schmidle and fair on the laden raid – that imagination

Hoping to look into the role of exciting, exotical and eastern mountaineering as part of careers in the east that have become part of our understanding of the area that is belted by Hindukush. Karakoram and Himalaya, I am currently with Francis Younghusband in Tibet. While he was determined to understand the locals here, he always manages to portray the locals as backward through narratives that are a mixture of empire-supremacy, political opportunism, ethnology and heart-felt-love for or heart-felt-despise of the people. I smirk now and again at his descriptions – after all, that was a whole century ago. Todays’ writing that becomes polciy relevant like Younghausband’s did in it’s day is, chastened by the ever present threat of being accused of Orientalism or breach of political correctness, a lot less obvious in such revealings of imagination. But when it does come up, it leaves me with a cringing smirk.

porous border: an observation from the durand-hinterland

The Afghanis sometimes bring their family members from back home for treatment. So far so good, these are no big numbers. What’s surprising though, is that we expect the number of Afghani Refugee patients to plummet. Many of them return to their high pastures in Afghanistan during summer. For one, that ridicules our understanding of a refugee (who I would expect to only be in the host country, because it’s really impossible for him, for whatever reason, to live where his home is).

exchange rate: $ to PKR

The US – Pakistan relationship dubbed as a double game – little understanding is there for the fact that the flaws of this bond should be looked for on both sides and how they deal with each other.

Hitchens on Pakistan – on the frontier of poor polemics

It’s important to note, since Hitchens, in his to date last article on the issue, uses Rushdies’ Shame and the narrative concept of his Midnight’s Children, to transfer the appaling misconceptions he has so far introduced for the rather impersonal country (with it’s elite as a concept, not so much a Pakistani person) to the Pakistani as a person, or in a wider sense as a society.

Taliban and Conflict

The new studies of Afghanistan are vastly more knowledgeable than the writing that angered Poullada, but they grapple with the same contradictions.

Collected Articles (DAWN Lahore 2006)

In 2006 I worked as a freelance writer for DAWN Lahore, covering cultural events in the City. Below are all articles collected, viewable as PDF in their unrevised form. Sometimes they were also published under a different title, also pictures were often different.

Some articles are quite bad, especially the earlier ones which were my first shot at writing for a newspaper and that in English. Also my perception of the city has changed radically over the time I lived in Lahore.

Pakistan’s free media – free in what they make up

In response to the following article, published in Daily Times Pakistan, Lahore Edition, on 5th of March 2008 I wrote a Letter to the Editor to somehow make clear what’s spooky and whose bed has shaken harder …

Descent into Information Chaos

Focusing on the geographical core of the problem, the Afghanistan- Pakistan region itself, unfortunately most of the material available comes from American sources – which is problematic in two aspects. Firstly, most of the US writers on AfPak focus foremost on the impact of the conflict on their homecountry, judging from Washington, often calling themselves „National Security Experts“ and often missing the gerater picture when imminent threats to the US are not given. Secondly when staying in the area itself the foreigners one meets in public space are non-American. Americans are mostly barred from moving around freely or don’t even come in the first place.

Hitler’s Popularity in Pakistan – Jumping to conclusions

Kazim is right though in not jumping to a wrong conclusions that many Europeans immediately take – adoration of the person Hitler and Aryanism being equal to Anti-Semitism. Still he points out (and thus suggests a link)

In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role. Conversations with German visitors rapidly turn to the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians who were robbed of their land.

Language Proficiency Necessity

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.