Now, this can not without proper curriculum approval system in place. I wonder what the hell they were thinking? If that’s not enough, they were taught ‘Hiroshima tactics’ on the two holy cities to Muslims; Mecca and Madina. Now this is what Hiroshima tactic is; dropping an Nuclear Bomb:

Being a Muslim myself and knowing Muslim faith revolves around the city of Mecca (in terms of geographical value), if you as much as drop a grenade on Mecca you want this planet to be destroyed. At least, I don’t know a Muslim who will not seek revenge.

Conversing with Pakistani craftsmen, drivers, soldiers and cooks from the Pashto speaking parts of Pakistan during work, I was interested where exactly they hailed from. ‘Peshawar’ was often the simple answer – for one, because it is assumed that ‘Dir’, ‘Charsadda’ or ‘Batkhela’ wouldn’t really tell me much, but often ‘Peshawar’ was really what they meant to say. A certain perimeter around the city (and I am not sure to what extent and how that changes for different people, for some native Bajaur or Kohat would still be ‘Peshawar’, other really only took it to Hayatabad) is regarded as justifyably referred to with this urban summary. I don’t know Peshawar and it’s surroundings well enough to make further statements on this, however I never met a person from Okara, Nankana Sahib or Muridke for that matter who would say he or she was from Lahore.

More interestingly is the notion however of the space that lies beyond the city. Not only for our driver during work in Kashmir whom we knew very well and he equally knew and understood us, was I coming from a place ‘Peshawarse pichai‘ [from behind/beyond Peshawar]. And there it really did not matter whether that was Mashad, Innsbruck, or New York [I am not sure whether this 'beyondness' extends over the Pacific, I assume Beijing or Tokyo would be rather considered this side of the Khyber Pass]. In any case, this may be an indication, of how the native space is regarded by some people from the area (this is an observation limited to a certain stratum of society).

'Peshawarse pichai', seen from the Khyber Pass in 2006.

Above, the view from the Khyber into the lands beyond. Beyond this place is also that remote place of Montana, where a court recently ruled in the Greg Mortenson case. What should be considered more important after this story than just paying back huge frauded debts, is the realization that the space we are talking about (be it in the drone debate or the aid debate) is very often misrepresented. And it unfortunately often remains so from both sides of these disputes.

Via darpadreaming, I found another paper from the political geography side which looks at how the actual space is shaped into what it is finally conceived to be. Derek Gregory looks at how the US Army, through press briefings and Petraeus’ famous PowerPoints visually (re)configured Baghdad between 2003 and 2007 (Seeing Red: Baghdad and the eventful city. Political Geography, 29, 266-279. 2010). Apart from very insightful and interesting observations, Gregory has a very enjoyable style of writing. I think his concepts, although here applied to an urban setting involved in continuous heavy fighting with, can be understood applicable for the drone war as well (and he is currently moving into this geographical direction as well, see the presentation linked there).

There are three points that sprang out I can see valid for how Pakistan is mapped as well.

 their wars

This rhetorical effect is enhanced by the way in which those same militaries render the actions of their (non-state or para-state) enemies as indiscriminate, insensitive and illegitimate. Militias, gangs and terrorist groups are engaged in an altogether different set of ‘new wars’ to those in Der Derian’s sights. Their violence is viscerally corporeal and even diabolical. In this field of vision death stalks the battle space, saturated in blood and bodies by ethno-sectarian violence and an exorbitant cruelty directed overwhelmingly at civilians, and insurgency becomes the proving ground for a disenchantment of war e which is to say, of ‘their’ wars.

Their wars in Baghdad are often conflicts that are reported as Shia-Sunni rivalries (and I guess he goes into more detail in his War and peace. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35, 154 – 186., and The biopolitics of Baghdad: counter-insurgency and the counter-city. Human Geography, 1, 8 – 23. which I am only reading now). For Pakistan, that applies especially for reporting on Gilgit-Baltistan and Quetta. Where the Shia-Sunni divide is somehow involved (and it sure is a driver for violence), these standoffs are quickly reduced to savage conflicts with no relation whatsoever to the greater war or perhaps underlying political/land reasons.

walking and mapping

Just as the ‘badlands’ in Pakistan are rhetorically clearly delineated in space (‘North’ and ‘South’ Waziristan, the turbulent ‘North West’, the Durand ‘line’; Schetter is addressing these topologies) to try to box a problem into confined space, while the actors who are ought to stay in that box are migrating in and out and are interlinked to the ‘outside’ world through migration and them being part of the globalized world just like, or even more so than a US Soldier, Gregory points at the mapping of ground truth in Baghdad.

The connection between top sight and ground truth was established most frequently through the metaphor of ‘walking’ reporters through the maps, a trope that became so commonplace that the distinction between the battle space and its representations was virtually erased. Soon after the start of Operation Together Forward, when a curfew had been imposed and checkpoints, patrols and targeted raids increased, Caldwell told reporters he would ‘like to walk you through the statistics of the last 30 days’ and showed them a map of attacks in Baghdad district by district. ‘As you walk through this,’ he continued, ‘you’ll see that all except two beladiyas [districts] were able to experience a slight decline’. [...] He noted that ‘this is the only area that’s been specifically cleared’ coded green on the map but he predicted that ‘you’ll see those colors expanding out through the city of Baghdad eventually’. In one, magical sentence, the colors bleed from the map to the city. [...] What ‘it’ looked like: at once the map and the city.

The ‘walking’ trope is interesting in another aspect, that may be a bit detached from what Gregory lays out in his work – I am actually not sure whether it makes sense to bring this up here at all, but to jot it down for possible future reference. Manan Ahmed from ChapatiMystery looked at the ‘walking experts’ issue (also in his class at FU Berlin), especially Rory Stewart and I would add Younghusband, Harrer, Newby. How does walking a place make us know more about space in the complexity of conflict? And how is that ‘knowledge’ overrated, misinterpreted and misused?

medical scans of the body politic

The proponents of drones argue that it is possible to accurately take out identified villains from above – a surgical intervention to take out the ill. Gregory links this rhetoric to the geographical localization and containment that has been undertaken beforehand.

It is surely no accident that these military plots of deaths resemble medical scans of the body politic, where ethno-sectarian violence is visualized as a series of tumors. In his testimony to Congress in April 2008 Petraeus called ethnosectarian violence ‘a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.’ Here the visual and the verbal work in synch, and the maps become so many visual performances of an intrinsically biopolitical field.

[...]

Thus we are assured that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance now provide such an accurate and detailed view of the battle space that precision-strike capacity can be directed (‘surgically’) against infrastructure power stations, communications systems, bridges e and invited to
draw a duplicitous distinction between targeting ‘the means of life’ and targeting the lives of those who depend on them. This mode of cartographic reason continues to yoke objectivity to what I call ‘object-ness’: ‘Ground truth vanishes in the ultimate “God-trick”, whose terrible vengeance depends on making its objects visible and its subjects invisible’.

While such a medical mapping may not be directly taking place in Pakistan of course, since the war involvement of foreign forces looks very different here, the coverage of the country is, through different narratives, well underway in pinning it to a map that is believed to represent the country.

I am neither an expert on drones, nor on the FATA, nor on bilateral politics in conflict. I care little for singular individual victim’s stories that are thrown at me in my twitter feed to make me choose sides. I trust them just as little as some Obama speech on how ‘for the most part’ there were no civilian casualties. These arguments are not brought on to solve the problem, but solely to propagate one’s own stubborn conviction on the issue. I am not going to argue for or against the use of some weaponry here, but just want to pull together some aspects of the drone debate that get scant attention. All I can contribute, is the fact that we (our NGO) work in KP in the medical field, and I will highlight some interesting publications in German.

We run a hospital just outside FATA, and children not growing because of malnourishment, people dying because a lack of clean water and the ignorance from the government’s as well as many people’s side is a far greater threat to the people than hovering drones – it’s deadly to civilians, and it is long term. Unfortunately it is not heavily discussed however and very little is done against it, although it would perhaps be a lot easier to solve. On the other hand, people who live in areas that are not subject to the drone war, feel its impact directly. The security situation does not only imply that foreigners need to restrict their movement, it increases food prices and stops doctors from visiting the area.

Furthermore, there are some recent German papers – on law (Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict – Themenheft „Nicht-bemannte Waffensysteme und Humanitäres Völkerrecht“, 2/2011) but more importantely on the concept of ‘ungoverned space’ (Conrad Schetter in Geographica Helvetica Heft 65/3) that I will look at.

I Tech History/A History of War for Science

Two worthwhile reads on the recent history of drones and our perception of them are by John Sifton in the Nation (specifically on drones) and Daniel Trombly (specifically on the perception). Another article by David Bell in TNR also goes along the legal arguments I will get back to when looking at the discussion from the humanitarian law perspective.

All of these look at the drone as a weapon. I want to look at it as a scientific tool. When I went to one of our University’s libraries to pick up a journal for this post series, students at our Informatics Department were just testing their own drone – some years back we probably would have just called it a remote controlled helicopter. It has become a fancy topic in different fields, and I assume it will also at some point gain importance in our Environmental Engineering and Sciences field. The fact, that this technology is being fostered by its use in a war, is a phenomenon that reminds one of one of the most important surveillance techniques in Environmental Sciences today – the Radar. It was invented well before the first World War, but only further developed when its use became apparent for Aircraft detection most prominently by the Germans, who set up huge Radar stations around Berlin and later in many different places. The first drones, just for surveillance purposes were hence the so called Homing Pigeons – the beginning of today’s scientific remote sensing.

The FATA, considered ‘lawless’ and without any chance to hold anyone accountable (or if they try, one can easily make sure they stay mute) is an ideal area to test and develop a tool that may come in handy for all kinds of purposes in future. What is very different for the drones compared to the time when the Radar was tested, is that the Radar would actually rather make sure the civilian population was safe from air strikes, while many indications point to the fact, that the drones are actually tested on civilian population.

II Law

Simply discussing the legality of drone strikes, I find problematic – for the earlier mentioned arguments. Even if all legal reasoning would point to the fact, that drone strikes are in all international legal frameworks to be considered acceptable, this does not prove at all, that it is actually a good idea to carry them out. Neverthless, there are some points that are worthwhile considering. There is of course debate in the English (US) speaking/writing world on the legal aspects of the drone war. What is interesting about the publication by the ICRC however, including mainly German authors, is the impartiality of all the contributions – because it is the Red Cross but also because I find US writers often find it very hard to detach themselves from axiomatic presumptions of ‘national security’, that Afghans and Pakistanis all act with anti-US sentiments and the like – a handicap the authors in this journal do not grapple with (that issue a difficult topic in itself, Tony Judt struggles with that in his dialogue with Timothy Snyder in the ‘Age of Responsibility’ Chapter of ‘Thinking the Twentieth Century’ – unfortunately the European Intellectuals are keeping themselves largely out of the debates circling around the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s not just that them publishing in another language than English keeps them unnoticed).

The three significant contributions are by Wolfgang Richter (a former colonel in the German army, now working at the SWP), Felix Boor (Uni Bochum, he is interviewed in the Austrian newspaper DerStandard on the issue) and Christian Schaller (SWP).

They argue, that whether drones are used in the war in the frontier areas is not so much the issue – they acknowledge that drones may be more effective than fighter planes would, and that the action of the international forces in the FATA can be considered legal since they act on the invitation of the Pakistani government (they acknowledge that this is unclear, but I agree that it can be considered most likely the case). But they emphasize that this observation leaves the question unresolved, whether the armed conflict there itself is legitimate the way it is lead, and that by justifying from different standpoints – self defence and an international conflict with terrorists – the Obama administration is confusing ius in bello and ius ad bellum and hence contradicting itself (Schaller). Richter observes, that ‘Under certain circumstances, putative tactical advantages (that is, the effectiveness of the drones) may have negative consequences  on the strategic aim of the operations.’ Richter also looks at the problem of identifying justifiable targets: ‘The appearance of armed civilians, does not imply them being part of an islamistic terror organization or the Taliban; and not all armed groups comply with the humanitarian-legal requirements to be considered elligible targets for continuous attacks. Armed civilians, who only take part in armed encounters sporadically and without a coherent organisation, are not considered protected like civilians, during the active encounter; they may be attacked during the encounter and during the retreat. Apart from that, they need to be recognized as civilians however, and are granted their respective rights.’ Boor states, that the belligerent nexus needs to be readily given when taking out anyone with a drone, otherwise he needs to be considered a civilian.

III Ungoverned Space/Territories

The debate on the space itself where this war actually happens, and how we percieve it, is often only marginal. There are few who dedicate their work to – I have reviewed one example earlier. Conrad Schetter had a great article out on the terminology of this perception – ‘Ungoverned Territories – a conceptual innovation of the War on Terror‘ in the Geographica Helvetica journal (it has just become available online here). He specifically looks at the invention of this terminology in the RAND report and the paper by Lamb (2008) which shaped the narrative in the following years.

I translate some of his observations here to illustrate what his arguments are. He sees the term ‘ungoverned territories‘ as a ‘deliberate effort of a conceptual innovation‘ to delinate space around a very unclear concept – similarly to vague ‘axis of evil’ of Bush and the ‘defence of our freedom on the Hindukush’ by Struck.

The aim is to create political and analytical tools for situations, which could not be solved with the to date available vocabulary. The effectiveness of such conceptual innovations depends on how it institutionalizes itself in the public and scientific debate and whether it becomes a framework to legitimize political actions.

He wants to focus on two contexts: (Space)-rhetoric in the area of security policies and how specifically through blurring and over-simplifications demands for safety are created and how these are then used as a legitimization for political and military actions. He bases his observations on the two documents mentioned, on Zellin’s article ‘Tribalism and the future of conflict’, on Rice’s introduction of the notion that spaces in Pakistan are ‘ungoverned’ in 2007/2008 (for example in this NPR interview) and Obama’s mentioning of the area as ‘vast, rugged and mostly ungoverned’ in 2009. Manan Ahmed in his ‘Where the Wild Frontiers are’ dedicates a whole chapter to this issue, with Clinton and Kerry as examples.

Early on he observes:

Phenomena like warlordism, patronage and corruption tend to surface most prominently, where the state is actually present. Here an institutional bricolage happens, since formal and informal rules overlap. The term ‘ungoverned’ suggests furthermore, that alone the state owns political legitimacy, and that non-state actors and institutions are essentially illegitimate.

[...]

Thus, in both reports, terrorists are mentioned in line with insurgencies, criminal networks and warlords. This view overlooks, that criminal networks are often closely interwoven with the state apparatus or that state actors may be closely involved in terroristic activities.

[...]

Since the term was coined based on initiatives of the US Army one has to ask, how a solution for this problem was envisioned based on what means were available.

He adds that the term ‘ungoverned territories’ suggests, that the space where the state has no power can be demarcated with a clear line and completely overlooks the possibility of tranition zones/hybrid spaces and the possibility that there may be spaces that were never part of the state and where no territorial thinking as inherent to the US army may exist.

The approach of ‘ungoverned territories’ negates, that people move in space, have networks that transcend this space and its borders, yes even make political decisions outside of spatial constraints. Transnational movements and processes of globalization are completely left out in the RAND report.

He closes rather sarcastically:

It is astonishing, that the RAND and the UGA studies, specifically identify border areas where extensive smuggling and migration takes place as ‘ungoverned territories’. [...] Following this reasoning, the border regions of the US and the EU should be regarded as ‘ungoverned territories’ par excellance.

He notes how the RAND report only identifies ‘ungoverned territories’ in the West in ‘ Muslim ghettos in some European cities’, while other publications conflictingly identify it as ‘rugged and remote areas’ and ‘densely populated cities’.

The concept provides no contribution to a reflective debate on the connections between territorial figuration, statehood, governance and terrorism. On top of that, the ideological use of the term is [...] highly questionable.

——-

The discussion on statistics of drone efficiency, the drone war’s legality and who are civilians/terrorists and who are not, are highly futile until we have not developed an understanding of the space this debate is happening in.

An Ahmadi place of worship is a mosque. If you disagree, you should STFU about the Europe minaret bans because they were Ahmadi mosques.

This recent tweet from UroojZia prompted me to stop by the local Zurich Ahmadi mosque, which had an open doors day today. Mahmud Masjid was built in 1962, the first stone then was laid by Hazrat Syedah Amatul Hafeez Begum, daughter of the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect from Qadian and it was inaugurated by then UN president Zafrullah Khan (the first foreign minister of Pakistan, one of the famous Ahmadis of Pakistan’s history) and then Major of Zurich Emil Landolt. When the minaret debate raged in Europe in 2009, Switzerland was were it all started and the Mahmud Mosque, being one of only 5 with a minaret in the country (and the picture above gives you a grasp of dimension in comparison to that beautiful church tower …), was an often cited example.

The fact, that at the inauguration the Zurich Major was present is a source of considerable pride to the community of what I overheard today. And till the present the community – which counts some 800 people in Switzerland, hailing from all over the world, most of them though from Pakistan making Urdu and German the colloquial language in the building – is counting on the support of the City Council. Only recently, when the City invited all Imams of Zurich to a festive meeting, a number of Imams from other mosques directed a letter to the Major, asking to keep the Ahmadi Imam out, since he in their eyes was no Muslim. The City Council of course refused. The repression of their sect in many countries, and they emphasized most and foremost Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, weighs heavily on the local Ahmadis and they pointed out, that even here attempts were made to single them out – be it in a Cricket match or an official event. The Swiss State gives them a feeling of being able to follow their belief without repression. There are of course elements of the Swiss State (and especially the SVP party, which initiated the anti-minaret hullabaloo and which has big support especially in the rural areas, not so much in rather left leaning cities like Zurich or Geneva) who would ironically like to repress the Ahmadis just for that – that they are Muslims. But their influence on actual actions of the state (in the end the Bundesrat for statewide decisions, or the City Council for Zurich for example), is smaller than perceived abroad. They just know how to shout louder.

It is noteable with what unease and regret the Pakistani community members talked about their (former) homecountry when I adressed it. Even returning for visits of relatives or their place of upbringing is not an option anymore and they felt no wish to talk about it. At no point did they blame anyone specific or a group of people, but as one person said, they do not want to mix politics and their religion: ‘Mullahs should not become Politicians, Politicians should not become Mullahs’. I have no special interest in the Ahmadiyya, nor in its conflict with the Pakistani state – but it leaves me sad, when I can feel how people have to cut of their connection to their homeland because of the ignorance of a state, including some of its powerful inhabitants and a media that is dynamic and calls itself free, but makes few attempts to stand up against this injustice (by for example sticking to calling Ahmadi mosques ‘places of worship’).

The Mosque houses the flat of the Imam for the whole Swiss community, a homeopathic doctor’s practice, community rooms and space for sleepover for people from more distant communities. They also have a detailed website and are altogether extremely active in their neighborhood, always trying to reach out to outsiders.

The threat to history in Europe came not from the deliberate distortion of the past for mendacious ends, but for what might at first have seemed a natural adjunct to historical knowledge: nostalgia. The final decades of the century had seen an escalating public fascination with the past as a detached artifact, encapsulating not recent memories but lost memories: history not so much as a source of enlightenment about the present but rather as an illustration of how very different things had once been. History on television – whether narrated or performed; history in theme parks; history in museums [emphasize added]: all empasized not what bound people to the past but everything that seperated them from it.

Judt goes on to discuss how malleable the perception of Europe’s very recent history has been and how there is still a lot to deal with and catch up to – the very last sentence of the book actually is: ‘European Union’ may be a response to history, but it can never be a substitute. This reminded me of three museum visits in recent years which for me all had the purpose of finding out how a country deals with it’s actual past (and present) made obvious by what it had to show of it’s perceived past. These museums – the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Museum in Urumqi, the National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan in Dushanbe and the Lahore Museum in Lahore – have a couple of things in common. Strange photographing policies, from strict prohibition that no one adheres to in Urumqi to extra tickets if you bring your camera in Lahore, are common. There is often a void where artefacts from local history should stand, that today make big money in a Euopean museum, with only one or two amazing relics left behind (the mummy in Urumqi, the Buddha in Dushanbe, the Queen in Lahore …). Among critical Western tourists they are altogether regarded as a sham (least so probably the Lahore Museum). Displays are poorly explained, often no coherence in the overall setup is visible and cultural propaganda is obvious – I find just that to be a good reason to visit these museums and take all your time to walk through it even if the guard already threatens to turn the room’s light off to get you moving.

Urumqi

The museum is most famous for the exhibit for one of the oldest completely preserved mummies in the world. It gives a good overview over the history of Xinjiang and the desert towns of Lop Nor that are today only inaccesible ruins in a nuclear test site. What is most striking here though, is how the curators tried to link this history of human settlement that dates back thousands of years in often inhosbitable environment, to China’s claim that this area ‘always’ has been a part of China. The time line starts with the earliest settlements, which are attributed to nomads, when suddenly from one room to the next, some 4000 years ago everyting suddenly inexcplicably turns Chinese. The exhibit goes on to talk about historical facts deduced from excavations, but let’s you know, that in these rooms you’re dealing with Chinese history, while only the very very distant past somewhere in the sand is left to noone in particular.

Dushanbe

The most prominent piece of the main exhibition is the 14 m long sleeping Buddha – after the Bamiyan statues destroyed, it is the biggest one left in Central Asia. The display I liked best however was in the adjacent Folk Museum. It’s a collection of household items and clothes of the different peoples of the area (the museum in Urumqi has a very similar ‘minorities’ section). In one place it compares the clothes of a Tajik woman 100 years ago, a beautifully embroidered dress and some simple shoes with that of a Tajik woman today – some cheap Satin dress and actual fake Gucci high heels.

Lahore

The Lahore museum is a bit more sophisticated and has better researched displays. Similarly to the Lok Virsa in Islamabad it has a folk section as well – household items are at display with an explanation how stoves look like in Chitral or Balochistan and how the people on Manchar lake live (that later is actually just in Lok Virsa). And just like in Urumqi and Dushanbe, this folk section portrays how very much different the displays have to be judged here in comparison to European national folk museums. While in a European muesum, the household artefacts like cuttlery and hand made clothes, or the display of housing sections are really from the past (at least from the poor rural postwar period), the displays in Lahore and Central Asian museums show customs that are very much part of modern life at least in the rural areas. Judt’s illustration of how very different things had once been is here quite a make believe – while for an ignorant urban Pakistani or foreign tourist these displays may be made to look like to preserve heritage that would otherwise be lost, that heritage is still lived outside the museum’s door, but rather being disregarded in it’s alive form.

Finally, the proximity of the three areas’ histories becomes quite obvious. The spinning wheel in Dushanbe is a charkhea just like in the Punjab, the influence of Budhhist/Gandhara style is obvious in all sculptures and these cities all being more or less (Urumqi and Dushanbe were quite insignificant places until rather recently, but other cities in their vicinity like Qurgan Teppe or Turfan and Kashgar may be substituted) entry points to the passes over the Karakoram/Himalaya/Pamir makes it worthwile to visit these exhibitions and put the different pieces together oneself.

7. Ausgabe der Sino-Pakistan Serie

Teil I Teil II Teil III Teil IV Teil V Teil VI

Das offizielle Chinesisch-Pakistanische Friendship Jahr ist vorbei, eine chinesische Frau wurde in Peshawar als Antwort auf die kürzlich wieder in den Medien aufscheinenden Riots in Xinjiang erschossen, und wir schliessen damit diese Serie hier auch. Zum Schluss gibt es die spannendsten Theorien zu dieser Beziehung, über die sich trefflich diskutieren lässt ohne auch nur einen Schimmer einer Ahnung zu haben – ganz im Stile der hier in den letzten Teilen vorgestellten medialen Auseinandersetzung mit diesen zwei Ländern.

Das Bahnnetz

Der Handel zwischen China, den zentralasiatischen Republiken, vor allem aber Afghanistan und Pakistan wächst stetig. Sowohl die Karakorum Route als auch die Verbindung über das südliche Kyrgyzstan ist mitunter unverlässlich. Regelmässig schliessen Länder in der Region irgendwelche Goodwill-MoUs ab und haluzinieren von Direktverbindung über den Pamir und den Karakorum. Feasability Studien wurden angeblich gemacht (ich glaube nicht einmal das), passieren tut und wird in den nächsten Jahrzehnten nichts.

Eine interessante Seite zum Bahnnetz in der Region mit Fokus auf Afghanistan findet sich hier.

Der KKH

Ein Grund warum China nach anderen Routen Richtung Arabisches Meer sucht, ist die geologische und politische Unsicherheit entlang dem KKH. Seit Jänner 2010 steht er im oberen Hunza noch dazu unter Wasser, der Seespiegel wurde erst dieses Wochenende das erste mal signifikant gesenkt )auf den Bildern erkennt man auch die bereits begonnenen Ausbauten der Chinesen vor der Überschwemmung). Die Planungen um den KKH um 30 nach oben zu verlegen haben bereits begonnen. Wie lange das dauern wird und ob es überhaupt so durchgeführt wird ist derzeit mehr als fraglich.

Der Wakhan

Über den Landgrab der Chinesen im tajikischen Pamir habe ich bereits geschrieben. Eine Theorie erklärt diesen eher untypischen Schachzug mit der Sicherung der glazialen Wasserresourcen, ich glaube eher, dass sich China einen sicheren Zugang zum Wakhan erhalten will um in Zukunft hier eine Strasse direkt von China nach Afghanistan zu bauen. Reine Spekulation ohne irgendeinen Beweis. Aber es wäre eine Autobahn in malerischer Natur.

Der Kashmir

Indien ist fest davon überzeugt, dass China seine Truppen im pakistanische Kashmir stationiert hat und bringt dieses Thema auch regelmässig bei bilateralen Gesprächen auf den Tisch. China negiert diesen Vorwurf gar nicht dayidiert, trotzdem reden beide Seiten wohl von einem Hirngespinnst, das sich gut gebrauchen lässt um in den eigenen nationalen Medien den harten Verhandler zu spielen und andere wichtigere Themen, die sich aber weniger gut verkaufen lassen, unter den Tisch zu kehren.

Jeder ist eingeladen seinen Senf dazuzugeben. Er wird damit keinen Unterschied machen, nur weiss es ForeignPolicy auch nicht besser.

Choda Hafeez and ZaiJian.

Der Gedanke der Authentizität oder authentisches Denken?

Spätestens seit den Demonstrationen in Teheran im Sommer 2009 haben so genannte Social Media Applikationen (Facebook und Twitter) die westliche Berichterstattung über ganze Weltregionen – und damit auch die allgemeine Wahrnehmung derselben – wesentlich beeinflusst. Ganz besonders trifft dies für die arabische Welt und das westliche und vor allem muslimische Asien zu, das vermehrt im geopolitischen Medienfokus steht[i]. Der Wert dieser Quellen ist begrenzt. Erstens handelt es sich meist um keinen repräsentativen Teil der Bevölkerung. Zweitens schränkt die Notwendigkeit einen Internetzugang zu haben und sich darüber hinaus eloquent auf Englisch ausdrücken zu können, um auch wahrgenommen zu werden, die Auswahl auf die urbane Oberschicht ein, die oft noch im Westen, der Zielregion ihrer Information, ausgebildet wurde oder sogar teilweise dort lebt. Auch wenn diese Einschränkung anerkannt wird, geht man aber oft davon aus, dass durch eine Berichterstattung über diese Quellen aus der Oberschicht, die Diskussionsthemen der gebildeten Bevölkerung adäquat wiedergegeben werden kann.

Im Falle der arabischen Welt meinte der tunesische Soziologe al-Taher Labib in einem Interview mit der Zeitung al-Hayat[ii] , dass die Denker und Kommentatoren, die die zweite Nahda hervorbrachte, kritisch betrachtet werden müssten – es gäbe den ernsthaften/seriösen Denker und den sogenannten ‚Intellektuellen’, der damit beschäftigt ist, sich als ‚Experte’ zu positionieren. Labib meint, dass die Fähigkeit, aber auch die Verantwortung des seriösen Denkers es wäre, Aussagen mit Bedeutung hervorzubringen. Die ‚Denker’, die über das Internet auch im Westen schnell Gehör finden, gehören nach Labib’s Darstellung meist eher zu ‚Experten-Intellektuellen’. Um eine Vorstellung davon zu bekommen, welche Gedanken die Gesellschaft wirklich bewegen, bzw. welche als essentiell betrachtet von der intellektuellen Elite des Landes intensiv diskutiert werden, sind diese Quellen mehr als unzureichend, im schlechtesten Fall zeichnen sie sogar ein komplett verzerrtes Bild. Diese Diskussionen in der arabischen Welt sind außerhalb ihrer Grenzen fast unbekannt, das heißt sie spielen z.B. in europäischen Überlegungen zu aktuellen Entwicklungen im arabischen Raum keine Rolle. Die arabische Welt (wo auch immer man diese schlussendlich lokalisiert) wird als eine statische Menschenmasse porträtiert. Ihre Beweggründe werden im Westen oft schnell mit einfachen materiellen Konzepten wie ‚steigende Nahrungsmittelpreise’ erklärt. Was sie auf intellektueller Ebene bewegt bleibt meist unbeachtet.

Der Hinweis auf Labib’s Kommentare bezieht sich auf Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab’s Buch ‚Contemporary Arab Thought – Culture Critique in Comparative Perspective’, eine Auseinandersetzung mit den Diskussionen in der arabischen Welt zu Identität. Ihre Übersetzungen der al-Hayat Interviews aus den Jahren 2006 und 2007 setzen den Schlusspunkt unter einen Überblick mit viel kritischer Auseinandersetzung der intellektuellen Debatten zur arabischen Kultur seit 1967.

Kassab beleuchtet verschiedene Aspekte – von der ersten Nahda über die Phase nach 1967, die Diskussion von Kultur, Islam und Säkularismus bis zu den postkolonialen Diskussionen. Indem sie zu jedem Kapitel die Kommentare eines Intellektuellen genauer beleuchtet, vermag sie, über das ganze Buch gesehen, einen Einblick in viele verschiedene Narrativen von Marokko (Abdallah Laroui) bis Syrien (Sadeq al-Azm), von im deutschsprachigen Raum bekannteren Namen wie Bassam Tibi zu unbekannteren Stimmen, wie derjenigen der christlichen Araber in Israel und Palästina (Naim Ateek), zu geben. Im Folgenden möchte ich auf zwei Konzepte eingehen, die bei vielen von Kassab beleuchteten Denkern eine Rolle spielen und daher in unzähligen Debatten immer wieder im Mittelpunkt stehen.

Nach innen gerichtete Kritik

Im Gegensatz zur (ersten)[iii] Nahda, für die exemplarisch Muhammad Abduh’ und Jalal ud-din al-Afghani immer wieder von verschiedenen Autoren herangezogen werden, richtet sich die Kritik arabischer Denker nach der Niederlage gegen Israel im Sechstagekrieg nicht mehr in erster Linie nach außen (‚against the Other’) sondern zusehends nach innen. „The shock of the 1967 defeat provoked the bitter realization that fundamental mistakes were made in carrying out these postcolonial projects [welche in der ersten Nahda diskutiert wurden, Anm.]. Some Arabs continued to view their governments and fellow nationals as faultless victims, but for many a fundamental questioning of ideas and policies had become necessary.“ Um diese (Selbst-)Kritik möglich zu machen, müssen wichtige Voraussetzungen geschaffen werden, die, nach Ansicht vieler der von Kassab beleuchteten Denker, gerade auch heute noch zu den wichtigsten zählen und gerade im Falle Syriens auch ausserhalb der arabischen Welt verstanden werden sollten. Kritik ist nur in Freiheit, also in einer Demokratie, möglich. Exemplarisch dafür stehen Saadallah Wannous’ Werke. In ‚Ana al-Janaza wa al-Mushayyi’un’[iv] schreibt er von seinem Bedürfnis ‚Nein’ zu sagen zur politischen und gesellschaftlichen Unterdrückung. Kritik ist nur möglich wenn der Araber sich von ideologischen Termini löst und nicht einfach die eigene Identität durch die Sprache oder Religion oder arabische Kultur, die ihn mit anderen arabischen Ländern verbindet als Argument anführt, sondern die eigene Geschichte als passierte Geschichte und nicht al Tradition betrachtet (Traditionalism vs. Historicism, Laroui). Weiters kommen immer wieder Frauen zu Wort, die, wie Kassab kritisch bemerkt, auch in den sich selbst aufgeklärt gebenden Kreisen arabischer Intellektueller selten eine Stimme bekommen. Leila Ahmad oder Nawal el-Saadawi weisen darauf hin, dass Frauen (auch exemplarisch für andere Minderheiten) durch ihren doppelten Kampf gegen die Unterdrückung (gegen die Macht im Staat aber auch die eigene Gesellschaft) besonders betroffen sind. Nicht nur in diesem Thema vermag es Kassab, obwohl ihr Buch mehr ein Einblick als eine explizite Kritik jedes einzelnen Denkers ist, immer wieder die Argumente zu hinterfragen und gegeneinander zu stellen.

Turath

Einer der immer wiederkehrenden Begriffe ist der des turath. Kritiker wie Fouad Zakkariya und Ali Ahmad Sa’id sehen die dauernde Berufung auf die glorreiche Geschichte der arabischen Welt zur Schaffung einer aktuellen Identität als Hindernis an. Zakkariya meint, dass diese Rückbesinnung zwar auch in Europa existierte (das sich ständige Beziehen auf den Westen zieht sich einerseits wie ein roter Faden durch alle Kommentare, ist gleichzeitig aber auch ein Kritikpunkt einiger Denker), Europa aber nicht daran gehindert habe zu wachsen und seine Macht auszubauen. Zwar können aus Tradition wichtige Werte gewonnen werden, sie sei aber nicht Teil der ‚living mind of the contemporary Arab’ und daher entkoppelt von seiner wirklichen (und nicht nur ideologisch konstruierten) Identität.

Konzepte in der jungen Internetszene

Um zurück auf die ‚Experten’ der modernen Internetlandschaft zu kommen – auch diese, wenn auch manchmal nur unterschwellig kommuniziert, werden von den Diskussion zur innen-gerichteten Kritik und der Diskussion zur Bedeutung der turath sehr beeinflusst. Wie Kassab in der Einleitung zu ihrem Buch meint: ‚Growing up in Lebanon in the second half of the twentienth century, I could not imagine the Arab world without anguished debates on culture. The Arab mind was for me invariably associated with questions of cultural crisis, […]. [The] Arab debates were […] on the fringes of my awareness. [This neglect] applies to almost any student graduating in the Arab world, […].’ Für viele Quellen, auf die sich westlicher Journalismus zur Befindlichkeit der arabischen Welt bezieht (und das ist nun mal eher der junge al-Jazeera Korresepondent und nicht ein Sadeq al-Azm oder Abdallah Laroui), spielen diese Diskussion zu Kultur eine grosse Rolle, werden aber als Diskussion selten nach aussen getragen und erscheinen damit nicht am Radar der westlichen Aufmerksamkeit. Es ist gerade dieser Konflikt der Kritikfähigkeit an der eigenen Kultur mit dem Selbstverständnis der Kritik am Westen, um den sich unzählige Debatten drehen. Kassab’s Buch zeigt eindrücklich, dass obwohl (oder gerade weil) sich die Suche nach einer arabischen Identität auch 45 Jahre nach 1967 noch immer in einer Krise befindet, die Diskussionen dazu äusserst lebendig sind und nicht nur existieren, wenn der Westen den arabischen Frühling verkündet.

Caroline Brothers has an article in the Guardian on Afghan boys who ended up in Paris after an Odysee over land. It’s not a story that is limited to Afghanistan, stranded in my hometown they hail just as likely from Pakistan, and of course African countries. And those stories are old – it is just that they have been ignored largely and are continued to be treated with far to little sincerity by European governments. Let me recount such a story, that takes Brothers’ line further – where such an Odysee can end, and after Paris and Calais London is often not where it ends up.

When I worked for an international humanitarian organisation in Pakistan, I was issued the responsibility of a young Afghan man (I’ll call him Farhad) who had suddenly emerged in Peshawar. He had been deported from Germany many days earlier, where he had earned his education at the same organisation where I was employed now. A decade earlier, in the early 90s, his uncle advised him to take the 5000$ trip in a truck’s container to Europe, where he ended up having scarse contact to other family members who were already in Germany, but largely made his own way. He was repeatedly granted the right to stay but never with a full permit. When the German province he lived in passed a stricter law on asylum seekers, prompting all above 18 who had no close family members in the country to be deported at earliest – his parents had been killed in conflict back home – he was put on a plane to Kabul with two police accompanying him – the salary for these he had to come up for himself at a later stage. In Kabul he was released on the tarmac with a fat ‘Deported’ stamped into his Afghan passport. Ground staff in Kabul devalidated his passport and he was a persona non grata – no family and being a returnee from Europe made him suspicious and an easy target to be exploited. Together with a boy with a similar fate he met in Kabul – he had just been deported from England where his family did live, on charges of marihuana posession – they made their way to Peshawar. Here the guy from England assured, the chances to find someone to get them immediately back to Europe would be bigger.

On Kabul River

At this point, the organisation in Germany, who was in constant contact with Farhad, contacted their branch in Pakistan to take care of him. They refused. They had a point, where would they get to if they had to take care of all Afghan men coming illegaly to Pakistan, wishing to go to Europe. The international head office warned us to take the matter up as well, an issue too politically sensitive with little chance to cut a tear wrenching story out of it. He was to be forgotten, were it not for his care takers in Germany who felt it their responsibility to get him back to Germany. I ended up shuttling between Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore trying to get to a solution, at constant threat of being seized with an illegal Afghan. His care takers were portraying Pakistan as a dangerous place in hell back home from which Farhad needed to be saved, while he was living in a mosque in Peshawar begging in the street to be granted a place to sleep, being constantly harrased by Pakistanis for being an unwelcome foreigner. The antipathy was large from Pashtuns like him in Peshawar to Punjabi clerks in Islamabad to International Staff at the Embassy and the UNHCR. But the naivity concerning the situation in Afghanistan or Pakistan itself of the international donors who only want the best (which is what?) back home in Germany (is it his home?) was the most troubling aspect for me. In their eyes, Afghanistan and Pakistan are exciting, oriental, dangerous, dirty and unwelcoming places from where you can only flee or go to if you want to help people or dip you finger into a spice bowl in a bazaar.

Not enough such stories as by Brothers’ are written to bring this topic, which has been growing bigger and bigger in recent years, to the attention of the public. But these are not incredible stories one should be marveling with sorrow about, only to rush to the next book shop and buy Khaled Hosseini. Our responsibility is to make sure that our governments deal with the issue sensibly.

I figured it was not for me to judge whether he should be helped to get back to Germany, or try to figure out a future in Afghanistan. That was for him to do, I would help him to get to where he thought going fit his realistic dreams.

The Tractors

Conrad Schetter from the German Crossroads Asia Project, has an excellent short write up on patterns of migration in Afghnaistan out.

Waves of refugees and labour migrants determine the social reality of life in Afghanistan ‐ perhaps more so than anywhere else. The intervention which has been on‐going since 2001 has barely considered this high spatial mobility in its conceptual planning. Where it has been noted, it tends to be perceived as disruptive. This article intends to demonstrate the extent to which forms of migration affect the lives of Afghans and should be taken account of in plans for the future of the country that go beyond the dominant state‐building model.

He shows how spatial mobility between Pakistan and Afghanistan is a common nearly unrestricted fact and a central tenet of many families. His story of a family from Lower Dir is especially interesting, as it could have been told by Babur (Zahir ud din Muhammad, 1483 – 1530), who like his forefathers and other realtives, when danger loomed, always shifted the women from his family to the safe havens of Badakhshan.

Another example, that of a family from Lower Dir in north Pakistan, shows the migration strategy of a family that can be reckoned to the educated middle classes. Part of the family moved from Lower Dir to the neighbouring district of Bajaur at the beginning of the 20th century. Several members of the family subsequently moved from there to Kunar in east Afghanistan. In the late 1940s, part of the family moved to Archi, on the Afghan‐Tajik border, when they were offered land there. [...] All the women in this extended family live in Lower Dir. When violence escalated in the Swat valley in the spring 2009, the female members of the family were all brought to Kunduz, but they are now already back in Lower Dir; this shows, yet again, that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not seen as a barrier to spatial mobility. This case, moreover, illustrates nicely the concept of the competence network Crossroads Asia.

I have pointed at one phenomenon of the porous Durand Line earlier, stemming from my experience with patients from our hospital close to the refugee camp Shamshatoo. Here I want to briefly look at another aspect of migration of Afghans into Pakistan and beyond.

In Pakistan administered Kashmir

While it is popular to write of the alleged presence of the Chinese in Pakistani administered Kashmir, it is Afghans who really have a say in business there. After the earthquake in 2005, the complete tractor business (that is transport of building material) was in the hands of Afghans who had lived here since long ago – one can imagine why they originally came. Organised according to the places they hail from in Afghanistan, they today control many garments, carpets and utilities shops, linked up to warehouses all over the country in the hands of other family members (just as Schetter portrays). When the construction after the earthquake quickly subsided, they were a lot more flexible than local Kashmiris to adapt to new jobs. When demand decreased significantly in their field, they would move back to Afghanistan for a few weeks or months and drive tractors there or follow up on another job. In the Afghan’s carpet shops letters and photos of female Swedish NGO workers are passed around while a family member just returned from Waziristan talks about his experiences with a Mehsud lashkar which he left to take some days off in cooler Kashmir.

Just as Bernd Glatzer explains in his War and Boundaries in Afghanistan: Significance and Relativity of Local and Social Boundaries (which one should read in combination with Schetter’s article), the Afghans here ‘consider Pashtuns from beyond the Durand Line as first and foremost Pakistanis.’ Even though their counterparts in construction would often be Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (the daily wages construction business is in the hands of Pakistani Pashtuns who lived in tents for the weeks they would work, only to move on or return home when they had earned enough), they had little to do with them. The place in Afghanistan (sometimes down to the village) would matter most, after that Afghanistan. After that Pashtun identity, much later somewhere the fact that they are Muslims just like the Kashmiris.

While the debates on drones and talks to Taliban in Qatar may be important to lead and are essential to the area’s future, the fact that they are detached from the place (one up in thin air, the other on the other side of the street of Hormuz) they are symptomatic for what goes so wrong here. To be so far away from the Know and the stories that are happening just outside our doors as Brothers shows, and so in love with the grandiose speculative theories.

I am looking forward to this book.