A challenge to Sindhi media

SO honour killing rears its ugly head again, this time in Khairpur, where 17-year-old Tasleem Solangi met her death at the hands of the people she was supposed to have loved and trusted the most: her father-in-law and her husband, who were also her uncle and first cousin respectively.

The details are murky, but from what I can make out, Tasleem was married to her first cousin; her mother then left the village with her children and later had Tasleem remarried to a man from a neighbouring tribe.

The resulting feud between two tribes saw Tasleem, eight months pregnant with her first child, forced to deliver the baby prematurely. An hour and a half later, the elders of the tribe deemed the baby illegitimate because it was the child of Tasleem’s ‘second’ husband, and drowned the baby in the Ubhal Wah canal. Newspaper reports say the men who laid judgment on her made dogs attack Tasleem before they shot her dead. So much for peace and tolerance in the land of the Sufis.

Educators tend to believe that the answer to everything is education. A colleague at the university where I teach part-time first told me of this case earlier this week with tears in her eyes. “You know why this is happening?” she said in a voice that was choked with emotion. “Because they are not teaching the humanities to children. The arts, music, languages, history, social sciences … people lose their souls when they aren’t taught the humanities. Where are the classes that teach children to be kind to animals? Where are the classes that teach civic responsibility, hygiene, discipline, morality?”

I nodded, but in my head I was thinking, never mind the classes, where are the schools?

Still, I wasn’t convinced that education was the only answer to the deadly riddle of honour killing. Surely there’s a psychological component to this, the worst kind of homicide in the world? Could this not be seen as a mental illness, or a temporary insanity that descends upon people which causes them to enact such horror upon defenceless women and children for the sake of ‘honour’? To this end I posed the question of honour killing to a Sindhi psychiatrist living and practicing in the United Kingdom, Dr Ghulam Mustafa Soomro. As a Sindhi, I felt he would have some insight into the mindset which has spawned karo-kari, which rather than being a matter of honour is actually a blot of shame upon our otherwise vibrant Sindhi culture.

Dr Soomro outlined for me the individual, psychological reasons for why honour killings take place. Jealousy that arises from male suspicion and insecurity then leads to extreme rage and violence, as well as men’s perception of their superiority in a socio-economic and political context are the immediate factors. Furthermore, said Dr Soomro, the perpetrator of an honour crime “may have a paranoid way of thinking — for example the woman has rejected and dishonoured the man in a deliberate and planned way.”

But Dr Soomro told me that the socio-contextual reasons are far more powerful than the psychological ones. These include patriarchy; the social attitude that a woman or a baby’s life is inferior to a man’s honour; the tribal-social codes that preach ‘bloody extermination’ as a way of restoring a man’s violated honour; and the admiration bestowed upon the killer. In fact, the social attitudes are so entrenched that “if honour killing is not carried out by the would-be perpetrator, he is stigmatised for not doing what he must have done.” And finally, there is the male hypocrisy that women must not be allowed to exercise choice in relationships — an attitude that reaches far beyond the borders of Sindh.

I asked Dr Soomro how we can rid our nation of honour killing, and he presented me with a fourfold solution: “There must be just laws not simply enacted but also enforced; there must be universal education for men and women; those in power must change themselves before the masses will change their attitude; and finally, the press and media must embark upon an effective and genuine campaign to change attitudes, not just malign some sections of society.”

So, I put forth a challenge to the Sindhi media, and I have a very specific plan for them to follow. One of my students showed me the most amazing series of little video clips I’ve ever seen, all available on a website called ‘Youth for Human Rights International’ (www.youthforhumanrights.org). These 30 one-minute clips outline, in an engaging and creative way designed to appeal especially to young people, what human rights are. They list all the basics of what human beings are allowed to be, do, or have: “The Right to Life. No Slavery. No Torture. You Have Rights No Matter Where You Go. We’re All Equal Before the Law. Your Human Rights Are Protected by Law. No Unfair Detainment. The Right to Trial. We’re Always Innocent Till Proven Guilty. The Right to Privacy. Freedom to Move. The Right to Seek a Safe Place to Live. Right to a Nationality. Marriage and Family. The Right to Your Own Things. Freedom of Thought. Freedom of Expression. The Right to Public Assembly. The Right to Democracy. Social Security. The Right to Play. Food and Shelter for All. The Right to Education. Copyright. A Fair and Free World. Responsibility. No One Can Take Away Your Human Rights.”

These, in my mind, are far more beautiful than the most beautiful poem, story, or song. They bring tears to my eyes, but for all the right reasons. I appeal to all the Sindhi television networks and all the Sindhi newspapers and all the education institutes to download these clips and translate them into Sindhi, and then broadcast them, print them, make posters out of them, teach them, as a public-service announcement for all of Sindh. According to the Youth for Human Rights website, “when human rights are not well known by people, abuses such as discrimination, intolerance, injustice, oppression and slavery can arise.” If we can reach the young people of our province and teach them what their human rights are, we might begin the social revolution that erases honour killing from our society. No more young women or men shot or killed or buried for honour, ever again. Ameen.

The writer is a novelist.

binashah@yahoo.com

Drafting Obama’s agenda

AMERICANS voted for change on Nov 4 in overwhelming numbers. The vote was a repudiation of the Bush administration’s domestic and foreign policies.

Republicans, led by a president whose popularity stood at 22 per cent, lost not only the White House but also many congressional seats.

President-elect Obama declared, “Change has come”. Nowhere is the need for change more apparent than in US policy toward Pakistan. Before discussing Obama’s options, it is necessary to state what should not be done.

Invading Waziristan with special operations forces in order to hunt down the terrorists would invite disaster. Any such incursion would be viewed by 170 million Pakistanis as an attack on their country. Suicide attacks on soft civilian targets would get a boost, just as they did when the Pakistani army attacked the Red Mosque in Islamabad last year. Al Qaeda would have a field day picking off American targets throughout the Muslim world.

Another bad idea is the continued firing of drone-launched missiles inside Pakistan. To be successful, these attacks require precise human intelligence on the ground. In its absence the attacks kill civilians, making it easier to recruit terrorists. Giving the Pakistani military control over the drones won’t solve the problem either since people would see right through that ploy. And lastly, handing Pakistan over to its military won’t solve the myriad problems facing the nation.

As Obama huddles with his advisers to devise a new Pakistan policy, three options are likely to be on the table: status quo; incremental change; and radical change.

The status quo, i.e. bringing shock and awe to the region, is not viable. The Taliban are resurgent courtesy of the US desire to pursue a military option in Afghanistan. It has not helped matters that Hamid Karzai is widely disliked in his own country because of his incompetence and because of the corruption that he has allowed to flourish in the country. On Karzai’s watch the power of the warlords in the countryside has been restored, along with its attendant drawbacks.

Incremental change would involve transferring Gen Petraeus’s Iraqi formula to Afghanistan. A pincer movement would be aimed at the insurgency, with one branch of the pincer operating along the military axis and the other branch operating along a political axis.

The first branch involves a temporary surge in US troop strength to impose law and order on the streets while the second branch seeks to co-opt some of the tribes to the American side. Obviously, this involves talking to members of the Taliban, a break from the past.

Saudi-sponsored talks have already begun between elements of the Taliban and the Karzai government. There is recognition, even by America’s commanding general in Afghanistan, that the war cannot be won simply by killing people, i.e. the time for a military solution is gone.

Indeed, many analysts question whether Afghanistan can be tamed by force. Time and again, it has fallen to mighty conquerors who have subsequently been humbled by their failure to pacify it. Just in the past two centuries, the British and the Soviets have tried and failed. So why are the Americans going to fare any better?

The success of the incremental-change option depends on being able to separate the good Taliban from the bad Taliban. The latter are those who are sworn to pursuing terrorism as a weapon for achieving their political goals and originally brought Al Qaeda to the region.

The radical change option requires a regional approach but one that not only includes Afghanistan but also India. While such an approach may not be acceptable initially to New Delhi, it is the only option that has the potential for long-run success.

Much of the extremism in the region can be traced back to the links between Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and various radical groups which were set up by the ISI to mount a guerrilla war against India in Kashmir. The ISI has created an illusion to which many Pakistanis now subscribe, that India dreams of reabsorbing Pakistan and creating a greater India (the Akhand Bharat of antiquity). The vivisection performed by the Indians in 1971 continues to be presented in Pakistan’s military academies as evidence of India’s nefarious designs.

This insecurity has led Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons, maintain a large military and most notably to engage in an unending war with India through guerrilla attacks. The object of this proxy war is twofold.

First, tie down the much larger Indian army in Kashmir, making it difficult for India to mount a full-scale invasion of Pakistan while simultaneously bleeding the Indian treasury and weakening the country with the hope of one day dismembering the Indian state. And second, create strategic depth by allowing Pakistani forces to retreat into Afghanistan if faced with an all-out Indian invasion. The latter strategy led Pakistan to support the Taliban in Kabul during the mid-nineties.

The war on terror will only be won if Pakistan takes ownership of it. And it will only do that if its underlying insecurities are addressed. Kashmir is the most manifest demonstration of this insecurity but there are several others as well. The Obama administration should actively seek to resolve the simmering conflict between India and Pakistan of which Kashmir is but a symptom. If resolved, it has the potential for transforming the strategic culture of the region.

The radical change policy option would also need to be equipped with a long-term component focusing on human and economic development in Pakistan. The Biden-Lugar Senate bill would be a good place to start, especially now that Joe Biden is the vice president-elect. The bill seeks to provide $1.5bn annually to Pakistan over the next five to 10 years. Of course, for this aid programme to be successful, it will need to have clear goals and to be monitored very closely.

In conclusion, the incremental change option may appear to be the best way for the Obama administration to get its feet wet. But there is no guarantee of its success. The evidence from Iraq has a short history and Afghanistan’s tribal culture is very different from Iraq’s.

It would be best for president-elect Obama to engage in a more fundamental reassessment of the situation that would bring radical change to the region.

The writer is an associate with the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford.

faruqui@pacbell.net

It’s governance, really

SUDDENLY, in only a few months, we seem to be reaping the results of poor governance. For decades, our rulers disregarded blatantly the recognised principles of successful governance, with the last nine years marked by the superb cosmetics of the likes of Shaukat Aziz.

Today we are in the thick of a financial turmoil. A variety of analyses is on offer by economists and many phoney make-dos. But the genuine and the spurious alike make short shrift of real causes and long-term answers in favour of high-sounding realpolitik or off-the-cuff silliness about rotund billionaire beneficiaries of state protection.

While urgent plans to keep afloat the economic boat are announced seriatim there is little or no reference to our permanent malaise and the sheer disregard for good governance. The banker-advisers, with practiced solutions to monetary crises, are likely to continue to protect individual speculators in land, stock and banks.

The predators of the wealth of the masses will seize every challenge as an opportunity for personal profit. Only a more pervasive general sales tax (GST) regime affecting the lives of all and sundry will enhance national revenues and direct taxation of windfall profits from speculation, and exploitation, in land or stocks will only be marginally resorted to, presenting a facade of equity to the gullible public. This is an old legacy, now perfected into an art by our rulers.

The wails of urgency generated by the current crunch in monetary assets have now caught the ears of our economic managers and they seem busy in trying to restrict this onslaught of economic travails. Averting imminent doom is understandably the managers’ main concern. Crisis management galore, but what about demonstrating a desire to solve problems permanently by addressing known and recognised causes of such extravaganzas of disaster? The symptoms have identified the underlying disease, yet there is no commitment to the remedy.

Unfortunately there is a lack of demonstrable personal commitment by the rich and the powerful to a long-term future of this country. Almost all of them while enjoying power and pelf within the country own and maintain huge assets abroad and are ever ready to relocate when times are unkind. The equity and accountability that good governance alone breeds and sustains is avoided under one guise or ruse or the other.

Lack of commitment to the idea of Pakistan by the suppliers of governance compels a myopic view of the situation from them and thus they offer short-term reactive responses to urgent issues instead of articulating proactive policies and vision. (The military has a long-term view but essentially of its own institutional supremacy.)

Economic management is not separable from the overall governance culture: if the overarching culture breeds lack of discipline and lack of accountability and governance is used as a vehicle for perpetuation of selfish motives of individuals and groups, economic management under such an irresponsible framework cannot be idyllic in isolation.

Every now and then, therefore, such exploitation of the many by the few will result in a depletion of honourable options. For crisis management bankers may jump in the fray trying their tested skills in temporarily enhancing monetary assets to smother the turbulence in the short term. The common man will suffer in the long term; the speculator darlings will be protected.

IMF conditionalities notwithstanding, integrity and discipline will evaporate unless the rulers own the idea of Pakistan and align their future with that of the masses. Only then can good governance be practised and the country saved from the clutches of these predatory dinosaurs devouring the public interest at regular intervals.

The present predicament is being ascribed to poor planning, the external environment and global linkages. But the real causes are heard only in inaudible murmurs, as if not to arouse serious interest in addressing these.

We practice a governance of convenience and not commitment. If the tax-to-GDP ratio has been dismally stagnant, it has been because it was convenient not to disturb the holy cows. Sparse commitment to governance ensured that equity and capability were not considered when distributing the tax burden. Prime ministers with foreign domiciles would only protect the interest of their cronies in white-collar crime; they had to be allowed to mint billions without a hint of fulfilling their obligations to the state.

Similarly exports could not compete with imports, as domestic enterprise was not optimally protected and encouraged to produce and export and to strengthen the manufacturing base and increase employment. FDI did not create new assets — it only transferred existing local assets to foreign ownership. FDI was freely encouraged in services which do not support exports.

The cause of these pursuits was sheer disregard of good governance over decades really. What is the answer? The remedy is a demonstrated, continuously practiced commitment to good governance in perpetuity.

This would require that governments rise above petty prejudices and selfish motives. It would entail a commitment to strengthen the institutions of governance, particularly the legislature, judiciary, revenue department and police, and to sustain them. Transparency and accountability will have to be neither selective nor cosmetic. All laws will need to be founded in equity and enforced across the board. The state, not an individual, will be the focus of concern.

We can, and will, see out this passing typhoon of economic malaise with grit, determination and sacrifice. But we will resurrect as a vibrant society, a self-respecting nation and a performing state only if we actively pursue good governance. A note of warning though: good governance is not mere foul-mouthed oversight and chiding of civil servants by arrogant and conceited political bosses and their personally loyal bureaucratic lieutenants, like reportedly in one provincial government of the day.

javed.hasan.aly@gmail.com

Race factor in US polls

THERE is a remarkable racial story at the heart of Barack Obama’s historic election. But it may not be quite the one that you imagine. So, before the 2008 presidential election becomes forever defined as America’s cathartic act of collective redemption on race — which of course to some degree it also was — we should understand some facts and realities about what happened on Tuesday.

Barack Obama is America’s first post-racial president? Only up to a point. Obama won because he was the Democratic candidate who was also black. The risk that a black candidate might let that victory slip — the case made by Hillary Clinton during the primaries — was widely shared but gloriously disproved because Obama ran a campaign in which he never made his race the issue.

Obama played race the same way that Tiger Woods plays it. But race still shaped the contours of the voting patterns. Whites still voted Republican rather than Democrat on Tuesday — just as they have done in all recent presidential elections — dividing 55 per cent to 43 per cent in favour of John McCain. That’s not as big a gulf as in 2004 or in some earlier contests — which partly explains why Obama did well overall — but it is pretty much the same gap as in the racially charged 2000 contest, when whites voted for George Bush over Al Gore by 54 per cent to 42 per cent. Since the 2000 election took place in the economic sunshine and this one occurred during an economic chill, it looks as if these instincts endure in good times or bad.

Black people voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee on Tuesday. No change there then. Ninety per cent of African-Americans voted for Gore, and 88 per cent for Kerry four years ago. Obama pushed that percentage up to 95 per cent, and there was a bigger black turnout this time too, all of which made a big difference to his cause in states like Indiana. But this was not a qualitative shift large enough to explain the overall result in 2008.

The big racial game-changer in the voting patterns was not among white or black either. It was among the Hispanic vote. Four years ago, Kerry beat Bush by nine points among Hispanic voters. This year, however, Obama beat McCain by 34 points — taking 66 per cent of these votes compared with McCain’s 32 per cent. That is not merely a huge 12-point swing that helped Obama capture Florida and a clutch of states in the south-west in which the Hispanic vote is concentrated.

It also sends a signal about the future — about the possibility of a future Democratic win in Arizona (which Bill Clinton carried in 1996) and even in Texas, as well as about the strength of the Democratic hold on California. It is a signal about the kind of American political map that will take shape later in the 21st century, as Hispanic voters come to outnumber all others. It is very bad long-term news for the Republicans, whose immigration policies are costing them dear.

There is good news to be found for those who believe that America may be changing on race in smaller subsections of the white vote. Young white voters, unlike their elders, went heavily for Obama. Hope for the future there, perhaps. Poorer whites, always more likely to vote Democrat, were more likely to vote for Obama than richer ones. More college graduates voted Democrat than non-graduates. Jews and other non-Christian religious white voters went heavily for Obama but white Christians overwhelmingly went for McCain. White evangelicals voted McCain by three to one. In America, the white churches are too often racial division’s best friends.

None of this is to belittle in any way what Obama’s victory means to black Americans. The scenes in Harlem on Tuesday were glorious. Ditto those in Washington DC, which voted 93 per cent in favour of Obama, where the noisy partying went deep into the small hours. It was no surprise that Oprah Winfrey, a key figure in paving the way for Obama, cried in Chicago. What was more surprising was that Condoleezza Rice declared her pride in his achievement too. Colin Powell spoke for millions — white as well as black — when he said “Look what we did”. Even George Bush seemed to get this bit of it.

But did Obama’s candidacy really reach across the old divides to the parts of America that the other Democrats could not? In some ways, principally because of the Hispanic swing, yes it did. In other ways, though, one should be careful not to assign too much unique electoral magic to Obama. Certainly he did marvellously well in the two states, Florida and Ohio, that have been electoral graveyards for Democratic party hopes in the past two elections.

And he comprehensively saw off McCain’s fight-to-the-finish effort in Pennsylvania. But would Hillary Clinton have done any worse in these states in these conditions? Tuesday’s exit polls suggest that Clinton would have beaten McCain by a slightly bigger margin than Obama did.

— The Guardian, London