… reduced to an Army

What Pakistan is most often used for as a synonym in reporting and most importantely opinioning on the country is the Pakistan Army (often including the secret service ISI as well). Manan Ahmed, reviewing most recent books on Pakistan that have gathered wide attention, looked at this issue in a National article this August.

One cannot help but note that helicopters are of little use to a Pakistani civilian and not much help in what Riedel himself identifies as the three central problems facing Pakistan – rampant population growth, a diminishing water supply and a curtailed democracy. But they do solve a military problem – and the US-Pakistan relationship over the past 64 years is all about military solutions being offered as an answer to every problem. At least, that is the view from the mahogany conference tables in and around Washington.

Ahmed of course, has written a whole book going in the direction of this issue, and is a critical observer of the voices from within as well.

… reduced to a country without people

Myra MacDonald has recently penned very insightful observations of narratives on the country. She does so without playing the advocate for millions of inhabitants, which many commenters far away do, and is laudably wary of jumping to absolute statements but rather unravels these in the writing of others, while being well aware of local situations and their histories. One piece looked at how reporting on the country can be void of people.

Whether, and however much, we might disagree with them, we should however, know what they are. For me as a reader (and less as a journalist since there is always a value in telling a story from different perspectives and rarely room to fit them all into one piece), I personally am troubled most by one aspect of the New Yorker reconstruction. There appear to be no people in Pakistan.

Like Ahmed, she also critically reflects on the view from within, which can be very much from outside, within the same country – something foreign reporting of the country is still very far from grasping. It’s a critical reflection of how the educated urban upper class projects the voices of the people who are actually directly affected by the drone strikes in the border regions to Afghanistan. I would not call it the ‘Punjabi imagination’, but rather that of the urban class. There may be upper class citizens of Peshawar who write op eds about the WOT impact on Pakistan, very much unaware of what the rural Punjabi population really thinks, although it may be much more affected by price hikes and insufficent health and water supplies induced by the instability. Nevertheless, as MacDonald manages to point out, this is something the Pakistani opinionators and foreign correspondents who buy their comments as ‘local insight’ need to reflect critically on.

Now reread Hamid’s piece and consider the gap between the characters imagined in his short story, and a people with full citizenship rights and political representation. As Fazia S. Khan said, judge it as a work of fiction. But as a window into the Punjabi imagination, it may also have its uses as a political document.

… reduced to a religion

In a longer essay on Gender, Sexuality, and Islam under the Shadow of Empire, Saadia Toor, by elaborating the Saima Waheed case, portrays how the popular Western narrative of condensing of issues of freedom rights to religion in Muslim countries (in this case specifically women’s rights in Pakistan), is not only simplistic and flawed, but deliberately brushes aside other problematic issues (also caused by the colonial and neo-colonial involvement), which are really at the core of the issue here.

Ultimately, the Saima case was not simply about ‘secular liberals’ versus ‘religious conservatives,’ or even ‘fundamentalists.’ [...] Saima’s case was argued, and ultimately judged, not within the terms of existing Muslim family laws in the Pakistan Penal Code [...] but on the undesirability of filial disobedience [...]. [...] Daughters of the Ropri family were also not denied access to other accoutrements of wealth [...] associated with the Westernized upper classes. [...T]hey wore jeans and t-shirts at home and, even when outside, continued to wear them under the hijab. Thus the ‘fundamentalist’ (if there is such a monolithic figure) does not unequivocally despise the West or ‘modernity,’ understood as commodities—cultural and otherwise. But all these accoutrements were given to Saima to enhance her father’s social status [...].

These narratives become exercises like Chaudhry Rahmat Ali’s attempt to explain the acronym of Pakistan through it’s letters. It misses out on a lot deliberately suitable to the viewpoint of the writer and creates fiction for people who are not given a voice as Hamid did. To use Ahmed’s argument, ‘the country [is more than] all its military [religious/ethnic...] parts’. And it’s Now, not Never you should follow @salmaan_H, @myramacdonald and @sepoy to make sure you don’t miss out.

Alpine Narrative

Unverständlich ist sie nicht. Besonders Deutschland und Österreich haben, ganz ohne Empire, eine lange Präsenz im nördlichen Hindukush, der mehrere heutige afghanische Provinzen umfasst und die pakistanischen Khyber Pakhtunkhwa und Gilgit Baltistan streift. Eine Unzahl von Expeditionen von den Anfängen des 3. Reichs bis zum Beginn des sowjetischen Afghanistan Krieges beschäftigte sich mit der lokalen Flora und Fauna, Ackerbau, Viehwirschaft und Sprache, aber vor allem auch mit alpinistischen Zielen wie im benachbarten Karakoram und Himalaya wo Namen wie Buhl und Harrer zu Berühmtheit gelangten. Dieses Interesse für eine montane Region rührt natürlich auch von der Heimat her – gerade ältere (ehemalig) aktive Bergsteiger haben ganz andere Vorstellungen von Pakistan, als dies heute von Medien vermittelt wird. Hochgebirge wie man es in den Alpen nicht findet zieht auch heute noch jährlich profesionelle Bergsteiger wie Amateure über Islamabad in den Karakoram und die mediale Aufmerksamkeit kommt im Falle der letzten Wettrennen (wie das der ‘ersten Frau auf allen 14 Achttausendern’) auch nicht zu kurz. Eine Aufmerksamkeit für die Region besteht also – nur deckt sich diese mit der politischen Hindukush-Narrative, und trägt damit nicht zu einem weiteren Verständnis bei. Ganz im Gegenteil – während Mortenson mit seiner K2 Abstiegsgeschichte in Mitteleuropa wohl eher aufgedeckt worden wäre als in den USA, für alles ausserhalb des Alpinsports warten deutschsprachige Medien meist auf Input aus den USA (NYTimes) oder England (Guardian).

Negierte Beiträge

Nicht einmal die deutsche Koriphäe der Islamforschung und enge Freundin des Landes Pakistan, Annemarie Schimmel, scheint es geschafft zu haben, das Bild in den Subkontinent zu erweitern. Zwar liegt die höchste Erhebung des Hindukusch, der Tirich Mir, in Pakistan, verglichen mit der gesamten Landesfläche ist sein Einfluss auf das Land aber gering. Nicht einmal militante Organisationen haben im pakistanischen Teil (von Peshawar nördlich bis zum Wakhan) einen nennenswerten Rückzugsraum. Aber das Bild eines kargen Gebirges passt gut in die Erklärung warum hier alles so kompliziert ist, und eine ordentliche Recherche leider schwer möglich. Das zu einem Verständnis des Landes und seiner Verstrickung im Hauptaugenmerk der Medien, islamistischem Extremismus, die Megastädte Lahore und Karachi wie auch der ländliche Punjab und Sindh genauso wichtig, wenn nicht sogar unumgänglich ist – also genau die Räume, die von Annemarie Schimmel aber auch heute noch von Wasim Frembgen oder Ruth Pfau, einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit vermittelt werden – wird so lange nicht wahrgenommen, bis es die amerikanischen Medien nach und nach selbst erkennen und damit auch im deutschsprachigen Raum mehrheitsfähig machen. Inwieweit die amerikanische Narrative (‘Imagination’) von der pakistanischen Realität abweicht zeigt schon seit Jahren Manan Ahmed, der derzeit als JuniorProfessor an der FU Berlin liest, auf seinem Blog chapatimystery.com – eine edidierte Auswahl hat er nun als Buch vorgelegt, ‘Where the Wild Frontiers are: Pakistan and the American Imagination‘. Und auch wenn die Empire-Beziehung zum Subkontinent, welche Ahmed immer wieder aufgreift für das deutsschsprachige Mitteleuropa weniger Relevanz besitzt als für das old-empire England und das new-empire USA, werden seine Beobachtungen durch seine mediale Abhängigkeit von diesen Empires auch zunehmend für Europa relevant.

Geschichte von der anderen Seite betrachtet

Amitava Kumar schreibt in der Einleitung:

‘Not where I was at such-and-such time, but what are the other histories that where unfolding at that moment, in a universe whose centre isn’t so close to mine. [... ...] What does history look like from the other side? Well, one way to think of the situation is to recognize that there is no other side.‘

Manan Ahmed verbindet sein Verständnis seines Heimatlandes Pakistan, mit der Möglichkeit es aus den USA (und in Zukunft vielleicht auch vom europäischen Standpunkt) zu betrachten, mit seinem wissenschaftlichen Gebiet (Islamgeschichte am Subkontinent) und einem Schreibstil, der manchmal sogar den von Kumar erreicht. In Einträgen aus den letzten 7 Jahren seziert er den imaginären und realen Aufbau des American Empire, auf welcher Grundlage es fundiert (Terra In/cognito), welche medialen Narrativen dazu führen (Support, Deny, Ignore), wie man sich dieser erwehrt (Observe, Resist, Debate) und schreibt darüber hinaus noch prägnant und erheiternd bis erschütternd zu lesende Einblicke in die pakistanische Politik und Geschichte (Friend, Wrong) – dabei fällt er jedoch nie in die Falle, Dinge der Kürze wegen zu vereinfachen. What kind of historian would I be if I didn’t endorse complexity?

Was in Europe ‘am Hindukusch’ ist, ist in Amerika die ‘afghanisch-pakistanische’ Grenzregion. Die Intention, die Region als topographisch-vegetativ karg zu präsentieren um damit sogleich auf Kultur und Gesellschaft schliessen zu können findet da wie dort mit dem jeweiligen Haupteinsatzgebiet der Truppen in Afghanistan statt. Für Briten ist es ein Land wie eine Wüste (nach Helmand), für die USA unzugänglich (Korengal), für die Deutschen der trockene Hindukusch. Ahmed dazu, bezugnehmend auf John Kerry’s Rede vor dem Foreign Relations Commitee und Hillary Clinton: There are mega-cities like Karachi, with populations of more than 19 million. We are not dealing with hamlets and pockets. Es ist genau diese wild frontier of imagination, die er von ihrem Mantel der säuberlich konstruierten Narrativen zu befreien. It is human nature to omit parts of our past or to relegate them behind carefully constructed narrative frameworks that avoid excessive scrutiny.

Selbst Pakistani, der wohl mehr in Englisch als einer seiner endemischen Landessprachen kommuniziert und Pakistan oft nur zu Besuchen und Recherchen wiedersieht, lässt er auch die Kritik an der pakistanischen Elite nicht aus, die zu dieser Narrative beiträgt: I should add that, as a reader, it is disheartening to see the Pakistani English-sprache elite contribute so wholeheartedly to the construction of only that reality.

Abzug der Aufmerksamkeit?

Für einflussreiche Printmedien aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum ist aus Pakistan mit Hasnain Kazim (Spiegel) derzeit nur ein einziger ständiger Reporter vor Ort. Möglicherweise wird mit dem nahenden Abzug deutscher Truppen auch die Aufmerksamkeit für die Region noch weiter schwinden, und der Einfluss amerikanischer Narrativen noch größeres Gewicht erlangen. Bevor dieser Fall eintritt, und solange niemand diese Betrachtung für europäische Berichterstattung anstellt, ist Ahmed’s Buch ein ausgezeichneter Leitfaden wie Pakistan (als eines und als multiple Identitäten) zu verstehen ist wenn es in der täglichen Berichterstattung auftaucht. Mit in seiner edidierten, geordneten und kommentierten Form ist es für neue Leser ein notwendiger Einstieg in seinen schon sehr umfangreichen Blog, der auch in Zukunft ‘Hindukusch’ in ein realistisches Bild einer Nation mit 180 mio. Einwohnern, 130 Sprachen und mehreren Klimazonen übersetzen wird.

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Rezension deutscher Literatur zu Pakistan:

Berichterstattung am Prüfstand

Die unkonventionelle Betrachtung

I have equally little respect for the media that now challenge his work. 60 Minutes covers the area with Lara Logan in reports that are not only poor but outright propaganda gibberish. Checking on schools, finding them to store spinach and thus declaring them disfunctional is adressing the issue with no understanding of ground realities. Jon Krakauer’s Into thin Air was somewhat exciting to read, but written in the same style of trying to get attention by exagerating that he is accusing Mortenson of now and he is now trying to cash in on Mortenson’s sell out. Nevertheless Mortenson will need to adress the criticism. One side are the finances and practices of his organisation, an issue adressed once by the organisation itself here and already discussed extensively among Aid-Bloggers (most notably at Good Intentions are not enough). The other side are his made up stories, which are not so interesting as such, but do point out how he perceives the environment he works in. He has adressed that in written statements which can be read here and here. By trying to counter criticism with explanations of the “Balti notion of time” or his admiration for “proud Pathan people of Wazisristan” he is rather revealing his own simplistic understanding of the area he is working in than dispelling the doubts over his accounts. The organisation declaring, that it is unaware of any organization qualified to undertake such a study, that is to assess the effectiveness of their schools, points at their ignorance of local structures that have existed long before they pushed into their perceived void. The AKF is just the most obvious name that comes to mind, and they are not the only ones around.

It will be difficult to keep all the different sets of criticism’s mashed up in the CBS show apart, adress them separately and get to the core which may be relevant apart from whether Mortenson is a person with a bad memory or a passion for portraying himself as a ‘real life Indiana Jones’. Bergen is trying hard with a CNN anchor, which I think reveals the major problem of the whole issue – the way perceptions are shaped by narratives as not only Mortenson provides them. For me this is most aptly portrayed by the extensive use of remote in the context of referring to anything virtually in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is just outside Kabul or Islamabad. This has led to considering the whole Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remote, a province that lies along one of the major water ways of the planet and however you define the term, Attock, Peshawar or DI Khan are only remote in our understanding of the place. Nosheen Ali has adressed this issue in an excellent paper already last year (Books vs Bombs? Humanitarian development and the narrative of terror in Northern Pakistan, PDF), Ahmed points out (and will keep doing so) the consequences for policy.

The most liberal-minded ruler in Pakistan’s history since 1947 is the present one, a man who speaks fluent Turkish, whose model is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. If you look at General Musharraf ’s speeches and compare them with the speeches of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, two democratically elected leaders, you will find very easily and quickly who is the most liberal-minded thinker. No Pakistani leader in recent history has spoken up so often for women’s rights and minority rights, and against honor killings and blasphemy laws. The fact that he has failed in all of these endeavors is notable, but it is still interesting that he is the only one to speak so forcefully about it.

Manan Ahmed has reviewed his newest book, Monsoon at the National looking into his Imperialism musings as well that reach pointedly back to his Balkan Gosts book but became most vocal with Imperial Grunts.

Tom Bissell trashed him long ago at the VQR, lengthily but worth reading.

AJK summed up some more trashing at Gazistan.

Kaplan has recently written on Pakistan’s shore/Gwadar and Afghanistan a couple of times including the obligatory Saving Afghanistan article.

Of course the extreme adverse side of critics also does exist – Pakistani writers who continuously blame their own country (often including themselves as it’s citizens) for it’s current situation. Ahmed Rashid often does so, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Nadeem Paracha as well. I respect their assessments and find them constructive, in case of the latter they sometimes do tend to go into the all-destructive though.

Manan Ahmed on chapatimystery showed that coming up with conspiracy theories or offended negations is not necessary to counter the US push into Pakistan. He offers a straight confutation of a NYTimes OpEd by “one of the brains behind President Obama’s Afghanistan policy”, Seth Jones.

He also links to a hottly debated post at Registan which not only bashes Jones but also Michael Semple on the article I recently referred to. It sounds a bit harsh, I would have seen Semple in less critical light but Foust may be more informed (although some commenters disagree). His bashing of Kilcullen I would agree with though.

2) sepoy at chapatimistery has dug up some background info.

Richard J. H. Gottheil. “The Origin and History of the Minaret”. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Mar., 1910): 152-4.

It is a well-known fact that the early Christian basilica had no towers attached or superposed. The same is true of the earliest Byzantine churches in Italy – the classic home of the campanile. Even to this day there are none attached to the cathedral of Parenzo (535-543), of Prado (571-586) or to that of San Lorenzo at Milan (6th century), which are among the earliest examples of church architecture in the West. … The oldest campaniles are supposed to date from the beginnings of the ninth century – those of Santa Maria della Cella at Viterbo and Sant Ambrogio at Milan: though that of Sant Apollionare in Classe is held by some to be of the eighth century. The campanile of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo is however reliably dated between 850 and 878.

It is therefore a pertinent question – whence did this addition to church architecture come? The writer of the article “Kirchenbau” in the Protestantische Real-Encyclopädie is of opinion that it was an original conception both in Italy and in the Frankish Empire, and that it had no connection whatsoever with the East. I understand this to be be also the meaning of Adolf Fäh’s words: Ein neues Element bilden die meist kreisrunden Türme”. But one might well ask in return – if they were not necessary as belfries, what purpose did they serve? In Ravenna they could hardly be needed as towers of defence, since the whole city was enclosed by a wall. Nor could they be used as light-houses; for that purpose they were too far distant from the shore. It is certainly peculiar that the rise of the campanile or church tower synchronizes with the coming of the Arabs into the Mediterranean. The first Arab raid upon Sicily is said to have taken place in the year 701; and though Sicily and certain parts of Southern Italy did not come under their direct rule until the Aghlabites were strong in Africa during the ninth century, Arab influence permeated the Eastern Mediterranean long before that. I do not know what authority there is for the statement that the columns for the basilicas at Ravenna were made in Istria by oriental workmen; but Ravenna was a great centre from which Oriental influences passed on into Europe – not only in art, but also in decoration, in mosaics, and in miniatur-painting as well. The basilica of St. Mark at Venice, supposed to contain the remains of the saint brought thither in 828 from Alexandria, is adorned with columns garnered in the East; and the campanile has an “ascent by a continuous inclined plane built between an inner and outer wall and turning with a platform at each angle of the tower” which reminds one at once of the ascent in the Pharos at Alexandria. Like the minaret, the campanile could be either round or square. Most of the early examples are round; but square ones are not wanting, e.g., at San Giovanni Evangelista, San Francesco and San Michele in Affricisco in Ravenna. And like the minaret, the campanile was at first not an integral part of the church building. It was generally placed near to it, sometimes even leaning upon it; until in the church spire it became almost a necessary part of every Christian place of worship.

It seems to me, therefore, that a possible explanation of the sudden appearance of the campanile in Italy during the eighth and ninth centuries, would be that they are due to Mohammedan influence. Whether this influence came from Egypt, or from Syria and Mesopotamia, or even from the Maghreb, is a point upon which I should not like to insist. But this much does seem to follow from a study of history of the monuments, that the old idea of the Ziggurat or tower in some way connected with worship at a shrine has filtered down to us through the Mohammedan minaret and finds its expression to day in our church steeple.