

It’s time for an overhaul

WHEN the Beatles broke up in 1970, John Lennon used his first solo album to get things off his chest. Heavily influenced by the primal scream therapy he had been undergoing, the record included a song called God in which Lennon trotted out a litany of things he no longer believed in. It was a long and eclectic list including Buddha, magic, Kennedy, yoga and — of course — the Beatles. The song ended with a simple statement: the dream is over.

For America, too, the dream is over. The past week has seen the nation bellow out its own primal scream of rage at the idea of a big, blank cheque for the financiers who got the US into its current predicament. Judging by the reaction to the Bush administration’s emergency stabilisation bill, the list of things Americans no longer believe in is as long as Lennon’s: Wall Street, bail-outs, Congress, Paulson, Pelosi — you name it.

This reaction is understandable. For the $700bn earmarked to buy up Wall Street’s toxic waste, the US government would currently be able to buy Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, lock, stock and barrel, while leaving itself with $100bn or more to put by for a rainy day. Even worse, the Paulson plan isn’t even a particularly good plan since it fails to address the real problem of the US banking system.

One response to the blatant deficiencies of the Paulson plan has been to say that the world would be better off without a plan at all, because the only way to purge the system of its rottenness is to allow the market to decide which banks are fit to survive. Paulson briefly tried this strategy last month when he allowed Lehman Brothers to go bust; the subsequent mayhem means the “creative destruction” thesis now finds few takers in finance ministries and central banks around the world. There is a more sensible way forward, but it requires three things to happen.

The first is for policymakers and banks to recognise that it is neither possible nor desirable to recreate the global financial system as it existed prior to August 2007. Paulson appears to think it is possible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but it isn’t. There is no pain-free solution to the crisis and those policymakers, like the UK finance minister Alistair Darling, who have been prepared to say so, will be proved right. Central banks have pumped dollars, euros and pounds into the markets to precious little effect. The reality is that finance became too big and too powerful; a reduction in its size is now inevitable as the previous excesses are worked off. When the dust settles there will be fewer banks and they will be behaving more cautiously.

The second requirement is to come up with proposals that address the real issue: that the banks badly need new capital to repair balance sheets battered by the losses on their dodgy investments. For too long policymakers approached the crisis as if they were dealing with a cash flow problem that could be solved by flooding financial markets with liquidity. The penny has dropped that this is a matter of solvency.

That’s why there is suddenly interest in what Sweden did in the 1990s to recapitalise its banking system. The Swedes took a hardnosed view of which banks were viable and which weren’t, then used a tough love policy towards the institutions deemed fit to survive.

The state took an equity stake in the banks to ensure that the public was not simply writing blank cheques, put all non-performing loans into a “bad bank” which was given the task of recouping the taxpayers’ money, and gave a blanket guarantee to depositors but not shareholders. The merits of the scheme were that it was a “something for something” deal for Swedes, the taxpayer was protected and it allowed the government to have a say in how the post-crisis banking sector would be organised.

Those working in the financial markets are now resigned to some form of state ownership. “The endgame,” said George Magnus of UBS, “must include recapitalisation, including nationalisation, in our view.” Governments should not blow this golden opportunity. State-backed recapitalisation gives them the opportunity to reconstruct a more sober banking system.

But recapitalising the banks is not going to work if a prolonged recession adds to their losses. Across the G7 industrial nations, the outlook is grim and getting grimmer, so the third leg of the recovery plan means a recognition that a lack of growth — not inflation — is the real threat. Those critics of the Paulson plan who say it would be better to spend the money trying to keep struggling mortgage-payers in their home have a point. But monetary policy also needs to be eased, and the sooner the better.

Cuts in interest rates do not work overnight, particularly in the current circumstances, where the bursting of the housing bubble means property prices will continue to fall.

— The Guardian, London