Politblogo

A death triangle

I've been in Canada with my family for approximately a week, and today I woke up to overhearing my parents talking about the death of Benazir Bhutto, which was enough to get me out of bed and wide awake.  It is next to impossible, these days, to tell who in Pakistan is responsible for what, although that's nothing new.

I was in Pakistan in the general vicinity of a year ago.  There was political turmoil then as now, though nothing so dramatic as the assassination of a major leader, but for most people life goes on.  Pakistan is no Iraq, and people know how to live even with a certain amount of background political chaos.

I have been in Pakistan during an assassination however, depending on how conspiracy-minded you are, which in the case of the average Pakistani, is very. I was with my mother visiting my grandfather, and we were in the Pakistani International Airlines planetarium watching whatever sort of educational show that Karachi planetarium had on---I can't remember now.  Ten minutes in, the show abruptly cut out, and the lights came on.  The planetarium manager walked in to tell us the show had been cancelled, because Gen. Zia ul-Huq, the head honcho of the previous dictatorial regime---who was in some ways far worse for Pakistan than Musharraf has been---had died in a plane crash.  Thereafter proceeded days of televised prayer and mourning.  Never had there been so many empty and false declarations of public grief.

His predecessor: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he had executed. His successor: Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter.

As a leader, General Zia ul-Huq was missed by few, regardless of whether or not his death was an accident.  I will not say that Bhutto père was a necessarily a great leader---there are lots of reasons to think that he was not, including that fact that some of his power stemmed from the lack of needed land reform in Pakistan---but he was missed, if only that his death heralded yet another discontinuity in the Pakistani republic.  Bhutto fille died today; though some people say that it is not auspicious or polite to talk ill of the very recently deceased, I will say that she was not good for the country either, and if you believe the rumours---which is up to you in Pakistan---neither was she particularly shy of extrajudicial violence herself.

Neither is Musharraf, of course, and in her defense, she would have had a veneer of legitimacy that he can never have.  It's not clear whether he had a hand in her death, though at the moment, I think it is unlikely, breaking the symmetry with their predecessors.  And he may yet share her fate, turning this triangle into a square.

But now pair of ghosts that has haunted Pakistani politics for decades has become a trio, father and father's killer and daughter.  And what this means for ordinary life in Pakistan in the near future: probably not all that much. Life has gone on and will go on for what is a chaotic and poor society, but also a consumer society quite recognizable at some level to Westerners.

Pakistan as instrument

I have been following firedoglake's coverage of the Libby trial, and sometimes they have articles on the war in general.  One comment on one of these articles has inspired me to discuss something I've noticed from time to time about American liberals and their solution to the problems they feel have been posed by the War on Terror, whose premises they frequently accept, albeit with a more coolly managerial and perhaps more human perspective than the conveniently panicked American right.

We resume our fight with those who wish us harm, but now that our fearless leader and W too have no credibility left, doing battle in Pakistan without toppling that regime may be impossible.

I had a similar feeling not long ago when I saw this user diary post on dKos which discussed Pakistan as a "strategic conundrum".  I felt the need to contribute to that thread, actually, which is strange because it wasn't a particularly well-read diary entry as dKos threads tend to go, it seems.

What is this feeling?  It is the feeling that the same attitude it taken towards Pakistan as is taken towards Iraq, perhaps worse, in fact, except in this case it is the American liberal grassroots and/or establishment that holds it: Pakistan as an instrument to be valued in terms of its utility to US foreign policy goals.  Formenting external revolution and proposing regime overthrow and national breakup are casually bandied about as though foreigners have the right to make that decision.  But Pakistan is a complex industrial society, and while its present political arrangement is deeply problematic, that form of external destabilization would be just as catastrophic as anything one might see in Iraq---perhaps worse.

It's true: I cannot but take this personally, as I have been there and know its nefarious elite class and its delicate political balance, as well as the curious exuberance of the Karachi megalometropolis and its prosperity and poverty.

But I cannot also help wonder how much it is that Pakistan suffers from the reverse effect of the fetishization of South Asian culture and religion that often happens in the West, and---perhaps I am unfairly stereotyping---among Western liberals who have fond memories of their younger days and their dabblements in Eastern spirituality.  Pakistan is cast in this drama as wise, cheerful India's grim, angry sister, even though many of the pathologies of both countries are the same pathologies.  Aspects of Western culture have seen India and Indian life as a fun, entertaining culture that makes a too-easy contrast with the threatening Other of Islam in South Asia.  In so far as Islamic spirituality reaches the west in this manner, it is a bland version of Sufism that serves as a second-order foil on the Muslim orthopraxy common to the vast majority of Muslim lifestyles and political perspectives.

(And the Indian government and media shows no qualms about exploiting this.  Here's a direct link to the Goodness Gracious Me episode segment that AradhanaD linked to---the second skit is indicative of the dynamic.)

So I fear this cultural dynamic as well as frustration with the complexity of the situation may impel otherwise well-intentioned people to support precipitous actions regarding Pakistan and its unity and stability. 

Animals and death

Nope, this is not a philosophical post.  This is instead a post wherein I throw a bone to all of the people who demanded that I post my travel photos.  Here's a small sample, then.  The theme is animals, either about to die or already dead or having profited from death.  Below the fold, then:

Airlines and airports - a review

(Yes, yes, I'll eventually get you your pictures.  Geez.  Can't you give a guy some time to even organize his hundreds of photos?)

So, as you can imagine, going to specific locations in South Asia from the You Knighted States can get pretty complicated indeed!  One generally doesn't have direct flights at that distance even between major locations, and even a convenient indirect route can be expensive.  I travelled between India and Pakistan as well, and while the two countries are technically next to each other, in travel terms, and Pakistanis watch a whole lotta Indian soap operas, they may as well be on different continents.

Consequently, I've had an opportunity to sample several combinations of airlines and airports in the "Old" World (hah!), and I have even been able to build up a thorough impression of some of them.  And I will briefly share with you some insights.

• I took United Airlines to Munich on one leg of my voyage.  I fly United domestically quite often, and even once in first/business class, and, as expected, international economy (I'm not made of money!) was a little bit closer to domestic business class than to domestic economy.  The flight was uneventful, the entertainment selections adequate.  However, I had bulkhead seats.  Now, if I were so worried about legroom, I'd have been happy about this.  But I am not, shall we say, narrowly built.  Bulkhead seats,  because they are at the front, have the entertainment system and tray table built into the armrests of the seats, meaning that precious inches of, er, spread are lost.  The food is boring neutral-Americanish food, but it was acceptable.
• Munich airport itself was a relatively acceptable experience.  American arrivals are in one terminal, and international departures are in another.  The terminals are not connected by a bridge, bus, or train system, and consequently it is not possible to make the sort of connection that we were making without immigrating to Germany on tourist visa status, which is trivial for Canadians to get right there at the passport control gates (this is the case for most of Europe).  The passport control guard was friendly and helpful, as were most of the airline staff, and stereotypically German Lufthansa employees. 
• We had a few hours in Munich, and we window shopped at the exterior mall attached to the other terminal before entering.  We were curious about the grocery store there and explored it and confirmed that everything does cost twice as much in Germany.  We had to pass passport control again to exit Germany into the other international terminal---exit control is unfamiliar to most North Americans but seems to be the norm in the rest of the world.  Munich is a new and underutilized airport, and parts of this other terminal were built but completely abandoned.  Food choices were few beyond the security checkpoint (competent, helpful staff!), and we should have eaten in the mall food court outside.  The airport is connected to Munich via Munich's metro, and I regret not spending a couple of hours in the city, but the rest of our group thought it was a bad idea for their ersatz travel arranger to run off without them (and they were too tired to explore on their own).
• Completely opposite to the Munich experience was the Frankfurt experience on another leg of our complicated journey.  Frankfurt is a massively overused, undercapacity airport that is cold and dirty and has little to recommend itself.  Whose big idea was it to let M. C. Escher design an airport?  Let's just say that while I've had bad airport experiences, I have never felt so maltreated by airline employees as there.  It was a very, very negative experience.
• Lufthansa sucks.  Compared to the other airlines we took, Lufthansa's seats were very narrow, as though Germans were little people or something.  Leg room was OK, but even business class looked cramped.  The food was boring, and they didn't have individual entertainment systems like every other modern airline has even in economy class.  We all had to watch The Devil Wears Prada.  At least the flight attendants were polite.  I almost rather they had not been, so that I would have been prepared for the Frankfurt experience.  I won't fly Lufthansa again unless it's seriously cheaper, which it ought to be.
• I had several flights on Emirates.  The experience is totally different from Lufthansa.  Seats were for the most part wide and comfortable.  The individual entertainment system was very comprehensive with more selection than you could really want.  Some of the planes allow you to play videogames with other seats.  The food was good and plentiful, and the service was friendly and prompt.  I'd definitely fly them again.  Emirates is supposed to be expensive, but I did a great deal of research on this trip, and it was the cheapest option to get to Karachi at that time.
• Dubai airport is good, but it's still overrated.  People who travel more frequently than we were telling us how wonderful the airport was, but it didn't even have the same variety of restaurants that some of the major North American airports do...which is not saying much, of course.  If we wanted to check into an internal hotel, than it might have been wonderful.  The duty free stores were OK but I don't understand the fuss.   Nevertheless, I have few complaints about Dubai airport.   The food and services were very reasonably priced.  The best thing about it was the free and ubiquitous wireless Internet access; in most airports, they charge you $10 for a little bit of access, which is extremely annoying.  Not so in Dubai.  Lastly, you aren't allowed into the gate lounges until they're ready to board you, basically, and there isn't enough seating outside the gate lounges.  They obviously expect you to shop.
• The airport in Karachi ran surprisingly well for something run in Pakistan.  I mean, it was, for the most part, a normal large airport.  People still didn't follow the rules (Pakistanis don't believe in rules), but at least things worked.
• The airport in Chennai was surprisingly dilapidated for a major city in India.  Bathrooms are disgusting.  Efficient and orderly, at least in our experience, but oddly dilapidated.
• Finally, United Airlines was OK.  For the most part.  Well, on our way back we had a flight attendant with a mental toothache, so to speak.  Eventually, she divulged the reason for her mental toothache, and I sympathize.  Capitalism sux.  But the airline was OK.  Not spectacular, not bad.  Individual entertainment, but not the selection or quality of Emirates.  Food was whatever the local caterers brought.  Do not trust them when they say that it is "turkey, not ham."  It is probably ham.

That last, you may wonder why I didn't order the halal meal.  Well, it goes like this: for stuff I don't cook myself, I'm not all that strict about halalitude.  A lot of North American Muslims are like that.  If I ordered the halal meal, I'd have been condemned to eating beans and rice on all the non-Emirates flights (Emirates is 100% halal, they emphasize it in their literature, and I believe them).  Usually, the airlines have a meal that isn't pork.  We had one exception which my pork radar was easily able to detect.

Every situation's a different situation, sing it!

It appears that old blogbuddy Mustafa Hirji at Points of Information trackbacked to an old post of mine (well, not so old) in order to criticize my declarations of futility in this Afghan mission.  I missed it since I so rarely get trackbacks---they have not caught on as a replacement for comments by any stretch, thankfully. 

Anyway, his...interesting critique:

About a decade ago, there was this place called Rwanda where the Hutus and the Tutsis each hated the other and were just waiting for the chance to kill the other side. And when one side started organizing to do exactly this, we in the West decided that we should leave those people to their own devices since it would be difficult to stop them. Most people acknowledge that this course of action was morally bankrupt, and the political "left" has been especially critical of our moral failure over Rwanda—and rightly so.

Mandos and the political "left" now think that we should just leave millions of Afghan civilians to their own devices in the face of some violent and oppressive, and potentially genocidal, warlords, do they want to defend the West's record in Rwanda?

I'm afraid that I'm just going to be a big ol' meanie and point out the obvious: Afghanistan is not Rwanda.  I have never taken a position on Rwanda, as far as I can remember, and hence have no desire to defend or critique any external actor in that conflict and genocide.  The only thing I'll say is that almost every situation in Africa these days seems to have been massively exacerbated by some form of foreign intervention at some point in time.  I'm not a component of some inchoate mental collective called the "political 'left'" (what are his scare quotes for?) and do not take responsiblity for this object's views, whatever they are.

The analogy is silly, anyway.  The internal conflict in Afghanistan is and has always been about governmental legitimacy foremost.  And consequently when Mustafa says,

But I take issue with the claim that our presence necessarily can only make things worse. First, he's provided no real support for this claim at all—yes, we are unsuccessful there right now, but that doesn't mean we are making it worse, and certainly not that we will necessarily make it worse. But his argument that because the Pashtun, the Uzbecks, the Tajicks, et al. each mutually hate the rest, we should just leave them to their own devices is what really confuses me . . .

I thought I gave the evidence, but I'll give it in a nutshellier nutshell: that we are there to favour one group over the other, from an Afghanistan-internal perspective, and that favour creates a political imbalance that the disfavoured side---the majority---has apparently elected to resolve by force.  We cannot favour the majority, because we have declared ourselves opposed to the geopolitical---among other things---perspective that has taken root among some significant elements of the majority.   (The absurd "Safe Haven" thesis held by some---that eliminating Save Havens For Terrorists is a real or attainable or meaningful goal.  ROTFL.)

I won't---and do not need to---refer to any kind of essential hatred between groups, merely material and political interests and perspectives.  I do not know why Mustafa does.  I didn't do so in my original post---I said that the Pashtun peoples view with hostility an authority that has chosen to define itself against them in history.  To me these sorts of distinctions are important.

And this is but one double-bind with which any do-gooders-by-force in Afghanistan must contend.

Taking Afghanistan out of context

One of the things you hear from supporters of involvement in the Afghanistan imbrioglio is how much the country's people NEED Canada.  "Do you want the women to be re-enburqulated?  The whosits to be oppressed!  For shame!" they cry to those of us who suggest that maybe our involvement is counterproductive. 

From the Bread and Roses discussion board, someone posts a link to Eric Margolis' column on Common Dreams, originally published in the Toronto Sun.  Now, my American readers should know that the Toronto Sun belongs to a chain of virulently right-wing---and mostly trashy with their Sushine Girls near the front---tabloids that exists from coast to coast, including francophone Québec.  Canada is united in its trashy culture, you see; it's the better parts that don't get along so well.

Nevertheless, they published the works of Margolis, a vitamin-supplement magnate who is also right wing on economic and social matters; but he usually makes wonderful sense on foreign policy issues pertaining to the Muslim world, since he's actually been there.

Anyway, the crucial component of his article for me is here:

U.S., British and Canadian politicians say they are surprised by intensifying Taliban resistance. They have only their own ignorance to blame.

Attacking Pashtuns, renowned for xenophobia, warlike spirits, and love of independence, is a fool’s mission. Pashtuns are Afghanistan’s ethnic majority; long-term national stability is impossible without their co-operation.

What the West calls “Taliban” is actually a growing coalition of veteran Taliban fighters led by Mullah Dadullah, other clans of Pashtun tribal warriors, and nationalist resistance forces under Jalalladin Hakkani and former prime minister Gulbadin Hekmatyar. Many are former mujahadeen once hailed as “freedom fighters” by the West, and branded “terrorists” by the Soviets.

The people who scold those of us who desire disengagement from this futile war have, at best, an extremely shallow view of the situation and its history.  You cannot Save The Womenz if you do not have cooperation of The People there.  And you do not.  The Pashtun peoples---who extend well beyond the artificial (but perhaps necessary) border with Pakistan---cannot abide a government in Kabul dominated by people whom they view with mutual hostility.  (Pakistan cannot either.)  The Pashtuns cannot abide a government that makes holidays in honour of people they hate.  You may want to Save The Womenz and Feed The Childrenz and Stop The Drugs, but you cannot.  The priorities will be dictated, as they usually are, locally, and you can only make it worse.

The delicate gears of the machine

In the comments to my previous post, skdadl mentions an article by Luciana Bohne on the situation in Baluchistan (a Pakistani province) and its connection to US designs on Iran.  I googled it and found it.  Essentially, the accusation as I read it is that the US is attempting to destabilize parts of Pakistan to force Pakistan to arrange it's military strategy in a manner convenient for a US invasion of Iran. 

Of particular note is this:

An article by the Carnegie Endowment entertains the same thought, albeit to deny it: "The Baluch and the Pakistani think that Washington would like to use Baluchistan as a rear-guard base for an attack on Iran, and Iran is suspected of supporting Baluch [independence] activists in order to counter such a Pakistani-US plot. . . . Some Pakistanis perceive the US using its Greater Middle East initiative to dismantle the major Muslim states and redefine the borders of the region. Some Baluch nationalists charge the US with conspiring with the Pakistani government to put an end to Baluch claims. So far nobody has been able to prove any of these accusations."

This must be understood in light of the original state ideology of Pakistan and its founders.  The founders built their ideology around the experience of the Muslim intellectual classes in the subcontinent that had recently emerged from the long period in which the Muslim elite refused to participate in the institutions and education of the Kuffar who now ruled them.

The basic idea is thus: in effect, given the collapse of the large Muslim empires and the longstanding fact, in particular, of British domination of South Asia, the Muslim principalities were weak and ethnically divided and would emerge as such as the British empire was dismantled.  The Indian independence movement was blind to the specific history and needs of the Muslim population, and its success, laudable as it were, would threaten an entire cultural and historical perspective that had at least managed to survive the British.  At the same time, continuing British domination as well as educational and administrative backwardness were an unacceptable situation.

The answer: Pakistan, the unity of the Muslim-majority principalities of India.  It was to be founded as a secular republic under principles that are, incidentally, uncomfortably similar to aspects of Zionism---a Western-style nation-state whose purpose is to preserve the history and primacy of South Asian Muslim culture in a socially, economically, and technologically modernizing framework. 

And after its founding, for a surprising length of time that most Westerners do not realize, things kinda sorta looked up for this particular nation-state, at least the urban part of what was then West Pakistan, the part that I am most familiar with.

Then the Cold War intervened, General Zia got into power, and the rest is history...

So what does this have to do with Bohne's report?  Well.  As she says, "Some Pakistanis perceive the US using its Greater Middle East initiative to dismantle the major Muslim states and redefine the borders of the region."  This is intensely significant to the region.  Because one of the most important implications of the Pakistani founding ideology, to some extent still held by the Pakistani ruling classes, is the historical necessity of pan-Islamic secular unity, political unity that is to supercede the ephemeral claims of tribe and culture.  Thus, a threat to Pakistan's territorial integrity, according to this ideology, is an attack on this very idea.

So if the US is attempting to destabilize a part of Pakistan, it's next to impossible for the Pakistani government to avoid acting.  Not only is the ideology at stake, but the practical reality is that the dismantlement of any part of Pakistan is destabilizing for the whole region.  And it's impossible to give willingly into local autonomy demands, no matter how merited, because to do so, would be to concede the ideological point of Pakistan's fundamental divisibility to India, and that is the real elephant in the room.  Bangladesh was one thing: but the ideology cannot accomodate India's claim to Kashmir, not to mention the vital strategic ramifications. 

And that means that Pakistan can't afford multiple hostile fronts---in particular, a stable Northern Alliance government in Afghanistan.  Not only will the Pathans in Pakistan reject that as an oppression of their Afghan brethren, but the Pakistani ruling class cannot abide that very destabilizing threat as long as it has the Kashmir issue to deal with.  An Indian-friendly government in Afghanistan would be a strategic disaster.

This is what the US is playing with if it is playing with Pakistan.  And anyone who wants to circumvent it has to understand that the road leads through Delhi and through Kashmir.   What the Pakistani elite can afford in terms of supporting global stability is inversely related to what it can afford in terms of local stability.  It's paradoxical, but there it is.  If a stable solution to the Kashmir matter can be found, Pakistan would be more willing to support local autonomy, and thus less susceptible to act as the US intends it to act.