No Securtiy in an insecure country

[faizkhosa]

No security in an insecure country
WATCHING the stirring and colourful opening ceremony of the cricket World Cup in Dhaka last week, I was reminded that originally, Pakistan was supposed to be one of the hosts of this hugely popular sporting event. But the rising tide of violence, culminating in the terrorist attack on the visiting Sri Lankan team in Lahore two years ago, has effectively made Pakistan a no-go state for foreign sportsmen.

Now, none of the World Cup matches will be played on our soil. In fact, our sports teams have to go abroad to play in fixtures where they were supposed to have the home advantage. Like nomads, they roam the world to gain international experience. The sad reality is that the state can no longer guarantee security to foreigners, or, indeed, to our own leaders, as the recent assassination of Salman Taseer so painfully demonstrated.

The Sri Lankan team had been assured of a level of security that the government provides the president and the prime minister. In the event, it transpired that the superintendent of police in charge of the visiting team’s safety was having breakfast at home when the attack occurred in broad daylight. Similarly, the police officers in charge of Benazir Bhutto’s security in Rawalpindi were woefully negligent, according to the UN report.

After the many threats to Sherry Rehman’s life, a well-meaning friend emailed me from London to suggest that we demand official protection for the brave parliamentarian. I pointed out that poor Salman Taseer had been killed by one of the guards assigned to him by the Punjab government. I suggested that Sherry Rehman is probably better off with the private security arrangements she has made for her own protection. The fact that a minister advised her to go abroad is a shameful admission that the government is unable to protect one of the ruling party’s leading members.

The fact is that even so-called ‘elite’ police units are virtually unsupervised by their officers, and members are never vetted for their extremist views at any stage. Thus, Qadri could continue in his job, even though he made no secret of his intentions to kill the Punjab governor.

It would appear that only specialised army units are now capable of guarding the lives of public figures at an acceptable level of professionalism. However, even Musharraf was nearly killed on a number of occasions despite being surrounded by SSG commandos. In at least two attacks on his life, air force personnel were involved. So it seems that the contagion of extremism has spread to every nook and cranny of the country.

It is true that a determined assassin can breach any security barrier in any country. In the United States, despite the high level of training the Treasury Department security detail assigned to the president and to presidential candidates receive, two Kennedy brothers fell to assassins. Ronald Regan was almost killed by a deranged gunman. So clearly, politicians who mingle with the public are always going to be at risk.

The difference is that in Pakistan, the police no longer appear to have the motivation or the training to do the most routine policing work. But in this decline in performance, they reflect the general fall in standards across the bureaucracy. This, in turn, is linked to the poor education now being imparted in state institutions across the country, as well as to the widespread corruption now so prevalent at every level of society.

When these corrosive elements are combined with toxic levels of extremist propaganda being force-fed into the system through textbooks and TV broadcasts, we should not be surprised at the meltdown we see all around us. The reality is that today, jihadists out-gun the police and the paramilitary units they are fighting. And they are certainly more motivated. Partly because of their poor training, these security personnel have been laying down their lives in unprecedented numbers.

Understandably, the police are a very demoralised force today. Apart from being targeted by Islamic extremists day in and day out, they are being constantly blamed by their masters and the public for being unable to ensure security in any public place. But as we have seen time and again, it is impossible to stop suicide bombers determined to kill themselves and as many victims as they can.

In other countries with more efficient police forces, terrorist cells have often been penetrated, and plotters arrested before they could carry out their gruesome plans. Courts have swiftly tried these jihadists and handed down stiff jail terms. In Pakistan, trials drag on for years, and suspects granted bail at the drop of a hat. They can then continue on their deadly missions. Given the virtual absence of modern forensic training, techniques or equipment in our police departments, evidence is patchy at best, and acquittals are proportionately high.

Over the last few years, jihadists have been subtly transformed into the good guys by reactionary sections of the media. Even when they commit the most appalling crimes, they do not receive the kind of condemnation the Americans get for their much more selective drone attacks against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in the tribal areas.

In Sri Lanka, where I am currently, a friend told me that when he reported a robbery a few years ago, the police immediately sent over a fingerprint expert. In Karachi, despite the number of armed robberies we have experienced, I have yet to see any policeman taking fingerprints. Nor, as far as I can recall, has any criminal been convicted because his prints matched those at the scene of a crime. And this technology is over a century old, so it’s hardly rocket science we are talking about here.

Every now and then, some politician or other announces the formation of yet another anti-terrorist police unit, or the passage of yet another anti-terrorist law. But all we require is the strict implementation of existing laws by a properly trained, equipped and motivated police force. The need for new laws and new units are excuses made by politicians who lack the will and the ability to make the present system work.

More than training and equipment, our security services need the support of our political leadership, our judiciary, the public and the media. In the fight they are waging against a determined and ruthless enemy, they do not need to be the punching bag
for any politician or TV personality wanting to gain cheap popularity.

[faizkhosa]

“THEY were beating me so hard I could no longer see, there was so much blood running from my head.” These were the words of Bahraini physician Dr Sadek Al-Ikri to BBC reporters about the security forces’ crackdown on peaceful protesters in Bahrain.

But this was not all. Dr Al-Ikri also told the journalists that the men beating him refused to stop even when he told them that he was a doctor and that he spoke Urdu.

The role of Pakistani migrant workers in the protests in Bahrain has since been highlighted by other international news outlets too. A report in the Guardian said that Bahrainis resent the fact that many riot police and security forces do not speak Arabic and denounce them as mercenary soldiers with little empathy for the common people.

The Canadian press reported that a majority of participants in pro-government demonstrations were Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis who have recently been granted citizenship in Bahrain.

In the words of one regime supporter, Abdelrahman Ahmed, a 21-year-old student born in Bahrain of Pakistani parents, “We always support the government and they are always on our side.”

Citizenship and demographic manipulation are at the centre of the revolt taking place in Bahrain. Currently, the Al-Khalifa family, a Sunni monarchy with close ties to the ruling Saudi royal family, rules over a population nearly 70 per cent Shia.

This dynamic of Sunni rulers and Shia subjects has begun to foster resentment regarding recent ‘political naturalisations’ through which the ruling family has been allegedly handing out Bahraini citizenship to Sunni South Asians in an effort to boost their demographic majority. The xenophobia is further fuelled by the fact that the new citizens are being actively used by the monarchy to brutalise protesters in Manama and other parts of Bahrain.

The situation is that it pits victims against victims. The vast majority of Bahrain’s migrant workers, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others, have little hope of acquiring either Bahraini citizenship or political rights. According to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, migrant workers originating from various parts of South and Southeast Asia are little better than slaves and are often subjected to abuse ranging from regular beatings to actual torture.

The group’s website details the story of Salma Bibi, an Indian Muslim woman, who like many others was beaten by her sponsor and refused meals and her salary. A report published by IPS news service also reported the widespread practice of passport confiscation where employers seized workers’ documents denying them the basic right of freedom of movement and forcing them to risk imprisonment if they did not follow their employer’s bidding.

In this context of silence and repression, a few migrant workers have been selected by the ruling powers to receive Bahraini citizenship. In this way, their meagre rights are set against those of other impoverished sections of Bahraini society, the Shia Arab majority that feels excluded from governance and threatened with losing its demographic majority.

Many in the Shia majority are either unqualified to do the jobs done by Pakistani engineers, accountants and technology specialists or not desperate enough to perform the menial tasks done by Pakistani cooks, drivers and janitors. Despite this, the fact that some migrant workers are being coddled by the monarchy presents a deepening challenge to their own sense of belonging.

The idea of ethnically constructed citizenship, where only those who are Arab are considered deserving of Bahraini citizenship, is an inherently unjust one. The tragedy in the current situation is that this core injustice is being manipulated for the political purpose of ensuring the longevity of another illegitimate system; that of birthright kingship.

Hardworking migrants, many of whom have spent generations working in Bahrain, are put in the impossible situation where the realisation of their rights automatically comes at the expense of granting rights to indigenous Bahrainis who deserve a political voice.

In a strategy reminiscent of colonialism, xenophobia and sectarianism are both employed to force one voiceless population against another: poor Shias develop a robust hatred against migrant Sunnis and vice versa leaving both to battle on the streets of Bahrain while the ruling family watches smugly from its sequestered palaces.No progress can be made to resolve this without two core realisations, both of which are tragically unlikely to impress. The sliver of migrants granted citizenship via the benevolence of an opportunistic monarchy must realise that the political demands of the Shia population for voice and representation in a political system are legitimate if inconvenient to the economic stability of the country.

Their own desire for citizenship is in fact recognition of the idea that belonging in a polity is crucially important and the basis of national and political identity. If you recognise this underlying fact, it makes no sense to say that citizenship should similarly afford the freedom to have a voice in the political system and peacefully demand changes when demands are not being met. Similarly, Bahrain’s Shia majority should realise that if they are to benefit from the labour of migrant workers, they must in turn create a notion of citizenship that is not based on the accident of tribal and ethnic membership.

In other words, arguing that a monarchy is illegitimate because it is based on the accident of birth makes little sense when you want the same criterion to be used to justify that citizenship only be limited to those who are ethnically Arab are deserving of Bahraini citizenship.

Democracy thus cannot and must not be used to justify intrinsically discriminatory ideas that simply replace the superiority of one illegitimate group by another or to ensure that subjugation, repression and silence are all retained even after momentous revolutions.

Migrant workers and the Shia community comprise two victimised populations in Bahrain. A new system that truly aims to be just and representative must not pitch them against each other; such an outcome would be a victory for hatred alone.

[faizkhosa]

THE question above is agitating many minds today. If we believe in the domino effect, other states should follow suit. Egypt came after Tunisia and now there are rumblings in other parts of the Arab world.

I tried to look for the answer to this explosive question in the poem Fahmida Riaz recited at the Critical Discourse session of the Sindh Education Foundation recently.

Here Fahmida Riaz spoke on the Urdu dictionary published last year by the Urdu Dictionary Board of which she is director. This 22-volume publication is no ordinary work of lexicography. In Fahmida’s words, “it actually traces the history of our civilisation, being a discourse on 1,000 years of our culture, tradition and customs”. Containing approximately 254,074 head words, it took 51 years to complete when the first Oxford English Dictionary was compiled in 70 years and had 414,825 entries.

Described very simply yet eloquently in the invitation as “a poet, feminist, human rights activist”, Fahmida Riaz, gave an insightful talk on her team’s experience of compiling the Urdu dictionary. The animated discussion that followed made it a wide-ranging dialogue on the Urdu language.

It was her poem that she recited at the meeting that was thought-provoking in the context of Egypt. It shed ample light on our national psyche as it has evolved over the centuries. The fact is that the people who stage revolutions — it is still too early to say how much will change in the land of the pharaohs — should have the capacity for collective action of the kind that was witnessed in Cairo.

The first attribute that distinguishes the Muslims of the subcontinent from others is our innate desire to cling to what we have conventionally believed. Even when we discover that our belief is flawed, we do not let it go. Fahmida described this national weakness succinctly when she narrated her experience of researching the roots of various words. She found it disquieting when her team discovered that the word ‘ababeel’ which figures in the Holy Quran is not the name of a bird as many of us have believed all along. To her utter surprise she learnt there is no bird by that name in Arabic. ‘Beel’, a collective noun, stands for a flock of birds.

Drawing an analogy with our tendency to reject what negates our own popular perceptions, she says it is essential for one to uncover the truth howsoever unpleasant it might be. These lines from her poem say it all:

‘Banatay hain hum ek farhang-i-nau/ Jis mein har lafz ke saamnay darj hain/ Wo muanee jo hum ko nahin hain pasand’. (Know that we seek to set down a new lexicon/ where each entry has writ against it/ meanings we frown upon).

The other quality that would disqualify us from an Egypt-like revolution is the exclusivity displayed by those who would be expected to spearhead the process of change in society and the political dispensation. Fahmida dwelt at length on this concern when I met her later. She is pained by how supremacism has penetrated deep into our soul. This has its roots in the overblown distant memories we still cherish of the great Muslim empires of yore. “But the fact is that there was a lot of diversity in those empires which also included non-Muslims in their fold,” Fahmida reminded me.

The need for us is to adopt an inclusive approach and acknowledge the greatness of others as well — even the non-Muslims. When Muslim societies embraced diversity and plurality they flourished. When we abandoned this quality of acceptance of the ‘other’ living in our midst, our society went into a state of stagnation. This is how she puts it:

‘Doosron kay liyay sirf nafrat liyay/ Khushk honton pe harf-i-hiqarat liyay/Jo khala hai jahan us ko bhartay naheen/ Chaar aankhen haqeeqat say kartay naheen’. (Harbouring but hate alone for the ‘other’, our lips gone sapless with brother’s contempt for brother; we fail to re-incubate the worlds gone up in smoke and fire, and failing to assume the truth, we do not look in the eye the liar).

She is spot on. After witnessing all the hatred that is being spewed around us, an article I read in The New York Times struck a chord. Writing two days before Hosni Mubarak stepped down, a spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic party, wrote, “We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians.”

In contrast our Islamists delight in branding as ‘kafirs’ our non-Muslims and the minority sects. They even abuse ulema from other parties. How can there be any orderly change here? There can only be chaos.

But Fahmida Riaz tried to inspire some hope in the future when she spoke of the daybreak opening up new possibilities when pluralism, diversity, equity and egalitarianism will become our norms.

‘Is gulistan kay har ek mehmaan kay/ Roo buroo hon gay hum asl imkaan kay/ Jis kay aagay barabar hein mein aur too/ Jis ki nazron mein yaksaan hein hum aur woh/ Banatay hein hum ek farhang-i-nau (we shall be flowers all, beholding the joy of possibilities that smile at us, as if to say, between you and me, there stands no wall, no difference; all illusions done, revealed we are as one; such do we intend to be this our lexicon — translation by Badri Raina).

But can one share this optimism? The fissures run deep. They are multiple and overlap one another. Can they be bridged in a lifetime?

waiting for seniors point of views.......!!!! best regards