What Is More Deadly: Denials or Defeatism - 2
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“There are three types of people in this world-the ‘wills,’ the won’ts, and the ‘can’ts’. The first accomplish everything, the second oppose everything, the third fail in everything.” Anonymous
Justice: A cow, a calf and ten kilo walnuts: One Gul Zaman, a poor person in Afghanistan, had his brother killed over a land dispute. He went everywhere in search of justice, but could find no succor. The murderers marched in front of him without any fear or inhibition. Finally, in the court the honest judge frankly asked Gul, “What have you got to offer?” He said, “I have nothing to offer. They took away my land and killed my brother.” Then the judge turned to the murderer and repeated the question. His reply was, “I can offer one cow along with a calf and ten kilo walnuts”
The judge was satisfied and he decided the case in his favor. The murderer walked away jeering at the aggrieved Gul Zaman. Then Gul Zaman met a man whose four relatives had been killed by some influential people and he had gone to the Taliban for justice. Gul Zaman also went to the Taliban Center. They called the murderer and decided as per the “Qur'an and Sharia” ordering the murderer to hand over the land he had grabbed, and never even think of taking it back. In case he did, he would qualify himself to bear the full brunt of the Taliban wrath.
The incident does not romanticize the Taliban, nor does it vindicate them of their barbarism. It clearly tells what is wrong in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. It is not the Taliban who are winning; it is the system of Justice that is losing, says BBC in its Urdu bulletin. The Karzai government in its twelve-year rule could not establish a semblance of peace and justice. The same is true for Pakistan.
The whole focus now in the country is not on the improvement of governance, on the establishment of a rule of law and justice, on bridling the greedy and nasty rich or those in power, it is conveniently diverted to the drone attacks. Drone attacks are really bad, but perhaps for different reasons. The current movement against them, and through them against America, is like Pope Gregory IX’s edict against the cats. A few months ago before elections, Mr Imran Khan was heard stating loud and clear, “I am willing to negotiate, if asked, with the Taliban”. Why does he not do so when his party rules in Pukhtunkhwa and enjoys a respectable position in the national assembly? He knows what he is talking about. Drones are not the issue; drones are made the issue. Let us suppose that from tomorrow, drone attacks cease to take place. Will that usher in a new dawn in Pakistan? I can bet my life on it with a big NO. The real drama is to begin from next year.
It is true that drones violate local state’s sovereignty. They may also be tactically useful but they are strategically harmful, and it requires a coherent, comprehensive and well-thought out strategy to weed out terrorism. The real bad thing about drones is that like the stringer missiles supplied in the Afghan War against Russia, drones have a tendency to take a life of their own, meaning their use would become a routine matter. Other nations are already busy in developing them, and in the near future most will be using them over minor matters against other nations. As warns Andrey Kurth Cronin in his article in the Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013 issue, “Drone campaign has morphed into remote control repression, the direct affliction of brute force by a state… it wiped out terrorist groups in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Tsarist Russia, but it also eroded their governments too”. The same is happening in Pakistan.
Drone strikes have become a rallying cry in the hands of clueless politicians who are engaged in the game of point scoring against each other, giving life to the terrorists. Harboring the terrorists and rallying against drone strikes are two contradictory things. Since Pakistan did not effectively deal with the issue of terrorism, and often remained ambivalent, un-decisive, double-minded, often in the denial mode, attempting to butter the bread on both sides, it “got hoisted by the petard it had engineered”. Muslim League (n), Imran Khan’s TPI, Maulana Fazlalur Rahman’s JUI (f) and Jamait I Islami, all are unanimous against the drone strikes, but all are engaged in vying against each other even on this issue.
The worst is the ruling PML-N. Three of its important ministers while sitting in the cabinet say one thing inside the meeting, and an entirely opposite thing when outside in the public. Imran Khan’s CM in Pukhtunkhwa is not participating in the NATO supply campaign, while his party is actively engaged in this campaign. Could there be something more hypocritical than that? When the looting and shooting starts as a result of his stopping the supply of containers, then he cries, “It is a federal responsibility to provide protection to them.” When provinces, and within them the politicians begin to run the foreign affairs of the country, and the PM meditating and contemplating like Gnu (wildebeest) right in the thick of the danger, the conclusion becomes as predictable as two and two make four.
THE WILDEBEEST THINKING: Danny Cox in his interesting book, “There are no limits”, says, “To reach your goals, you have to avoid what I call 'wildebeest thinking.' " When I read the page on this kind of thinking, I could not desist from thinking of the country I left behind, and the politicians currently holding its charge.
Wildebeest is a cow like hooved animal. It lives in the east African jungles, weighs 120-270 pounds. It has strong legs and sharp horns and thick neck hair. It can run fairly fast and is strong and big enough to defend itself. So what is wrong with this migratory animal?
Wildebeests just never run for very long. That’s not because they have just realized something important and want to stop and think about. Certainly not. The lion or the cheetah is in hot pursuit of them. It is because they are so dumb that they forget why in the first instance they began to run. When they see a predator, they realize that they are supposed to run, and they start moving in the opposite direction. But soon they lose sight of what inspired them to run, sometimes at the most inopportune movements. Sometimes they will walk right up to the predator, as though they weren’t really sure whether it is the same animal that frightened them a few minutes ago. They almost appear to be saying, “Hey, Mr. Lion, are you hungry? Care for some lunch?”
Danny Cox further says that there are a lot of people whose regular behavior reminds one of this animal. They get a great idea, they commit themselves to a goal, and they run with that goal for a day or two, and after that “they stop dead in their tracks”. How about our politicians in Pakistan?
Wildebeest thinking is that one does not know whether one is moving closer to or further away from a goal, and certainly such a person or leader does not seem to be very good at embracing goals that inspire them. “Wildebeest don’t build tomorrows. They live in a 'permanent yesterday,' " a world ruled by unproductive habits, inertia, and routine because it is comforting, and it is a safe way for them.
The most dangerous thing in a leader having wildebeest thinking is that he begins to “assume that the predator is his competitor or a rival. If a person stops moving toward constructive goals long enough to start thinking about compromising his own ethical principles, he is in trouble,” says Cox.
Peace is a wonderful blessing, and absence of war is not peace. According to Deepak Chopra, “Peace is not something to be found out there but within us ... There is no way to peace, peace is the way, otherwise the world goes to pieces.” in his book, “Peace is the way” . He says beautiful things about peace, but most of them appear too Platonic. Terrorists have their own ideology of hatred, he says. It is based on its own belief system. The tenets of that belief system strike peaceful people as unbelievably cruel.
Terrorists believe, murder is a viable political tool. Second, terror is the only means to wake up the conscience of the world to massive injustice. Third, targeting civilians is crucial, because their deaths create maximum terror. Fourth, terror is the only thing governments will listen to, and lastly, in the chaos created by terror, oppressed people can seize power and force an end to their suffering.
“Terrorism operates outside of morality; it has no law or rules. It disobeys every instinct of tolerance and uses intellect to justify something that cannot be justified. They violate the rules that hold civil society together, says Chopra on page 178. He also poses some very pertinent questions. “On physical grounds, terrorism would appear to be so strong that opposing it with equal violence, intolerance, and unforgiving resolve is the only sane choice. Can love stop a suicide bomber? Can love prevent a beheading? If the answer is no, then love cannot be the answer to a jihadist determined to die while taking as many civilian casualties along as possible.”
Chopra underpins the problem when he says the real enemy of peace is not evil but chaos. In a state of chaos such as terrorism wants to create, society breaks down. Chaos is not the same as evil. It affects people in ways that you can’t predict. (One hour’s chaos and anarchy is more dangerous than sixty years of despotism). When Baghdad fell and Saddam Hussain’s army disappeared overnight, the Iraqi populace looted everything in sight, not only the palaces and headquarters of the Baath party but every school and university. Mental patients were thrown out of their beds so that the beds could be stolen, alone with all the medicines and supplies. In the 1996 racial riots in Los Angeles black communities were looted and burned by their own residents. Chaos is just irrational. It happened in the same way when Russia disintegrated. Ruthless oligarchs made billions from mining operations and siphoned their money out of the country into Swiss bank accounts. At the local level ordinary people stopped paying their taxes.
Is Pakistan passing through a different kind of phase? Its politicians and leaders are in fact its grave diggers. Evil people and miscreants never see themselves as evil, they style themselves as reformers, as revolutionaries, as saviors. On the assassination of Ms. Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, chaos and anarchy prevailed for a day or two, and almost a good portion of the country got destroyed or plundered away. Just yesterday, twelve people got killed in Karachi, did anyone take notice of that?
So it is hard to endorse what Deepak Chopra so beautifully says, “By declaring war on drugs, crime, cancer and poverty we managed to increase their presence in our lives. A war on terror is having an identical effect.” What he is forgetting is that when corruption, greed and absence of justice and ideologies enter into such a campaign, then they deliver the kind of results he is talking about. Rule of law and justice do not eliminate the presence of punishment for the culprits.
The new player to join the old stalwarts of dirty politics in Pakistan has been Imran Khan. So far, his performance and his vision and foresight relating to the future of Pakistan indicate that he has not been a good addition to the rotten lot. His indiscreet acts are earning Pakistan the wrath of 52 NATO countries, plus isolation and the spread of chaos. He has added something that was never there. A political party nullifying the writ of the federation. Be it the case of Lal Masjid, or the Malakand insurgency, or the Swat operation in 2009, all had one thing in common. It all started with a small step of “Dharna”, an obstruction to the civil conduct of business. What follows for certain is the snow-ball effect.
