Elections 2004: Impact on Pakistani
Americans
By S. Asif Alam
President
Association of Pakistani Professionals
New York
The change of face in the White House which most
of the Pakistani-Americans and Muslims, and perhaps
people the world over, were so eagerly hoping
for has not taken place.
Various Pakistani organizations have been brainstorming
on the possible outcome and were worried that
voters from the “Bible Belt” will
not be able to connect to Senator John Kerry’s
elevated approach: United Nations, internationalism
with Europe, direct talks with North Korea, and
timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But the final
results have revealed something deeper and more
chilling.
As the New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman,
has commented, the election was not about policies;
it rather ended up becoming one about the kind
of America both sides stood for. And John Kerry
and Democrats have proved them selves far too
liberal for the anti-abortion America that was
now scared of the specter of liberal approaches
towards terrorism, homosexual marriages, and stem
cell research Internationally, Bush’s victory
might make it difficult to court European support
for managing the mess in Iraq; this was pretty
obvious from the news analysis in the European
papers. Also worrying is the possible attitude
this new Bush administration will take towards
Iran and its implications for Pakistan and the
larger Islamic world.
But they say that charity begins at home; it is
the United States that demands our most immediate
attention. Since 9/11, the Pakistani community
has suffered in all respects, from its cultural
image to civil rights to jobs to educational opportunities.
For instance, the number of Pakistani students
arriving for higher education, the number of doctors
finding residences and graduates finding jobs
in banking, insurance and information technology,
have all radical ly gone down.
If this trend continues, it will have ominous
implications for the future standing and influence
of the Pakistani community. On a broader level
Pakistanis share a predicament across the board
with most immigrants, especially Muslims. As I
rode my train for work the day after the elections,
I could hear people mumbling about “Ashcroftcracy”
and a week later, with the announcement of Alberto
Gonzales as the new Attorney General, civil rights
groups remain pessimistic. According to the American
Civil Liberties Union, Gonzales drew criticism
after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks when
he wrote a memo saying Bush had the prerogative
to waive anti-torture laws and international treaties
providing protections to prisoners of war. Human
rights groups later said that position helped
lead to the types of abuses uncovered in the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.
America has been changing for quite sometime and
the process of inward-looking change has only
accelerated after the tragedies of 9/11. It is
becoming clear that the future of immigrants will
be radically different from that of the earlier
generations when the dream was to reach the land
of the free. This new situation has thrown up
new challenges; it will become ever more important
for the Pakistani community to immerse itself
deeper into the mainstream and to identify with
the concerns of the mainstream liberals, who offer
the best hope of leadership for the immigrant
communities.
It may also be the time to reflect on the clear
schism that appeared between the interests and
perceptions of the Pakistani community in the
US and the government in Islamabad. Whereas Islamabad,
for understandable reasons, prayed for a Bush
victory, the Pakistani diaspora, for equally potent
reasons, looked for a Kerry win. Ironically, in
the last four years, whereas Islamabad has been
eager to court the Pakistani Americans for its
own reasons, it has exercised little influence
i n Washington on issues that immediately concern
or even threaten the interests of the Pakistani
diaspora. This potential schism may become even
more important in future and therefore demands
our attention.
The pain and fear of an uncertain future that
lies ahead for the immigrant community in the
United States is indeed alarming, but this challenge
demands that we embed ourselves deeper into mainstream
United States. The two critically important elements
are politics and the media. Presidential elections
will take place after four years but in this intervening
period America will witness scores of other elections
and contests at different levels: state and county,
district and Supreme Courts, school boards and
so on. And it becomes important for the Pakistani
community to take interest and raise its voice
everywhere.
The run up to the election also gave an opportunity
to the Pakistani community to learn more about
the dynamics of the whole process. AOPP and i
ts various allied organizations and supporters
took a leading role in opening channels of communication
with political formations and the media. We as
a community were able to get an interview with
Senator Kerry, helped the electronic and print
media with its interviews and participated in
an incessant dialogue at the state and county
level and with various grassroot organizations.
This time period has also shown the formation
of the Pakistan Caucus in the US Congress, which
now has 55 members. What we need is to bring around
some of the ‘movers and shakers’ into
this formation; and once again community leadership
will play an important role.
However there is no room for complacency; our
interaction with the US media remains far from
adequate. This is truly a dangerous situation.
We need to engage the correspondents, op-ed writers
and editors of newspapers and producers of television
programs in a civil but assertive manner, so that
they know that we are here, we watch, we monitor
and we are sensitive to what they say and are
prepared to shout when misrepresented.
This is an
area in which AOPP has achieved success in the
last two years as a watchdog for the Pakistani
Americans, and the general feeling we have is
that most often the adverse or malicious comments
are as much a product of ignorance as of a deliberate
malice. It remains upon us as American Pakistanis
to raise our distinct voices to let them know
that we are here and we have graduated from the
state of individuals to that of a community. But
talking politics all the time will not do. We
clearly need to move in other areas; if we have
to change our image then we need to brand ourselves
as a different community by creating platforms
where we can display our arts, music and literature
and where we can bring forward our community leaders
and professionals who have achieved prominence
in different walks of life.
It remains our responsibility to educate the people
in the United States about Pakistan and Pakistanis,
and time demands from us to be creative so that
we can leverage our relationship with other South
Asian diasporas, the Muslim community and the
liberals in the mainstream.
[Syed Asif Alam is the President of Association
of Pakistani Professionals (AOPP) and can be reached
at asifalam@aopp.org]
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