Gandhi, bin Laden and the Global Chessboard

By Anjum Altaf

The thought of any connection between Osama bin Laden and Gandhi would not have occurred to me were it not for a remark in the much talked about biography of the latter by Joseph Lelyveld. At one point in the book, I am told, Lelyveld writes that “it would be simply wrong, not to say grotesque, to set up Gandhi as any kind of precursor to bin Laden.”  The remark piqued my curiosity especially given the fact that it was written before the recent discovery and elimination of Osama. Clearly, Lelyveld was not cashing in on a coincidence. So what was it that provoked the comparison even if it were to be dismissed?

Let me state my conclusion at the outset: the personalities bear no comparison but the contextual similarities highlight major political issues that bear exploration and attention.

Pakistan after the Arab Insurrections

By Anjum Altaf

 

What do the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt portend for Pakistan? The question is on many minds. One approach to attempting an answer might be to try and infer it from below by investigating the morphology of Pakistani society and noting any significant similarities and differences in the process.

A convenient point of departure is the elementary error that most people make in their characterization of Pakistani society. It is often argued that the portrayal of Pakistani society as religious is incorrect because people do not vote for religious parties in elections; the latter hardly ever get more than five percent of the votes cast.

Another Country, Another Election

Well, there has been an election in Afghanistan and (surprise, surprise) tensions have risen about large-scale fraud. We have just been through an exercise in Iran whose repercussions are still being visited on the dissidents locked up in jails. And last year there was an election in Kenya in which thousands of people were made homeless in inter-tribal warfare.

Kenya? Really? Yes, and already forgotten. Time to move on to the next election. What’s going on folks? Is there really no need to figure out what happened in Kenya? What happened in Iran? No need to pay heed to the mud flying in Pakistan where tattletales are spilling the beans that virtually every election has been fixed (as if people did not know already)? Not only that; political parties have been manufactured and thieves bought and paid off to populate them. Should any of this cause someone to think that something might not be quite right in the Cuckooland of governance?

This is the blindness caused by ideology. It is just like the faith in the magic of the free market that is always supposed to get everything right. The same blind faith that prevented everyone from taking note of all the bubbles that were inflating and popping till the entire financial world collapsed in a heap. And now people ask themselves: What were we thinking?

These ideological blinders have serious effects – people get hurt, people are put in jail, people die. The Great Depression of the 1930s caused lost jobs around the world and the power void it created led to the Second World War in which more that fifty million people died. FIFTY MILLION.

Isn’t it time to think why these kinds of elections don’t work in some countries instead of blithely moving from one election to the next? Isn’t there a need to realize that at times elections make things a whole lot worse?

What was the logic of holding an election in fractured, war-torn, foreign-occupied Afghanistan at this time? I understand the American government went into Afghanistan to rebuild it. I know there was a “Transition Initiative” with the goals of developing economic and social infrastructure and fostering democratic governance. But are elections the only way of fostering democratic governance in a country that is fast receding into chaos and anarchy? Is it because the Americans know of no other way of fostering democratic governance?

Surely there must be some indigenous institutions and mechanisms in tribal and ethnically diverse societies that could provide alternative ways to build consensus. Has there been any effort to try and understand if some other route may hold more promise? Would bringing back the king in Afghanistan have provided an authority (without power) to which everyone could have been loyal? So what if the Americans did not think much of kingship or kings or this particular king (now dead)?

Spain comes to mind. Two days after the death of Franco (in 1975), the monarchy was restored and the king successfully guided the transition from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy. With high approval ratings he is still considered amongst the most popular leaders in his part of the world. An alternative could have been to call immediate elections without restoring the monarchy (monarchy being so outdated) and the outcome could have been quite different.

The point is not that monarchy is a necessary condition. It is that there are times and places where an externally determined objective implemented mechanically can be seriously counter-productive and can set back the process of recovery and reconciliation. It is easy to forget that elections are divisive and need a cohesive society to absorb its strains and work. The point is also that there are indigenous traditions that cannot just be cast aside because elections are the only modern route to political governance just as the free market is the only modern mode of economic governance.

Well, the market has imploded and the state has to step in to pick up the pieces. If one looks at the evidence in many developing countries, “pure” democratic governance has also been imploding. It is time to sift through the evidence, to reckon with the experience, to revisit the countries where intelligent adaptation of the democratic form has yielded much more stable outcomes. It is also time to explain the (Indian) exception instead of assuming that it is the norm that could be painlessly replicated in every other country.

It is time to take off the ideological blinders. It is time to put on the thinking cap.

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Iran and the Dilemma of Democracy

The only significance of the events in Iran is the proof that when it comes to politics even Ayatollah’s cheat. Otherwise, everything remains the same.

But the proof is of immense significance because it demolishes some strongly held beliefs about religion and democracy. Think about it. If those whose vocation it is to tell the truth, who insist they represent God’s will on earth, who claim they will have to answer to God for their doings in this world, if even they have been forced to cheat, something very compelling must be going on.

But whatever it is, it is not new. Let us begin from the beginning.

Democracy is about the will of the people determining who is to govern them and how they are to be governed. It is about public opinion being the determinant of public policy. But what happens when public opinion demands public policies that are contrary to the interests of those who govern them – when the will of the people is opposed to the will of the rulers?

This is by no means a new dilemma. Here is Aristotle (384-322 BC) talking about it in his Politics. Of the systems of governance he had studied, Aristotle considered democracy “the most tolerable.” But he was aware that the poor “covet their neighbors’ goods” and if wealth were narrowly concentrated, they would use their majority power to redistribute it more equitably.

James Madison, one of the framers of the American Constitution, argued that people “without property, or the hope of acquiring it, cannot be expected to sympathize sufficiently” with the interests that represented the “wealth of the nation.” From recent times, let us just quote Richard Holbrooke simply because he presently holds such a critical assignment related to South Asia. This is what he said with reference to the Yugoslavia of the 1990s: “Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists — that is the dilemma.”



The bottom line is that a lot is at stake in elections and given all the experience it is naïve to think that all it takes for the will of the people to prevail is for it to be expressed. The high sounding tributes paid to democracy by its champions turn out to be quite hollow when matched up against their actions.

As is being witnessed in Iran today, the maintenance of any status quo requires the exclusion from the political arena of groups with incompatible interests. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century in the now developed countries this was accomplished by restricting the suffrage (see the earlier post on the history of democracy). Remember that even Aristotle was talking about a limited democracy of free men – slaves did not get the vote till quite recently even in America. In the twentieth century (and continuing into the twenty-first) elections in developing countries continue to be rigged, bought, stolen or nullified with a frequency that should leave little doubt about the systemic nature of the phenomenon. Pakistanis need think no further than the year 1971 that has been brushed out of all history books.

As if this were not enough, the will of the people in our times faces daunting challenges not just at home but also from abroad. This is not the first time that an election is being stolen in Iran. Only American citizens remain uninformed of what happened in 1953. And that was not an aberration: leave aside Chile (known in Latin America as the first 9/11) and the banana republics of Central America, the US government has even intervened in elections in Greece and Italy during the 1960s. There is need to ask the question: Why? Why has even the American government been so scared of democracy? And why does it desire democracy in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia?

So, as we said before, something very profound must be at stake that calls for a continuous fear of the will of the people, its frustration at every opportunity, and such selectivity in where it might be acceptable. At the very least it should be clear that democracy is not as welcome to the powers that be as it is made out to be – the myth that any election will usher in the will of the people (even when divinely ordained Ayatollahs are in charge) needs to be put to rest.

Democracy has to be won; whatever rights people have anywhere in the world today are the results of bitter struggles – ask the Blacks in America, ask the women in England. The elimination of child labor, the limitation of the workweek, the right to form unions, the right to safe work places, the right to a minimum wage – all these have been the outcomes of protracted struggle.

The fight of the Iranian people is symptomatic of this struggle for democracy that has gone on for more than two centuries. While we support this struggle, we should also reflect on what our strategies need to be to ensure that the voices of the people are heard, that the will of the people prevails, and that public opinion determines public policy. We need to focus on specific rights (education, clean water, housing, employment, justice, peace, equality of opportunity, fair distribution of wealth, a voice in the allocation of resources) and strengthen the forces that would help wrest these rights, one at a time if necessary, from those who are determined not to concede them.

Even if they are Ayatollahs.

This is the link to an important speech (May 2010) by Akbar Ganji on behalf of the Green Movement in Iran.

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Obama in Cairo: Ten Weak Points

I did not watch President Obama’s address in Cairo because I did not wish to be influenced by his obvious oratorical skills. But I have the speech in cold print and would like to highlight ten weak points from the perspective of a non-Western audience in order to start a discussion on its wider implications.

The reason for this approach is that every audience brings with it a different baggage of history, a different template for interpretation, a different metric of credibility, and a different set of expectations. Thus the reaction of an American audience is likely to be quite different from that of a non-Western audience especially one that has been at the receiving end of America’s pursuits of its national interests.

So, putting myself in the place of such an audience, I tried to identify ten points in the speech that would have come across as particularly weak or unconvincing. These are mentioned here in the order they appeared in the address and not in any order of importance. I ignore here the compulsions that might have forced Obama to say things that might not have rung true with him either.

1. On Stereotypes

In the discussion of stereotypes Obama equated Muslims with the American state. Now clearly it is only the very ignorant or bigoted who stereotype Muslims because Muslims come in all shapes, sizes, colors and convictions. But the American state is a well-defined entity and its interactions with the outside world are a matter of historical record. It is not a pretty record by any means and for people at the receiving end the stereotype seems quite well founded.

For Obama to call it a “crude stereotype” similar in nature to the stereotype of Muslims was a weak attempt at glossing over some ugly truths. A forthright acknowledgment that the American state had too often been on the wrong side of history as far as the rest of the world was concerned would have carried more conviction. Sure, America has been a great source of progress as Obama said but the Internet and the transistor do not make up for the imposition of brutal dictators that take away liberty in return for the fruits of progress.    

Roger Cohen was on the mark in reminding Obama a day before the Cairo speech: “Palestinians can be successful software engineers, they can have an espresso in a café and blog on their MacBooks, but they cannot hide from their children that they are powerless in the face of an Israeli teenager holding a gun who may or may not be in a good mood.”

And Obama continuing with “We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words – within our borders, and around the world” would not have resonated with the experiences of his wider non-Western audience.

2. On the Killing of the Innocent

Obama said “we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children.” The audience would have sighed thinking of all the deaths justified as collateral damage in the defense of US interests. Those with memories would have recalled Madeleine Albright’s matter-of-fact assertion that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children. Others would have remembered Brzezinski’s casual disregard for sacrificing some “stirred up Muslims” in order to defeat the Soviet Union. Both these individuals were key representatives of the American state.

3. On Even-Handed Treatment

Obama said: “just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles” and that the trauma of 9/11 has “led us to act contrary to our ideals.” The audience would have wondered why the response to the two violations of ideals was so lopsided: while the extremists are to be wiped off the face of the earth the Americans who acted contrary to ideals are not even to be questioned. The lofty words would not have been able to overcome the skepticism of the listeners.

4. On Israel

Obama stated that America’s bond with Israel is “unbreakable” being based upon “cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” This was a very strong statement and would have provoked two questions. First, what did the Palestinians have to do with this tragic history? And, second, what does ‘unbreakable’ signify? Is there no line that Israel cannot cross? Did Obama come across asserting that despite all the rhetoric might is right after all?

5. On Violence

Obama’s call on the Palestinians to abandon violence was based on the argument that it was not violence that won full and equal rights for Blacks in the US or in South Africa. Does Obama really believe this? The struggle of Blacks in the US involved the Civil War and urban riots and it was only when Martin Luther King was seen as the least worst of the alternatives that meaningful concessions were made. And how could the protracted and bitter struggle of the ANC in South Africa be ignored? One need not even go back to remind Obama of the French and American revolutions. It would be a great world in which power is gracefully yielded to the oppressed through rational argument. The audience could hope and wish that Obama may succeed in ushering such a world but the rewriting of history would not have gone down well.

6. On God and Religion

The President said: “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day… when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be.” How does Obama know that? Perhaps God intended it to be a place of eternal conflict because He created three hostile religions in such a small space. Was there anything to be gained by making pious assertions that could not be supported by any evidence?

7. On Nuclear Weapons

Obama focused on Iran without saying anything about the nuclear arsenal of Israel. The audience would have interpreted this as a continuation of America’s unbalanced policy in the Middle East.

8. On Democracy

On democracy, Obama said: “we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” The audience would have been well aware that America has routinely intervened in the electoral politics of many countries from Latin America, Asia and Africa. An enterprising listener would have pulled up many examples on Google including this poignant one from Guyana. Leaving asides countries like Chile and Pakistan, even elections in Italy have not been immune to manipulation by the US. It would have gone across better if Obama had also said that we would no longer do so in the future.

Obama listed all the human rights and said “those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.” All the listeners would have thought of the US supported dictators who have denied these human rights to all their citizens and wondered if things were really going to change in the future. There would have been a lot of skepticism, no doubt.

9. On Muslim Intolerance

Obama said: “Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s” and “fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.” Here the wearied audience would have winced at being told to behave and be nice to each other. This would have come across as an oversimplification of religious and social tensions that have occurred everywhere over space and time. If this was to have been mentioned at all, it could have been in the context of trying to understand what lies beneath the emergence of such divisions and how they are exacerbated and exploited. The audience would have recalled the American exploitation of divisions in the course of the Iraq-Iran war.

10. On the Scriptures

Obama concluded by quoting from the scriptures of the three religions of the Middle East. The fact that Obama was addressing Muslims need not have implied that they were particularly susceptible to religious preaching. Obama would have known that the quotes were very selective and those who play this game could equally easily find messages in all the three books that would support completely contradictory positions. This could well have come across as a condescending gesture to an audience that the President felt was particularly prone to religious mumbo-jumbo.

And in the final sentence of his speech Obama reiterated: “The people of the world can live together in peace” following that up with “We know that is God’s vision.” Once again, Obama would have come across to the audience as the imam of the local mosque on a Friday rant using lofty words that signified nothing. How does Obama know what is God’s vision? This would have made the audience shudder having already suffered from the God inspired visions of Obama’s predecessor.

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