Not yet
September 24, 2012
Even as protests against the anti-Islam film raged across Pakistan and demonstrators’ angry chants against the filmmaker persistently mixed with cries against the United States, the US Senate on Saturday overwhelmingly defeated a bill that would have denied US aid to Pakistan till the release of imprisoned Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, who helped track Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by running a fake vaccination drive for the CIA. The move came only days after the Foreign Office had summoned the acting US ambassador and handed him a demarche demanding that the blasphemous film be removed from YouTube. Eighty-one senators opposed Republican Senator Rand Paul’s bill and 10 supported it; indeed, the bill was opposed even by senators from Paul’s own Republican Party. The defeat of the bill is at least one substantive and substantial meaningful measure of the fact that things between the US and Pakistan are not irreversibly bad.
US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, just recently completed a two-day visit to Islamabad while Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar also concluded a four-day trip to Washington. This Saturday, the US Senate finally confirmed as ambassador to Pakistan, Rick Olson, a 30-year veteran of the State Department who was envoy to the United Arab Emirates between 2008 and 2011, and whose appointment is aimed at turning a page in diplomatic relations with Islamabad. Certainly, the United States’ heavy reliance on the land route through Pakistan is not about to disappear. And even while the Afghan pullout may throw up new policy options, President Obama does not have all the levers he expects. The defeat of the bill comes after the recent anti-US protests. Indeed, at this delicate moment, does the US really want to wield the stick and risk making Pakistan’s elite and incensed public even less cooperative? If anything, right now is the time to convince the Pakistanis that the good guys on the US side don’t just want to use Pakistan for immediate security needs but also have a long-term vision. On the other hand, even the more pessimistic explanation – that the US has decided that Pakistan will become a big ‘problem area’ in the next phase, post the Afghan war – would require the US to continue to have some kind of relationship with Pakistan in order to manage the differences. Isolating Pakistan is not an option; neither is slashing military and civilian assistance, severing intelligence cooperation, escalating drone strikes, initiating unilateral cross-border raids or even declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism and imposing sanctions on it. True, Pakistan and the US may be trapped in a bad marriage, but circumstances keep them tied to each other and hence no messy divorce is on the horizon – yet.
A rising tide
September 24, 2012
It would be a grave mistake to assume that religious intolerance, something we see every day in a variety of manifestations in Pakistan, is in any way Muslim-specific – and there is now clear evidence that it is not. Religious intolerance is on the rise globally, is present in long-established democracies as well as autocracies and theocracies, and in the developed as well as the developing or undeveloped world. On Thursday last week, the Pew Research Centre published the conclusions of a survey of 197 countries identifying a sharp rise in religious limits globally and a 6 percent increase on religious restrictions in the four years up to 2010. This is not a phenomenon that has suddenly emerged; it has been developing over many years and is worldwide, across faiths and cultures. The sharpest rise in intolerance – 63 percent – is recorded between mid-2009 and mid-2010 in the number of countries that increased government restrictions. The harassment of specific religious groups occurring in individual countries rose from 147 in mid-2009 to 160 in mid-2010.
The countries where intolerance and religious discrimination are on the rise may surprise some. The UK is noted for its rise in ‘social hostility,’ which is now ranked as ‘high’ and on government restrictions it is ranked as ‘moderate’. The rise is visible in anti-Semitic incidents, anti-Muslim sentiments, honour killings, issues within the Muslim community itself and Christians’ resentment of the secularisation of daily life. Other countries recording a significant increase in religious intolerance for the first time include the US. The sharpest rise once again was in the ‘social hostilities index’ driven by religious groups that had been unable to get permission to build new or expand existing places of worship, and the ban on Sharia law in some states. It is not just Muslims who faced restrictions on the practice of their faith. Nigeria has seen increasing attacks on Christians; Indonesia has seen the forced closure of dozens of churches by Islamists; and Switzerland has banned the construction of minarets. Minority faiths are under pressure everywhere from the majority that surrounds them – our own Kalash people come to mind – and this rise in discrimination comes at a time when there is an increase worldwide in people who express some sort of religious adherence. Christians were harassed by government officials and organisations in 95 countries, while Muslims were more likely to be harassed by the same entities in 74 countries. The depth of detail is such and the breadth of the survey so wide that there can be little doubt as to its veracity. The world is increasingly polarised and fractured along the fault-lines of faith. It is easy to lose sight of our own place in the global picture, but clearly we are not alone in our intolerances. This in no way excuses them, but it does contextualise them.