Civil Society protest at Red Mosque, Islamabad (Credit: philly.com)
LONDON, Dec 19 — Only a week ago, the Red Mosque seemed a nearly untouchable bastion of Islamist extremism in Pakistan, a notorious seminary in central Islamabad known for producing radicalized, and sometimes heavily armed, graduates.
On Friday evening, though, the tables were turned when hundreds of angry protesters stood at the mosque gates and howled insults at the chief cleric — a sight never seen since the Taliban insurgency began in 2007.
What has changed is the mass killing of schoolchildren, at least 132 of them, slain by Pakistani Taliban gunmen in a violent cataclysm that has traumatized the country. In the months before the shocking assault on a Peshawar school on Tuesday, Pakistan’s leadership had been consumed by political war games, while the debate on militancy was dominated by bigoted and conspiracy-laden voices, like those of the clerics of the Red Mosque.
Now, united by grief, rage and political necessity, Pakistanis from across society are speaking with unusual force and clarity about the militant threat that blights their society. For the first time, religious parties and ultraconservative politicians have been forced to publicly shun the movement by name. And while demonstrations against militancy have been relatively small so far, they touched several cities in Pakistan, including a gathering of students outside the school in Peshawar.
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Children wearing white burial shrouds demonstrated on Friday in Lahore, Pakistan, against an attack by Taliban militants on an army-run school in Peshawar. Credit Arif Ali/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Protest leaders believe that the public will support them. “This will become a protest movement against the Taliban,” one organizer, Jibran Nasir, thundered into a microphone outside the Red Mosque on Friday.
Though there is little doubt that the Peshawar massacre has galvanized Pakistani society, the question is whether it can become a real turning point for a society plagued by violent divisions, culture wars and the strategic prerogatives of a powerful military.
After all, Pakistan has been here before. The country has suffered countless wrenching tragedies — the death of Benazir Bhutto in 2007, as well as attacks on mosques, markets and churches — only for rage to fizzle into nothing. And after the Taliban attack on the teenage rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai, a resulting backlash against Western support for her made her the target of smears and vitriolic criticism.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, seemingly paralyzed for much of the year by political opposition, has promised that this time will be different. He rushed to Peshawar as the school shooting was still underway. As global scrutiny intensified, Mr. Sharif vowed to eliminate the distinction between “good” and “bad” militants — a nod to the military’s decades-old policy of fighting some Islamists while secretly supporting others.
The army, for its part, has been buoyed by a wave of public sympathy, as many of the children killed at the Army Public School in Peshawar came from military families. And other forces, such as Karachi’s M.Q.M. party, have sought to harness national anger for local purposes.
“Crush Taliban to Save Pakistan,” read the banners at a large party rally in Karachi on Friday.
The tide of outrage has encouraged progressive Pakistanis, increasingly marginalized for years, to speak up.
Outside the Red Mosque on Friday, protesters waved placards mocking the chief cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who had enraged many by refusing to condemn the Taliban attackers during a television interview. “Run, burqa, run” read one sign, in a reference to Mr. Abdul Aziz’s attempt to slip through a military cordon in 2007 while disguised in a woman’s concealing garments.
A day earlier, when a few dozen demonstrators tentatively appeared outside the mosque, students there wielded staves to intimidate the protesters into silence. But on Friday, the protest grew, and riot police officers waving truncheons interposed themselves between the two sides.
“The Red Mosque has become a factory of terror and hatred,” said Bushra Gohar of the Awami National Party, a Pashtun political party that has suffered countless Taliban attacks.
But for all the fighting talk, many are skeptical that the anger and tears of this week can make a sustained change.
The most intense anti-Taliban protests this week have been confined to the relative safety of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, where many users have posted solid black images as profile pictures. The extraordinary scenes at the Red Mosque would only be significant if they were replicated in numbers across Pakistan, said Chris Cork, an editorial writer with The Express Tribune newspaper.
But, he said, civil society is still weak and disorganized, riven by fear of the Taliban and the harsh gaze of the intelligence agencies.
“I don’t see a joining up of the dots across the country,” Mr. Cork said. “There isn’t the infrastructure, the will, the people with organization, ability and visibility to lead it.”
The wave of anti-Taliban sentiment is “probably just a blip,” he added. “Quite honestly, give it a month and it will have faded.”
The hard lessons of history underpin such pessimism. Although the Pakistani military has taken the fight into the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan in recent months, there is evidence that Pakistan’s generals continue to play favorites among militant groups.
The “good” militants that Mr. Sharif referred to in his speech — those focused on Afghanistan and India, and who have longstanding ties to Pakistani intelligence — have continued to strut the national stage, even after the Peshawar massacre.
The most visible of such groups is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Not only does its leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who has a $10 million United States government bounty on his head, live openly in the eastern city of Lahore, but he has also built a public profile as a media personality.
On Friday, his brother-in-law, Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, delivered a sermon at a mosque in Hyderabad, the second largest city in Sindh Province. After offering prayers for the victims of the Peshawar attack, Mr. Makki first accused NATO of sending “terrorists disguised as Muslims” into Pakistan, then linked the attack to India.
The group said that as he spoke, preachers from its charity wing fanned out across Karachi, a city of 20 million people, giving sermons at 45 different mosques — and propagating similar conspiracy theories.
Experts say it would be naïve to expect the Pakistani military to immediately disband groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, particularly given the fraught state of relations with India in recent months. But they also say that the underground ties between militant groups — which often share ideas, fighters and weapons — hopelessly undermine army efforts to dismantle the Pakistani Taliban.
“It’s that old story,” Hillary Rodham Clinton said when she visited Islamabad as secretary of state in 2011. “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.”
A cross-party political committee, formed by the prime minister, has promised to come up with a new strategy to fight the Taliban within a week. That is a hopelessly optimistic goal, by most reckonings.
The bigger worry, though, is that once anger over the Peshawar massacre has dissipated, the debate over militancy will once again be clouded in confusion and obfuscation — which, as recent years have shown, offers an ideal moment for the Taliban to strike again.
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Saba Imtiaz from Karachi, Pakistan.
“Tuesday’s attack was utterly reprehensible, and it is imperative that those responsible for this unimaginable tragedy are brought to justice. However, resorting to the death penalty is not the answer – it is never the answer,”said David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Asia-Pacific.
Sharif’s announcement came the day after at least 148 people – including 132 children – were killed by Taliban militants at an army-run school in the north-western city.
“Pakistan is understandably gripped by fear and anger in the wake of the attacks. However, lifting the moratorium on executions appears to be a knee-jerk reaction which does not get at the heart of the problem – namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan,” said Griffiths.
“This is where the government should focus its energies, rather than perpetuating the cycle of violence with the resumption of executions,” he said.
Amnesty International calls for those responsible for indiscriminate attacks and attacks against civilians, including the Peshawar attack, to face investigation and prosecution in proceedings that comply with international fair trial standards, but without resort to the death penalty.
“Capital punishment is not the answer to Pakistan’s law and order situation and would do nothing to tackle crime or militancy in the country,” the London-based rights body said.
Pakistan re-imposed a moratorium on executions in October 2013 and has not executed since the hanging of a soldier in November 2012, while the last civilian hanging was in late 2008.
There are currently dozens of people sentenced to death for terrorism-related offences in the country.
Torture Victim Sarwech Pirzado (Credit: iaojwordpress.com)PAKISTAN, Dec 3 : Disappearances and extra judicial killings of Sindhi nationalists continues unabated; in many cases disappearances have occurred following arrest by the police and at times by plain clothed persons, presumably from intelligence agencies; thereafter being taken into custody, most often tortured and ultimately their bodies are found dumped on the streets.
In the Sindh Province, the security forces have made secular and nationalist forces and activists their main target, in order to keep them in illegal detention centres, torture them and thereafter are extra judicially executed in an effort to eliminate any evidence of the disappearances. During the year 2014, more than 100 activists from nationalist groups particularly from the group ‘Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz’ (JSMM), a banned organisation, have been arrested and are missing. On the other hand all the banned Muslim militant groups have made the Sindh Province their safe haven and hiding place.
Accusations are levelled by the nationalist groups that security forces are targeting nationalist forces to provide a space for religious militant groups and the Taliban, similar to what took place in the Baluchistan Province – where today as a result, the sectarian and militant groups are operating freely and every year they are involved in killing more than 1,000 persons in such sectarian violence.
In Sindh, the Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) is the worst victim of the intelligence agencies in this regard. Although the members of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), one of the major Sindhi nationalist parties, Jeay Sindh Tehrik (JST) and other parties have been facing no different situation, it’s worse for JSMM because they, unlike the other parties, openly support an armed movement for the freedom of Sindh.
On 15th August 2014, Mr. Asif Panhwar was arrested in a police raid at his friend’s house in Nasim Nagar, Hyderabad, in the Sindh Province and since then he has been missing. After 100 days of his disappearance his bullet riddled and torture marked body was found on the 25th of November this year. Asif Panhwar was a local leader of a banned secular nationalist organisation, the ‘Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz’ (JSMM). Following his arrest and disappearance his brother filed a petition in the Sindh High Court for his recovery. As is the usual practice, the Sindh High Court did nothing, despite the appeals by his brother that Asif Panhwar might be killed in detention by the security agencies.
In another such incident on 15th October 2014, Paryal Shah, an activist of the JSMM was abducted by the Pakistan security agencies and since then he has been missing. His mutilated body was later found on 7th November 2014 with clearly visible marks of torture. His body was dumped near the city of Rahim Yar Khan in the Punjab Province where military is operating torture cells in their Cantonment area. Shah hosted the Baloch long march last year for the recovery of Baloch missing persons. Victim’s brother, Zamin Shah was also killed by the armed forces in fake encounter.
The bullet ridden body of Mr. Abdul Waheed Lashari, 37 years old, was found after his disappearance after 15 days after being arrested in the first week of November 2014 while he was travelling in a passenger bus. Mr. Lashari was affiliated with the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) Arisar group.
On 25th November 2014, a third-year student of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, in the Sindh Province went missing from the Sindh University Housing Society, Jamshoro. Mr. Kamlesh Kumar was standing at a photocopy shop when two police mobile vans and a car approached them and dragged him in a police van. His only alleged crime was that he belongs to the Hindu community and he was participating in the protests against the persecution of religious minority groups. He was not affiliated with any political group. The family searched for Kamlesh at the police stations in Jamshoro and Hyderabad and to no avail.
Many such activists who stand up against the kidnapping of Hindu victims often go missing in the Sindh Province. The Chairman of Sindh Human Rights Organization (SHRO), Fayaz Shaikh was abducted from the city of Karachi. He has been organizing demonstrations on behalf of several Hindu girls who have been kidnapped in Pakistan. He has been abducted by unknown persons on 24th November 2014. His disappearance came on the eve of yet another demonstration he was supposed to organize under the auspices of the Sindh Human Rights Organization on behalf of the nine Hindu girls kidnapped by the Islamic seminaries in the Sindh Province. This is ironic since he was a leading voice who began a campaign to approach the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, to take notice of the enforced disappearances of young Sindh activists and to call for an end to all such kidnappings and abductions of minorities and human rights activists there.
Another activist Mr. Rohel Laghari, 22 years old also belonging to the JSMM was abducted on the 1st April 2014 from Hyderabad and his whereabouts too are todate unknown.
Mr. Sarvech Pirzado who was yet another activist belonging to the group JSMM and an employee of a private medical company was abducted from the impress market in Karachi on 12th September 2014 by plain clothed persons and was later hurled into a four wheel type jeep. His family has filed a petition before the Sindh High Court for his recovery but as in all the other instances, to date no decision has been taken by the Court.
On October 11, the bullet riddled body of an activist of JSMM, Mr. Shakeel Konhari, was found dumped near the Malir Military Cantonment, Karachi. He was arrested from his house by the unknown persons.
The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the Government of Pakistan to stop the persecution of the Sindhi nationalists and halt once and for all these illegal and unconstitutional methods of enforced disappearances and extra judicial killings in Pakistan. If the law enforcement agencies have the evidences against the suspects and if there are criminal charges against them the government must bring them before the civil courts of law and tried.
The AHRC also urges the government to immediately ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and implement its provisions in law, policy and practice, and in particular include a new and separate crime of enforced disappearances in the penal code, as the government has already pledged before the United Nations visiting team, the working group of enforced and involuntary disappearances in 2012.
Every day, shortly after breakfast, more than 150 noisy and eager-eyed kids, coated in dust from top to toe, troop into a mud cowshed in a sun-baked village among the cotton fields of southern Pakistan. The shed is no larger than the average American garage; the boys and girls squeeze together, knee-to-knee, on the dirt floor.
Words scrawled on a wooden plank hanging outside proudly proclaim this hovel to be a “school,” although the pupils have no tables, chairs, shelves, maps or wall charts — let alone laptops, water coolers or lunch boxes.
Nor are there any teachers, except for one very young woman who is sitting serenely in front of this boisterous throng, occasionally issuing instructions, watched by a cow and a couple of goats tethered a few feet away. Her name is Aansoo Kohli.
Aansoo is a 20-year-old student in the final stages of a bachelor’s degree. She is the only person in this village with more than a smattering of education. Her mission is to change that: “I’ll make these children doctors,” she says. “I’ll make them teachers and engineers.”
The kids in Aansoo’s cattle shed are from Pakistan’s Hindu community — a marginalized, sometimes victimized, minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Their village has for centuries subsisted on the tiny income produced by picking cotton and green chilies for feudal landlords.
The mass exodus of Hindus to India — 50 miles to the east — during the 1947 partition of the Subcontinent seems to have passed by this remote community.
The village, Minah Ji Dhani, lies deep in the countryside of Pakistan’s Sindh province; you have to drive across fields to reach it. There is no road. Nor is there electricity or running water. Its inhabitants are among the poorest of Pakistan’s roughly 200 million population.
A crude wooden crutch lies at Aansoo’s side. She needs this because she lost the use of a leg as an infant due to a botched medical procedure. Her father, an illiterate farm worker, realized she would be unable to work in the fields, so he packed her off every day to a government-run school miles away.
As an impoverished and disabled Hindu girl in a highly conservative and patriarchal rural society, Aansoo says her school years were difficult. “People would laugh at me when I went to school,” she recalls. “They’d say, ‘What’s she going to do once she’s educated?'”
Aansoo’s cowshed “school” is her answer to that question. She has no teaching qualifications and works without pay. This hasn’t deterred her from pushing ahead with a personal campaign to give her village’s children — girls as well as boys — the chance to get educated.
“I love these kids,” she says. “I’m urging them to study.”
You only have to watch Aansoo at work for a short while to realize that to describe her cattle shed as a school, or her as a teacher, really is a stretch.
Overwhelmed by numbers, she teaches some of the older children, who then squat on the ground and impart what they have just learned to the smaller kids, some as young as three. Somehow the village whipped up enough money to buy some dog-eared government textbooks and hand-held blackboards.
But there is another goal here. Talk to Aansoo, and it soon becomes clear she has assembled these kids in part to draw attention to a chronic problem blighting her country’s young, especially the poor.
Over the years, government teaching jobs in Pakistan have routinely been handed out as political favors. Thousands of so-called “teachers” pocket wages but do not go to work. There’s a girls’ school less than a mile from Aansoo’s village that has long been closed because the teachers never showed up.
Aansoo Kohli, 20, is in the final stages of a bachelor’s degree. She is the only person in Minah Ji Dhani with more than a smattering of education. Abdul Sattar for NPR hide caption
itoggle caption Abdul Sattar for NPR
Aansoo Kohli, 20, is in the final stages of a bachelor’s degree. She is the only person in Minah Ji Dhani with more than a smattering of education.
Abdul Sattar for NPR
Aansoo’s aim is to generate the kind of publicity that will send a message to people far beyond the confines of her village: “I want to tell Pakistan’s teachers that you have a duty to the nation’s children. Please come to school and teach!”
“Aansoo is posing a question for all of Pakistan,” says Janib Dalwani, a Muslim social activist from a nearby village who’s playing a central role in Aansoo’s seven-month-old campaign, publicizing her efforts and rallying villagers to the cause. “If someone with her disadvantages can teach, then why can’t teachers who’re sitting at home drawing salaries go out and teach?”
The task of persuading parents to allow their kids to go along to Aansoo’s cattle shed fell to Dalwani. He says they were initially reluctant to release their children from working in the fields and doubtful about the benefits of education.
“I told them God’s on their side,” says Dalwani. “He’ll help them.”
This seems to have worked. Ram Chand, a farm worker, has allowed three of his daughters to go to the cattle shed: “I am very happy,” he says. “We don’t want the children to lead the life we’ve led.”
Aansoo’s message is being heard beyond her village. Liaquat Ali Mirani, a principal in the Sindhi city of Larkana, runs a website that publishes the names and photos of absentee teachers in the hope this will shame them into doing their jobs.
“I fully support Aansoo and have a lot of sympathy for her. May God help her,” says Mirani.
He estimates four out of 10 teachers in the province never set foot in a school: “Some of them run shops, some work in the media, some for feudal landlords.”
In 2010, Pakistan’s federal constitution was amended to make education compulsory and free for all children age 5 to 16. But education is run by provincial governments; they haven’t yet turned this amendment into law and it seems unlikely they will. This helps explain why, according to estimates, nearly half of Pakistan’s 58 million kids of school age are not in school.
“The state of education is very bad in Pakistan,” says Farhatullah Babar, a leading figure in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the late Benazir Bhutto’s party that governs Sindh. “In fact, we have what we call education emergency.”
Babar says that although the PPP bears much responsibility for the education crisis in Sindh, it plans to fire absentee teachers and make government teachers take a proficiency test.
“I think these measures indicate a very strong realization on the part of the PPP that if it was responsible for the mess, it is also determined to clean the mess,” says Babar.
For now, though, the kids in the cattle shed are on their own. Their chief hope is Aansoo’s determination — and their own enthusiasm
The UNDP has released its flagship document Human Development Report 2014 entitled “sustaining human progress: reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience”. The annual report provides status of all countries against vital indicators of human development.
Pakistan, ranked at 146 out of 185 countries, has been bracketed among low human development countries. Pakistan barely maintained last year’s ranking when it shared 146th position with Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh this year moved four rungs up and stood at 142nd position. With such an ignominious ranking, a nuclear power, flaunting atom bomb has been outshined by all other SAARC countries except the war-ravaged Afghanistan. Even Afghanistan has improved its position from 175th in 2012 to 169th this year.
Interestingly, all SAARC countries have improved their ranking compared to the previous year except India and Pakistan who just maintained their ranking. Sri Lanka is the only SAARC country that has been grouped among high human development fraternity. It has taken enviable stride from 92nd number in 2012 to 73rd position this year.
A cursory glance at Pakistan’s ranking on various indicators narrates a sorry state of human development in the country. Except Afghanistan, all other countries have humbled Pakistan on most of the indicators. Pakistan has the second highest maternal mortality ratio in the region. 260 mothers die during 100,000 live births in the country. This ratio for Maldives is only 60 and just 35 in Sri Lanka.
Similarly, the country has second highest infant mortality rate (IMR) after Afghanistan. 60 children out of 1000 live births die before the age of one year. Comparatively, the infant mortality rate in India is 44, in Bangladesh 33 and in Nepal 34. Even African countries Rwanda, Cameroon and Sudan have lesser IMR i.e. 39, 61 and 49 respectively.
Similarly, 86 out of 1000 children die before their fifth birth anniversary in Pakistan. Barring Afghanistan with 99 such deaths, all other countries have much lesser child mortality rate. Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bhutan registered only 11, 10 and 45 deaths under five year age. Even war-torn Sudan performed better with 73 deaths of under-five infants.
Likewise, Pakistan has third highest child malnutrition only better than Afghanistan and India. Alarmingly, 43.7 per cent children below five-year age are stunted in Pakistan. Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka have 33.5, 18.9 and 17 per cent of stunted children respectively. Sudan has lesser percentage i.e. 35 of stunted children.
Education is another area of inglorious performance of the country. Pakistan’s adult literacy rate 54.9 per cent is second lowest in the region after Bhutan. Maldives has an impressive adult literacy of 98.4 per cent followed by Sri Lanka with 91.2 per cent. African countries Cameroon (71.3) and Rwanda (71.3) have better adult literacy than Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistan has the lowest youth literacy rate. With 70.7 per cent youth literacy, the country is trailed behind by Bangladesh with 78.7 percent and India with 81 per cent.
Pakistan has also the lowest gross enrollment ratio (GER) of primary and secondary education. Afghanistan’s GER in primary education is 97 per cent compared to 93 per cent of Pakistan. Bhutan’s GER in secondary education is 74 per cent.
The UNDP report is in consonance with Pakistan’s status on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The government’s own report on status of MDGs in 2013 admits that out of 33 targets, Pakistan could achieve only 3 and the progress on 23 targets is off-track.
Being a chronic security state, the country drains much of its resources on traditional security measures. Contemporary concepts of human security are alien to the policy makers. Paranoia of internal and external threats has fettered human development since inception. Even war-torn countries are earmarking better resources on human development.
For instance, Pakistan spends only 0.6 per cent of GDP on health which is dwarfed by even highly unstable Afghanistan with 3.9 per cent. Pakistan spends only 2.4 per cent of GDP on education which is significantly lower than 5.8 per cent of Bhutan and 4.7 per cent of Nepal. Even Congo spends 6.2 per cent on this account.
Ignoring human security has devastating implications for society. In 2010, a UNICEF report made startling revelations by comparing the state of nutrition in Sindh with Chad and Niger. The report sends a wave of chill through spine by claiming that hundreds of thousands of children are at risk due to alarming malnutrition prevalent in the province. The malnutrition rate was reported as 23.1 per cent in north Sindh and 21.2 per cent in the South.
This scale of malnutrition has surpassed 15 per cent, the emergency threshold of World Health Organization and far exceeds the global average of 13.9 per cent in flood hit areas. The report also reveals that 11.2 per cent pregnant and lactating women were suffering from malnutrition in north Sindh and 10.2 per cent in the South.
The security mania has eclipsed the basic needs of citizens. It is an implausible idea to secure borders without securing basic human needs of citizens. According to a report of Social Policy and Development Centre “Social Impact of the Security Crisis”, allocation for health and nutrition in federal government’s public sector development program registered a marginal average annual increase of 0.4 per cent over the last five years. Whereas the security related expenditure during last ten years registered an average growth of 20.6 per cent. The figures speak volumes for our misplaced priorities.
Security across the world is biting human development needs and countries like Pakistan are a laboratory to gauge its social and political ramifications. In a country where “haves” and “have-nots” are multiplying exponentially, remiss of state to lifeline necessities of its subjects can culminate in a catastrophic socio-political vortex.
The ubiquitously prevalent felony has its roots in decades-long socioeconomic inequalities that kept diverging with every passing day. Emaciated social sector had not only been starving for resources, it was also pulverised by frequent natural disasters and multitude of conflicts. Elite political fabric coupled by over-centralised and unjust resource distribution has decimated weaker segments of society.
On external front, a trigger-happy foreign policy has been a causative factor to perpetuate border acrimonies. The security monster gobbled up the scant resources meant for development of millions of impoverished masses. Unremitting wars have created a black hole that continues to gulp down hard earned revenues.
It is an ignominious irony that we funnel our hard-earned resources in wars but ask tax payers of developed world to dole out coins to resuscitate our derelict education and health sectors. Basic social services are primary responsibility of the state, which has abdicated its role and tossed citizens at the mercy of a rudderless market. Boasting power to trounce every enemy, the state has kneeled before polio virus.
Pakistanis are the only creature required to show polio vaccination evidence at immigration desk for overseas travel. This year Pakistan has ashamed its own past record of polio cases by breaking psychological barrier of 200 cases in a year. Two other countries of the polio club Nigeria and Afghanistan have shown remarkable improvement to rein in polio, whereas we are on a polio proliferation spree. The world is watching us with trepidation to become the only polio sanctuary on earth.
We have a distinction of hosting more than 80 per cent polio cases in the world. More scandalous is the fact that polio virus with Pakistani provenance is now sneaking into polio-free countries prompting disconcerting travel embargoes. Dengue and malaria mosquitos deride our hubris of being a nuclear power. Terrorism, bad governance, corruption and failure on human development are some of the factors impinging on image of Pakistan.
Characterised as a security state, the country has developed an image of a problem child in the region. Enigmatically, the decision-makers are hardly sensitive to the faltering image of the country. Their unremitting obduracy and addiction to a confrontational approach is ostracising Pakistan in the world community.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this Friday to India’s Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai for their struggles against the suppression of children and for young people’s rights, including the right to education. That is great news, and it might almost mean Nobel Peace Prize makes sense again, after being awarded to Barack Obama in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”, and to European Union in 2012 “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”.
Still, there is something that really troubles me. How come we (meaning the West) always recognize the “devils” of the East, the torments children like Malala had to and have to go through (in her case, with the Taliban), but always fail to recognize our own participation in creating those “devils”? How come we never talk about the things our governments are doing to the children of Pakistan, or Syria, or Iraq, or Palestine, or Yemen? Let’s just take drone strikes as an example. Last year’s tweet by George Galloway might illustrate this hypocrisy.
Galloway is absolutely right. We would never even know her name. But, since Malala’s story fits into the western narrative of the oriental oppression (in which the context underlying the creation of the oppression is left out), we all know Malala’s name. Like Assed Baig writes:
“This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her. The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, ‘see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives.’”
The problem is, there are thousands of Malalas West helped create with endless wars, occupations, interventions, drone strikes, etc. InLast Week Tonight with John Oliver, one can hear how little we know about the drone strikes – its aims, targets, results. “Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time, for secret reasons based on secret evidence, in a secret process undertaken by unidentified officials. That frightens me.” This is how Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown professor and former Pentagon official under President Obama, explained the US policy on drone strikes during a congressional hearing last year.
The following photo presents the piece that was installed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, close to Pakistan’s northwest border with Afghanistan, by an art collective that includes Pakistanis, Americans and others associated with the French artist JR. The collective said it produced the work in the hope that U.S. drone operators will see the human face of their victims in a region that has been the target of frequent strikes.
That is the reality we are not being presented with. Another reality is the story of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, 14-year-old Iraqi girl, who was gang raped by five U.S. Army soldiers and killed in her house in Yusufiyah (Iraq) in 2006. She was raped and murdered after her parents and six-year-old sister Hadeel Qasim Hamza were killed. Also not irrelevant to mention is that Abeer was going to school before the US invasion but had to stop going because of her father’s concerns for her safety.
And while the West applauds Malala (as they should), I am afraid it might be for the wrong reasons, or with a wrong perspective. It feels like the West wants to gain an agenda that suits them or the policies they want. That is also why Malala’s views on Islam are rarely presented. She uses her faith as a framework to argue for the importance of education rather than making Islam a justification for oppression, but that is rarely mentioned. It also “doesn’t fit”.
So, my thoughts were mixed this Friday when I heard the news about the Nobel Peace Prize. On so many levels. They still are. We’ve entered a new war, and peace prize award ceremonies seem ridiculous after looking at this photo.
Sure, we must acknowledge the efforts of those who are fighting for a better world, but when it is done in a way that feels so calculated, unidimensional, loaded with secret agendas and tons of hypocrisy – I just can’t celebrate it.
Malala wins Nobel peace prize (Credit: wiki-feet.com)
Take that, Islamic extremists, anti-Muslim bigots, Pashtun-bashers and misogynists! Malala Yousufzai has become the youngest person to win any Nobel prize and, fittingly, did not appear before the media to respond for several hours because it was a school day, and the girl’s got priorities.
A year ago the Guardian sent me to interview Malala in Birmingham, where she still lives, and I asked her why she thought the Taliban felt so threatened by her. At first she laughed. Then she said: “I don’t know, but many people say that they’re afraid of education,. They’re afraid of the campaign we’re doing for girls’ rights.”
But as she continued to speak – her ideas enlarging, in contradiction to my expectation of someone who would already have stock responses to all the obvious questions – she said: “I believe it’s my life and it’s my choice how to live it. The Taliban thinks that everyone should be in and under their control. I am not a slave. I am not their follower … I will use my mind.”
Listening to the interview again, I am more struck than previously by her understanding that the Taliban’s power comes from their ability to terrify those who oppose them. In the last few months Islamic State (Isis) has made it impossible to keep from thinking about how anyone is supposed to stand up to brutality instead of responding with acquiescence or flight. It’s a question to which Malala had to find an answer as a child.
When she was 13, two years before she was shot in the head, a Pakistani journalist asked her if she was frightened of the threats the Taliban directed at her. “Yes,” she said, “but I don’t let anyone see it.” When I put the same question to her, she said: “Fear was spread all over the valley of Swat, but we [she and her father] were not afraid of fear. At nights our hearts were beating fast, but in the morning we were like normal people, and we said we’ll continue our campaign. Our courage was stronger than fear.” She says a thing like that, and there’s no question of doubting her.
In Pakistan, news of the Nobel prize has led to an outpouring of accolades from official figures, led by the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who called her “the pride of Pakistan”.
Also among the praise-singers is the director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the public relations wing of the military. All this is as it should be. But officialdom has refrained from commenting on the fact that the pride of Pakistan is unable to return to Pakistan because the Taliban remain too great a threat.
As of June this year, Pakistan’s military has been engaged in an anti-Taliban offensive, during the course of which it captured 10 men who are allegedly members of the group that planned the attack on Malala.
But it’s hard to gauge the success of the operation, and difficult not to think about what Malala said to me about an earlier military operation against the Taliban: “In the military operation they didn’t target the Taliban leaders – they fled. But suppose a Talib went to a shop and asked for a comb – then the shopkeeper would become a [military] target, and be killed. They [the military] are doing nothing to the leaders.”
Malala isn’t the first Pakistani to win a Nobel – that accolade goes to Abdus Salam, joint winner of the 1979 physics prize.
Like Malala, Salam was in exile from Pakistan when the Nobel prize was announced. His was a self-imposed exile in protest at the Bhutto government’s decision to pass a law declaring members of the Ahmadiyya community, to which he belonged, non-Muslims. Salam never returned to live in Pakistan again.
When I listen to Malala talk about her home of Swat, it’s hard not to hope history will turn out differently this time.
It isn’t when she describes Swat as “paradise” that her heartbreak is evident, but later in the interview, when she remembers the river near her house. “I miss that river. It smelled a lot. It was full of garbage. But still, I miss it.”
QUETTA, Oct 12: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed concern over rights violation in Balochistan, the country’s resource-rich but least developed province.
HRCP delegation, headed by chairperson Zohra Yusuf, held a series of meetings with journalists, lawyers, politicians and other members of civil society on Sunday.
Former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Asma Jehangir was also part of the delegation that thoroughly discussed the prevailing situation in Balochistan with the intelligentsia and other stake holders.
Addressing a press conference at the Quetta Press Club later in the day, Yusuf stated that poverty was one of the underlying factors behind the increase in militancy and insurgency in the province.
She said although the situation had improved in comparison with the past, a lot needed to be done to improve the situation in Balochistan.
Yusuf stated that it was a matter of serious concern that different communities were being targeted in Balochistan. “Minorities feel insecure here”, she added.
The HRCP prepared different recommendations with regard to improvement of the human rights situation in Balochistan, which would be presented before the federal and provincial governments to ensure durable peace in the restive province.
Visiting Karachi University student, US President Barak Obama (Credit: Dawn newspaper)
Karachi confuses people – sometimes even those who live in it.
The capital of Pakistan’s Sindh province, it is the country’s largest city – a colossal, ever-expanding metropolis with a population of about 20 million (and growing).
It is also the country’s most ethnically diverse city. But over the last three decades this diversity largely consists of bulky groups of homogenous ethnic populations that mostly reside in their own areas of influence and majority, only interacting and intermingling with other ethnic groups in the city’s more neutral points of economic and recreational activity.
That’s why Karachi may also give the impression of being a city holding various small cities. Cities within a city.
Apart from this aspect of its clustered ethnic diversity, the city also hosts a number of people belonging to various Muslim sects and sub-sects. There are also quite a few Christians (both Catholic and Protestant), Hindus and Zoroastrians.
Many pockets in the city are also exclusively dedicated to housing only the Shia Muslim sect and various Sunni sub-sects. Even Hindu and Christian populations are sometimes settled in and around tiny areas where they are in a majority, further reflecting the city’s clustered diversity.
Most of those belonging to clustered ethnicities, Muslim sects, sub-sects and ‘minority’ religions reside in their own areas of majority and they only venture out of these areas when they have to trade, work or play in the city’s more neutral economic and cultural spaces.
The survival and, more so, the economic viability of the neutral spaces depends on these spaces remaining largely detached in matters of ethnic and sectarian/sub-sectarian claims and biases.
Such spaces include areas that hold the city’s various private multinational and state organisations, factories, shopping malls and (central) bazaars and recreational spots.
Whereas the clustered areas have often witnessed ethnic and sectarian strife and violence mainly due to one cluster of the ethnic/sectarian/sub-sectarian population accusing the other of encroaching upon the area of the other, the neutral points and zones have remained somewhat conflict-free in this context.
The neutral points have enjoyed a relatively strife-free environment due to their being multicultural and also because here is where the writ of the state and government is most present and appreciated. However, since all this has helped the neutral zones to generate much of the economic capital that the city generates, these neutral spaces have become a natural target of crimes such as robberies, muggings, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, etc.
The criminals in this respect, usually emerge from the clustered areas that have become extremely congested, stagnant and cut-off from most of the state and government institutions, and ravaged by decades of ethnic and sectarian violence.
Though the ethnic, sectarian/intra-sectarian, economic and political interests of the clustered areas are ‘protected’ by various legal, as well as banned outfits in their own areas of influence, all these outfits compete with each other for their economic interests in the neutral zones because here is where much of the money is.
Just why does (or did) this happen in a city that once had the potential of becoming a truly cosmopolitan bastion of ethnic and religious diversity, and robust economic activity in South Asia?
This can be investigated by tracing the city’s political, economic and demographic trajectories and evolution ever since it first began to emerge as an economic hub more than a century and a half ago.
Birth of a trading post… and ‘Paris of Asia’
Karachi is not an ancient city. It was a small fishing village that became a medium-sized trading post in the 18th century. British Colonialists further developed this area as a place of business and trade.
‘Paris of Asia?’ – Karachi (in 1910). Karachi was always a city of migrants. Hindus and Muslims alike came here from various parts of India to do business and many of them settled here along with some British. In the early 1900s, encouraged by the city’s booming economy and political stability, the British authorities and the then mayor of Karachi, Seth Harchandari (a Hindu businessman), began a ‘beautification project’ that saw the development of brand new roads, parks and residential and recreational areas.
One British author described Karachi as being ‘the Paris of Asia.’
A group of British, Muslim and Hindu female students at a school in Karachi in 1910: Till the creation of Pakistan in 1947, about 50 per cent of the population of the city was Hindu, approximately 40 per cent was Muslim, and the rest was Christian (both British and local), Zoroastrian, Buddhist and (some) Jews.
Members of Muslim, Hindu and Zoroastrian families pose for a photograph before heading towards one of Karachi’s many beaches for a picnic in 1925: Karachi continued to perform well as a robust centre of commerce and remained remarkably peaceful and tolerant even at the height of tensions between the British, the Hindus and the Muslims of India between the 1920s and 1940s.
A British couple soon after getting married at a church in Karachi in 1927.
A group of traders standing near the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) building in the 1930s.
Karachi Airport in 1943. It was one of the largest in the region.
Karachi’s Frere Hall and Garden with Queen Victoria’s statue in 1942.
A 1940 board laying out the Karachi city government’s policy towards racism.
Lyari in 1930 – Karachi’s oldest area (and first slum): Even though Karachi emerged as a bastion of economic prosperity (with a strategically located sea port); and of religious harmony in the first half of the 20th century, with the prosperity also came certain disparities that were mainly centred in areas populated by the city’s growing daily-wage workers. By the 1930s, Lyari had already become a congested area with dwindling resources and a degrading infrastructure.
Shifting sands: Karachi becomes part of Pakistan
Karachiites celebrate the creation of Pakistan (August 14, 1947) at the city’s Kakri Ground: The demography and political disposition of the city was turned on its head when the city became part of the newly created Pakistan. Though much of India was being torn apart by vicious communal clashes between the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs at the time, Karachi remained largely peaceful.
To the bitter disappointment of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (a resident of Karachi), the city witnessed an exodus of its Hindu majority. Jinnah was banking on the Hindu business community of the city to remain in Karachi and help shape the new country’s economy.
As if overnight, the 50-40 ratio of the city’s population (50 Hindu, 40 Muslim) drastically changed after 1947. Now over 90 per cent of the city’s population was made up of Muslims with more than 70 per cent of these being new arrivals. A majority of the new arrivals were Urdu-speaking Muslims (Mohajirs) from various North Indian cities and towns. Since many of them had roots in urban and semi-urban areas of India and were also educated, they quickly adapted to the urbanism of Karachi and became vital clogs in the city’s emerging bureaucracy and economy.
Karachi’s rebirth as the ‘City of Lights’
Karachi’s Burns Road in 1963: It grew into a major Mohajir-dominated area. By the late 1950s, Karachi began to regenerate itself as a busy and vigorous centre of commerce and trade. It was also Pakistan’s first federal capital. It was the only port city of Pakistan and by the 1960s it had risen to become the country’s economic hub.
Karachi 1961: Brand new buildings and roads in the city began to emerge in the 1960s. The government of Field Martial Ayub Khan that came into power through a military coup in 1958 unfolded aggressive industrialisation and business-friendly policies, and Karachi became a natural city for the government to solidify its economic policies.
The II Chundrigarh Road in 1962: It was in the 1960s that this area began to develop into becoming Karachi’s main business hub. It began being called ‘Pakistan’s Wall Street.’
1963: Construction underway of the Habib Bank Plaza on Karachi’s II Chundrigarh Road. The building would rise to become the country’s tallest till the 2000s when two more buildings (also in Karachi) outgrew it.
Saddar area in 1965: Trendy shops, cinemas, bars and nightclubs began to emerge here in the 1960s and it became one of the most popular areas of Karachi. With Karachi’s regeneration as an economic hub, its traditional business and pleasure ethics too returned that consisted of uninterrupted economic activity by the day and an unabashed indulgence in leisure activities in the evenings.
Though the Ayub regime moved the capital to the newly built city of Islamabad, the economic regeneration enjoyed by Karachi during the Ayub regime’s first six years attracted a wave of inner-country migration to the city. A large number of Punjabis from the Punjab province and Pakhtuns from the former NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) began to arrive looking for work from the early 1960s onwards. But with the seat of power being moved from Karachi to Islamabad by the Ayub regime, the Mohajirs for the first time began to feel that they were being ousted from the country’s ruling elite.
It was during the Ayub regime that the term ‘City of Lights’ was first used (by the government) for Karachi as brand new buildings, residential areas and recreational spots continued to spring up. Karachi once again became a city of trade, business and all kinds of pleasures, and yet, the industrialisation that it enjoyed during the period and the continuous growth in its population began to create economic fissures that the city was largely unequipped to address. The economic disparities and the ever-growing gaps between the rich and the poor triggered by the Ayub regime’s lopsided economic policies became most visible in Karachi’s growing slums.
Many shanty towns sprang up in the outskirts of Karachi in the 1960s. Criminal mafias involved in land scams, robberies, muggings and drug peddling in such areas found willing recruits in the shape of unemployed and poverty-stricken youth residing in the slums.
Resentment against Ayub among the Mohajir middle and lower middle-classes (for supposedly side-lining the Mohajir community), and the growing economic disparities and crime in the city’s Baloch and Mohajir dominated shanty towns turned Karachi into a fertile ground for left-wing student groups, radical labour unions and progressive opposition parties who began a concentrated movement against the Ayub regime in the late 1960s (across Pakistan). Ayub resigned in 1969.
Sleaze city: Fun and fire in the time of melancholia
The PPP became the country’s new ruling party in 1972. After the end of the ‘One Unit’ (and separation of East Pakistan), Karachi became the capital of Sindh. Bhutto was eager to win the support of Karachi’s Mohajir majority. In various memos written by him to the then Chief Minister of Sindh, Bhutto expressed his desire to once again make Karachi the ‘Paris of Asia.’
Karachi’s ‘Three Swords’ area in 1974 was ‘beautified’ during the Bhutto regime but today has become a busy and congested artery connecting Clifton with the centre of the city. It was during the Bhutto government that the city’s first three-lane roads were constructed (Shara-e-Faisal), dotted with trees; the Clifton area was further beautified; foundation of the country’s first steel mill laid (in Karachi); and the construction of a large casino started (near the shores of the Clifton Beach) to accommodate the ever-growing traffic of European, American and Arab tourists.
A newspaper report on the 1972 ‘Language Riots’ in Karachi: Bhutto failed to get the desired support of the Mohajirs. This was mainly due to his government’s ‘socialist’ policies that saw the nationalisation of large industries, banks, factories, educational institutions and insurance companies. This alienated the Mohajir business community and the city’s middle-classes. Also, since Bhutto was a Sindhi and the PPP had won a large number of seats from the Sindhi-speaking areas of Sindh, he encouraged the Sindhis to come to Karachi and participate in the city’s economic and governing activities. This created tensions between the city’s Mohajir majority and the Sindhis arriving in Karachi after Bhutto’s rise to power.
The insomniac metropolis: The city that never slept
Karachi in the 1970s gave a look of a city in a limbo – caught between its optimistic and enterprising past and a decadent present. It behaved like a city on the edge of some impending disaster or on the verge of an existential collapse.
Most Karachiites would go through the motions of traveling to work or study by the day, and by night they would plunge into the various chambers of its steamy and colourful nightlife …
A badly managed economy (through haphazard nationalisation), and the reluctance of the private sector to invest in the city’s once thriving businesses strengthened the unregulated aspects of a growing informal economy that began to serve the needs of the city’s population. The flip side of this informal economic enterprise was the creeping corruption in the police and other government institutions that began to extort money from these unfettered and informal businesses.
The rupture
In 1977 the city finally imploded. After a 9-party alliance, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) – that was led by the country’s three leading religious parties – refused to accept the results of the 1977 election; Karachi became the epicentre of the anti-Bhutto protest movement.
The protests were often violent and the government called in the army. The protests were squarely centred in areas largely populated by the Mohajir middle and lower middle classes. Apart from attacking police stations, mobs of angry/unemployed Mohajir youth also attacked cinemas, bars and nightclubs; as if the government’s economic policies had been the doing of Waheed Murad films and belly dancers! The bars and clubs were closed down in April 1977.
As the PNA protests led to the toppling of the Bhutto regime (through a reactionary military coup by General Ziaul Haq in July 1977), within a year a group of young Mohajirs were already exhibiting their disillusionment with the ‘PNA revolution.’ In 1978 two students at the Karachi University – Altaf Hussain and Azim Ahmed Tariq – formed the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO). They accused the religious parties of using the Mohajirs as ladders to enter the corridors of power while doing nothing to address the economic plight of the community.
Apart from the fact that Karachi’s university and college campuses exploded with protests against Zia (and then violent clashes between progressive student groups and the pro-Zia right-wing outfits), the city largely returned to normalcy and its status of being Pakistan’s economic hub was revived.
The continuous flow of aid helped the Zia regime stabilise the country’s economy. But underneath this new normalcy something extremely troubling was already brewing.
Since most of the sophisticated weapons from the US (for the Afghan Mujahideen) were arriving at Karachi’s seaport, a whole clandestine enterprise involving overnight gunrunners and corrupt police and customs officials emerged that (after siphoning off chunks of the US consignments), began selling guns, grenades and rockets to militant students (both on the left and right sides of the divide) and to a new breed of criminal gangs.
From the northwest of Pakistan came the once little known drug called heroin, brought into Pakistan and then into Karachi by Afghan refugees who began pouring into the country soon after the beginning of the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency in Afghanistan…
Hell on Earth?
When the MQM was regenerating itself during the Musharraf regime, it did not completely dismantle its problematic wings – despite the fact that the party’s appeal began to cut across all ethnic groups in Karachi during Kamal’s mayorship.
However, by 2008, the growth in the city’s Pakhtun population managed to give the Pakhtun nationalist party, the ANP, a greater sense of power in Karachi. To ward off the perceived threat from MQM and the growing tussle between the city’s Mohajir and Pakhtun communities over Karachi’s economic resources, ANP too decided to compete with the MQM at its own game.
The PPP, the third major political power in the city already had violent elements in its midst and even though all three parties were in a coalition government, they often fought for political and economic control of Karachi. Many members of the parties’ wings also began getting involved in major crimes, so much so that it became tough for even their party bosses to rein them in.
The PPP tried to dismantle its wing but by then the wing had already gotten embroiled in the vicious ‘gang wars’ in Lyari. The gangs got involved in drug and gun running, kidnappings, theft, muggings and ‘target killing.’ They often fought one another and the police.
ANP’s wing was wiped out along with the party in the areas where they enjoyed influence. This was not done by MQM or PPP, but by various groups of extremist and sectarian outfits that had begun to establish themselves in Karachi from 2009 onwards. They right away got involved in the many illegal activities and crimes that witnessed a dramatic increase, making Karachi one of the most crime-infested city in South Asia.
Citizens protesting VIP Culture in Clifton, Karachi (Credit: Athar Khan)
KARACHI, Sept 30: “VIP culture is a disease that has been inflicted upon us,” screamed an elderly man. “Don’t use such polite words for these vultures,” he told a young man, Dr Jahanzeb Effendi, who had been explaining why a group of around 80 young professionals and old-timers had taken to the streets to raise their voice against the status quo.
The protesters, armed with placards and banners, all screaming their resentment of the VIP culture, stood on the pavement of the landmark, Teen Talwar at around 5pm on Monday. They were ordinary citizens, giving voice to the millions who wish to fight the ‘Guns and Goons’ cult that has taken the country by storm. Each time a VIP motorcade passed the roundabout, the protesters shouted: “Shame, Shame”; rants that were met with cheeky, nonchalant grins from the armed escorts of the very people they were protesting against.
“We are sick and tired of bowing down in front of these vermin,” said Zafar Alam. “They will have to listen to us. Ehsaas,” he said, placing much emphasis on the last word. “Hundreds of people are killed in the city each day and these so-called elected representatives of the same victims roam around in their flashy cars with their 50-vehicle escorts.”
Sharmeen Usmani, the wife of a sitting Supreme Court judge, spoke from experience. She claimed she declined security escorts whenever she travelled. “I hate these guards screaming at people to move away from my vehicle whenever we are driving somewhere,” she said.
For Usmani, VIP culture had transcended into every aspect of Pakistani society. “It has so deeply ingrained into our psyche that we have come to accept it as part of our daily lives.” Only in Pakistan will you see an ambulance waiting for a VIP motorcade to pass, chipped her friend. Speaking from her knowledge of judicial affairs, Usmani lamented that laws were modified and altered to perpetuate the status quo. “These modified verdicts then set a precedent which are used later to benefit the VIPs again and again. What future are we leaving for our children?” she cried.
A retired naval officer, who identified himself as Captain Farooq, was also part of the protest. The elderly gentleman chose to speak about the ideological stance of the protest. “Remember: Evil prevails not because of the bad people but because of the silence of good people,” he said to the nods and murmurs of his compatriots.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the protest was the innovative taglines inscribed on the placards and banners. It was obvious these posters had been given much thought. For example, the acronym, VIP, now stood for various connotations, such as as ‘Vultures in Pakistan’, ‘Vermin in Pakistan’ or ‘Very Incompetent People’.
These protesters came out of their comfort zones to demand an end to the status quo. They were ordinary citizens; their agenda is to end the preferential treatment for anyone with a little money or clout. “We will not be slaves to the status quo anymore,” resolved one protester, Mahrookh, who described herself as the ‘mahrookh of Karachi-gone’. “We want the law to be equal for all citizens, irrespective of wealth or status.”
Clifton SHO Ghazala, who had by this time arrived at the scene of the protest, was all smiles for the protesters. She refused to comment, saying if she spoke her mind, her superiors would be displeased with her. The SHO did say, however, that in an ideal world, everyone would be equal before the law.
Shamma, one of the protesters, realised it would be a long and arduous journey before the mindset changed, but said it did have to start somewhere. “This is a start. One can only hope it goes on to achieve something,” she said, wistfully eyeing the traffic warden as he stopped the oncoming traffic for a motorcade to pass through.
The warden, Talat Mehmood, personified everything the protesters spoke against. “It is these government officials that pay us. It is our duty to serve them; to make way for them,” he said proudly.
On the hour, the protesters carefully folded their placards and made their way to their waiting cars. Thus ended the peaceful demonstration, but not before they pledged to return the next week, with even more people, to continue their struggle for the rights of the common citizen.
