Masael kay anbhaar - Najam Sethi
Monday, January 6, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Cockroach k Akhri Alfaz - Isar Rana
Published on : jang.com.pk
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Dr Adil Najam - The banality of outrage
The slim volume – and most importantly the concept embodied in its subtitle – went on to become a seminal philosophical artefact of our times. The book was much debated by political theorists, Holocaust historians, and activists; particularly in the context of the substance of the Eichmann trial. However, the central – and harrowing – insight that the term ‘banality of evil’ sheds into the nature of evil, and of its perpetrators, resonates well beyond that context. Including, maybe especially, today’s Pakistan.
Those who have ever wondered how a seemingly ‘ordinary’ person could possibly undertake deeds of unspeakable horror – and how equally ‘normal’ people can claim to rationalise, if not defend, the mind-numbing senselessness of the patently evil – would do well to read Arendt’s treatise. In choosing the word ‘banal’ she is not suggesting that the deeds were in any way ‘commonplace’ or ‘trivial.’ She is arguing, instead, that the evil of Eichmann’s actions – as a top administrator in the Nazi death camps – was made even more terrible because he had trained himself to see them as no more than the merely routine. “The lesson that this long course in human wickedness has taught us”, Hannah Arendt points out, is “the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
Arendt saw a certain “ludicrousness” in Eichmann standing in the dock. She reports that “the deeds were monstrous, but the doer … neither demonic nor monstrous.” As he ranted in his defence, she found him “neither perverted nor sadistic” and without “any diabolical or demonic profundity.” Indeed, her most chilling realisation was that he was “terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Characterised by, more than any other thing, his own “sheer thoughtlessness.”
That is the essence of the banality of evil. The idea that great evil can be perpetuated not only by fanatical sociopaths but also by ordinary people who so conform to a corrupt premise that they view their actions as entirely ordinary, entirely defensible, even sensible. Banality is terrifying precisely because it emanates from the inability to recognise, acknowledge and confront evil for what it is.
All of this is eerily relevant to today’s Pakistan. The church massacre in Peshawar is only the latest reminder in a string of reminders that evil lives in our midst. But also, and maybe even more excruciating, is the realisation of a certain banality that is most evident in the discourse that sprouts as routinely and as predictably as the evil itself.
Bombings. Killings. Bloodshed. All have become routine. And routinised. Commonplace. Banal. Or, as Hannah Arendt may have put it, “terribly and terrifyingly normal.”
Out of desperation more than analysis, we often call these acts, “thoughtless.” And in more profound ways than we may imagine, that is exactly what they are: devoid of – starved of – critical thought. The banality is as self-evident in the discourse of those who commit this evil, as it is in the lamentations of those who purport to understand its context. And the realisation that other ‘ordinary’ people – in many ways as ‘ordinary’ as ourselves – will not see the injustice that is so very obvious to us pierces the heart as much as the injustice itself.
The only recourse one has, then, is grief. And, outrage.
In Pakistan, the predictability of senseless acts of violence is matched only by the predictability of outrage. It is a lie that we remain silent. As big a lie as the one about Muslims never speaking out about atrocities by other Muslims. Maybe it was once true, but it has not been true for a long time now. Because we have had so many unfortunate opportunities, we have perfected our rituals of outrage: editorials, TV talk shows, social media, political condemnations.
But outrage in a divided society is also divided. We are all outraged by these events, but very differently outraged. We do not rush to embrace and comfort each other in our times of tribulation. We scream out in pain. Mostly, we scream at each other. We point fingers. We score points. We jab partisan barbs. Nearly always we get into verbal bouts. Sometimes, into fist-fights. Our outrage has become cliché-ridden. As predictable, as commonplace, as those acts of violence themselves. There is, to coin a phrase, a certain banality in our outrage.
To suggest that there is a banality of outrage is not to suggest that it is not sincere. Far from it. Our hurt is real each time we are hit. Our tears are real. The hurt does not lessen over time. The tears never stop streaming. The trail of tragedy is too long to recount, but this is not a pain you get used to.
Our banality of outrage emanates from the futility of outrage. Hannah Arendt would have been the first to recognise that outrage has political potence. Ours does not.
The banality of our outrage emanates not just from the fact that it has become predictable and commonplace. Our outrage is banal, because it is politically impotent. It does not lead to action – neither political, nor societal. This impotence of outrage makes us more enraged, but it does not make our outrage any more effective. Hence, the banality of outrage.
This banality of outrage also has its farcical moments. Well-meaning, but farcical nonetheless. One such ritual is the all-too-predictable discussion on ‘whodunit’ that triggers off as soon as a bomb goes off. We become voyeuristically glued to any signs of rumour or news on who will take responsibility for that terrorist attack. As if we do not know? As if knowing the answer would make a difference in our view of whoever takes responsibility? As if we are ever able to bring those who do claim responsibility to justice?
In a functional polity, tragedy leads to outrage, outrage leads to introspection, introspection to action. In our case, the tragedies come so fast and furious and the very fabric of society is so tattered that there is no time for introspection and no political stomach for action. Our outrage, therefore, is catharsis at best; venomous vomiting at worst.
If we sound cynical, there is much reason to be so. If we lunge at each other’s throats, it is because we are a divided society. If we sound exhausted in our grief, it is because we are. But most of all, our outrage seems banal because we do not believe that outrage will lead to action, let alone change. Indeed, there seems to be a pervasive certainty that it will not. That, more than all else, explains our banality of outrage.
But our outrage need not necessarily be banal.
Hannah Ardent’s answer to the problems posed by the banality of evil was ‘thoughtfulness’. Not just thinking, but critical thinking. She suggested that there is “a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil” and wondered if “the activity of thinking as such… could ‘condition’ men against evildoing.” She was referring, I would like to believe, to education in the truest and deepest sense as the answer to the problem of ‘evil’.
If, indeed, our banality of outrage is real, its answer lies in action. Outrage is wasted if it does not lead to action. Maybe a dose of ‘thoughtfulness’ will also help in structuring our own outrage. The belief that nothing will happen needs to give way to the resolve that something must. The way ahead in linking action and words in outrage is pointed, again, by Hannah Arendt in her other book The Human Condition: “Of all the activities necessary and present in human communities, only two were deemed to be political and to constitute what Aristotle called the bios politikos, names action (praxis) and speech (lexis), out of which rises the realm of human affairs.” Lexis without praxis, is a recipe for the banality of outrage.
The writer has taught international relations and diplomacy at Boston University and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and was the vice chancellor of LUMS. Twitter: @adilnajam
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Dispossession, orthodoxy and Indo-centrism - Harris Khalique
No one who believes in a modicum of humaneness will say that the use of full force by the state should be the first option before other peaceful methods are tried and exhausted. However, there is neither a timeline given, nor conditions spelled out nor a process explained through which the objectives set forth for the government will be achieved.
Assume that – with or without the use of force – the state of Pakistan succeeds in either taming or making peace with the Taliban in the coming months. They have to be ready for some give and take, though, and one sincerely hopes that a Swat-like situation does not arise after an accord is reached.
One other thing that needs to be considered is that those citizens in areas under Taliban influence who do not carry arms and resist the writ of the state are not further marginalised through this process. When the government talks about taking all stakeholders into confidence, the category should also include those who are nonviolent but may have grievances against state institutions as well as the militants.
The larger question, however, remains: will terrorism of all kinds be eliminated after peace is achieved in this instance? The unfortunate answer is ‘no’. Any focused process of dialogue or use of force can eliminate or mainstream a particular kind of militants but the possibility of the use of terror against the state and its citizens in future will not be eliminated until the sources are correctly identified, isolated and dried up.
This is the real challenge for the elite-dominated state of Pakistan. Acute economic and social dispossession of all kinds, orthodoxy harnessed and promoted among people in the name of faith and Indo-centric internal and external policy options exercised by the state will continue to breed different forms of terrorism in the country. Let us take these one by one.
A country where almost half of the children who are of school-going age are out of school, where maternal mortality claims 75 young women daily, where a third of the population finds it hard to scrape together two square meals a day, where workers live like serfs and the lower middle-class lives in the most undignified of conditions, where only a fifth of the entire population has access to clean drinking water, where the uneducated and unemployed youth are in millions, where farming communities along the rivers and canals get inundated by floods and then remain in camps for times unending, where inhuman debt traps the poor and turns them into bonded labour, where the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of a janitor have little choice but to remain janitors – in such a country will there be no chaos in society, no crime, no disgruntlement with the state?
Crime will be rampant, it will then become organised, this organised crime will turn into mafias and the mafias will then create terror on a massive scale. This is not just a future scenario. Instigated by urban poverty and increased inequality, it has already started happening in Karachi on a large scale. Other cities find higher crime rates than ever before. In terms of politics, Pakistan’s unique socio-political conditions have not let something like the Indian class-based Naxalite movement begin here.
But can we dismiss the possibility of a violent movement along class lines in the future? A violent movement of the marginalised and disadvantaged can also articulate itself in religious or ethnic terms. Anyone who understands the Balochistan issue will agree that it is primarily the economic deprivation and inability to access their own resources that have led to a struggle against the state.
It is time for the powers that be and the classes associated with them to not just think about but also do something to get people out of this grinding economic and social dispossession. However, that would mean giving up the undeserved privileges they enjoy, redistribution of wealth and creating equal opportunities for all.
The other factor, no less important, is a certain kind of religious discourse that the state has either promoted or allowed to take root in Pakistan. From state actions to school curriculum to promotion of political and social religious movements to public messages relayed through media, all strata of the middle class, women and men, are nurtured and encouraged to develop a mindset that is exclusive, paranoid and conservative in nature. There is more hypocrisy than religiosity at the level of the elite and clerics who benefit from such mindset. However, for many ordinary people it becomes a genuinely emotional issue.
In a country, where more than 95 percent of the people practice the same faith, how can their faith ever be in danger? What makes the majority feel insecure because of a small number of non-Muslims who mostly belong to the working class anyway? Why is it only the body of a woman where religion has to be imposed in full? While we may wonder whether it is personal beliefs or social values that make people go out and kill, the fact is that Pakistan has become an intolerant religious society.
When those listening to the oath of the president of the republic find that it is more about his religious beliefs that the state is interested in and less about his ability to competently run the office, their loyalty will rest more with an abstract notion of an Islamic state rather than the interests of a real country in which they live. If the ideal theocratic state that is promised to them – and which will resolve all their issues overnight – is nowhere to be seen, they will take up arms to create such a state and wage a struggle whenever conditions permit.
Lastly, unless our state stops thinking of itself as non-India and widens its understanding of global issues, there will be trouble both within and outside. Our issues in Afghanistan emanate out of our issues with India. I fully recognise that it is not an easy task for the Pakistani state and its military in the wake of four wars, covert operations and espionage in each other’s countries and the hostile coldness shown by India on many occasions.
But it is in our interest to have peaceful borders in order to industrialise our economy, flourish in trade and commerce and bring prosperity to our people. You may be a peacenik or not, this is in our enlightened self-interest – nothing more nothing less. Like many Pakistanis used to say that the hawks in India have not come to terms with the Partition, it seems that the hawks in Pakistan have not come to terms with it either. At the cost of repeating myself in these columns, the premise for Partition in 1947 was to bring peace to the Subcontinent, not to create a neverending rivalry.
We were not liberated from India, which is the impression given to the masses, for instance, by naming the gate at the Wagah border ‘Bab-e-Azadi’ (door to freedom). Both the countries – India and Pakistan – were liberated from British colonialism. Also, it is common sense that you cannot keep non-state militant groups controlled and restricted forever. If they are organised on religious lines, they will also get more ideologically motivated with time and subscribe to some sect or school of thought as well. If they won’t succeed in imposing themselves outside, they will impose themselves upon you.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Force or diplomacy? - Dr Maleeha Lodhi
President Obama also confronts doubts among his own public about the need and risks of military strikes, especially without UN authorisation. In his weekly radio broadcast on Saturday, he sought to reassure a sceptical public that the action he envisaged would not be “another Iraq or Afghanistan”.
In a nationwide address planned for Tuesday (today) he will again press the case for military strikes. He will do this against a backdrop of opinion polls that have indicated that more people in the US are against rather than for a military attack on Syria. A Pew poll showed only 29 percent approved of military action. An ABC-Washington Post survey found that 59 percent opposed strikes.
Opinion against unilateral military intervention is of course even stronger across the rest of the world. Last week’s summit meeting of the Group of 20 demonstrated that the weight of opinion among this grouping of developed and developing countries was firmly against any military solution to the Syrian issue. Around the grand table at the palatial venue in St Petersburg, more world leaders were opposed to military action than in favour of Washington’s position.
This made President Obama look diplomatically isolated and he left the summit with his hand weakened, not strengthened. If he was hoping to win endorsement for his plan to bomb Syria this wasn't forthcoming – except from France, Canada, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. To drive home this point at his press conference, President Vladimir Putin named the countries that, like Russia, rejected military action.
Hours of informal discussion at the summit failed to shift the balance of opinion on Syria and proved a setback for the advocates of war. In his message to the conference the Pope joined the international chorus of warnings that a “military solution” would be a “futile pursuit”. The UN secretary general reiterated his call for a ‘political’ solution. As did the EU representative, who also emphasised the importance of the UN process.
Where the G-20 summit proved a lost opportunity was in its failure to bridge the divide and slow the momentum for military action by providing impetus to the stalled diplomatic process for a UN-sponsored peace conference in Geneva. Any expectation that energy could be injected to that process to encourage the US to desist from the military option did not materalise. This of course was not surprising against the background of longstanding complaints voiced by UN officials about the lack of will shown by the warring sides and their patrons to pursue a negotiated settlement – an attitude that has prevented the peace conference from convening.
The predominant international sentiment against the use of military force rests on the illegality of such action without UN authorisation and concerns about a repeat of the Iraq blunder that was undertaken on the basis of false intelligence about Saddam Hussain’s never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction. What has also weighed in with countries that oppose military action is that military strikes would be the prelude and trigger for escalation into a wider conflict that could engulf an already unsettled region.
The argument of US officials that “narrow and limited” airstrikes will be carefully calibrated has few takers among the international community. “Precision strikes” to “degrade” Syria’s military capabilities will not make them legal any more than they will obviate the risk of a wider conflagration. The dubious assumption that underpins confidence about managing the highly uncertain aftermath is that those bombed will silently suffer the ‘punishment’, not retaliate and will also not be helped by their neighbouring allies through reprisal attacks.
The fallout could go beyond these destabilising strategic consequences. As China’s deputy finance minister, Zhu Guangyao, warned at a briefing on the eve of the G-20 summit: “military action could have a negative impact on the global economy” by pushing up oil prices and fuelling an economic downturn. Therefore, economic repercussions could be as consequential for global stability as political ones.
But these considerations were brushed aside or played down by America’s national security team when they presented the case for punitive military action to members of Congress. Faced with a grilling from those senators wanting answers to what-after-the-airstrike questions, administration officials were hard pressed to offer a convincing response. What really mattered, they argued, was action to “enforce the norm” on the use of chemical weapons, banned under international conventions.
The issue of US credibility was placed at the centre of this argument: if the US did not act after their president said it should, American credibility would suffer a grievous blow. This seemed to suggest that ‘preserving credibility’ was a good enough reason to bomb another country and justify the bloodshed and violence that would inescapably be caused by any airstrike.
In fact US leaders have ended up presenting themselves and others with a false choice: that the only option to military action was to wring hands and do nothing. They have argued in other words that the only response is a military one. This is far from true. The choice is not between paralysis and war. There is a range of non-military options available to press the norm on chemical weapons, once it has been conclusively proven that Bashar al-Assad’s government did in fact use them. Tough economic and diplomatic sanctions, an arms embargo, Security Council condemnation, setting up a special tribunal for Syria, referring the violation to the International Criminal Court and a travel ban on the Syrian regime’s top figures are among several punitive measures that can be considered. To take such actions it is, however, necessary to work through the UN, where mechanisms for accountability are available provided incontrovertible evidence is forthcoming. So the choice that has to be made is between force and diplomacy.
Regrettably the Obama administration already seems to have made that choice and is just waiting for Congressional approval to implement its decision to resort to force. But the majority of the international community has preferred to stick to the principles of international law and the UN charter that commit countries to abjure the use of military force except when authorised by the Security Council or in self-defence. As the G-20 summit demonstrated, the majority of its member nations, like the rest of the global community, are unwilling to endorse the violation of international law, which unilateral US military action would constitute.
An American analyst recently wrote that the Syria debate has forced into focus “a new distance between Washington and America”. The rest of this week and the next will see President Obama strive to close this gap. Whether or not he succeeds in that effort, it is apparent that the distance between Washington and much of the rest of the world will widen even more if President Obama takes the grave step of ordering a military attack on another Muslim country.
The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.
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