Where’s the Gaza outrage in Pakistan?

Islamabad diary
Bigger rallies have been held in London against the Israeli assault on Gaza than anything we are likely to see here. This is a mirror copy of what happened during the Iraq war: huge anti-war rallies in London and New York, and other western cities, not much outrage across the great world of Islam.
We do get worked up but about different things. Some outlandish cartoon that in a normal day’s work no one would notice has to appear in a far-off publication and there’s no end to our indignation. Some crank film has to be put out by a shady character somewhere in California – a film no one remembers today – and the world of Islam, from one end to the other, is aflame.
A crazy gunman in Pakistan shoots the governor of Punjab he is supposed to be protecting and he is hailed as a hero of the faith, a former chief justice of the Lahore High Court rushing to his defence and lawyers, those quintessential guardians of the law, showering him with rose petals. Huge rallies are taken out in his support.
But a hundred thousand Iraqis if not more are killed, two million Iraqis are displaced from their homes and made refugees, the entire country is laid waste – American troops using uranium-tipped artillery shells in Fallujah – and the Muslim world is silent. Outrage is not dead in Pakistan but it has become pretty selective.
Public protest here against Israeli atrocities in Gaza will make no difference to Israel which understands the world of Islam and its collective impotence better than we do. But the United States, as Israel’s great protector and with a large enough presence in Islamabad, would feel some of the heat…and that would be good enough, the point made.
But the world of Islam, and us, are wired differently. Saudi Arabia will draw a line over Syria and get hugely upset with the US for not bombing Syria and working harder to dislodge Bashar al-Assad. It will urge action against Iran and will get upset at the prospect of a nuclear deal between Iran and the western powers. Qatar will get all worked up over Egypt and the situation in Syria. Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia will have something to say about Libya. But the fire seems to go out of their bellies when it comes to Gaza and the Israeli killing of women and children.
The Pakistani government hardly counts. The present leadership, in any case, cannot be expected to take any stand ahead of or out of step with Saudi Arabia. The insipid statement issued by the Foreign Office for all it meant might as well have not been issued. Imagine if a Bhutto had been around. By this time he would have been all around the Arab world, taking the lead in condemning Israel and promising all out support, including military support, to Hamas. In the 1973 war Pakistani air force pilots were sent to Syria. That’s what endeared Bhutto to Hafez Al-Assad. But those were different times and Bhutto, for all his other faults, was a different kind of leader.
But what about the Pakistani masses, what’s happened to them? There was a time when Pakistani students demonstrated on the Mall in Lahore when Patrice Lumumba, leader of Congo, was killed in an air crash, still largely unexplained. The Pakistani intelligentsia used to be involved emotionally in distant affairs, including the Vietnam War. There were no television channels then and few independent newspapers. But the Pakistani student, the newspaper-reading man, the professor and academic, the lawyer, the trade unionist, was more aware of what was going on in the world – of what was happening in Cuba, Angola, the streets of Paris during the student uprising of 1968 – than his counterpart today.
Leila Khalid, the woman Palestinian hijacker, was as much a Pakistani poster girl as she was a Palestinian heroine. The East is Red was as much a Pakistani slogan as a rallying cry anywhere else. We are in a strange kind of relationship with the rest of the world. Metaphysical problems, mostly self-invented, assail us. Real problems demanding concrete action leave us cold and indifferent, our attitudes towards them advertising our ignorance and helplessness.
What’s happened to Pakistani activism? In Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, only the maulvis can take out a big demo or the MQM. The PTI has a burger class behind it in Clifton and Defence but the burger class is not into such things. And the Caudillo Altaf has other things on his mind at the moment.
Islamabad was always some miles away from Pakistan but the way concrete and tar have been poured over its open spaces it has become more of an empty city, in socio-political terms, than it ever was. You can bring a ‘long march’ onto its roads from outside but there is no possibility of any kind of indigenous ferment arising from its half-dead inhabitants. The last bit of soul in this city of the dead and for the dead is being taken care of by what in development economics is sure to be known as the Mian concept of development. RIP Islamabad, Gaza can expect no help from this quarter.
As for Lahore, the PML-N, the dominant party, has never had any truck with wider, international issues except of course when maulvis and self-appointed defenders of the faith, on the basis of their own interpretation, declare Islam to be in danger. Then the banners which go up in Lahore have to be seen to be believed.
There’s a sizeable burger class in Lahore too, the kind that all dolled up or dressed up flocks to literary festivals, but this class has gone all quiet after its one memorable, and by all accounts historic, foray into the field of active politics – attendance at Imran Khan’s Minar-e-Pakistan jalsa on Oct 30, 2009. After that heroic endeavour the sound seems to have gone flat in its trumpets. This class should be out in front protesting the Israeli massacre – a vigil or a rally at the Mall-Canal Bank crossing would be a big event – but who will stir up this somnolent mass?
This is Imran Khan’s natural constituency but he is into other things. A Gaza solidarity march on the Mall on chaand raat no less, starting from the Canal Bank crossing down to Nasir Bagh…what a way it would be to celebrate chaand raat. Why doesn’t Imran Khan do it, a torch-bearing procession down the Mall, in solidarity with the people of Gaza? If Londoners can do something of the sort, what holds us back? For Gaza and North Waziristan.
It’s a strange concept of ‘toheen’ or blasphemy that we are being taught. Gaza, Palestine and Jerusalem are lands sacred to all three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The blood of innocents spilt in these lands…can any blasphemy be greater than this?
But we are divided in our responses because the world of Islam is split. The war in Syria is a war between different factions of Islam. The same is true of Iraq, the battle-lines again drawn largely if not wholly on sectarian lines. Taking advantage of this chaos is Israel.
But Hamas, outgunned and out-resourced, is fighting back. Thirteen Israeli soldiers dead – when was the last time Israel suffered so many casualties? Not since the war with Hezbollah in 2006. Hezbollah has proven its mark as the only fighting force in the Middle East able to take on the Israeli military. Hamas is following in its footsteps. In the 2006 war Hezbollah’s most effective weapon was the anti-tank missile, deployed to devastating effect. In Gaza Hamas too is making good use of the same weapon.
The important thing is that Hamas, despite overwhelming Israeli superiority, is not being cowed. It is hitting back…to Israel’s gathering fury and frustration. All power then to Hamas and Hezbollah – the only two forces upholding the honour of Arab arms.
Tailpiece: Will our English newspapers learn to properly edit the agency copy they get? Reuters and AFP stories from Gaza read like handouts from the Israeli military. And our newspapers carry them faithfully. Where has old-world literacy gone?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com