'The Road is Occupied' روڈ لگا ھے'

During my recent visit I saw rapid changes in Rawalpindi – a garrison city and headquarters of Pakistan’s military, which both revealed an expansion of the military’s influence and its increased vulnerability, something affecting the collective psyche of the people.

In Rawalpindi I was staying in a lower working class neighborhood near Saddar or Cantonment, which sits alongside an important road that links the city centre with the Airport. Further along, the same road leads to the adjoining city, Islamabad, it is therefore frequently used by military generals, politicians and visiting officials to Pakistan. In the last five to six years the road has been totally transformed and now hosts flyovers, overhead bridges and service roads. These transformations are related to and consequent of the so called ‘war against terror’ and impacts upon the daily life of the people living in its surroundings in specific ways.

Central to these transformations and impacts is the event I witnessed and refer to here as ‘road laga hay’ or ‘the road is occupied’. About fifteen minutes before the ‘occupation’ of the road a military van with a blaring siren sped along the road and a uniformed soldier could be seen waving a red flag and instructing everybody to vacate the road. Seconds later military personnel carrying guns were on the scene and occupying different parts of the road and crossings asked all the passerby and drivers to leave the road within 15 minutes. The entire road was cleared and armed personnel stops at all crossroad corners and junctions. The road occupation prevented all access and movement towards the main road and remained so until the high ranking Pakistan officials and their vehicles had passed along the road. This is a frequent daily occurring which many local residents living along or relying on the road have had to accept and adapt to.

The impacts and effects of such daily road occupations were largest in the neighborhood where I stayed. This neighborhood near Saddar is a lower working class area, with many small streets and alleys, and houses are often small and owned or rented by mainly non-contractual laborers and low ranking government servants. If one wants to rent an apartment in the neighborhood locals are asked to show their national ID card at the local police station. There are shopkeepers who having established their businesses along the road and who are often asked by the armed militant men to close their businesses when the road is ‘occupied’. . It is perhaps the vulnerability of the road and the demography of the neighborhood which makes military personnel suspicious of potential security threats and which in turn lead to such extensive security measures.

A wounded City
Strict security measures are arguably a consequence of a number of bomb blasts and militant attacks in the area over the last ten years. There were two bomb attacks waged against the entourage of the former ruler General Musharraf as it passed on the outskirts of this neighborhood. Another major blow for the military was an attack and siege of its headquarters in 2009. All these attacks, involving mostly military institutes and personnel located in the area resulted in frequent casualities. Often new roads, squares and various military housing schemes are named after the soldiers and officers killed during bomb attacks or those killed during military actions in the areas bordering Afghanistan. Thus a casual traveler will see road signboards with names often ending with shaheed or ‘martyr’ that the present day conflict is creating.

These semantic and visual impressions are further extended by other attempts at sanctifying and sacralizing the road. All along the road from the airport to Saddar, the lamp posts are inscribed with one of the ‘99 names of Allah’, written in Arabic and with Urdu translation. It is possible that a frequent visitor could learn these name by heart in the course of his/her journeys. Yet besides these memorizing exercises, such sacralization attempts are also intended to engrave in space and create a collective truth of being a particular kind of Muslim who is against the militant jihadis in the ongoing ‘war against terrorism’.

The Mundane Interests
This inscription and sacralization of space runs alongside the mundane happenings also. In the last decade Rawalpindi, along with other major cities in Pakistan, have witnessed a mushrooming growth of military housing schemes. The outskirts of Rawalpindi are now dominated by military led investments in real estate creating new clusters of gated suburbs within the city. Such gated suburbs are dominantly occupied by retired service personnel, an emerging middle class and overseas absentee residents. Besides providing security to these gated communities, the military initiated a network of security agencies in the urban areas providing protection to the private institutes, businesses and foreign missionaries, something which also worked to create jobs for its retired personnel. The state of political and social unrest and resulting securitization of Pakistan also translate in such booming business.

There has been then an increasing militarization of the city which has built on the fact that military services have always been a major source of employment in the area. Rawalpindi, and the adjoining three districts, provide more than 50% of the total foot soldiers needed for the Pakistani military--- a tradition that goes back to the colonial times. Many of my cousins resident in the area have also served in one way or another the military. With the increasing investments of the military in oil, agriculture and the financial sector--- and thus converting itself into an ‘enterprising army’, more civil personnel are now incorporated into the affiliated military institutions. This transformation of the military has arguably also affected the way ordinary people understand and relate to the military. For example, it is now a truism that if you lose your mobile phone, it is possible to trace and get it back if you have a good friend working within the ISI, the intelligence branch of the military. Considering this dominant economic and social position of the military, it is perhaps not that suprising that in response to criticisms against the Pakistan army in the aftermath of bin Laden’s murder the first pro-military demonstrations were held in Rawalpindi.

The Pakistan military is sometimes called the ‘state within a state’[1], and now stands and operates in a complex relationship between the state and the people. The military provides a livelihood for the people, but under the present circumstances of violence, insecurity and terror, it also provides a symbolic justification for violence through simultaneously spatially inscribing and invoking an umbrella of sacredness that embraces the lives of the people.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1750265.stm

60 kilometers from bin Laden

The immediate reactions of Pakistanis on hearing of the murder of Osama bin Laden were divided--- between those showing disbelief and condemning the Americans, and those condemning bin Laden for causing calamity for Pakistan. However as the news emerged, I did not find any emotional outburst in the neighborhood where I stayed.
On the 1st of May, it was late in the evening when me and my family returned back from to our apartment after attending the wedding reception of a relative. Everybody was tired after the preparation and enactment of three day long wedding rituals, usual for Pakistani marriages. Just after midnight began the ‘load-shedding’ – a compulsory power cut that occurs many times during day and night in Pakistan, and we all fell asleep. Although the power cut usually means more mosquito attacks, that night we were so tired we didn’t even notice.

If the load-shedding began here in Rawalpindi, an adjacent city of Islamabad, where we were staying with family, it would have been the same time that it ended in Abbottabad --- a garrison town about 60 kilometer to the north and where bin Laden was hiding out, presumably for several years now. . Around that time US Navy Seals started their military action under the name ‘Geronimo’, and attacked the hide-out compound in Abbottabad. American commandos had already left the hide-out, taking with them the dead body of bin Laden, before the Pakistani military or intelligence agencies could make an assessment about the incident. It was late in the morning when I was awoken by a phone call from a friend who teaches in a local government College. He asked ‘if I was watching the TV’ and told me about the killing of bin Laden as a result of the American covered military action in Abbottabad. ”Sad thing is that the Americans came in helicopters, killed Osama and left, while our military kept sleeping” he said.

I sensed anger and distress in the tone of voice of my friend. I hurriedly searched for the remote control of the TV but becaue of the hectic chaos of the wedding nobody had watched the TV for the last couple of days and so it was no easy task. Under the dirty laundry spread across beds and sofas, finally I found the remote and turned the TV on. Different local channels showed the image of a half-furnished ‘compound’ with streams of incoming news running on the screen regarding the American action. The news obviously caused curiosity among the residents of the house now gathered around the TV: some were hurling abuse at the Americans while others said ”He was also responsible for several bomb blasts in Pakistan” reminding them of the daily terrorist attacks in Pakistan. Curiously not a single person used the word shaheed or martyr for Osama.

In the afternoon I had an appointment with a colleague at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. I took a taxi from Rawalpindi and it crossed through the streets of Cantonment where the headquarters of the Pakistani military are located. I did not observe any unusual security measures or gatherings of people along the road or on the squares. The taxi-driver, a retired soldier in his 50s, moaned about the hot weather while adjusting a wet piece of cloth on his head to keep himself cool. Obviously I wanted to talk with him about today’s incident: “how is it possible that he was hiding-out in Abbottabad—a military city? Where is the proof of his murder they didn’t show any proof of how they killed him”. On my suggestion that the announcement was made by the American President himself and that this is significant in showing that they might have really done it ‘this time’, he turned less assured about his position. ”Babu sahib (a term used for educated people) you know we do not know; these things are played at higher levels and about those decisions we are uneducated”, he tried to conclude this talk on a note of his powerlessness.

Such a helplessness augmented in the wake of total silence from the civil or military institutes to inform people about the actual events. This situation translated into a narrative of convulsive rage that I found in the words of a student at the Islamic University in Islamabad: ”as a Pakistani I am confused and shocked regarding the Osama incident, and how angry I am with this state of my mind?” There was an element of evaporated jingoism when people like him asked ”what was our military doing?”; therefore there was anger at the failure of the military and intelligence agencies. Somebody said ”If they knew, they should have taken an action of their own, and if they did not know, they are also guilty of negligence: in both cases they are incompetent”.

Whether or not the world will ever become enlightened about the actual position of the Pakistani military in Osama’s murder, in the days following the military had to clear its position through its presentation in the Pakistani Parliament where it apologized for its failure. For some Pakistanis this confession was a big thing on the part of the military, however for the majority it added to a more general mystery of how the military can determine the internal and external policies of the Pakistani state.

The Terror of the 'War against terror'

A small piece for the standplaatswereld:
http://standplaatswereld.nl/2011/03/21/the-terror-of-the-%e2%80%98war-against-terror%e2%80%99/#more-4694

It looked like a scene from a Hollywood detective film. While driving in his car in a busy street of Lahore, an American took out his weapon and fired at two young men riding on a motorbike. The attacker stopped and emerged from his car. Then, using an even bigger automatic weapon, killed his antagonists, who were already injured and had fallen to the ground. The murdered Pakistanis were carrying weapons but they did not get a chance to pick these up and use them. In the meantime, elsewhere in Lahore, a black car with ‘tinted windows’ rushed to rescue the attacker. Hurrying on the wrong side of the road it crushed a passersby. However, before it could reach the attacker, the latter was arrested by the police.

The incident opened up a plethora of speculations and ambiguities about the official status of the killer, Raymond Davis, who, in the meantime, has become a household name in Pakistan. The American Consulate in Lahore first mentioned that Davis belonged to the ‘technical staff’ of the Consulate; a day later the American Embassy in Islamabad issued a ‘new list of officials,’ mentioning Davis as a ‘staff member’ enjoying diplomatic immunity from a trial in the host country, Pakistan. The White House refused to name the arrested ‘American official,’ which in practice meant that the ‘official’ was a CIA agent. However, it asked for his release due to his ‘diplomatic’ status. Later president Obama entered into the controversy when he personally recognized Davis as ‘our diplomat in Islamabad’ and asked the Pakistani government to ‘avoid any step’ to start criminal charges in a Pakistani court.

Such inconsistencies on the part of the American officials were equally shared by their counterparts among the Pakistani government. The ministers and officials of the ruling People’s Party (PPP) gave contradictory statements about the alleged ‘diplomatic immunity’ of Davis. The foreign minister was expelled from his post when he challenged the official soft line that his government had adopted towards the issue. The weak and corrupt PPP government, surviving on IMF regulations, was already unpopular due to economic downturn, rising commodity prices and, not least, due to its failure to contain the domestic consequences of the ‘war against terrorism’. The government ambiguities on the issue are translated as a ‘selling out’ by the right wing parties and media. It caused a wave of anti-American feelings already abundant among the masses.

Hunting down ‘Terrorists’
These fears and conspiracies were feed on the slow unfolding of events that depict the shadowy aspects of the ‘war against terrorism’. It soon turned out that Davis worked for an American ‘security firm’, that is named ‘Xe’ in the media, and which is the new face of the infamous Blackwater Worldwide which was once active in Iraq. Like its embedded character during the Iraq war, the US media, including the New York Times, covered the actual background of Davis as it might ‘jeopardize his safety in Pakistani jail’. Furthermore the incident refers to the war inside the ‘war against terror’ involving layers of Pakistani security and military establishment: it turned out that the two Pakistanis killed by Davis were working for the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, and they were following Davis diligently to know the broader network of the recent American involvement within Pakistani society. Contrary to the ‘double agenda’ of former military ruler Musharraf regarding his alleged ‘half-hearted fight against the Taliban-AlQaeda’ networks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the civilian PPP government turned more supportive to the US in the ‘war against terrorism’. As part this shift, unknown numbers of American security officials were dispatched to work in Pakistan.

This high level of cooperation between the civilian government and the US was already a thorn in the side of the Pakistani military establishment—- who ruled the country for the longest part of its history. The civilian government is now presented as failing to protect the ‘national interests’ of the country, while the military is readjusting its image as the ‘only savior’ of the country. Such efforts are also meant to mystify the failings of the military and intelligence agencies in this affair. The military generals are again sitting at the table alongside their US counterparts and the spymasters behind the curtains, to reframe their positions on this issue. In the longer run the incident has further weakened the working sphere of the civil institutes in Pakistan.

Until recently, Raymond Davis awaited his lot in a Pakistani jail. A court was to decide about his ‘diplomatic immunity’. Pakistani media and its frenzied anchorpersons held daily Davis’ trials that already cost victims—- a widow of one of the murdered Pakistani men committed suicide due to the rumors that the Pakistani officials are sending Davis back to America. Indeed, Davis was released by the court on March 16th on the basis of the diyat laws. These laws allow for release of the prisoner after payment of compensation money from the offender to the offended party beyond the court decisions.

At another level the US and Pakistani military and security agencies are re-determining the perimeters of their involvement in this ‘war against terrorism’ in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It occurs in a shadow where international media is mostly focused on the political developments in the Middle East. The American shadows are clearing away from the heads of the long-time dictators in the Middle East. However, in South Asia the US is deep in the midst of its muddled support to undemocratic forces, and for the absurdities of the ‘war against terrorism’.