There can be no happy man on earth,
No one can work well on this planet
While that nose continues to breathe in Washington
Asking the old bard to confer with me
I assume the duties of a poet
Armed with a terrorist’s sonnet
Because I must carry out with no regrets
This sentence, never before witnessed,
Of shooting a criminal under siege,
Who in spite of his trips to the moon
Has killed so many here on earth
That the paper flies up and the pen is unsheathed
To set down the name of this villain
Who practices genocide from the White House
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Many educated young people today, having been raised in a de-politicized cocoon on a diet of ultra-consumerism, would probably attribute such words to an Islamic fundamentalist. After all, only a raving Jihadist lunatic could be so firmly opposed to US militarism and aggression, right?
But these words are not from the latest video-tape which Osama bin Laden mailed to Al-Jazeera. They were written by Pablo Neruda, the iconic 20th century poet of social justice and passionate love. The practitioner of genocide who he refers to is none other than Richard Nixon.
This is a poet, a sensitive soul, a thinking soul. Surprise, eh? It turns out that all sorts of people can be very angry at the US for its policies in the Third World.
I was immediately reminded of this poetry by a recent New York Times video report, about some Pakistani pop musicians and their opposition to US policies in the region, entitled “Tuning out the Taliban”, by Adam B. Ellick.
For those who haven’t seen it, take a look:
Never in its history has Pakistan been the focus of so much Western media attention. Just recently, Hillary Clinton launched a “charm offensive” against our people, amid a flurry of coverage by the Pakistani media.
Ellick’s original report in the NYT and the Pakistani responses to it have made for a fascinating case study on how political leanings, cultural critiques, music and the media interact in the deadly battleground of America’s War on Terror.
Nadeem Farooq Paracha, aka NFP, a prominent cultural critic (who is interviewed in the NYT video report itself), chooses to dismiss legitimate concerns about American militarism. For him, the only Pakistanis to be bothered by distractions such as US drone attacks would be conservative, patriotic products of the 90s. So it would follow that any Pakistani who wishes to prove their secular credentials must cheer on the circus of military dictators, civilian thugs, warlords and religious bigots who play a prominent role in America’s War on Terror. After all, this sage distinguished himself earlier with his barrage of cultural criticism against college students who opposed General Musharraf’s rule…
Another commentator, a columnist in the Dawn (a prominent English daily), chooses to nod along with Ellick, lamenting the lack of criticism for the Taliban in Pakistani pop music. For her, Pakistan’s problems are homegrown and “we” are at fault if “we” live today in a violent, poverty-stricken cesspool. Of course she feels no need to define who “we” are. She ignores the fact that “we” constitute a large and stratified society in Pakistan. Whether “we” are a junta of military commanders, a menagerie of Jihadist mullahs, a gang of corrupt politicians or the brutalized people of Pakistan, it is of no great consequence to the writer. In her universe, “we” ought to have stopped the US from arming Islamic fundamentalists who threw acid in the faces of women who didn’t cover up. “We” ought to have convinced Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq not to strangle democracy and human rights in Pakistan so that he could qualify for Reagan’s largess. “We” must take responsibility for the blindness of men such as Zbigniew Brzezinski: Reagan’s pundits of Freedom and Democracy. If “we” refuse to take up the burden of these sins, the worthy writer sees little need to distinguish us from right-wing Pakistani analyst Zaid Hamid and his hordes of admirers – who blame every flat tire on an imaginary nexus of the CIA, Mossad and RAW. For her, then, “we” are all a mass of delusional, xenophobic “ostriches” who refuse to see the Taliban coming to get us.
Others, especially bloggers, have correctly pointed out the inherently ridiculous nature of Ellick’s brand of reporting. But they seem more interested in scoring polemical points against the obvious flaws in the report. Many of the underlying issues influencing Western reporting, such as racism, stereotyping and NATO militarism are not being addressed.
Ellick misses the obvious fact that songs, concerts, music fans and political lyrics are by themselves a huge rejection of the Taliban and their ultra-Puritanical worldview. He fails to understand that “pop music + Taliban” does not compute. Orientalist delusions can be hard to cure.
Ellick’s report is ridiculously one-sided. In today’s urban Pakistan, if you are into pop music, you cannot miss a band called “Laal” (Red). This band has drawn upon the traditions of the Pakistani poets of resistance and revolution: men like Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib and others, whose vision for Pakistan had little room for misogynistic Islamists. Laal is enjoying an explosion of popularity among the Pakistani urban youth. Putting a musical spin on the timeless poetry of Faiz, Laal declares boldly in one of their tracks:
“No more will any daughter of this country languish under the rule of the mullahs!”
Is that not opposition to Islamist militancy?
The Mekaal Hassan Band is one among several that have turned Sufi mystic poetry into modern music. Junoon, the band which started this trend and gained immense popularity, sing a message of love and tolerance which the wandering Sufi preachers taught to the masses of South Asia.
Some members of the Pakistani intelligentsia, in an attempt to live up to their version of secularism, have joined in the chorus of Western critics who conflate an absence of bands roaring “Die Taliban, die!” with a general lack of opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. Evidently, it is not enough that Pakistani musicians defy fundamentalists by singing and holding mass concerts. For Ellick, perhaps they must openly swear an oath of loyalty to the War on Terror, challenge individual Taliban leaders to shoot-outs and openly endorse the unpopular US bombing raids in north-western Pakistan.
So, what is it, apart from shoddy background research, which leads prominent American media sources to spew such mindless and misleading representations of Pakistani culture?
The first factor involved here is the need to blur the distinction between militant Wahaabi Islamists and other critics of US policy in this region. The message being given is that if it walks like a Pakistani Muslim and talks like a Pakistani Muslim (and happens to see US policy in this region as a huge problem) then it probably is a fanatic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, suicide-bomber Pakistani Muslim.
The Western mainstream media is not new to the business of selling racist stereotypes. It persists in irresponsible journalism because of the political climate of the US itself. In most countries, public opinion rarely bothers about the context and nuances of events taking place half a world away. Eqbal Ahmed noted that in order to sell a foreign colonial adventure, Western governments need two things: a ghost and a mission. American militarism follows this model to the letter: the ghost serves to frighten the public, the mission serves to unify political and military forces around the war effort.
From 1945 to 1990, every war launched in a faraway Third World country was justified using the ghost of communism and the mission of “containing” communism and protecting the Free World (represented by leaders such as Augusto Pinochet and Ngo Dinh Diem). Now the Cold War is over, but the Empire’s juggernaut must roll on. It needs new ghosts and new missions to go with them: from Serbian nationalists to Latin American drug-cartels.
In the region known to Obama as Af-Pak, the ghost is a vague, misty and amorphous enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. To the American public, this ghost is also known interchangeably as “al-Qaeda” and “Taliban”. If you move along the American political spectrum, somewhat towards the right of Obama, this ghost is popularly seen as a brown-skinned male, with wild hair and a messy beard, dressed in rags and a keffiyeh desert-scarf. The ghost carries an AK-47 and has a suicide-belt around its waist. The mission is just as vaguely defined as the ghost itself. It started out as an effort to nab Osama bin Laden. It then added the removal of the Taliban regime to its list of objectives and eventually developed into a counter-insurgency war against the resurgent Taliban. Bonus points were to be awarded for liberating Afghan women from their burqas and bringing true Democracy to the region. There was also this business of securing Central Asian energy reserves by ensuring a strategic foothold in Afghanistan…
With the mission going awry, Washington is now looking for a way out of this mess. Thrashing about wildly, trying to cut deals with “moderate” Taliban and desperately lashing out at Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Washington’s approach to this war is reminiscent of its previous imperialist adventures. The US paid a heavy price for trying to extend its Korean War into China. It succeeded in spilling over its lost war in Vietnam to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, again with disastrous results. It now hopes to transfer the brunt of its war in Afghanistan onto Pakistan.
The rulers of Pakistan, be they military or civilian, have adopted the rhetoric and tactics of the War on Terror. It only remains to be seen if the delusions des grandeur of the Pakistani military (which it calls “strategic depth”) can be subordinated to American strategic aims in the region. As for the Pakistani masses, they are not too enthusiastic about jumping aboard America’s doomed War on Terror. After all, this is not the first time that Uncle Sam needs a “frontline state”.
It is in such a context that Ellick interviews popular Pakistani band Noori and is apparently shocked by their attitude. He just can’t seem to get over the fact that many Pakistanis would disagree with him on what is the biggest problem facing their society. He does not seem to have grasped the fact that most Pakistani people face problems which are much more immediate than the Taliban, and therefore might refuse to put a bunch of crackpot fanatics on top of their list of problems in life.
[sarcasm]And he does have a point. After all, what are these Pakistanis on? Why don’t they realize that a few thousand armed militants in a country of 160 million are the biggest problem to sing about? Hunger, poverty, injustice, corruption: those issues are so 20th century, aren’t they?[/sarcasm]
And that brings us to another important point. It is true that a lot of young people in Pakistan have a tendency to look for silly xenophobic explanations for the troubles faced by their country today. Tariq Ali would call this the “anti-imperialism of fools”.
In Ellick’s video, popular vocalist Ali Azmat comes up with a tragically disjointed and confused explanation of the Taliban phenomenon in Pakistan. For him, it boils down to the infamous “foreign hand”. But his confusion is shared by hundreds of thousands of youth in urban Pakistan.
Now this is not a nuanced analysis of US imperialism, socio-economic dependence and globalization. What Ali Azmat is saying is based on pure conspiracy theories, the purpose of which is to deflect anger away from the actual structures which keep our people subjugated, and direct that righteous wrath at “Indian agents”, “Jewish conspirators” and other such bogey-men from the imagination of Pakistan’s military rulers.
The military establishment and its mouth-pieces would like us to believe that they had nothing to do with the creation of the Taliban, that they never established dictatorships in this country which systematically placed our human and natural resources at the disposal of US imperialism, and that all of our problems today are the fault of “corrupt politicians” like President Zardari. And they also throw in a bit of anti-American posturing to gain cheap popularity, while hiding their actual subservience to Washington.
And a lot of younger people, including music sensations like Ali Azmat, swallow this propaganda completely.
Are these young people supportive of the Taliban, as Ellick and NFP and others would want us to believe?
Without looking at the social environment and psychology of our youth today, one can only come up with the kind of nonsense that Ellick produced in his report.
The main source of information for most young Pakistanis has been a conservative-populist Pakistani media, which is quick to cook up links between any social unrest in Pakistan and the machinations of RAW, the Indian intelligence agency. When you add to it an even more ridiculous link with the Israeli Mossad, the imaginary CIA-RAW-Mossad axis becomes a convenient way for the Pakistani state to explain away its own irresponsibility.
These conspiracy theories are peddled by most mainstream Pakistani TV channels and print media outlets. GEO, Express, Waqt and other TV channels take great delight in dishing out this nonsense. So do most local publications, with a few honorable exceptions. From Shahid Masood to Zaid Hamid: there is an endless stream of media personalities whose first question after any terrorist atrocity or separatist unrest is to ask:
“But what about the foreign hand?”
It is quite obvious what Ali Azmat was trying to do: i.e. to string together various phrases from various merchants of nonsense who he would have heard on TV or interacted with personally. His affinity for Zaid Hamid’s conspiracy theories is well-known, and he co-hosts one of his shows.
But to what extent can we blame our ill-informed youth? They show all the classical symptoms of a colonized, humiliated people, because that is what we Pakistanis are. In such circumstances, a young person grasps desperately for ideological straws to hold on to. A grand conspiracy of the CIA-Mossad-RAW kind becomes very attractive. The Pakistani education system doesn’t help either. It is geared towards producing engineers, clerks and executives for the corporate world. The social sciences, as taught in schools, are openly touted by the government as tools to convey the “Pakistan Ideology” to students.
All of this, however, does not translate into widespread sympathy for the Taliban. What it means is that we have a lot of young people who are having to engage with international and local realities which they do not understand, but which they desperately want an explanation for. And the best explanation they get, given their restricted worldview, is the one that windbags like Zaid Hamid can offer.
Considering that they have been through an educational system which purposefully limits and perverts the intellect, what can we expect from Pakistani students today, except to fall back on the only intellectual framework they were ever introduced to: the hotch-potch of religous rhetoric and hyper nationalism which the Pakistani state promotes?
In the absence of alternative discourses, what else will our youth say, except:
“India, America and the Jews dun it!”
