Whose voice are we hearing? Photo by Jonathan Smith.

The humanitarian documentary is a double-edged sword of communication and narrative. It serves both to inform and to raise awareness, but it does so through a medium which is necessarily subjective, emotionally manipulative and most importantly, aesthetically produced. So, when it comes to documentaries which focus on human rights issues and campaigns, there appears to be a serious ethical problem in their nature. This problem then forces the question – what do these documentaries actually achieve?

The dichotomy between communication and narrative can be broadly broken down into the idea of “show and tell”. Do these documentaries show us problems, or do they tell us about them? The answer is almost inevitably “tell” – the most powerful documentaries tend to be ideological in their foundations, not only alerting people to serious human rights issues, but exploring the reasons behind them and positing the possibilities for change. This is by no means a bad thing – whether a documentary is led by one strong voice, or features a panel of insightful talking heads, it is often enlightening to have problems which may seem initially very alien relayed to you by those who know the subject.

Although it is arguable that ideology should be the motivating force behind documentary, that argument is contigent upon what we believe the documentary can and should achieve. For example, the basic concept of a documentary would be “to document”, to simply chronicle information and then relay it, leaving room for personal interpretation and reflection. However, humanitarian documentaries, which are heavily stylised and persuasively emotive, aim to create food for thought without actually leaving any room to taste it. A notorious exemplar of this is Invisible Children’s much debated Kony 2012 short film. With its heartbreaking images and moving soundtrack, it struck a chord with the public (not unlike charity adverts) and immediately went viral, before being quickly denounced as flawed, partially false and worryingly evocative of militant propaganda.

Why then were so many people taken in by it? Perhaps it was the aesthetic qualities of the video, perhaps it was the rush of virtual activism (or “slacktivism”, if you will), or the extremely simplified message of Good vs. Evil. However, the most revealing form of persuasion was actually the most unsettling: Kony 2012 made people feel good. Much of the appeal is inherently self-centred – it told us that we could achieve great things by doing very little, that we were an empowered generation of connected social media activists, and crucially, that we in the liberal West had the power to solve the problems of everyone else. It was all about us.

The assumption that documentaries are actually all about the viewer isn’t necessarily wholly negative; learning about and attempting to understand human rights issues requires empathy as well as sympathy. It’s just that the documentaries rarely present situations that we can even attempt to empathise with. As soon as we start trying to, the films risk becoming ethically flawed, and frequently Western-centric – both in terms of moral values and presentation.

For example, recent documentaries such as Girl Rising and Half the Sky – both about women’s rights in India, Pakistan and Africa, amongst other countries – relay personal, first person narratives through the medium of celebrity monologues or interviews. Girl Rising calls for female education and empowerment, but good intentions are dampened by the film’s execution – liberties are taken with the girl’s stories, and their voices are essentially drowned out by a Western imposition of morality, and the famous faces we implicitly trust to deliver said moral judgment. The difficulty with this imposition is that it requires us place a value judgement on cultural norms. In these documentaries, the general solutions are wound up with Westernisation, suggesting that countries should not only assimilate our societal structures, but assimilate the cultural values that go along with them. The question is, where does this end? What happens in countries where religion and state are one and the same? In this respect, the documentary can become overtly political, and once again lose sight of the nuances in these issues, and in each nation. Obviously, there are elements of Western society that are objectively beneficial, and among these education is chief. However, human rights issues cannot be diluted into abstract “pillars of society”; these ideals are fundamentally subjective as culture and morality are not easily separated.

Half the Sky is similarly concerning, in which several Hollywood women meet female victims of persecution and attempt to relate to them. The actresses epitomise the flaws in these kinds of films – the interviews blur into psuedo-docu-drama, and in the attempt to connect with the women, the film ends up alienating them even further. Their very real histories of oppression and trauma are glossed into a simplified story female troubles the world over.

However, idealistic though it may be, behind the majority of these films are people who are intending to achieve something positive. In many cases this goes beyond raising awareness, to actually facilitating change. For example, They Go to Die, a film about the links between tuberculosis and the South African mining industry, led to an All Party Parliamentary meeting in the UK to discuss the issue, and the film received a Global Health Award. The person behind the documentary, Jonathan Smith, was not a filmmaker, but rather a student of the Yale School of Public Health. Smith approached the issue by using his academic background of health and social policy, but rather than letting social theory dominate the film, he let the victims of the mining industry explain the issues themselves. Equally, the award-winning documentary on sexual assault in the US military, The Invisible War, led to an almost immediate directive ordering all sexual harassment cases to be handled by senior officers, issued by Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta. According to the New York Times, the film has been credited with both encouraging victims to come forward, and galvanising procedural changes within the military itself.

Documentaries such as these appear to operate on both a deeply personal level, whilst effectively working to make definitive change. Although they may be a rarity, it is certainly encouraging. Despite the fact that humanitarian documentaries can be extremely flawed in their composition, the argument ultimately boils down to the way we perceive change. Is change restricted to formal, legislative action, or can it also refer to a change in attitude? Raising awareness is the germ of change, even if that change is a gradated one, beginning with a person who watches a documentary at home, and is inspired to seek out answers by themselves. However simplistic it may seem, any narrative that at least raises a few questions, or sparks interest in a previously unknown topic, can only be a positive thing. When the glossy veil of film is stripped away, the human rights issues at their core still remain – as long as we become aware of that, the documentary may still have the power to make a difference.

Donated English textbooks at a school in Pakistan. Photo by Hashoo Foundation USA – Houston, TX via Flickr.

Sometime in 1834, a plump man ventured from the comfort of his “civilized” British homeland to “barbaric” India. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s world view very well reflected the ills of the 19th century. A racist colonist in full measure, the naivety of his knowledge in history prompted him to radically reform the education system in India.

Macaulay believed that to civilize the Indian barbarians, they should be tutored in Shakespeare’s classics and the Glorious Revolution; the expansion of European civilization was key to the progress of humanity. He seemingly ignored the wonderful history of India’s own civilization, of Asoka the Great’s militaristic feats and his philosophical notions of peace that followed. Romeo and Juliet was a Shakespearian masterpiece, but Macaulay was blind to the legend of Rama and Sita.

The colonists did not realise that Pashto, Saraiki, Sindhi, Bengali, etc. are all beautiful languages in their own right, that the Indus and Ganges rivers flow for more miles than any of their European counterparts, and that, discounting Russia, India was larger even in size to the militaristic Europe.

Macaulay’s education reforms are relevant even today: he succeeded in creating a colonial elite. English-medium schools did not seep into India’s core, rather, in modern day Pakistan, they lie on the fringes, available only to the social class that took over from the British, as most people still live in the harsh reality of blinding poverty.

With the elite now primarily English-speaking, Pakistan’s other languages have been degraded. Yet English isn’t the only nuisance in this confusing linguistic puzzle. Urdu, controversially set as Pakistan’s national language and a key element of Bangladesh’s secession in 1971, is a first choice for a mere 7% of Pakistan’s population.

Textbooks in Kenya

In the early 1990s, Harvard professor Michael Kramer was looking for a simple test to evaluate policy intervention in a developing country. He looked at schools in western Kenya that had a shortage of textbooks. It’s a near-universal consensus that textbooks are essential inputs in the education process.

Twenty-five schools were chosen at random, and they received the officially approved textbooks for those specific classes. Remarkably, the study found that there was no difference in the average test scores of the students that received textbooks and those that did not. However, interestingly, those who had scores near the top when the study began, made marked improvements in the schools where the textbooks were given out.

Here’s how it all comes together: Kenya’s language of education is English, and the textbooks were in English too. But most children speak English as a third language, after Swahili and the local tribe language. The same study has been repeated with other core inputs like improved teacher ratios and increased technology in education, but they’ve all yielded similar results.

The study above shows that improving the inputs to classrooms is essential for bettering performance. However, as language is the gateway to learning, these inputs have to work around a linguistic framework suited to the student. Be it Kenya or Pakistan, only a small minority (that are proficient in English or Urdu) will excel in this colonial education system.

British Council Report, 2010

In a 2010 report, the British Council, after a severe analysis of Pakistan’s education system, proposed some far-reaching changes. Their core argument was for Pakistan to embrace her multilingual identity, and reflect it in classrooms. Children, at least at a primary age, should be schooled in the language they are most familiar with.

Pakistan has more than 70 languages, yet Urdu, the medium of instruction, is spoken by a small migrant minority. The language was attached to the concept of Pakistan in the 1930s and 1940s as individuals tried to create a culture around their nationalism. But, with the prominence of regional languages, Urdu has always remained a minority and a second language for most, and the unifying culture took root. It’s time to drop homogenous notions and build a culture around diversity in light of Pakistan’s multilingual landscape.

Children learning in Urdu as second language face many obstacles in their early years. Their progress in reading and writing will naturally be hindered, as would the support they get from their parents.

The British Council’s report proposed a schooling system based around seven major regional languages, including Urdu. This, they claimed, would help provide a first-language education to 85 per cent of the population.

Currently, in order to gain access to the civil service and higher education in Pakistan you need to have a qualification in English. British academic Hywel Coleman suggests, “people should have to demonstrate competence not only in English but also in Urdu and one of the other main regional languages. If that were to happen you would find that the elite private schools would start teaching other regional languages. Something like that would put the three languages on a more equal footing.”

In the same breadth, public schools, charter schools, and schools in remote villages, should introduce English at a later stage, after a child’s primary schooling. This would help break the linguistic barrier to wealth in Pakistan.

As children are taught basic skills in their primary language, and individuals from all social classes begin to embrace Pakistan’s myriad of languages, Pakistan’s school dropout rate is bound to go down as the literacy rate increases. And, importantly, women’s involvement both in the education sector and civil service will increase, as Pakistan’s finally rids itself of Macaulay’s chains on a path to progress.

All this is not meant to undermine the necessity of inputs such as teachers and textbooks, but since language is the basis of communicating with knowledge, the system has to be reformed before the inputs can do their job.

I realise that my ability to criticise the current situation comes from the fact that this colonial residue was in place when I was born. I studied in English at a school still “run by the Church of England” and I wrote this for an English newspaper originally created with separatist-nationalist intentions in a colonial society. I am not just a product of the system I so vehemently criticise, I am the system. I am Macaulay’s child.

Sameer Tayebaly studies History and Economics at McGill University, Montreal. This article appeared first on www.dawn.com and again on our partner website, Graphite Publications, here: http://graphitepublications.com/macaulayism-language-and-education-in-pakistan/

Two civilizations fighting for control of the world. Photo by Vlad Genie via Flickr.

To read is to write as to write is to read. Whether in speeches, academic texts, novels, films, or video games, students meet this inevitable analogy as soon as their first day of school. In blunt terms, it describes how the way in which an author interprets the world, comes to influence how he or she reads or writes about it. In doing so, the author adds their own interpretation to the meaning of the words on the page. In Animal Farm and 1982, George Orwell creates a window to the world, luring the reader into believing that, for a moment, the book is describing a real world. In a similar way, video game developers have increasingly put the consumer into the action, free to explore the world by their own control. In other words, the player controls a character from a “first person” perspective where the screen becomes the eyes of a person within the world.

Entering a Brave New World in Civilization V

One such computer game is Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Brave New World (2013), which gives the player the power, as leader, to be the first to build up his or her civilization. As the player manages resources to develop his or her civilization, makes or breaks diplomatic relations with other civilizations, bolsters trade relations, and forms alliances, he or she is drawn into a simulated international system. Hence, as the decision maker of his or her empire, the player faces an endless number of international issues, and comes to better understand International Relations, both its defining concepts and complexities.

As soon as the player enters the game in 4000 B.C., they first learn how vital diplomacy and negotiation, seen through the concept of power, become. Because their civilization starts off from sticks and stones, the player will look to bargain in trade agreements to stock up on resources from other civilizations. The player soon recognizes how having leverage in a negotiation can protect them from being attacked or conquered by a much more powerful civilization. For example, they might find themselves in a deal where they lose more than receive, or in a negotiation where they exploit their opponent. In any case, the player realizes how important the force behind power is.

Secondly, through diplomacy and negotiation, the player further explores international cooperation through the lens of the United Nations. The player can form bilateral and multilateral treaties with other civilizations—human rights, trade, military alliances, bans on nuclear weapons, embargoes, and so forth. In fact, the player realizes just how much time and effort treaties and agreements take, how states have difficultly ironing out terms of treaties, how states become frustrated when another breaks an agreement, and how international law finds itself in a primitive nature. Therefore, with no “big brother” watching, with states looking for unfair tactics, and with states turning back on other states, the player will see for themselves just how the international system really works—all the ups and the downs.

With so much international cooperation, the player learns the fourth value: the concept of globalization. Since resources are divided unevenly from the start of the game, they begin to see why some countries are rich and others are poor, and try to find ways to reduce poverty across the globe. As the game progresses, the player will find a consistent trend: civilizations that are born near natural resources—water, land, and metals—develop much quicker than others, resulting in economic and population growth. Hence, the player sees how these civilizations interact more because they have the resources, as compared to those that have not.

Unfortunately, since not every civilization will want to participate in diplomacy, the player must defend their lands and waters from conflicts, the fifth value. From the beginning of the game, the player needs to keep his or her eyes open for barbarians, who steal, kill, and settle. However, as the game progresses, with oppressive governments and foreign occupation causing unhappiness, the player faces much more destructive conflicts, one of which comes by modern non-state terrorists. Hence, the player learns about some of the causes of terrorism, as well as some of the ways to stop terrorists from attacking.

Lastly, the player meets the triangle of economic growth, the environment, and sustainable development. In making economic decisions, to dig into the treasury with gold reserves, the player will face domestic constraints and consequences. Because the country’s financial resources influence citizen happiness and population growth, the player needs to run down a cost-benefit analysis if they want to build defensive units, explore the high seas, make or break diplomacy, or connect the civilization’s cities.

Throughout the game, the player will look into how his or her decisions might impact the environment and sustainable development, both in the short and long term. From the start of the game, the player needs to wisely settle his or her first city based on the type of terrain, the natural resources, and the physical borders. Furthermore, as their civilization advances, clearing land to expand cities and to build factories, the player starts to deplete the environment, leading to deforestation, desertification, and pollution. Therefore, the player may construct a coal plant, which would increase a city’s output, but then the player would have to see how to cut down on pollution that is causing a dissatisfied, diseased population.

Questions Within and Beyond the Game

Besides players controlling their empires, Civilization V brings up three interesting debates. One is showing the non-Western perspective, including the silenced voices of women and postcolonial groups, which textbooks seldom look into. Producer Sid Meier states:

Civilization was designed to let each player write his or her own story, so there’s never an intended outcome or message from the designers. It’s designed to give players the freedom to rule and conquer as they please

From Meier’s statement, players have the power to challenge history’s dominant narratives—those written by victors who are western, white, bourgeois men. They can consider how the world would be if the Global North and South traded places, or if certain events such as the rise of Hitler or the Cold War had not occurred. By revisiting the shaping of the international system, players can put the scattered puzzle pieces back inside history textbook pages, where they rightfully belong, and not leave them lying outside the pages’ margins. Players can, therefore, connect the international system in multiple ways.

The game encourages players to apply what they learn to the wider world, whether this is when watching the news or when reading the newspapers. Because players keep a log of the inputs that determine the fate of a nation, players can refer to their logs and uncover the behind-the-scenes of any event—from its creation to its implementation. Hence, they will understand history as a series of cause and effect, packaged and sold to the public in a specific form.

Through Civilization V: Brave New World, rather than reading black ink on white pages, students have a chance to directly engage in international concepts through an entertaining and cutting-edge way. It seems they will never read the news the same way again.

Daniel Golebiewski is an MA candidate in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University. 

North Waziristan, a tribal area in the North West Frontier of Pakistan, where Taliban operations are concentrated. Photo by maverick bashoo via Flickr.

Amidst all the talk of Sharia imposition in Pakistan and the Taliban’s ideological nature, analysts and the general population alike have ignored the very basic reason the Taliban movement sprung up in Pakistan: revenge.

This side of the Taliban movement in Pakistan is most apparent through their targets, leaders’ speeches, recruits, and their manifesto itself. Firstly, one must pay attention to the composition of the Taliban ranks. The TTP is concentrated in the North-Western areas of Pakistan, which is also where the majority of the population is of Pashtun ethnicity.

The Pashtun are a people with a very strong honor code which has dictated their society for centuries. A major component of that code is “badal”, or revenge, which allows every man the right to take revenge for any harm he receives. It is thought of as a method to safeguard the family’s honor, and hence any man who is unable to exact revenge is thought to be weak and his family dishonored.

This laid the basis for the spreading of the Taliban movement in areas dominated by Pashtuns who were being attacked by the Pakistan army. A clear indication of this was the proportion of bomb blasts targeting the Army the year after the Taliban’s formation. Out of a total of 61 bombings, 31 were against the Pakistani security force apparatus. This, in 2008, included bases, check-posts, and military convoys.

The majority of the rest of the bombings also targeted government buildings and officials, hinting at the TTP’s aim at avenging their losses and hurting the Pakistani State that they saw as an enemy.

Another indicator of the Taliban’s aim of revenge can be seen by way of their attacks in 2007, the year of their official formation. In the first six months of 2007, only four attacks took place. However in the next six months, a total of 52 attacks hit Pakistan. The turning point was the Lal Masjid operation by the Pakistan Army as well as the start of the Army operations in the Swat valley which invoked anger in the tribal areas and cemented the government’s image as a stooge of America giving birth to a violent movement against the Pakistani state.

It came as no surprise, then, when the leader of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud said in his first television interview, “We do not want to fight Pakistan or the Army. But if they continue to be slaves to US demands, then our hands will be forced.”

This gave insight to the Taliban’s tactics and ideology of attacking Pakistani soldiers who were mainly Muslims themselves. Mehsud also claimed at that time that if Pakistan stays in alliance with the US, his men would again be forced to stay on the “path of resistance”. This yet again showed the movement was spurred by resistance and revenge, not the imposition of Sharia law. In the same interview, Mehsud clearly stated the first aim of the TTP: they were to fight a “defensive jihad” against the Pakistan Army who was “attacking on the orders of George W Bush” while the secondary aim was to impose Sharia law. His statements clearly showed the TTP’s priorities and what was motivating them to fight.

Perhaps the most vivid indication of the TTP as a reaction movement was their basic manifesto and the aims they stated at the outset of their founding. According to their self-issued statements, their aims include “enforcing sharia, fighting a defensive jihad, react strongly if military operations are not stopped, demand abolishment of all military checkposts in FATA, demand release of the Lal Masjid clerics and to refuse future peace deals with the Pakistan government”.

All these objectives, except the first, are reactionary in nature – not ideological. What also acts as strong proof in favor of the TTP being an act of revenge is the area where its operations are concentrated. The TTP is centered in the tribal areas of Waziristan and other areas within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). These areas are also the ones where the military operations are taking place.

The first military operation in 2004 started in South Waziristan, which is also the area where the TTP’s headquarters are based. The TTP has failed to win any substantial support in any other area of Pakistan, except where the Pakistan Army is carrying out operations.

Pakistan had not encountered a single act of terrorism from the tribal areas prior to the operations. Before 2002, the army had never stepped foot in the tribal areas since independence in 1947. Yet not one terrorist had acted against the state in such a manner or scale before the start of military operations. In fact, the Pashtuns of the FATA had been and continue to be strategic assets of the Pakistani state. As recently as 2008, a Taliban spokesperson said in an interview, “We will put the animosity and fighting with the Pakistani army behind us and the Taliban will defend their frontiers, their boundaries, their country with their weapons.” This speaks volumes about the Pashtun’s and the TTP’s priorities again as not an anti-state movement but one forced to act out of revenge.

The single most horrific aspect of the TTP which in fact epitomizes their overall movement is their treatment of new recruits and kids. According to news reports, children as young as 12 were kidnapped by the TTP and brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers and militiamen. A compound found by the Pakistan Army after its operations was serving as a brainwashing center for kids who were enticed with images of heaven in order to convince them to train as suicide bombers who would attain heaven after their death.

One teenager who had been trained in this method was recovered and in an interview said, “Anyone who stops or becomes an impediment to implementing Sharia needs to be dealt with sternly by any means, including suicide attacks.” This indicates at the TTP’s ability to recruit innocent men with no intention of terrorist activities and inculcating in them the ideological aspect of the TTP.

This activity reflects at the TTP’s overall methodology. The TTP only found its impetus after the military operations started. Before the army entered the area it may have existed in the heads of a few men but the army operations gave these men the recruits to wage their war.

Men and children who lost their loved ones in the army’s ill-planned operations found the TTP as their source of revenge. Once trapped in the vicious cycle, the men who led the movement inculcated their ideas into the heads of the innocent. Thus sprung a movement whose heads are motivated by their own twisted logic and ideology, while their lower ranks comprise of men disillusioned with the state, hence breathing life into this movement which would die out as quickly as it had appeared if the recruits were not avenging their loved ones.

Ahsan Chawla is an undergraduate student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. This article originally appeared on our partner website, Graphite Publications, here: http://graphitepublications.com/pakistans-taliban-part-iii-revenge/

A demolished school in Swat, Pakistan, after conflict between the Army and the Taliban in 2009. Photo by Kash_if via Flickr.

The strict ideology upon which the TTP are based has been conspicuous through their actions over the years. It is through these actions, their composition and aims that they have proven time and time again their intention to try and impose their own version of Wahabbi-inspired strict Islamist law in Pakistan.

Evident through their stated aims, since inception, the TTP leadership have included the imposition of Sharia law in their manifesto. The very first indication of this side of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is the fact that they are modeled upon the Afghan Taliban across the border and also consider Mullah Omer, the Afghan Taliban head, as their own “Amir” or leader.

The Afghan Taliban, during their rule from 1996 and 2001 imposed a harsh version of Islamic law on the country. Beards were compulsory for men and those with beards insufficiently long were jailed, while head-to-toe veils were compulsory for women. Television was banned and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice took strict action against anyone who did not adhere to the stringent rules. Perhaps the most shocking example of the Taliban’s intolerance was the destruction of Buddhist statues and other shrines in the country’s Bamiyan province.

The TTP’s acceptance of such a group as their model, and the leader of the Afghan Taliban as their own leader, hints at their aspirations of creating a Pakistani state that resembles the Afghan state under Taliban rule. Another example of the TTP’s aspirations to enforce their brand of Sharia law in the country are their targeted attacks against barber shops, movie shops and art centers. Repeated death threats were also issued to barbers who shaved beards in their shops in suburbs of Peshawar, again indicating the TTP’s violent propaganda against anything they perceived to be against Islamic law.

In December 2008, the Taliban in the Swat district of Pakistan imposed a ban on female education and threatened to bomb any school with female students after their set deadline. It is reported that more than 210 schools were bombed in the Swat district, 97 in Bajaur Agency, 57 in the Mohmand Agency, 22 in Peshawar and 35 in the Khyber Agency. This was a stark reminder of the ideological aspect of the TTP that was surfacing more violently than ever. By attacking schools, shops and simple civilians they aimed to impose their will on the masses and coerce the military apparatus as well as the Pakistani government, hoping to gain some leverage over the authorities and the law. Their methods paid dividends as soon as the government gave in to their pressure and tried to appease them with various peace deals.

On February 16 2009, the North West Frontier Province’s government struck a deal with a faction of the TTP, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) widely known as the Swat peace deal and the Nizam-e-adl regulation. The TNSM itself is a group whose name literally means “Movement for Imposition of Muhammad’s Shariat”. It was founded in 1992 by firebrand leader Sufi Muhammad and joined the TTP coalition as a major partner in 2007. Under the deal, Qazi courts were to be established in the Swat region to decide all cases. These courts were meant to be strictly Sharia-based and Sufi Muhammad was to have the last say in appointing all judges. It was again a vivid reminder of the TTP’s and their partner groups’ aim to impose Sharia law in the country through force and violence.

In March 2009, an addition was made to the Nizam-e-adl regulation: the Taliban now being allowed to take action against “obscenity and corruption” as well as shutting down music shops. This clause in the agreement virtually left governance at the Taliban’s discretion, allowing them to interpret and implement Islamic law as they saw fit. This development left no doubts about the TTP’s intentions and objectives, raising fears in the rest of Pakistan’s populace.

The popular demand for swift justice in the Swat region was exploited by the TNSM and the TTP in tandem. The courts were established in the entire area and meted out harsh “justice” in the area according to their will. Floggings in public for offenders became a common sight while girls were again forbidden to attend schools. The Lal Masjid incident was another example of organizations influenced by the Taliban trying to implement Sharia law. On March 26, 2007 students of the Lal Masjid seminary raided a nearby house and kidnapped its female residents for allegedly running a brothel. The clerics of the mosque and seminary even established a court within the premises, doling out punishments according to their version of Islamic law. In addition to this, DVD shops were told to shut down by the students as well as music shops in what was another incident of Taliban style groups imposing Sharia law in the country by force.

All their actions were in line with a strict version of Sharia law decreed by their own version of Islam. It was these acts of “justice” that showed the Taliban are not just a group of individuals, but had spread and fermented a strict ideology across many areas of northern Pakistan.

Ahsan Chawla is an undergraduate student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. This article originally appeared on our partner website, Graphite Publications, here: http://graphitepublications.com/pakistans-taliban-part-ii-ideology/

The Durand Line, the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan that cuts through Pashtun tribal areas. Photo by Wenchmagnet via Flickr.

Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the situation on Pakistan’s Afghan border has been continuously volatile. The extremely porous border, namely Durand Line, is spread across a vast mountainous region. With a concrete border existing only in maps, locals often venture freely on either side of the border due to the historic connection with their brethren of the same Pashtun ethnicity.

After the U.S. invasion in 2001, thousands of fighters belonging to various militant factions fled across the border into Pakistan. The Pakistani Pashtuns, in line with their honour code, welcomed these fighters warmly. The government and military had little control over affairs in this tribal area, to regulate the border crossings. The Pakistan military responded by deploying troops inside the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2002 under the operation “Meezan”: this was the first time the military had entered these areas since independence from colonialism in 1947.

In 2004 the army started its operations in South Waziristan, “reportedly undertaken after intense U.S pressure”. During this operation indiscriminate bombing by the army resulted in high civilian casualties which eventually helped the militant cause. Three years later, in December 2007, thirteen militant factions formed the umbrella group named Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Baitullah Mehsud was named the group’s leader and their headquarters were located in South Waziristan agency in the FATA. The TTP, although widely perceived to be an ideological movement to impose Sharia in Pakistan, is actually motivated by feelings of revenge and hatred towards the USA and the Pakistan Army which the TTP see as America’s stooge, while only a small portion of the movement’s ranks are ideologically motivated.

As the TTP took shape, their demands and aims came to the fore. The very first demand that came from the militants was to stop military action in the tribal areas within ten days. The TTP then stated its aims and principles which were primarily to enforce “Sharia law, unite against NATO forces in Afghanistan, fight a defensive ‘jihad’ against the Pakistani military while reacting strongly if the Army did not stop its operations”. Yet other demands included “abolition of all military check posts, immediate release for the Lal Masjid cleric and a refusal of any future peace deal with the Pakistani government”. These demands gave an overview of this new Taliban movement influenced by the Afghan Taliban.

In 2008, the year after the TTP’s formation, sixty one suicide bombings struck Pakistan, killing 889 people, the highest number of suicide bombings within a single year in Pakistan’s history. The next year was even worse when 88 bombings hit Pakistani security and civilian sites. While not all of these attacks were claimed by the TTP, most of them were thought to be either their work or that of an organisation’s which was linked to the TTP. Subsequent years brought the Pakistan no respite.

However, it is interesting to note the targeted sites of these bombings. From 1995 to 2007, the year of the TTP’s formation, only 4 bombings targeted the Pakistani security apparatus. In 2008 alone, this number had risen to 31 showing clearly who the TTP’s prime target was. A heated debate on the TTP started in Pakistan. Some claimed they were freedom fighters merely reacting to the imperialism of Western forces and their perceived stooges, the Pakistan Army. Others insisted these were “mujahideen” who turned into terrorists after the Afghan war. Yet others thought of them as extremists trying to impose their version of harsh Islamic law in the Pakistani state. The latter were of the opinion that they should be dealt with harshly by the army.

Perceptions of Taliban in the society had a multi-pronged effect on Pakistani social circles. People who subscribed to the first view were deemed Taliban-sympathisers and fundamentalists themselves. Others who thought of the Taliban to be extremists were labeled “liberal fascists”. This phenomenon polarised Pakistani society to a great extent. It was during this time that bombs rained on civilians and the military amidst drone strikes by the Americans on “suspected terrorists” and jet fighter bombings by the Pakistani military itself. The problem of the TTP however, continued to grow.

Ahsan Chawla is an undergraduate student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. This article originally appeared on our partner website, Graphite Publications, here: http://graphitepublications.com/pakistans-taliban-part-i-growth/

War as destruction: a British soldier stands in the ruins of a French town during World War I. Photo by National Library of Scotland via Flickr.

In 1997 Martin Amis wrote in the New York Times that the end of the Cold War was likely to inaugurate “uninteresting times”. I myself have heard this assertion on a number of occasions from peers and elders alike. It suggests we have passed into a period of historical stasis without precedent. Of course, there are problems with this analysis. Who can say with any confidence that world history has come to any sort of “end”? Further, how has the world’s present condition led people to even consider such an absurd claim as legitimate?

A major dilemma facing modern societies is not that we are lacking in historical events, but that we often feel remote from them. Television and the Internet confront us with a constant stream of information that conflates the significant with the mundane, giving the unsteady course of history the appearance of a spectator sport, commonly euphemised as “current events”.

One cannot avoid the omnipresence of war in human history. War and the preparation for it has often been the basis for extremely influential changes in social organisation. The Napoleonic Wars for instance, pushed millions of conscripts across the plains of Europe to foreign lands where they suddenly found themselves in a position to decide the fate of their homeland in small ways that became significant on a wide scale. War provided an opportunity to find one’s place in History, to join the quests for national and personal self-realisation.

In observing the Napoleonic Wars, Carl von Clausewitz remarked that when states permitted themselves to engage in scorched earth campaigns, they risked exposing themselves to total destruction by a retaliating enemy. For violence to be “productive” it had to be contained. This concept can be traced in the changing status of war throughout the twentieth century.

The changing status of war

While we can debate whether or not atomic bombs alone brought an end to the Second World War, we can be sure that they were responsible for starting the next one. Nevertheless, this war would be as unprecedented as the weapons released above Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1948, American President Harry S. Truman gathered his advisers to discuss the moral and political implications of atomic weaponry. “We have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that”, he said, asking that his advisers recognise that the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could someday be those of any American city.

Meanwhile, a concerned Stalin had ordered the creation of a Soviet bomb. Although he displayed a disturbingly cavalier attitude in interviews, Stalin secretly worried the Russian people would chase him from power if he involved the Soviet Union in another conflict, adding that atomic weapons “can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world”. He knew that the atomic bomb was practically unusable.

Even after Truman’s departure from office and Stalin’s death, neither side lost sight of the possibility of mutual destruction. The closest they would come to attacking one another would be during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It forced all involved to acknowledge the apocalyptic consequences of war between the United States and the Soviet Union.  The conflict was thus named the Cold War, for both sides would never meet in direct combat. Instead they relied on the creation of spheres of influence from which they engaged one another in psychological warfare and proxy conflicts.

By the time the threat of nuclear annihilation began to disappear from the public consciousness in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, wars had a completely different character. America’s war in Vietnam was fought primarily by soldiers who belonged to working class or minority backgrounds. Although the involvement of the upper classes wars had always been more “comfortable” in comparison to that of their less fortunate compatriots, it was becoming clear that their place would have even less to do with leading at the front and more with the tricky, often bureaucratic business of slaughter management.

War as slaughter management

Did war become invisible? Not exactly – you could now watch it on television. Yet on-screen violence, protected from critical evaluation by that devious alliance of plastic and distance, has a way of becoming as dull and innocuous as the pale blue light that carries it.

This gradual disappearance and sterilisation of violence was not without its detractors. There were those who claimed to stand for action, progress, and revolution. While many hoped to achieve these peacefully, others did not. Enter the terrorist. Mao Zedong once argued that there are only two kinds of death, that which is light as a feather and that which is as heavy as a mountain; only by dying for a people or a cause could death, and thus life, have any meaning.

It was with this same conviction that terrorist groups sprung to action. The terrorist opposes himself to what he perceives as the conformity and complacency of the mainstream. An eternal chameleon, he imbibes the angst of his age, its ideas, its methods, its technologies, only to turn them against each other. He lives by a messianic creed, believing that an end to history lies just over the horizon, that his violence will be absolved by God’s love or the advent of a utopian future.

The idea that we are living in uninteresting times is a dangerous one, for it equates historical significance with violent conflict. It neglects peaceful struggles for economic, gender, and racial equality as well as the never-ending – probably doomed – quest for psychological fulfillment on a mass and individual scale. The struggle for peace is without end, and it is for that reason that we will always be living in “interesting” or significant times. Boredom is surrender.

Security personnel are detained on suspicion of treason at Gambia’s Mile 2 State Central Prison, where accounts of torture, forced confessions, and mysterious disappearances form a grisly catalogue of crimes. Photo by the author.

Serrekunda’s tranquil beaches attract tourists from throughout the world to continental Africa’s smallest country: The Gambia. They walk along stretches of white sand and visit clubs bustling with expatriates. Police smile as they pass by, protecting visitors from unlicensed guides, offering them friendly advice, and ensuring they stay on the pristine path. But Gambia’s holiday sanctuaries belie the unsettling reality of a place far from peace, a state suspended in a silent struggle against itself for the past two decades. A series of treason and coup plots date back to even before the current regime seized power in July 1994.

For almost twenty years since, the President – head of the former Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council, now the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) – has become increasingly isolated from the country’s security apparatus in a continual power struggle. His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh episodically clears the top ranks of Gambia’s police force, military branches, and intelligence agency: the state structures intended to keep the country safe and intact. The enemies he makes in the process are detained, forced to flee, or mysteriously disappear. Some escape with unsettling accounts of how he seeks vengeance against those who threaten his already troubled legitimacy. In the second quarter of 2012, Europe received more asylum applications per capita from Gambia than from any other West African country – including the “peaceful” nation’s war-torn or post-war neighbours.

Our Society is Bleeding

It’s not difficult to understand why. Gambia’s human rights record is abysmal; detainees who survive to speak of their experiences bear wounds that tell of systematic abuse behind bars. Their descriptions of harrowing torture routines and accounts of psychological and physical harm build, as Churchill might say, a macabre and seemingly endless catalogue of crimes committed by the State. Torture has become the preferred method of discovering the latest plots for rebellion, even if none exist; forced confessions are well documented. Victims accused of incitement, opposing the President, or other crimes against the state tell of electric shocks, sexual torture, forced labour, mock executions, near-drownings and endless beatings. Even when they are tortured, they must support the APRC no matter what: “You can’t say otherwise or they kill you. They want to kill you.”

Over 20 soldiers were arrested on suspicion of treason shortly after the first coup attempt against Jammeh’s government. According to eye witnesses, the President simply stated he didn’t want arrested soldiers, he wanted dead soldiers, and issued the command for a notoriously vicious and disgraceful series of extrajudicial executions against members of his own military. “There was lots of blood,” recalled one soldier, staring at the wall as though he could still see it, 15 years later. That pivotal event set the stage for the acrimonious relationship between the military and the President, a feud that has been spreading to other security agencies and tearing the country apart ever since. “Our society itself is bleeding,” one activist said. It’s a slow death.

Disturbing the Regional Waters

Bordering states welcome a regular stream of controversial exiles seeking refuge, which destabilises regional relations and means that nobody – from local police officers to top army chiefs – is insulated from accusation or suspicion. Even if they did not plot coups before, it has become common occupation for those in exile. Revolutionaries from decades ago now sit alongside those involved in more recent attempts to overthrow the government. Old adversaries put aside their differences to conspire against a common enemy, dreaming of liberating a conflicted country that barely knows it’s at war. Some former soldiers of the Gambia National Army now proclaim it’s their solemn duty to put Jammeh to rest for his crimes against their homeland. Others argue he must be seized alive and handed over to the International Criminal Court while human rights organisations investigate the abuses committed by his regime.

The most recent development, however, has been unabashedly public. Last Autumn, a group calling itself the National Transition Council of The Gambia held a press conference in Dakar, Senegal. It announced the formation of a government-in-exile ready to take over from the President at a moment’s notice. A full roster of Ministers was put forth, including a few of Jammeh’s disgraced former allies. An ultimatum has been issued for him to stand aside or face the consequences. It remains to be seen whether this will mobilise change from abroad, or if it’s just another turn in the cycle.

The Spies of Everyday Life

“Gambia is a powderkeg,” warns a local activist – it is a nation suffering from muted volatility. The toxicity of this pervasive suspicion means neighbours don’t talk to neighbours, colleagues avoid colleagues, and soldiers engage in the practice locally known as “eyeing” in order to trade any signs of disloyalty for fleeting favouritism in the ranks. Witnesses tell stories of friends pulling guns on their brothers-in-arms to avoid the torture chambers, and of fathers being hunted down by state-sanctioned paramilitaries to report the suspected treachery of their children.

In a country as small as The Gambia, the State holds leverage over almost everyone through civil service and public employment; allegiance is contorted in a manipulative brand of neopatrimonialism that aims to divide the security forces and entrench a competitive brutality. Everybody has something to lose and someone to protect; people divulge secrets or suspicions not out of loyalty but to survive. Anyone can be a spy. Meanwhile, at the top, wave after wave of police, military, and intelligence leaders are removed as the President seeks to maintain a system of betrayal that consolidates his power while destabilising the country’s nefarious security institutions.

Parallel, non-state “security” forces loyal only to the President emerge as a symptom of these ritualistic and paranoid upsets. They are populated with members of Jammeh’s own ethnic group, mandated to reinforce his rule in the face of declining legitimacy. The military say the President is sending the wrong message. A former soldier asked: “What should he have to fear if he is doing things right?” Gambia is, after all, a peaceful country; the army’s only threat appears to be their own Commander-in-Chief. It’s a common saying among soldiers, particularly those who have attempted to overthrow Jammeh and failed, that Gambia went from the frying pan to the flame the day he took power in a bloodless military coup. Ever since, the country has been simmering, in search of a spark.

The backdrop to the inter-agency rivalries in Bangalore. Photo by Rachel Proctor May.

India has long been viewed as a land of rural splendour. Before we were bombarded with images of Slumdog Millionaire, which presented an India replete with urban slums and high-rise buildings, the enduring public image was one of a country largely without electricity and basic amenities.

Yet even as India inches her way towards becoming a global economic power, Indian policy remains predominantly orientated towards its rural areas, often at the expense of urban development. The focus on rural India is not without reason – nearly 70% of the country’s population lives in the countryside – but it belies the fact that the cities, according to recent research, are growing fast.

A McKinsey Global Institute Report from 2010 projects that by 2030, 40% of India’s population will live in cities. Currently 13 cities have populations of over 4 million. In such a climate, politicians in India will need to engage with cities on two levels: first to improve local governance, and second to develop the crumbling infrastructure.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is one such policy initiative instituted by India’s central government in 2005. With a total investment of over $20 billion, it seeks to create “economically productive, efficient, equitable, and responsive cities”. Its wide-ranging focus covers basic amenities to the poor and infrastructure development, among other efforts. The policy initiative is in line with the 74th Constitutional Amendment of India, which was passed in 1992. This legislation sought to decentralise urban governance, and enable a regional approach towards urban development that increased the local governments’ accountability to citizens.

When in Bangalore

Bangalore in southern India is most famously associated with India’s information technology boom, and has earned itself the sobriquet of India’s Silicon Valley; the city is currently the third most populous after Mumbai and New Delhi. It has also received the most funding from the JNNURM. However, basic services remain staggeringly underdeveloped; water is a major area of concern, according to a Service Level Benchmarking Report conducted by the central government. Bangalore’s water coverage system extends to only 50.8% of its full potential, and ordinary citizens only have access to three hours of continuous water supply a day.

A study done by Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based NGO that works with urban governance issues, posits that the main problem is that municipal governance is “crowded”. What this essentially means is that there are multiple municipal agencies with competing jurisdictions, and this gives rise to conflicts, stalling progress.

Taking stock of recent developments across the two most important sectors of city government, roads and water, one soon discovers that while there are specialised agencies handling both, there is a gaping hole in terms of co-ordination between them. Statutorily defined roles exist, but there is a lack of legal guarantees for inter-agency interface, as well as inertia on the part of the agencies to take responsibility for engaging with each other.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) is the city’s urban local body, and the only municipal agency that consists of directly elected representatives. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is responsible for maintaining the city’s water supply, and acts as a subsidiary to the state government – which is also in charge of coordinating any disputes between the two, further complicating matters. In early 2011, the BWSSB began a water drainage project in the Trinity Circle area of the city, which left the roads in complete disarray a whole year after the project had begun. While the BWSSB has the legal authority to dig up roads to lay pipes, it cannot repair roads. The BWSSB alleges that it transferred money to the BBMP to repair the road, but the BBMP claims otherwise.

The Times of India spoke with a number of residents in the area who expressed frustration at their predicament. Two presidents of resident associations, Anil Sahai and Sharath Kaul, claimed they were in the process of taking up the matter with their local Member of Legislative Assembly and other authorities in the state government, but if they failed in these attempts, they would “block the road and play cricket on it”.

Not Cricket

In June this year, the Hindu ran an investigation on the Arcot Char Sreenivas Street, an important arterial road that suffers from multiple problems including water-logging and uncollected garbage, both of which pose severe public health hazards. They discovered, however, that the BBMP not only believes that the road does not come under their jurisdiction, but is unaware which agency should be responsible for its upkeep. As the primary urban local body, and the only elected one, such mismanagement on part of the BBMP does not bode well for the future of urban development in Bangalore.

Incidents like these illustrate that urban governance in India remains highly stratified, making it particularly difficult to address issues. If governmental agencies are unclear about the duties they are meant to perform, and are unwilling to liaise with other agencies, citizens cannot air concerns or have problems resolved; a conspicuous failure of democratic action in the world’s largest democracy.

Cities like Bangalore, and other major metropolitan areas, need not only to strengthen their local governance, but also empower citizens to truly do justice to the nature of participatory democracy. Urban agglomerations are a growing reality in India, and to do justice to the immense significance they hold for the country, major policy and legal reforms are necessary.  They must ensure that the money being invested in infrastructure development is not in vain, and enable a sustainable urban environment along with a more involved democratic culture among the citizenry.

Taking a mini-bus can be quick and cheap, but is also extremely dangerous. Photo by coda via Flickr.

“The fact that Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings does not necessarily make them sensible human beings.  If God wanted us to be equal to the Blacks, he would have created us all of uniform colour and intellect,” are the chilling words of former South African president P.W. Botha, made during a speech to his cabinet in 1985.

Racial segregation, legally enshrined by the National Party in 1948, clearly remained a prominent part of government policy throughout the 1980s, despite growing resistance and public protest from international groups and South Africans alike. However, on 17 June 1991 the last vestiges of apartheid appeared to be breaking; South Africa’s Parliament voted to repeal the legal framework for apartheid. Three years later, Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa. According to the statute books, apartheid became “history”, and so the world quickly assumed equality in legislation would heal the years of discrimination.

However, it is clear that racial division is still an inherent part of South African society. The average income of a white household is roughly seven times greater than that of an African household, and nearly three times greater than that of a coloured household. One only has to compare the predominantly white population living in the high security, luxury homes scattered along the bay of Clifton beach with the 90.5% black African population living in the township Khayelitsha to see how colour continues to determine where an individual lives, along with their wealth and their status. Yet rather more surprising is the blatant segregation evident in one of the most fundamental aspects of every day life – transport.

Cape Town Today

In Cape Town, an individual’s position in society is defined by the mode of transport they choose to take. Those with money pay more for a safer and more comfortable journey whilst those without settle for less. If you’re white, you travel by car. At a push you may take first class travel on the Western Cape Metrorail, though the infrequent services during the day and late in the evening tend to dissuade the majority. If you’re coloured or black you do not have the luxury of choice. Thus there are two options: the overcrowded mini-bus or overcrowded second class section of the aforementioned Metrorail.

Despite being the most dangerous form of transport in Cape Town, mini-bus travel is cheap and accessible, which is essential considering that the majority of the black and coloured population live on the outskirts of the city’s economic heartland. The mini-bus drivers pride themselves on providing a quick and efficient service, regardless of safety – or indeed any consideration of the law. Common practice includes swerving into lanes without signalling, parking in the middle of a street to pick up as many passengers as possible, and using vehicles which are barely roadworthy. Hardly surprising then that mini-bus tragedies and the predominantly black and coloured population who rely on them form the greater part of the 100 road fatalities recorded for September 2012.

Driving Change

In 2009, the government appeared to recognise the complexity of the problem, implementing the National Land Transport Bill. This proposed greater integration of transport in South Africa as part of a wider plan to improve public transport across the continent, stating that cities should take control of public transport services to ensure that vehicles run according to timetables and people feel safe when they travel.  However, it is only recently that Western Cape Transport has made a decisive attempt to deal with the segregation at the heart of its transport system. At the launch of Cape Town’s Transport Authority on 19 October, the Minister of Transport, Robin Carlisle, proposed a new plan to combat segregation through the creation of a single, centralised authority for all land-based transport in the city.

Commuters will be able to use different modes of transport across the same network, buying just one ticket to travel by train, taxi and bus regardless of operators. Walking, cycling and skating routes will also be established. There will be one timetable, one management system, and one standard. In his address, Carlisle stated: “Nothing can bridge the Apartheid barriers of this city faster and better than integrated public transport.” Mayor for Transport Brett Heron said it was his intention to “connect communities such as Khayelitsha and Mitchell’s Plain to the economic opportunities in Wynberg, Claremont, Belville and the West Coast”.

Potential Problems

The idea is certainly commendable, yet to what extent it will change people’s lives remains debatable. An integrated transport system that promises the creation of bus stops within 500 metres of most homes in the city could mean that those who cannot afford to travel far at present may be able to in the future, in turn increasing their job prospects. For those living outside such areas the future looks less promising. Sanjay Hora, former legal attorney at the Projects Abroad Human Rights Office questioned the viability of the plan: “In Cape Town there’s no efficient mapping area or formalised transport routes. Townships are rarely sign-posted and often illegally established which is why people living there rely on mini-buses. They access areas which other forms of transport do not.”

If integration along a single network is to succeed new routes will have to be created. Only when the poorest members of society are able to travel will racial integration in public transport become a possibility. Similarly, only when the white population feel they can travel safely will they ever stop using cars and regularly opt for public transport instead.