Bhutto’s mindless war

I can’t count the number of times I heard someone from Pakistan predict that she would eventually get killed. It was baffling to see her regurgitate the same speech about “religious extremism” over and over again. Is this really Pakistan’s problem, I wondered? Or is terrorism only a problem in Pakistan to the extent that Musharraf has decided to confront the Taliban on behalf of the Americans?

Terrorism is not Pakistan’s problem. The biggest problem for the average citizen in Pakistan seems to be the skyrocketing prices of household goods. “A poll in late November by the International Republican Institute, a U.S.-based non-profit group, gave respondents a choice of 12 issues that would determine which political party they would support. A whopping 53 percent of 3,250 people picked inflation, followed by 15 percent who chose unemployment and 9 percent who chose poverty. Only 6 percent picked terrorism; just 2 percent chose democratic reforms.”

So why was she so vocal about terrorism? For one, she didn’t have anything else to offer. Looking at her previous two stints as prime minister, it’s clear she didn’t do much. So, like Bush, she latched on to an issue which played on people’s fears and provided precisely the kind of slogans one needs to corral supporters in time of an election. Second, her only other issue was Musharraf’s dictatorship. During the martial law last month, she became the savior of democracy and demanded that the constitution be restored and Musharraf step down as the head of the Army, otherwise, she would boycott the elections. He did both, and just like that, the dictatorship problem went out the window.

The other reason why she spoke out against “religious extremism” so much is because of the friends she made overseas when she made the war on terrorism a top priority. The US would not have been so active in seeking a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf if Bhutto wasn’t so vocal about her opposition to “Islamic extremists.” In fact, it’s not hard to imagine Bhutto being as irrelevant as Nawaz Sharif if she came back from exile without terrorism as her raison d’etre.

In the end, Bhutto’s fist-waiving was a sham. Musharraf’s been tackling the same problem for years and it has only gotten worse – not for the populous, which is mostly concerned with feeding itself, but for Musharraf and the Americans. The people who she labeled terrorists in Pakistan are the same people who protected the interests of the Americans as well as the Pakistanis for over two decades prior to 9/11. For the Americans, these men played a key role in the collapse of the Soviet empire. For Pakistan, they kept India and Afghanistan at bay during the Cold War, and now fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir. Calling them terrorists and promising a war against their leaders because they’ve fallen out of favor with an overseas ally was not only senseless, but did nothing to resolve the problems faced by the average Pakistani who is yearning for a more stable and prosperous country. Hopefully, Bhutto’s replacement will realize that and make Pakistan the top priority – not the West.

Media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Let’s begin with a truism: the media plays a major role in shaping public opinion in contemporary democracies. In the US, many will argue that it’s the media that keeps the public blind to some of the most pressing problems of the world, focusing instead on catering to the masses’ voracious appetite for sensationalist entertainment with simple-minded ‘good vs. evil’ narratives. This of course not only waters down our discourse to “they’re evil” and “we’re freedom-loving,” but it also sets in motion the tendency to forgo facts.

One can find ample evidence of this practice in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’ll end this short post by sharing a critique by MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, of the coverage Hamas’ mortar attacks received following the Sharm El-Sheikh talks:

“According to mainstream Israeli and US media organizations, Palestinians broke the ceasefire only two days after the historic Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire agreement at Sharm El-Sheikh. It is true. Palestinians fired several rounds of mortars and homemade rockets, weapons that have killed people in the past, at illegal Jewish settlements in Gaza on 11 February. Luckily, no one was hurt in the attacks. However, these media are either marginalizing or not reporting at all some very relevant facts, in particular that Israeli troops killed two unarmed Palestinians in separate incidents prior to the attacks, and that the rocket and mortar attacks were carried out explicitly as a response to the killings . . . Israel should therefore be held responsible for endangering the calm in the region . . . Yet the Israeli and American publics are hardly likely to think so, simply because they do not know … The liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz, often celebrated for its unbiased approach, points an unambigous finger of blame at the Palestinian organization that claimed responsibility for the mortar and rocket attacks: ‘Hamas Rockets Deal a Blow to Sharm Optimism’ (Ha’aretz staff, Ha’aretz, 11 February) . . . The Atlanta-based CNN . . . (cnn.com, 10 February), referred to Palestinian attacks on ‘Israeli communities in Gaza’, but with not one word spilled on the prehistory of the attacks . . .

The media pressures contributed to the search for accountability among Palestinians for the Palestinian attacks. That is good media work. But should accountability not be demanded for the preceding deadly attacks? Not according to the Israeli and US media whose absolute silence on the matter speaks volumes . . . “

It certainly does. More on this later.