Thinking Aloud

The events of the last few days in Washington where, following incitement by the sitting president himself, a hysterical mob besieged, stormed and violently disrupted a session of the Congress, has shamed the vast majority of Americans and embarrassed supporters of democracy around the world. But it has also provided ample raw material to the propaganda factories of dictators, autocrats and pseudo-democrats of all types, of which there are many.

The images beamed from the U.S. Capitol on January 6, however shocking, were over four years in the making. What happened on that day had, by and large, become inevitable after Donald Trump got ensconced in the White House.

Every single day that Donald Trump has been in office, he has damaged America’s democratic institutions and traditions. But he was a disgrace from even before he was ushered into the White House. The leaked video in which he is heard boasting about being able to grope any woman and get away with it because he was a celebrity, should have collapsed his 2016 election campaign instantly. He would be considered as not “fit for public office.”

But it was a sign of the times that Donald Trump got away with that and numerous allegations of sexual assault by women. His misogynistic conduct towards Hillary Clinton during the presidential debates also became acceptable.

Propriety was sacrificed by leaders of the Republican Party at the altar of power and partisan politics. They whose job is to lead, instead became devotees of a thug and bully, fortified by his celebrity status, spurred on by his racist, rampaging admirers. And those who normally occupy the middle ground, the silent majority, also threw basic decency to the winds, laughed off Trump’s obscenities and found fault with Hillary Clinton instead.

No nation in history has been well served by charlatans who pose as heroes and liberators. Countries need leaders, not liberators. It is a sign of imminent danger when pretenders, with charisma or a prior celebrity status, employ demagoguery to build a distorted and false narrative to enter the corridors of power.

Though no two situations are ever identical, historical similarities can throw some light and make us wiser. For we may notice some common features and pointers such as big and repetitive lies, branding of those who think differently as enemies, denouncing political adversaries as traitors, resorting to cheap patriotic and nationalist slogans, arousing a feeling of collective victimhood, etc.

In the United States of Trump, these have been: Latino immigrants, Muslim infiltrators, “Socialist” Democrats, “China Virus”, “build the wall”, “take back our country”, “make America great again”. It is worthwhile mentioning that even Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany through elections, by repeating similar falsehoods and slogans about Jewish conspiracies, appeasement, betrayal and sell-out.

When I look at the rise to power of Narendra Modi in India and Imran Khan in Pakistan at about the same time, I see tell-tale likenesses with Donald Trump in the US. In Pakistan: targeting adversaries as corrupt, “Modi ka yaar” (Modi’s friend), liberal, tool of Western agenda. In India, denouncing “appeasement” of Indian Muslims, asking even Hindu opponents to “go to Pakistan” and vowing to expel Bangladeshi “termites”.

Trump and Modi may be the first of the type in their countries, but Imran Khan is not the first in Pakistan. This country has had the misfortune of suffering from the rule of many a “hero-liberator”. Due largely to them, Pakistan’s brief history is a long succession of military, economic, political and social failures and catastrophes.

It started with Ayub Khan, the handsome general in uniform determined to clean up Pakistan from the scourge of “corrupt politicians”. His slogan was a local version of Trump’s “drain the swamp” and “lock her up”. When Ayub resigned, 11 years later, the country had been wrecked by his political experimentation and military adventurism in Kashmir, leaving the majority population in East Pakistan totally alienated.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto constructed his political career on half-truths and blatant lies, such as Ayub Khan’s alleged surrender of military victories, and threatening to reveal the non-existent secret clauses of the Tashkent Declaration at an appropriate time. Pakistanis were led to believe that their leader’s machismo was more than a match for India’s female prime minister and he was the right man to avenge the military defeat of 1971. Combining charisma, oratory, demagoguery and bluff, Bhutto soon succeeded in his goal of getting to the top. In five short years he landed himself, and the country, in a grave political crisis.

Seizing the opportunity, Ziaul Haque, a cunning hypocrite in uniform, dishonourably despatched him to the gallows in cahoots with vindictive judges and some opportunistic politicians. What followed under this “Mard-e-Momin”, who vowed to Islamise an overwhelmingly Islamic country, was even worse. What Zia lacked in charisma, he made up with a mixture of blatant lies, religious slogans and brute force.

In his second incarnation as prime minister, bolstered by his two-thirds parliamentary majority (“heavy mandate”), Nawaz Sharif began to cast himself as Amir-ul-Momineen (commander of the faithful). Brooking no opposition, he sent hoodlums to storm the Supreme Court, much like Trump had the US Congress invaded.

Then came Pervez Musharraf, the “commando liberator”, with his promise of “enlightened moderation”. For him nothing mattered, not the parliament, not the constitution, not the supreme court, for he knew best. When he was over and done with, the country was in a much worse shape, despite the infusion of billions of dollars from Washington.

And finally there is a new hero-liberator, “Kaptaan” Imran Khan. Advancing a dangerously false narrative over the years, buttressed by his success as a cricket captain and in building a cancer hospital, astutely extracting every ounce of his celebrity status, he presented himself as the messiah who would liberate the country from the clutches of an evil and corrupt clique, solve all its problems within months, not years. It will be recalled that in August 2014, after laying siege to it for a hundred days with the goal of overthrowing the government, Imran Khan had incited his supporters to storm the Parliament House in Islamabad, which is the equivalent of the Capitol building in Washington.

Unfortunately for the country, Imran Khan has turned out to be the most conceited and incompetent head of a Pakistani government ever. Here, as in the US, the signs were there for all to see. Some saw the trees, but not the forest. Too many were mesmerised by their hero and fell for his tall promises.

Returning to the events of January 6 at the US Capitol, those who think that the US is just the same as any Third World country, ought to be reminded that even Trump’s own servile vice president has defied him to defend the constitutional process, many senior leaders of his party have broken ranks and the whole “insurrection” incited by the president was over in 15 hours. The one-term president has been impeached for the second time. Joe Biden will be inaugurated as president on January 20 as stipulated in the constitution.

In Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo”, when Andrea says: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes”, Galileo replies: “No, unhappy the land that needs heroes”. Better “Sleepy Joe” than “Celebrity Trump”! It is true for every country.

(Published in Daily Times, 16 January 2021)

By Razi Azmi

It is nine years to the day since the life of Salman Taseer was cut short at the age of 66 by an assassin’s bullet. His killer was none other than one of the trained men officially assigned, paid and sworn to protect him from harm.

Taseer was a man of many talents: accountant, businessman, entrepreneur, politician, publisher, writer and administrator. Associated with the Pakistan People’s Party since the 1980s, he rose in the hierarchy to become a minister and finally governor of the Punjab, a position he held at the time of his death in 2011.

In whatever he did, Salman Taseer distinguished himself. But he is most remembered for the one quality which cost him his life. He had his heart in the right place and, in an environment fraught with fear, he spoke fearlessly from the heart.

It takes a very brave man to speak out consistently in defence of Pakistan’s many persecuted religious minorities. It takes extra-ordinary courage to ask publicly that this country’s blasphemy laws need to be revisited. But it demands heroism of historic proportions for a provincial governor to be photographed in jail with an ordinary, poor Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, unfairly condemned to death by those very laws and to plead for justice on her behalf while large mobs bayed for her blood.

Salman Taseer was born in 1944 in Simla, then a part of Punjab in British India, of mixed parentage. His father, M D Taseer was one of the founders of the Progressive Writers Movement in Pakistan, along with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who later married the sister of the elder Taseer’s wife, thereby making Faiz an uncle of Salman Taseer. Progressive thinking was thus in the latter’s blood, one might say. He was a progressive to the marrow of his bones and to the last day of his life. In fact, it was his bold progressivism that cost Salman Taseer his life.

While his killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, has spawned a generation of nutheads within Pakistan, Salman Taseer is mourned by millions in this country and across the world as a martyr for the cause of humanity, regardless of one’s faith, creed or station in life.

No one engages in politics and statecraft for long without some blemish. Salman Taseer is no exception. His partisan dismissal of the Shahbaz Sharif government in the Punjab in 2009 at the behest of his party bosses in Islamabad, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court, is one such.

If Taseer had pedigree, pen, panache, pelf and power in life, he has left progeny who will make him proud. One son, Shahbaz Taseer, who was kidnapped and kept as a hostage for over four years by the assassin’s supporters, continues to speak out bravely for the same causes that had cost his father his life. So does another son, Shaan Taseer. A third, Aatish Taseer, is an accomplished journalist and writer who has earned the ire of the Hindutva bigots in India for speaking out in defence of minorities, including Muslims, in India. 

Salman Taseer’s soul and those who live to mourn his death can take some satisfaction from the fact that it took the painstakingly long but combined and sustained efforts of three successive, mutually antagonistic sets of Pakistani government leaders to finally bring an end to the ordeal of the woman at the centre of this tragedy.

It was the Pakistan People’s Party’s government that arrested and prosecuted Salman Taseer’s killer despite his overwhelming popularity among large segments of the population. It was a Pakistan Muslim League government which could muster the courage to hang him no matter his folk-hero status. And, finally, it was the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf government that was able to get Aasia Bibi’s death sentence overturned and to provide her a safe passage to freedom.

Her prayers alone, or those of her children, should suffice to guarantee Salman Taseer a place of honour in the hereafter. May his soul rest in peace!

(Published in Daily Times, 4 January 2021)

by Razi Azmi

Just over four decades ago, as I was driving my VW Beetle in Islamabad, a street dog standing aimlessly on the edge of the road suddenly decided to cross directly in my path. I applied the brakes, swerved a little, but a corner of the front bumper of the car collided with his head. With me in the car was a major of the Pakistan army who, noting my feeling of anguish, said: “Don’t feel too bad, he was living a dog’s life anyway.”

If this were to happen now, he might have substituted “elephant” or perhaps “Kaavan”, for “dog”. Though the tale of Kaavan the elephant has a happy ending, his tormented life in Islamabad Zoo has been reported throughout the world. As a year-old cub, he had been gifted to the Pakistani president in 1985 by his Sri Lankan counterpart as a gesture of friendship between the two countries.

Kaavan should have considered himself lucky being the beneficiary of such highest-level favour and to be lodged in a zoo in “Islamabad the Beautiful”, as we like to call our capital city. But that was not to be. A few weeks ago, as a result of an international humane intervention, the distressed animal was rescued from the zoo and transported to a sanctuary in Cambodia.

Pakistan has thus made light of an elephant, both physically and in a manner of speaking. It should be a matter of national shame, but few Pakistanis have batted an eyelid over the fact that a country with the world’s 5^th largest population and 6^th largest army, a proud nuclear power and a boastful champion of Islam, has failed to care for the centre-piece animal in the only zoo in their capital city. With the departure of its sole elephant and the wretched condition of its remaining live exhibits, the zoo has now been closed. “Islamabad the Beautiful” is now without a zoo.

Prime Minister Imran Khan, who surveys world affairs with a majestic sweep and maintains a robust presence on social media, has not said a word about Kaavan or about the zoo closure, to the best of my knowledge. To give the tale a touch of irony or, should I say, add insult to Kaavan’s injury (which was both physical and mental), and even before the miserable elephant vanished from the news cycle, he thought fit to post videos of himself being playful with his two lovely, sturdy dogs.

Pakistan’s zoos, mired in apathy, corruption and incompetence, would be a study in absolute misery for its captive animals. Of course, there are good people too. A group of volunteers called the Friends of Islamabad Zoo (FIZ), following periodic surveys, raised questions over the fluctuating number of animals in the zoo. When they pointed out these anomalies, the vanished animals soon (re)appeared in their enclosures.

There are strong indications that some zoo animals, mainly black bucks, were being sold for a price to influential and rich people to add variety and prestige to their barbecue parties.

Karachi Zoo, established in 1878 during British colonial rule, has a history of unnatural animal deaths. A pair of Arabian Oryx, classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), gave birth to a female in 2007 and to a male and a female the following year, both of which died shortly after.

The first-born Oryx gave birth in 2010 to another calf, which died the following day. Four days later, the mother of the calf also died. The female of the original pair from 2007 met the same fate in 2010 from a foot injury.

In 2016, a 16-year-old Bengal tiger named Alex died in the zoo from kidney failure. Around the same time, the zoo lost three young blackbucks in a fight within the enclosure during the night, for there is no monitoring of animals during those hours. Three newborn puma cubs have also died in the zoo.

Lahore Zoo, established in 1872, and Pakistan’s best by far, is not doing much better. In 2004, three female black-footed grey langurs died from exposure to cold. The next year, a mandrill and a puma died inexplicably, as did an Asian black bear in 2006. The same year, some animals at the zoo were diagnosed with tuberculosis, but early detection and treatment averted a major catastrophe.

Earlier, in 2004, a four-year-old male chimpanzee was reported to have died in Lahore zoo. Three years later, two stray dogs entered an Indian peafowl pen through a hole in the fence and killed 28 of the birds. Two Bengal tigers, one of which had given the zoo 19 cubs, died from trypanosomiasis the same year.

About the same time, a new-born macaw was reported to have been stolen from the zoo. In 2008, a chimpanzee died from a prolonged unidentified illness. A female giraffe was attacked by a plains zebra and died from its injuries. A 3-year-old female Bengal tiger died after a caesarean section. Two Asian black bear cubs went missing from the zoo in 2010.

That same year, Lahore Zoo received 53 falcons which were seized from Islamabad Airport when being illegally smuggled to Qatar. It wasn’t long before 16 of them died from heat stroke and other causes. But they did not die in vain! As a result of their deaths, the remaining falcons were given to the wildlife department to be set free.

By any standard or yardstick, Pakistan’s zoos are pathetic places, poorly funded, filthy dens of corruption. They lack adequate facilities, trained staff and qualified vets, and are bereft of compassion, both from staff and visitors, who poke the captive animals with sticks and throw stones at them for a laugh.

Public attitude towards animals is woeful. Malnourished cows, buffaloes, donkeys, mules, horses and camels with open sores carry or pull loads far above their capacity; poultry, tightly packed in small cages, are held or transported on open trucks in wind, cold and rain. And street dogs? Well, for them the proverbial dog’s life.

In a country whose prisons are horrible places where human captives are treated like animals, what can captive animals, beasts of burden and street dogs expect!

(Published in Daily Times, 22 December 2020)

by Razi Azmi

by Razi Azmi

Two recent events on far sides of the globe have given many people in the Third World, from ordinary folks to autocrats and dictators, occasion to gloat and beat their chests triumphantly. Though they are different in every respect, one in the United States and the other in Australia, what ties the two events is that they ostensibly show the West in a poor light.

To the detractors, these two events eliminate or blur the distinction between “them” and “us”, between the West and the Third World, between democracies, on one hand, and pseudo-democracies, quasi-democracies, autocracies and dictatorships, on the other hand.

The more recent and by far the more publicized of the two is the presidential election in the United States. President Donald Trump, having lost to Joe Biden, is disputing the result and playing every trick to have himself declared the winner. In so doing, he is casting aspersion on the election process of his own country by alleging rigging and “illegal” votes against him. He even suggests that there is, in America, a “deep state” which is determined to oust him.

That has led some people in Pakistan and many other countries to ask whether the western democracies can claim that their elections are free and fair, after all. Well, the truth is that Donald Trump is a disgrace to America but he remains an aberration, rather than the rule. Even his own party, slowly but surely, is accepting the victory of Joe Biden. Nevertheless, many of the issues which garnered over 70 million votes for Donald Trump on this occasion are another matter. They must be taken seriously by his adversaries unless they want to self-destruct.

But no one anywhere should lose any sleep over this election’s outcome and a peaceful transition from this president to the next. The winner, Joe Biden, will be inaugurated on 20 January 2021 on schedule as the 46^th president of the United States. The US constitution, judiciary, media and civil society are far too strong and entrenched to allow any upstart, even an incumbent president, to subvert the election result.

The other event concerns Australia. A few days ago, the Australian government officially released the “Afghanistan Inquiry Report”, the result of a four year-long investigation by Justice Paul Le Gay Brereton. He was appointed by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defense Force in 2016 to investigate pervasive rumors of war crimes in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2016. The report concludes that soldiers from Australian special forces committed 39 murders in Afghanistan, and recommends that 19 current or former soldiers face prosecution and be stripped of their medals.

It is an exceptional case of a nation washing its very dirty linen under floodlights, so to speak. The report is scathing of patrol commanders of the Special Operations Task Group, where the “criminal behavior was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed”. Commanders further up the chain of command who are found to be negligent may also face disciplinary action.

The hitherto highly-regarded Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment’s second squadron will be disbanded following these damning findings of a “warrior-hero” culture that contributed to this criminal conduct. Compensation will be paid to the families of the Afghan victims. Most of these alleged murders involved prisoners who had been captured or subdued.

Announcing the findings of the inquiry, Australia’s military chief, Gen. Angus Campbell, said that he found the findings “deeply disturbing” and “unreservedly” apologized to the Afghan people. “Today, the Australian Defense Force is rightly held to account for allegations of grave misconduct”. “Rules were broken, stories concocted, lies told and prisoners killed.”

In the United States, Robert Bales is serving life in prison for the “Kandahar Massacre”, which involved the murder of 16 Afghan civilians in Panjwayi, near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on March 11, 2012. There have been reports of atrocities committed in Afghanistan by troops from other countries, including New Zealand, but no country has ever so thoroughly and comprehensively investigated criminal conduct by its own troops as Australia has now done.

This inquiry was not the result of any external or international pressure, but entirely an Australian initiative after reports began to emerge internally in 2015. Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani before the release of the report to express his “deepest sorrow”.

Contrast this with the response to allegations of atrocities against their own forces by governments and nations who will use this report to denounce Australia in particular and the West more generally. Let us begin with those who will scream the loudest, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

No Russian soldier has been investigated for crimes committed during their 10 year occupation of Afghanistan (1979-88) or during two military campaigns in Chechnya (1994-96, 1999-2009). Similarly, no Turkish soldier has been charged for any crimes resulting from military operations in northern Cyprus (1974), Syria or Iraq.

Indonesian atrocities in East Timor (1975-77) have remained unpunished and the on-going Saudi and Emirati crimes in Yemen will never be properly investigated. Closer to home, criminal conduct by Indian troops in northern Sri Lanka (1987-90) and in Kashmir remain mostly unpunished.

And what about our own widely reported infamy in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971? To their credit, two officers of the Pakistan Army’s own public relations department (ISPR), Brig. A. R. Siddiqui and Major Siddiq Salik have, in their published first-hand accounts, alluded to atrocities against civilians during military operations (“East Pakistan: The Endgame, An Onlooker’s Journal: 1969-71” and “Witness to Surrender”, respectively).

The Hamoodur Rahman Commission (officially the War Enquiry Commission) Report, a highly critical account of Pakistan’s military in 1971, has never been officially published, though some details were leaked thirty years later.

For nine months in 1971, in the name of defending national unity, Pakistani troops are alleged to have committed the most atrocious crimes against civilians in what was then East Pakistan, including the pre-planned, targeted and cold-blooded murder of hundreds of professors, poets, doctors and intellectuals, but not a single prosecution resulted.

What the Australian Defence Force and government have done in relation to exposing, accepting and prosecuting its own soldiers for atrocities committed in Afghanistan is exemplary and a model to follow by other nations. While many individual heads must hang in shame, as a nation Australians should take pride in this investigation, the official expression of remorse, compensation to the victims and prosecution of offenders.

(Published in Daily Times, 27 November 2020)

by Razi Azmi

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