bullets over karachi

I do not think the time demands that we get a group of veteran activists in a room to discuss how we deal with Karachi's situation.  I do not think that going into your basements to collect old sweaters and blankets for those affected by the floods is going to cut it.  I do not think that press club protests have lost their drama or effectiveness forever, but in this instant -- they have.  We are faced with a political beast that we do not even understand, and whose name we can not even bring ourselves to take out of some supernatural fear of instant reprisal.  

Whatever we can do right now, in the ways of doing and giving we understand, is clearly not enough.

Activism around these issues needs a level of debate and serious rethinking.  We do not need the same old people revamping ideas, and recycling old organizations that will fizzle away with activist burnout or disagreement over minutiae.  We are becoming a city of remarkable resilience.  We are also becoming a city of redundant displays of activism that spiral into oblivion or go off in tangents of egoism and territorialism.

Look, nobody's silly narrative matters.  Nobody's art or essay is more important than the collective.

There has to be some earnest long term planning, whether it is in response to the floods or the recent Karachi homicides and arson, or to the general news that people have nothing to survive on, and have shit for transport, and struggle daily for basic rights to housing, water and power.

There has to be some level of serious minded campaign building around important issues such as food insecurity, labor rights, or ethnic and religious solidarity -- something that grabs attention and goes beyond conference room activism, and facebook groups.  Something beyond one person's control, and another person's diffidence.  Something that actually hits the ground, and is real.  Something that feels like a movement, but works with the manic efficiency of a good NGO or a solid campaign.  Something that does the math, and adds the numbers.

Something that accepts that the mayhem will continue whatever the wars played over our heads by the agencies and the imperialists, for short terms profits or eventual regional domination, and that once, twice, or even thrice a market will be bombed, a procession interrupted.  That the irrevocable tension between political and ethnic rivals will go on, unabated, and the only thing we can do is engage in construction.  Can we as human beings even fathom such a challenge?

We swim to the edge; yet the edge keeps receding.  With every passing minute that there is no justice for the victims of May 12th, the evicted Pashtuns of November 08, the Ahmedis, the people whose mothers were blown to bits on Ashura, we diminish in size.  We become more cruel, more acclimated to a cynical, ugly way of being.  In fact we are not resilient at all.  We are more brittle than china, more fragile than a new born baby.  We are now so sad and scared that we mourn our city, and then get busy with the business of things.  And we try to survive in the face of reality.  We even get guards.  But clearly, with so many people moving out of the country, the privileged parents like you and me, and with other retards like Atif Aslam now singing about it - something has gotta give.

I sound like a bloody priest;  But the only way out is concrete action that starts small, and thinks big.  So jarring has been this return to Pakistan (floods, murders), I have been unable to write anything.  Not even stupid trivia about the quietness of streets, the haunted schools, the jittery police, the news of men in jeans who open fire from their motorbikes, stories of four dead bodies near Punjab Chowrangi, reports of doctors in emergency wards who patiently wait for the arrival of the dead.

Who cares?  Who needs to revisit the misery and hope for things to calm down already when things should really be simmering. Theorizing is good, but often there is no place for it, when it becomes vampirish, feeding on the collective, but never ever giving back.  So pardon my impatience.  Makes notes instead, and document everything.

Start with organized thinking, note what changes we need besides debt forgiveness and cutting the military budget.  The floods, for example.  Reminiscent of the earthquake, relief efforts are abound.  But can we go past and organize beyond the immediate relief?  Relief officials claim that the floods have destroyed 1.3 million acres of crops in Punjab.  This would mean rising food prices and near starvation for many people, and for the economy more imports, and less exports.  Food prices continue to rise because of, among other things, a lack of vision in agricultural planning, lack of knowledge on key issues, water scarcity, inadequate means of irrigation, poor soil, companies selling GMOs, inegalitarian and obsolete systems of land ownership..

When we stop seeing images of whole villages submerging, the emotional need to give will come to an end.  But these issues of food insecurity, currently exacerbated by the floods, will go on.   When the blood in the streets is cleaned by jets, and aman and iman is restored, we will forget the need to build community.

There is some value in activists and human rights officials coming together and issuing a statement against Karachi violence.  I think it is important to register that, we as citizens, do not condone this violence.  But then what?  So much more.