Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Liberal Visa Regime and Infiltration: How do the two add up?

Pakistan’s federal cabinet approved today an agreement on a liberalized visa regime between Pakistan and India. The liberalized regime allows for issuance of visas to the elderly and children on arrival, facilitates group visas for tourists and allows for multi entry visas to businesspeople. This is good and means that the staggered approach to conflict resolution between the two countries is holding. It allows for people to people contacts which can potentially obviate and cancel out the prevailing stereotypes in the two countries about each other. Gradually, people across the divide may come to see each other as people and not as Indians or Pakistanis. This can potentially lead to bottoms up pressure on both countries for a comprehensive normalization of relations. It can also have other learning effects that can only be salubrious. This is much is well and good.
 
 
However, this raises a set of questions pertaining to the so called core issue between India and Pakistan. The reference is here to Kashmir. Why is Pakistan, despite its ostensible measures to seek and crystallize peace with India, continuing to push militants into Kashmir? Even the level of infiltration is low, what explains is? Is Pakistan being Janus faced and playing the same old game that it has become good at? If so, why? Will the infiltration pick up? What can and should be done to resolve the so called core issue and what tangible steps should and can Pakistan take toward a comprehensive settlement?
 
 
Explaining Pakistan’s infiltration attempts is not rocket science. The country obviously is desperate to have some traction and leverage on the dispute over Kashmir. Pushing militants into the valley and even low level acts of militancy can, in the Pakistani schema, allow Pakistan some leverage on Kashmir. The other explanatory variable is that even while some of the infiltration may enjoy the patronage of the Pakistani praetorian elite, some of it may be the initiatives of some of the militant outfits that the Pakistani state has cultivated and nourished. This does not mean that the state cannot control or curb this. The state can, if it chooses, put a stop to any kind of infiltration. The infiltration is then more or less a desperate measure made more salient and poignant by the fact that the conflict in Kashmir has transformed and mutated. Pakistan does not through its proxies have the same amount of leverage in the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
 
 
Low level militancy can be countenanced and even absorbed by the Indian state. It does not pose an existential threat. Pakistan then is playing a mug’s game. It should review and revise its approach and strategy and align it to the new equations-local, regional and global. What would this mean and entail? This means dropping its claim on Kashmir, dropping maximalism and arriving at a settlement with India that perhaps accords with the extant realities and the status quo. This will not be an easy task given that the conceptual dynamic of Pakistan is undergirded by the Kashmir obsession. This is overlain by the obsession of its people and society to wresting Kashmir from India.
 
 
Dropping the Kashmir obsession and arriving at a comprehensive and lasting settlement with India on Kashmir then almost amounts to a revolution and a paradigm shift. This is really difficult but not impossible. Nations and the principles and philosophies undergirding them are not static entities. They change and evolve. The trajectory of many nations is testimony to this. White Australia, for instance, has transformed into a multi cultural Australia where learning Asian languages is now mandatory. Pakistan can, for its own benefit, take a cue from this and evolve a new paradigm and conceptual dynamic that is in accord with the nature and mood of the times. This will not save it energy but allow the country to sublimate its energies toward endeavors that redound positively to it. This may mean swallowing the bitter pill but Pakistan has to, at some point in time, do it. This is in its own interest.
 
 
The Indian state should help and assist Pakistan in this. It can do so by allowing Pakistan a face saving exit from Kashmir which the country can then ‘sell’ it to its own people. Lots of blood and treasure has been expended on what essentially amounts to a Sisyphean endeavor. Let saner heads prevail and let a course correction and review be undertaken. This can be an unalloyed good for the peoples of the subcontinent. Let haste be made slowly and let peace and its concomitant , prosperity- the entitlement of the peoples of the subcontinent be allowed to crystallize and take root.

Friday, October 26, 2012

The Lone Eid Mubarak from the Netherlands: In search of the invisble Muslims in the West;


 

I returned home to an email that felicitated me on the eve of Eid Al Adha. Heart warming, the eid greeting was sent by a dear friend – a westerner with whom I have developed a great rapport,  considerable personal and social capital. It would, only a few years ago, be unthinkable, for westerners to know about Islam and the holy and important days of the Muslim calendar. Many westerners now know about Islam, Muslims and things that Muslims hold dear and value. This , unfortunately is not a trend and cannot be generalized.

 

Despite the presence of the huge Muslim diaspora in the West, most westerners are ignorant about Muslims. Whatever little the host societies know about Islam is mediated by the media. The media in its quest for ratings only reports the sensational and the ‘newsworthy’  This then brings to the western consciousness the negative aspects associated , for whatever reason, with Islam and Muslims.  This is ironical given that Muslims, to repeat, constitute a sizeable proportion of contemporary western societies. The question is: what, besides the media mediation and manipulation of images, explains this? And how can this problem be remedied and obviated?

 

There is no , ‘ one size fits all’ answer to these questions. Western , for want of a better world,  of Islam and Muslims is premised a host of factors. The salient of these are that the contemporary encounter of Islam with the west or the converse is a novel and rather unprecedented phenomenon. Termed and characterized as ,’ globalized Islam’, this phenomenon is novel in its scope, intensity and depth. It differs profoundly from Islam’s historical encounter with the west which was mediated by the sad saga of the Crusades and Imperialism. Both these have left lasting images of either in both the minds of Muslims and the west. Both , in the aggregate , tend to see each as the other’s Other. This is overlain by the fallacious assumptions and sterile assertions of Orientalism which, by design , portrayed Islam as the West’s other and operating on a philosophical terrain that was diametrically opposed to the West.

 

In conjunction and combination, these factors have created strong stereotypes about  Islam in the western collective imagination. The same albeit in a different permutation and combination caould be held true for Muslims. Colonialism and imperialism and the Crusades cast westerners in a negative light to Muslims and this is overlain by the obscurantist mullah’s depiction of westerners as infidels.

 

These images and mutual stereotypes that have formed and crystallized over the years have never really been addressed. To the contrary, westerner and Muslims find themselves in close proximity on account of the inexorable logic of globalization. This, instead of making either curious about the other has , in some senses, estranged them. The reasons for this estrangement are axiomatic: the nature and patter of immigration and the September 11 attacks on the United States account for much of this.

 

The latter is pertinent to Europe where much of immigration is class based. That is, most immigrants of Muslim stock come from rural backgrounds and are , by and large , uneducated. This impedes their integration into their host societies and also because of traditional and conservative attitudes and prevalent stereotypes, Muslim immigrants are loath to make en effort to reach out and understand their host societies. This is also overlain by racism and inability to put cultural differences into perspective by Europeans. This , as I have pointed out in my writings, is a peculiarly European disease.  Complementing this is the negative fallout of September II attacks wherein Muslims are tarred with the same brush. This leads to alienation and disaffection and their concomitant: ghettoization. Muslims and westerners in the west occupy and live in different mental and philosophical universes.

 

This condition needs to be remedied. The question is how? Perhaps the only effective way to allay the stereotypes upon which this condition is predicated upon is increased people to people contacts and interpersonal relationships. It these that can potentially obviate this condition and generate the much needed social capital for smooth functioning of contemporary western societies. This has to be a two way street wherein both Muslims and westerners take the initiative to understand each other. This non mediated and unstructured interaction needs to be iterated and repeated so that people of diverse backgrounds understand each other’s perspectives and value and talk to each other instead of talking at each other. We live in a globalized interconnected world where people of diverse backgrounds rub shoulders with each other on a quotidian basis. It is a travesty that these people remain perpetual strangers. This insalubrious condition needs to be reversed so that healthy, vibrant and dynamic societies are created and crystallized. Let us make haste slowly and bring about these new societies.

Pakistan and its Nuclear Weapons: On Mitt Romney and his Naivete

Mitt Romney's foreign policy naïveté and world view is reflected in his views on Pakistan. Romney in a CBS debate with Barack Obama asserted that, 'its not time to divorce Pakistan'. The reasons, according to Romney, lay in Pakistan's nuclear capability. Romney's assertions could be read as that its all right to dump Pakistan at some point in time and that Pakistan's value to the international community lay in its nukes. This is unlikely to go down well in Pakistan. Romney also supported the continuation of drone strikes in Pakistan.
While the Pakistani power structure has relied on nuclear weapons to pursue its foreign policy agendas- low intensity conflict in Kashmir and strategic depth in Pakistan and play double games with the United States- and the falling of its nukes is a clear and present danger, it cannot and should not be asserted or even implied that Pakistan's utility lies in its nukes. Pakistan is a security problem. The challenge lies not in humoring Pakistan or keeping it in good books, so to speak but to remedy the problem. This can be done by diagnosing the problem properly and then addressing the root causes of the problem.
 
 
Be it Pakistan's unremitting hostility towards India or its nurturing Jihadist groups for use against India , or in Afghanistan and as trump cards in its dealings with the United States, the reasons are conceptual in nature. It is the ideational premise and the nature of the Pakistan that is at the root of problems. Conceived as a bastion for Muslims of South Asia and as an Islamic state, the country has lurched from one crisis to another. This has affected and impacted the nature of its political system, polity and society. State society relations are misaligned and the political system perhaps best characterized as semi-authoritarianism has been unresponsive to the needs of society and the polity. There is, concomitantly, no consensus on the nature of Pakistan and various groups vie and contend for both supremacy and ideological space.
 
 
The ideational premse of Pakistan forged as it was in an anti India formulation and stance concieves Pakistan as India's, ' Other'. And because of the late president Zia ul haq's attempts at Islamification of both the state and society, other layers were added to the ideational premises and rationales of Pakistan. The country began to gradually concieve itself as the bastion of the ummah and its corollary , global Jihad.
 
 
Pakistan's meddling in Kashmir, its instrumentalization of the Taliban and by association, Al Qaeda, can be explained by this. And , it is this that needs to be addressed and reviewed. The impetus for this, should and must come from within Pakistan. Both the Pakistani state and society should come to a realization, that its conceptual dynamic has not served the country well and review this. However, there is a role for the international community especially the United States. The sole superpower should adopt a carrot and stick policy toward Pakistan. This policy should be long term and not ad hoc. Persuasion should be complemented or backed up by a hard power approach wherein the merits of a review of Pakistan's conceptual dynamic should be demonstrated.
 
Deeming and viewing Pakistan purely from a security prism is but a recipe for disaster. The country will use or more accurately misuse this to eke out geopolitical space for itself in a best case scenario or morph into a rogue state in a worst case one. The prudent course of action would be to goad Pakistan towards salutary directions. This will take time and energy but for global as well as regional security is a small price to pay. A vision and a long term grand plan for Pakistan needs to be devised. It is to this that the American strategists and elite must devote themselves to. Pakistan should not be pandered to nor should it be ignored. A balanced approach needs to be devised and implemented. Global peace and security may be contingent on finding this balance.

Kashmiris and Globalization: Bridging the gap, Opening up, and its Implications

A phone call from my sister working in the United States , and simultaneously chatting with a friend based in the Netherlands , instructions from my boss over email coupled with a terror attack in Srinagar a couple of days ago have all been revelatory or more accurately validatory. We now live in a networked world where both time and space stand compressed where everything is interconnected. The linkages between people, societies, businesses, markets and states have grown stronger and deeper. This phenomenon and trend has been termed as thick globalism. Many will deem and consider these assertions to be stating the obvious. However, elaborating and dwelling upon these is exigent.
This is especially more poignant and salient for places like Kashmir where only a certain strata of the population are connected to the world. A society connected to the world and the global economy is a society that is more cosmopolitan; not parochial and insular. It is a society that is outward looking and not inward looking. And in this society, dated but emotionally compelling phenomena like nationalism, ethnicity and cultural particularism can potentially lose much of their sting. This does not mean that a society exposed to the world loses or should lose its legacy, tradition, identity and culture. It is to say that the negative and insalubrious aspects or corollaries accruing from latching on to these powerful and compelling abstractions can potentially be ameliorated.
Countries and societies that have embarked on an opening up process have enriched themselves. Consider an example: a walk down the streets of Sydney reveals a mosaic of cultures with people of different colors, shapes and sizes jostling for public space. An aussie Rip
Van Winkle would not recognize contemporary Sydney or Australia. In this schema, people gradually but inexorably tend to see people as people; not as Indians, Arabs or Africans. What can be salubrious than this?
This is not a rhetorical question. It is pregnant with consequences. Much of the contemporary world is defined by ethnic and sectarian conflict wherein peoples and societies are caught in a conflictual spiral and dynamic just because people are viewed from the prism or culture, ethnicity or other attributes that are held to be ‘different’.Forging the kind and type of societies where ethnicity and culture is subsumed under the rubric of humanism may then even constitute the summon bonum of societies and nations. This , to repeat, does not mean that culture and identity lose their salience. To the contrary, it would be a boring world if there were no differences. But these differences should be appreciated and recognized as the diversity that defines the world.
Societies and cultures in the throes of narrow identity and cultural concerns wherein the sole markers of people are their cultural and ethnic or religious attributes are nurseries of conflict. Pakistan is a classic example of this. Coming closer home, what would be the consequences and implications of openness to the world?
These would be stark: the horizons of Kashmiris would expand and they would see themselves and others in a more positive and salubrious light. This would entail a redefinition of Kashmiri nationalism into a more expansive and salutary one. In turn, this would have a positive impact on the politics and political condition of the state. Kashmiris would become more confident and their self definition would be in accord with the mood of the times. This, for one moment, is not meant to imply that the special status accorded to the state of Jammu and Kashmir should be abrogated. This special status is hard won and is the right of Kashmiris.
All it means is that Kashmiris self definition change from a narrow focus to a more broader and expansive one wherein Kashmiris relate to the world in a more salubrious idiom. This will even have political economic consequences: by looking outward Kashmiris can tap into both the broader Indian national market and concomitantly the global economy. This will then bridge gap that makes Kashmiris disconnected from either and makes the dependent on fiscal transfers from the state. The new Kashmiri self will be confident, vibrant and dynamic. The question now is how can this state be arrived at?
The answer lies in the domain of public policy and education. More and more Kashmiris should be encouraged to go overseas especially as students. This should be complemented by fostering people to people contacts within and without Kashmir. This can open their horizons and the new learning and approach and attitudes inculcated overseas can potentially spill over to Kashmiri society. It is upon the new generation of Kashmiris that the future of Kashmir rests and it is this generation that needs to open their minds and explore new vistas and horizons. They will inculcate the local and the global in their selves, and take pride in their ethnicity and blend it with a more cosmopolitan bearing and attitude. This can be an unalloyed good. It is about time that Kashmir and Kashmiris open up to the world. Let all Kashmiris be part of the unfolding story and logic of globalization and globalism.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The War against Terrorism and Pakistan: Whose War is it anyway?


The War against Terrorism and Pakistan: Whose War is it anyway?

 

 

The dastardly and cowardly attack on a girl barely out of here teens, Malala Yusufzai, by the Pakistan Taliban has ignited a debate in Pakistan. The young Malala was an activist for women’s rights and education. Obviously, the Taliban did not find this to its liking and targeted the young girl for this crime. Hate and prejudice knows no bounds and killers operating under the illogic of either can kill and murder anyone if the beliefs and views of the victim do not accord with their world view.

 

With due respect to the young Malala, her bravery and courage, and prayers for her health and longevity, this, however is not the core thrust of this article.  The article is concerned with the debate that has unfolded in Pakistan over the nature of the war on terror, and Pakistan’s place in this schema. While aspects of the debate border on the ludicrous and idiotic, the thrust of the debate is whether Pakistan is fighting America’s war or whether Pakistan is fighting a war against itself? It is the author’s view that it is a combination of both. America naturally is pursuing militants ensconced in Pakistan’s territory for its security and strategic interests. The question here is: Is Pakistan being used and instrumentalized by America for its own ends with Pakistan as a passive, sulking and acquiescing ‘partner’?

 

The answer is a clear cut now. While America’s strategic and security interests in the region cannot be denied, it stretches reason to believe that the on terror is solely America’s war. It, in the final analysis, is Pakistan’s war. That is, Pakistan is at war with itself. The country must win this war with itself. It sounds paradoxical and ironical to state that the country is at war with itself. This, however, is the prosaic and hard reality. The war is ideological and is being fought over the nature and identity of Pakistan.  This accrues from the competing and contending narratives of Pakistan and its ideological premise. Laying out these narratives and elaborating them would amount to belaboring the point and stating the obvious. However, it may be needed to state that the war is over what kind of state should Pakistan be? Should it be an austere Islamic state with sharia as the law of the land? Should it be a secular land with a complete separation and divorce of religion from the state? Or should it occupy the middle ground?

 

The Taliban and its fellow travelers would want Pakistan to conform to an austere, strictly Islamic state wherein the legal and governing paradigm conforms to what the Taliban believes and holds Islam to be.  That is, an obscurantist version and vision of Islam. This not only is impossible and chimeric but a distortion of the essence and gravamen of Islam.  The miniscule liberal part of Pakistani society wants Pakistan to conform to the principles and spirit of liberalism, secularism and freedom. This too is surreal. The reasons are prosaic: while liberalism and secularlism are fine and high minded in theory but in practice pure practice of either would not suit the temper and mood of the Pakistani people. This mistake of putting a secular and liberal straitjacket on Muslim peoples was experimented by the Shah in Iran and Attaturk in Turkey. The former led to a revolution and the latter led to a country and society which lost its bearings and moorings. What then is the appropriate ‘solution’ for Pakistan?

 

A sober and prudent approach would be a synthesis of liberalism, secularism and Islam. This synthesis may sound like a contradiction in terms but it is doable. And it is this synthesis that may in the final analysis close the fault lines that define Pakistan. This would require a consensus on the nature of the Pakistani state and society which is both bottoms up and top down and would entail a revolution. But this has to happen and will happen if a long term view is taken. Prudence dictates that this happen sooner than later so that innocent lives are saved and for peace to crystallize within and without. In the mean time, the war on extremism and its concomitant, terrorism should continue, The state should seize the initiative and keep the pressure on forces inimical to peace and stability. It is, in the final analysis, Pakistan’s war and it is Pakistan that should fight it with some assistance from the international community. This counter intuitively includes India. Let Pakistan be given all support  in its war against itself. World peace and stability may be contingent on this.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Multiculturalism and Liberalism: the Answer to the Muslim Question in Europe?


Multiculturalism and Liberalism: The Answer to the ‘Muslim Question’ in Europe?

 

Mohammad Merah- a French Algerian young man-went on a killing spree , in the month of March, 2012 and killed French soldiers and Jewish civilians . This is now followed by an incident where a kosher shop was bombed near Paris. The alleged attacker, Jeremy Loius Sydney- a French citizen of Caribbean birth and intriguingly and curiously a convert to Islam has been killed by the French security forces. A nation wide manhunt has been instituted by the French authorities in an attempt to break terror networks in France. The French Prime Minister, Francois Hollande, has, after the incident said that, ‘the state is totally mobilized to fight all terror threats’. He, at the same time, has publicly stated France should –the home to the largest Muslim diaspora- should be careful and not stigmatize Muslims living in France.

 

These incidents and the ones preceding these and the states responses raise a set of salient questions: Why do these incidents of terror occur in France and more broadly Europe? Why are the perpetrators usually Muslim (converts or otherwise)? Do these acts stem from deep alienation of Muslim immigrants from their European host societies? What accounts for this? Is the European approach towards globalized Islam to be blamed?  Is this approach short termist and narrow?Or is it Islam that is the culprit? How can these incidents and the broader threat of terrorism in Europe be averted? Would taking cues from the Anglo Saxon in dealing with globalized Islam help and should Europe adopt these models?

 

The incidence and occurrence of these ghastly incidents in European societies is no surprise. Europe, barring the United Kingdom, has historically been hostile or cold to the outsider. This is a peculiarly European disease and more salient in France. The outsider (or the immigrant) in Europe never really feels part and parcel of European society and this is made clear to him/her in quotidian life. Poignancy is added to this feeling of exclusion by the assimilative straitjacket imposed on immigrants leaving no space or room for erstwhile cultural affiliations and roots. This is then overlaid by racism and prejudice toward the immigrant. Again, this is a European disease.

 

Social exclusion is followed by exclusion from labor markets and the immigrant is usually forced to rely on welfare systems. This creates a negative feedback loop wherein the immigrant, individually retreats into himself, withdraws from host society and collectively immigrants retreat into ghettos. Criminality and other insalubrious activity follows and mutual stereotypes  are formed and validated once this psychological and then the physical gulf sets in.

 

It is perhaps all about identity, culture and politics. The immigrant seeks an alternate identity and bonding mechanisms in an attempt to reclaim his/her culture as a reaction against the misdemeanors and attitudes of the host society. Criminality, in this schema, is not mere criminality but a supremely political act.   The question is why the perpetrators of criminal and terrorist acts Muslims are or converted Muslims?

 

The answer has nothing to do with Islam but the connotations and other negative associations associated with Islam in the contemporary world. A return to  Islam for the Muslim immigrant constitutes a reassertion of his/her lost self and given that Islam is associated with militancy these days, the immigrant makes a supreme act of rebellion against the host society by ‘returning to his faith’. For the convert, it offers an easy way and means to assert himself and an alternative identity that assuages his/her deep fears and concerns. In short, it is all about assertion of the self in an alien milieu and articulated in a negative idiom.

 

The question then is how can these incidents and their broader ramifications be obviated? The answer lies in rejigging the paradigms that inform European immigrant, social and assimilation policy. This may mean adopting a modest and truncated form of multiculturalism that gives and accords space to an immigrant’s ‘original’ culture and identity without according immigrants group rights. This should be followed by a policy of inclusion-social and economic-wherein the immigrant feels valued and becomes a  productive member of society. Or in short, an inclusive model of citizenship needs to be inculcated and practiced. Models of this exist in the Anglo Saxon and Anglo phone world-the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. Europe could take cues from these models and incorporate them into its policy making grid and framework. It is then that alienation can be reduced to a bare minimum and social peace achieved.

 

Relying on the blunt instruments of state power is a non starter. It will only lead to more disaffection and alienation. Globalized Islam can be accommodated within the western firmament. The experience of the Anglo phone west is a classic example and reminder of this. All it needs is a firm resolve to integrate the outsiders-especially Muslims-into host societies in a manner that is prudent and fair.  Multiculturalism and liberalism may be the best antidotes to alienation and disaffection and the attendant social peace and amity.A lot is at stake here. Let Europe and France introspect deep and hard and come up with policy and social paradigms that redound positively to all.