I've read most of Anatol Lieven's provocatively titled, "Pakistan, A Hard Country." Excitedly, I thought, when I bought a stack of optimistic books from Liberty Bookstore such as "Listening to Grasshoppers," -- here is a respected, white journalist, a professor, who does not think Pakistan is a failed state -- someone who calls out the prejudices, stereotypes, and misinformation in the Western narrative on Pakistan which portrays it as a cauldron of incestuous militants. He informs us that we have not failed, unlike Somalia and Congo. We are better than Bihar by per capita income, worse than Karnataka. Our insurgencies are not worrisome as long as insurgents do not seize much of rural countryside, junior army officers do not rebel, (which they haven't), and there isn't a mass uprising in the cities (which there isn't). Fair enough. I felt reassured even if a shrine was bombed a mile away from our law class at Szabist. It's not out of control.
Merrily, I checked out Anatol's face. A nice face, and I could see traces of Russian aristocracy. Someone who could be quite the student magnet -- enjoys shikar (hunting wild boar) trips hosted by the waderos he befriends. He describes his host's homes as ornate, quasi rococo, but is cautious about how much he insults his contacts. Perhaps, he imagines they will furiously turn to the page they are are mentioned on and refuse his next stay at their guest house. With Munir Malik he spares no blows and says, on many issues, he displays "a contempt for logic, rationality and basic rules of evidence."
At about 200 pages in, most people will have a sense of where he's going with this. There is no good news Lieven has to offer. He goes on to affirm every possible oppressive structure or problematic organization as if it were a miracle -- the Jamaat-i-Islami (disciplined lower middle class cadres with a soft spot for the Taliban), the MQM (violent, but organized, have made Karachi a wonderful city of flyovers), the army (so what if they give land to their retirees), the PML-N (tough, Punjabi businessmen who hated nationalization), and even the feudal kinship system (for what would replace it would be worse.)
At one point, he talks about rangers maintaining order in the city, and his temptation to kiss one, he cautions, is a urge that must be resisted. Bitterly, this is a sentence he may want to delete in the next print of the book in the aftermath of the brutal murder of a 17 year old boy, Sarfaraz, by rangers at Benazir Park in Karachi.
He asserts that jirgas are the most democratic institutions in Pakistan as they provide local justice in a manner that is not as alienating as colonial legacy courts. I almost nod in acquiescence; he acknowledges that jirgas are discriminatory to women. I can see how local expertise and knowledge minus the sexism and classim can be useful to the justice system to build upon like the magistracy system in the UK. But then he fails to comment on how there are groups (if city based) that oppose the jirga system as does Amnesty International - and even if these are criticisms from outsiders, it remains that jirgas are based in non-egalitarian, dynastic power systems, ownership of land, and control of resources. Men who administer and decide in jirgas own property, or have Syed and Sufi lineage which they use to command loyalty and unconditional reverence. Their authority to decide on judicial matters is derived from their continued subjugation of the masses.
To bring them, and hence jirgas, under the purview of the English/shariah legal system would make the system fairer. After all, the Baluchi Sardar who presides over Jirgas, whose long curls remind Lieven of student days in the UK, and who opposes Swara and rape orders, got his education in the west. He brings a Western (perhaps, alienating) human rights perspective to his decisions. If there were systemic reforms, then decisions would have to conform to principles of human rights, but in a less arbitrary or capricious manner, and less dependent on the whims and fancies of individual socially (but never economically) progressive sardars.
Lieven affirms that things work in Pakistan through kinship and patronage. It's a negotiated state, and it's all good, and the state is missing in the rural countryside. The police too follow local kinship patterns to resolve disputes. Is his nonchalant non judgmental-ism supposed to make us feel any better about rule of law? He does not have to live here. And he would say, neither do you -- because you are a westernized city elite.
The chapter on the military is when you really start to wonder if Lieven is an embedded reporter for the establishment elites of Pakistan. It doesn't matter to him that they engage in sugar, cement and cereal business and award real estate to generals. They're not obliged to follow the west's model of what armies should and shouldn't do. Where did this system of land bequests come from anyway? The Swat operation of 2009 was a success and Lieven is uninterested in really taking a hard look at its human consequences. Lieven, it seems, never quite makes it past raving about the military's structure, and in this, he loses credibility and plot. Isn't the military one of the biggest impediments to democracy and equal distribution of resources? He never answers this satisfactorily.
Nonetheless, the book has good information and insights; expresses a well-founded fear of the water scarcity in the country, presents the other side to Musharraf's modern enlightenment, gives great descriptions of visits to Altaf's home in Azizabad, has interesting interviews with Dr. Shamim Gul, Baluchistan's police surgeon and her midnight post mortems on the bodies of girls killed for honor -- but as an ideology, it fails. As a counter narrative, he has hardly anything to cough up besides the obvious - there is more to Pakistan than terror and failure, and that he has an appetite for our hospitality. (I too, as a school girl, was a guest of the Talpurs, and it was fantastic.)
It isn't condoling when he mentions the famous Lahore museum (where Rudyard Kipling's father was once a curator), motorways of Punjab, and a hip city cafe as signs of Pakistan not being a failed state or on the brink. It's akin to me saying we're alive and kicking because my daughter's being taught freestyle by an ex army coach who bangs kick boards on water to scare kids, and I managed to score an Eric Carle from Sunday Bazaar today, and some other children's' classics.
To be a good author/analyst you have to offer analysis of the ordinary hopes and desires of the people and how these can be achieved realistically. It goes beyond just providing interviews from the street where people regurgitate stereotypical impressions. What about some of the non mainstream currents in society - the lefties, the movements, even if negligible compared to the large parties, and the fact that many ordinary people loathe the military, the intelligence, and the establishment, and do not have housing, and are more concerned with basic needs. How one man's plot of land is another man's oppression. Plots allotted to officers, especially in fertile areas, for service is a naked usurpation of the rights of landless haris (mostly indigenous) who then depend on oppressive, if traditional and customary, jirga systems run by pirs and sardars - who in turn receive patronage from the military.
Perhaps, what is funny about Lieven is that he makes fun of our English without meaning to:
I asked him what they were. 'Flamingoes,' he replied.
'Um, I don't think so, Sir...;
'No, you're right of course, they are not flamingoes....we call them koonj.'
In other parts, he observes the strained legal English of a lawyer dictating notes. One reviewer calls out his cultural specificity -- But I would say, it's white man tripping, drawing comparisons which Pakistanis may even find mildly pleasing. He is describing an ANP dominated neighborhood in East Karachi.
I realized it was one of those scenes of Hollywood gangster films set in the 1920s or 30s with dreary roadhouses and brothels standing alone ...I half expected Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro to turn up.
There is good news about Pakistan. There are at least three dead men in the last 10 days. But, we remain a society that does not accept or label state terrorism as terrorism The state is present in peoples' lives, often directly, and sometimes complicitly through its omissions of services and infrastructure.
May 30
Saleem Shehzad, a journalist, who wrote about Taleban and Navy connections and lapses in security apparatus, was kidnapped and killed.
June 1st
Saba Dashtyari a Baluch nationalist professor, born in Lyari, was shot.
June 8th
Sarfaraz, a young man, from the Sultanabad slums was shot by rangers in Karachi as he plead for his life.
In every home, hatred for the military's budget, the repression in Baluchistan, its drunk on power massacre of the poor is growing. People are seeing the hypocrisies and the fissures, and the dismay and anxiety caused by these recent murders are exposing how brittle people feel. The media can be unrelenting. Even if on email, press people are sarcastically wondering how the Supreme Court CJ can take suo motu notice of the release of Atiqa Odho, an actor. She was carrying two bottles of wines on a local flight. She is not dead, hence a bigger threat to piety and Ummah?
In other news, 4,500 KESC workers were sacked, but are refusing to go down without a fight. I noticed how some of my comrades sat in dharna with them. Audaciously, the KESC hired 6,000 workers to replace them - workers they'd pay less as new hires and contract employees. The union leader, after 29 years of service, makes only Rs. 30,000. The CEO of KESC makes, a source tells me, Rs. 8,000,000 month (more than what most Pakistani would make in a lifetime) while he and management think its fair game to blame the union for sinking the city in hot darkness. Its really their inefficient distribution networks and power production that privatization and heavily paid top management can not seem to solve.
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/05/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-with-kesc/
It isn't condoling when he mentions the famous Lahore museum (where Rudyard Kipling's father was once a curator), motorways of Punjab, and a hip city cafe as signs of Pakistan not being a failed state or on the brink. It's akin to me saying we're alive and kicking because my daughter's being taught freestyle by an ex army coach who bangs kick boards on water to scare kids, and I managed to score an Eric Carle from Sunday Bazaar today, and some other children's' classics.
To be a good author/analyst you have to offer analysis of the ordinary hopes and desires of the people and how these can be achieved realistically. It goes beyond just providing interviews from the street where people regurgitate stereotypical impressions. What about some of the non mainstream currents in society - the lefties, the movements, even if negligible compared to the large parties, and the fact that many ordinary people loathe the military, the intelligence, and the establishment, and do not have housing, and are more concerned with basic needs. How one man's plot of land is another man's oppression. Plots allotted to officers, especially in fertile areas, for service is a naked usurpation of the rights of landless haris (mostly indigenous) who then depend on oppressive, if traditional and customary, jirga systems run by pirs and sardars - who in turn receive patronage from the military.
Perhaps, what is funny about Lieven is that he makes fun of our English without meaning to:
I asked him what they were. 'Flamingoes,' he replied.
'Um, I don't think so, Sir...;
'No, you're right of course, they are not flamingoes....we call them koonj.'
In other parts, he observes the strained legal English of a lawyer dictating notes. One reviewer calls out his cultural specificity -- But I would say, it's white man tripping, drawing comparisons which Pakistanis may even find mildly pleasing. He is describing an ANP dominated neighborhood in East Karachi.
I realized it was one of those scenes of Hollywood gangster films set in the 1920s or 30s with dreary roadhouses and brothels standing alone ...I half expected Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro to turn up.
There is good news about Pakistan. There are at least three dead men in the last 10 days. But, we remain a society that does not accept or label state terrorism as terrorism The state is present in peoples' lives, often directly, and sometimes complicitly through its omissions of services and infrastructure.
May 30
Saleem Shehzad, a journalist, who wrote about Taleban and Navy connections and lapses in security apparatus, was kidnapped and killed.
June 1st
Saba Dashtyari a Baluch nationalist professor, born in Lyari, was shot.
June 8th
Sarfaraz, a young man, from the Sultanabad slums was shot by rangers in Karachi as he plead for his life.
In every home, hatred for the military's budget, the repression in Baluchistan, its drunk on power massacre of the poor is growing. People are seeing the hypocrisies and the fissures, and the dismay and anxiety caused by these recent murders are exposing how brittle people feel. The media can be unrelenting. Even if on email, press people are sarcastically wondering how the Supreme Court CJ can take suo motu notice of the release of Atiqa Odho, an actor. She was carrying two bottles of wines on a local flight. She is not dead, hence a bigger threat to piety and Ummah?
In other news, 4,500 KESC workers were sacked, but are refusing to go down without a fight. I noticed how some of my comrades sat in dharna with them. Audaciously, the KESC hired 6,000 workers to replace them - workers they'd pay less as new hires and contract employees. The union leader, after 29 years of service, makes only Rs. 30,000. The CEO of KESC makes, a source tells me, Rs. 8,000,000 month (more than what most Pakistani would make in a lifetime) while he and management think its fair game to blame the union for sinking the city in hot darkness. Its really their inefficient distribution networks and power production that privatization and heavily paid top management can not seem to solve.
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/05/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-with-kesc/
We may be a mess, but we do it our way. Narmada Bachao Andolan in India led by Medha Patkar, may not have stopped the dam despite it creating inter class, peasant city progressive solidarity, a robust movement, pro people literature questioning the wisdom of big dams, but we are the ones who actually without the inter class movement and the massive literature stopped the Kalabagh dam. We did with all the inter provincial rivalry and angst, and some NGO activity, a local social scientist tells me.
You also can't make Pakistan what it isn't because it appeals to your hippy heart. My traitor heart would take the progressive Indian side on this, but, ideologically, I think, we have much more to hope for than Anatol's open hearted, but limited, book will have us.
1 comment:
I really liked this post. I wanted to read this book, and aside from the army part, I'm grateful that you took time to pass some judgement on this book. Now I will find it.
The cover was also a pleasant surprise/change for me. A view of dear old II Chundrigar Road just above the entrance to Uni Plaza. A tug at this old computer nerd's heartstrings.
I like what you said here:
To be a good writer you have to offer an analysis of the ordinary hopes and desires of the people and how these can be achieved realistically.
I guess Lieven was trying to give his readers an introuction to the country, and alternative movements are important, but first he would have to map out the mainstream of Pakistan also.
Considering the provocative title and the heft of the book this is probably appropriate.
Your last part about taking Pakistan as it is, is the best:
You also can't make Pakistan what it isn't because it appeals to your hippy heart.
That should be a rule for hippies everywhere. And although I do have a hippie heart, I will take my country as it is and push for it to be a better place.
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