BY SHANDANA MINHAS
If you expected better from the Taliban, you probably have a
shaky grasp of recent history or really any kind of history at all. But that’s
all
right because it’s not your fault. If you have been raised and educated in
Pakistan, your access to accurate information and ability to contextualise has
probably been hamstrung by bad textbooks and worse teachers. This is why you
have internalised a tolerance to pseudo-religious fascism and why you still
continue to wonder why Bangladesh stalked off in a huff all those years ago. But
do not fear, the media is here!
Thanks to the media the cellphone video of a 17-year-old girl
being flogged has been beamed directly into every home in Pakistan. Thanks to
the media we know that we care. The sadistic and perverted spectacle has led to
mass outrage. The chief justice has taken suo motu notice of the incident and
demanded that the girl be brought before him; whether she is or is not will be
an accurate indicator of political will. Human rights activists are organising
protests. Ordinary people are asking how we got to where we are. The privileged
are giving thanks for their privilege.
Why we are moved by this image of wanton brutality towards a
young girl and not as an injured police recruit dragged himself across a road is
something I don’t understand. Is it that we have not yet been desensitised to
this particular vision of violence? I think immediately of that stock footage of
the Zia years, the black and white story of a half-naked man being flogged by
the moral police.
Perhaps people are protesting more passionately now because they
finally realise that their incompetent leaders’ statements, rooted as ever in
self-interest, will never mirror the intensity, or sincerity, of their own
revulsion.
President Zardari’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar said he was
‘shocked’ and had called for a report from the government and provincial
administration. Will any commission appointed to probe the incident include his
point man, Rehman Malik? The interior affairs adviser had this to say: "We are
investigating the matter. But sometimes anti-state elements make fake or
artificial footage or images to bring disrepute to Pakistan." Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gilani pointed out that Islam teaches us to "treat women politely",
a statement I am sure was balm to the wounds of all those who feel that the real
problem with the Taliban is their fundamental lack of courtesy.
But there is an aspect to this story that is nudging me towards
a closer look at our local media. I first saw the footage on a foreign news
site. A writer for The Guardian said the video was passed on to him by a
Pakistani filmmaker and activist who said, "I have distributed this video
because I feel people are in denial. They don’t want to believe what is
happening." Various other stories in the local and international press
subsequently say the video is about a month old, citing "sources who did not
wish to be identified". If local journalists knew about it, why wasn’t it
released earlier? How culpable is the broadcast media in contributing to this
state of denial?
Those who remember when there was one news channel were very
excited when the media genie was let out of the bottle. The fundamental
imbalance between propaganda and news, we felt, would be rectified. The
fledgeling rose to the challenge, or tried to. Jousting about the judiciary,
sermons on sovereignty, conferences on the Constitution, rants on religion,
countless hours of airtime have been devoted supposedly to making us more
self-aware, less likely to suffer fools and exploitation gladly.
But sadly, most talking heads have proved to be as myopic and
reactionary as most of the rest of us. And as I watch talk show hosts caught in
a vicious ratings war back-pedal furiously and condemn the very movement they
were advocating benign engagement with not too long ago, I must ask the question
that has hopefully been haunting people other than me for some years now.
Aankhen hain ya button (Do you have eyes or buttons)?
Part of the reason this and previous governments were able to
sell compromise with the loons currently running Swat to the wider population is
because the Pakistani Taliban has had an image makeover, courtesy any number of
commentators. From an extremist movement behind heinous attacks and punishments
against anyone and everyone – suicide bombings, burning music and books, banning
education, impeding access to health care, flogging women for leaving their
homes, throwing acid on girls’ faces, public executions without trial, archive
footage of most of which exists in digital libraries across the country – an
effort has been made to market it as a romanticised movement of idealistic men
with guns who fight injustice when the state doesn’t and really just want to
bring the world closer to god, you know?
Public perception of them has been muddied further by two
consistent, irresponsible assertions by those commentators. One, that they are
Pakistani first too and share with us a love for the vision and spirit behind
our country and are also governed by the need and desire to preserve it. Really?
If Clint Eastwood made a movie about the only land the Taliban feel allegiance
to, it would be called No Country for Old Men, Young Women, Innocent Children
or Animals You Can’t Eat.
The second is that somehow their barbarism is justified, their
brand of Islam prompted by America’s war on terror. The Taliban existed before
the drone attacks began. They existed before 9/11 happened. They were
dismembering dissidents and hanging their bodies from lamp posts, assaulting
girls during the capture of ‘enemy territory’ and carrying out Balkan-style
ethnic cleansing of minorities in Afghanistan long before the word ‘Predator’
entered our local lexicon.
As for who created them, who funded them, who set them on the
path that puts them in direct confrontation with just about everyone else, that
is something that is good to know and pointless to dwell on. Good to know
because ‘history is written by those who survive their past’. Pointless to dwell
on because wallowing serves a useful purpose only for buffaloes.
Time now to answer the most pertinent question of all: how many
Pakistanis does it take to change a light bulb? One hundred and seventy million
and counting…
(Shandana Minhas is a writer based in Karachi. This article was
posted on The News International website on April 5, 2009.)
Courtesy: The News International;
www.thenews.com.pk
