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Made (and Unmade) in Pakistan—and Elsewhere

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I’ve just seen a very engaging documentary about energetic, enterprising young professionals in Lahore, Pakistan, and for over an hour I felt I was happily back in a milieu it’s been my pleasure and  privilege to be part of.  The film is called Made in Pakistan.  It’s a wonderful reminder that most people in most countries, Pakistan included, are focused on living dynamic, responsible, constructive, even creative lives.   So here they are, two women, two men: Waleed, a young lawyer passionately devoted to the rule of law; Rabia, a young writer and mother struggling to put a savvy  new magazine into the black; Tara, a fashionista and event planner whose go-go-go business is expanding into an all-Pakistan operation; Mohsin, a young politician running the family-business which  happens to center on elections.

Law, politics, journalism, fashion—these are four essential professions that, believe it or not, thrive in urban Pakistan, and Made in Pakistan shows us how four very appealing practitioners manage lives as fascinating and complex as those of their counterparts in New York or London.  Producer Ayesha Khan wants us to understand this, not from grim statistics but by sharing moments with people whose unscripted authenticity is insidiously appealing.  She wanted us to see that there is more to Pakistan than narrow religiosity and violence.  And she has succeeded.

So check it out, when you can.  Made in Pakistan was one of the favorites at the just closed Santa Fe Film Festival.  You’ll see why.

Blind Buddhas and Incendiary Cartoons

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Santa Fe is full of Buddhists, but no one has erupted with religious rage since this image (a sculpture by David Kimble Anderson) was placed on display in the atrium of a building that housed an art gallery and other business enterprises.  As anyone with the least facility in reading symbols will immediately have grasped,  there are innumerable ways of interpreting this work of art.  Since many possible interpretations are decidedly negative, I found my recalling the violent  reactions to the now infamous Danish cartoons, which were condemned by many believers as an affront to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.  The result?  Riots in several countries.  Some people unfortunately died.

Multiple Interpretations

Let’s consider some ways in which the Anderson piece might be understood.  The gold surface could be an indictment of materialism on the part of traditional Buddhist temple builders or on the part of current practitioners whose lives verge, hypocritically perhaps, on the sumptuous.  Of course, many traditional images of the Buddha are also flamboyantly gilt, to symbolize the transcendent value of the teachings and to honor the one who enunciated them.

In this case, however, the figure appears to be bandaged.  It is, evidently, blind and essentially quadriplegic.  Unable to see.  Unable to act.  Impotent.  Useless.  Is this a statement about the futility and irrelevance of Buddhism? On the other hand, meditative insights are available to those who sit without moving,  looking inward.  Sometimes these insights have effects that are far more powerful than actions that are not guided by wisdom. 

Which, one wonders, did the sculptor have in mind?

Mummies, Too

I simply don’t know.  When I first saw this image, I was and still am totally ignorant of the sculptor’s intention, as ignorant as many of those who rioted over the Danish cartoons surely were.  Nor would many of those angry Muslims have cared in the least whether the cartoonists’ intentions were pure or not.  The cartoons, taken at face value, appear to insult the prophet.  Enough.

This past weekend I had an opportunity to show a photo of the blind Buddha to a very knowledgeable Buddhist teacher/scholar.  “Give me your first reaction,” I asked.  “How do you feel?  What are your unconsidered thoughts?”  I should have known better.  I did not get any unconsidered thoughts. 

But I did get some interesting information.  This scholar said that the image reminds him of the mummy of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Cha’an (or Zen) Buddhism, who was born in AD 638 and is known for enunciating the revered Diamond Jewel Platform Sutra.  Evidently it was the custom to mummify great teachers back then in China.  The proper term, I just learned courtesy of Google, is “whole body relics.”  Mummies!  This seemed strange to me.  Buddhism supposedly teaches impermanence, while mummies are intended to make the physical remains last forever or as long as possible.  My bewildered personal reaction to Buddhist mummies notwithstanding, could Anderson’s work be an homage to Hui Neng?

And so the inquiry widens, opening my horizons, giving me pause to think.

The Dangerous Business of Female Education

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I mentioned the International Islamic University in Islamabad yesterday.  That’s where the latest suicide bombings in Pakistan took place.  Six not five persons were killed.  Three were girls and not by coincidence.  This was not one of those "senseless" incidents.  Here's an interesting Pakistani take on the bombings.

The best way to get an idea of the ambiance at the IIU is to take a look at the university’s website.  Women attend, but it's not really a co-educational institution.  It’s a highly segregated place.  Do a little browsing on the site, and soon you will realize that you are being bombarded with references to “the female wing”  of the IIU.  Naturally there are no references to the “male wing.”  If you find this as irritating as I do, think of similar practices in our own society. For instance, it is quite “normal” for  female high school athletes to be called by the hideous term of, say, the “Elkettes,” while the real teams, the male teams, are always the “Elks,” the nickname that would  apply to the school taken as a whole.

In pictures of classes and activities at IIU, you will note that most of the female students are very heavily veiled, even with no male present (unless the eye of the camera counts).  Only at the highest administrative level is an occasional female faculty member or dean represented with face fully revealed, often in the context of receiving foreign visitors, eg. pandering to the outside world.  

Otherwise the IIU world is male male male.  Male students.  Male teachers.  Male administrators.  Not so different from the way it used to be, not so many decades ago, in  many contexts in the West, for that matter.  Only recently have female faces turned up regularly in leadership roles or even as a good percentage of street crowds.  Re this, I’m going to see that both my sons get copies of the new book by Gail Collins: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.  Being a woman was pretty horrible when I was a kid—and lots of us vowed we’d change things or die trying.  Fortunately, the latter wasn’t needed in our case, but Pakistani girls who want an education and a professional life may be targeted by those who fear social change.    And their schools certainly aren't safe, not even the schools for primary students.

All the above notwithstanding, there is much to be said for the IIU as a way to provide a higher education for girls who would never otherwise be able to obtain a college degree.  As the website photos prove,  there's nothing like equality between the sexes here and the curriculum certainly does not offer anything close to a liberal education, but IIU does signify a step in the right direction.   Above all, the young women who graduate will be able to read the Koran for themselves and do some thinking of their own, which is unlikely to please the village mullahs who accustomed to quoting convenient

Pakistan’s Campaign in South Waziristan: What America Can Do

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Last Friday, just before Pakistan’s army finally moved into South Waziristan, an American friend asked me, “What are we going to do about Pakistan?”

This was my reply: “What are we going to do?  Nothing rash, I hope.  It’s Pakistan’s war.”

And that would still be my reply.  The army moved into South Waziristan with a force of about 33,000, a fairly modest contingent, considering the fact that Pakistan has an army of about 500,000 on active duty and an equal number of reserves.  This means that most troops are still guarding the border with India.  It also means that heavy reinforcements are theoretically available.

A Serious, Well-Supported Effort

However, this unexpectedly small force is probably not an indication of the half-heartedness with which previous forays into the tribal areas were launched.  Those attempts to squelch assorted militant Islamists relied heavily on the frontier militias, which have neither the training nor the equipment to wage war in earnest.  In addition, Pakistan was not then willing to take many casualties.  When the going got tough, government forces were pulled out. 

This time the war is for real, the stakes are high, and the Pakistani population, by and large, strongly support the move, as was not the case with earlier efforts.  Even six months ago, neither the army nor the people were ready for costly all-out war against any Taliban elements. Compromise, conciliation, containment—these were the preferred approaches to militant Islam:  stay on your side of the line and we’ll leave you alone.   Besides, the war against terrorism was seen as an American priority rudely foisted on Pakistan, and Pakistanis have a less than wholehearted love for the U.S.

Taliban Miscalculations

Then came Swat, where the deal broke down.  First of all, the Taliban, metaphorically drunk on success,  got too brutal too soon in an area that the generality of Pakistanis consider far less alien than the “backward” Federally Administered Tribal Areas which have long been left more or less to themselves.  Then they began pushing out of Swat into contiguous areas, closer and closer to Islamabad, which meant—Wow!—they’re coming for us, too!  Result: Pakistanis supported the Army offensive in Swat, not for America’s sake, but for their own.   At this point, the Taliban might have made the best of a beating.  They might have retreated North to more sympathetic areas.  Instead they misread the tea leaves.  They retaliated with a vengence, launching a bloody bombing campaign in every corner of the country, hoping to frighten Pakistanis into accepting the inevitably of a Taliban takeover.  Chest-thumping interviews with Taliban leaders reinforced the fear campaign.  As a result, a number of foreign observers have begun to predict the imminent disintegration of Pakistan.

On the contrary.  Taliban brashness has galvanized the Army and the population.   One hopes that the interminable delay in finally launching the operation in South Waziristan was caused by the determination to plan very carefully how to approach a very tough enemy who is going to be fighting for survival in very challenging terrain.  To accomplish this mission the Pakistani Army is  going to need time.  The campaign is officially scheduled to last two months, but it took longer than that to make the much smaller Swat valley safe enough for people to consider returning home.   Furthermore, the army and Pakistani society are also going to have to be willing to accept heavy casualties.  Fortunately, the delay caused by deliberation allowed tens of thousands to flee the anticipated battle zone, which will mitigate non-combatant casualties in this lightly populated area. 

Obama's War: A Must See

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I've just watched the PBS Frontline production Obama's War.  Mostly I want to say: see it now if you didn't manage to catch it on Tuesday night.    See our troops telling villagers they have to answer questions honestly---and actually expecting a heart-to-heart to happen, if not now, then in time!  Hear someone say it will take 600,000 troops to win (whatever winning means)---without speculating on how many years would be involved, but suggesting that in time the Afghans could take over most of the job, evidently assuming that the Afghans would have the same goals as the U.S.  And so it goes!  Delusion after delusion, punctuated by the grave pronouncements of the so-called expert General McCrystal Ball or Bull, whom the Republicans imagine to be capable of dictating U.S. policy in South Asia!   But see it for yourself.   

If I Were a Pakistani Reading Kerry-Lugar, I’d Flip

By Patricial Lee Sharpe

The Pakistani military is balking at some provisions in the Kerry-Lugar Bill and not every influential civilian is jumping with joy at the prospect of $1.5 billion a year from the U.S.  Meanwhile, Asif Ali Zardari’s civilian government is trying to persuade the Obama administration to take no account of such foolish tantrums.

Given the unusually spirited objections to U.S. aid,  I decided to see what might be obnoxious about the text.  I decided to try to peruse S. 962 as a proud, well educated Pakistani citizen might read it.  All 33 pages.  Every clause.

Reading in my Pakistani persona, I found myself getting more and more angry.  I was in the mood to throw all 33 pages across the room—or maybe to rip them up and stomp on them.

For a cool billion and a half a year,  the United States of America proposes to intrude into the following areas/processes/concerns of the national life of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: police; judiciary; political pluralism, equality and the rule of law; human and civil rights; media; transparency and accountability of ALL branches of government and judiciary; anti-corruption efforts at ALL levels of military and civilian administration; narcotics trade; legal and political reform of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas; rural development in general; natural resources management; energy and water investments and management, employment generation; roads, irrigation and other physical infrastructure; worker rights including the right to form labor unions [this from the union-busting U.S. culture!]; primary and secondary education and vocational training and higher education; food security and agriculture; public health; vocational training; micro-finance and income generation for women.

“Is nothing to be free of American meddling and dictation?” I find my Pakistani self raging. “It was fine, it was innocuous, back when the yahoos wanted to do a little project here, a little project there, a seminar, a conference, but scaled up like this!  They want to take over our whole life, beginning tomorrow!”

All projects will, of course, have to be approved by U.S. authorities, and before any money flows into these many channels of national life,  the U.S. government will require a description of the role to be played by Pakistani national, regional, and local officials and members of Pakistani civil society and local private sector, civic, religious and tribal leaders, all of whom may help to identify and implement programs and projects.

 “How sweet!” my Pakistani persona thinks.  “Local input.”

Our Real Problem in Pakistan: They Don’t Like Us

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The U.S. must develop a public diplomacy program to convince Pakistanis that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are Pakistan’s enemies as well as America’s, according to recent comments by Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Holbrooke actually said this after an eye-opening Pew poll revealed that support in Pakistan for Al Qaeda and the Taliban had dropped precipitously since 2002.  At the same time approval ratings for the U.S. had reached a new low.

A Strange Choice

Now, if you were designing a public diplomacy program in Pakistan, a country whose cooperation may determine the outcome of the American struggle in Afghanistan, where would your emphasis be? Would you insert yourself gratuitously into Muslim politics in order to smear a bunch of backward-looking violent Islamists who have discredited themselves by their vicious intolerant rule in the Swat valley and by their tendency to kill civilians with suicide bombs throughout Pakistan? 

English speakers have a few clichés for such efforts.  Like: hauling coals to New Castle.  Or: gilding the lily.  In short, the U.S. doesn’t need to do what’s been accomplished, gruesomely, by the Taliban themselves!  The Taliban are now regarded as pariahs, bin Laden’s no longer a true prophet and advancing Islam by killing civilians has lost its noble veneer.

Why, then, is a supposedly brilliant diplomatic mind ready to spend scarce diplomatic capital in a manner that’s sure to make Pakistanis dislike us even more by telling them how to react to already discredited renegade fellow Muslims?  Because, I suspect, the real problem is too painful for Washington or most Americans to contemplate. 

We Americans are congenitally unable to believe that we may be genuinely disliked.  It’s true of us as individuals and very much true of us as a nation.  How can anyone possibly doubt the purity of our motives, the intensity of our good will, the rightness of our collective conviction that America is the best country ever to arise in the history of the world, the sincerity of our generous faith that every other country can, with a little effort at transformation, be exactly like us?  

Terrorism in the Philippines - No Easy Answers

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The New York Times’  article “Curbed in Island Towns, Islamists in Philippines Take to Forests” published on September 26, 2009 by Norimitsu Onishi reporting from Lamitan, a small Christian enclave on the largely Muslim island of Basilan, is just additional evidence that not much has changed since the Bush administration sent 600 US troops, $100 million in military and counter-terrorism assistance and $55 million in economic and social assistance to the southern Philippines in 2002 to help the Philippine government eliminate Abu Sayyaf, a lethal band of Islamist kidnap-for-ransom extortionists, based in this mostly Muslim part of the country.

Although this kidnap-for-ransom crew of perhaps no more than 20 no longer operates freely in the main towns, Abu Sayyaf has not closed up shop or put down its guns.  Far from it: the fighters have just moved to the hills.

Since 2002, the US government has provided the Philippines with $1.6 billion in military and economic aid of which $400 million from USAID has gone to the Muslim provinces, the poorest parts of Mindanao, in the Philippines.

The Obama administration has also just extended the stay of 600 US “elite counter-insurgency troops” in the southern Philippines to continue to deal with the problem - to the consternation of Filipino left-leaning politicians and news media.   

The fact that the US and Philippine defense agreement permits American soldiers to be in the country only to support the Philippine military but not engage in combat, is, in my view, sensible. The US military’s role is to provide intelligence, training and technology to Filipino counterparts. 

But even so is this working?  Can it work?  And if not, why not?  What are the impediments?  What would make the difference? 

Why is there still a problem?