Let’s call what the politicians do the “Bloody Dog and Pony Show” because Iran’s attempts to shuttle weapons to Hezbollah and Syrian intentions to swipe at Israel have been a part of the country’s Arab Spring Screaming since the git-go.
Politically impotent potentates like Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei have with their self-indulging narcissistic zeal painted themselves into corners from which they cannot grow their state’s peaceful and productive capacities but rather, and primarily, wage war against all. Their kind devour themselves but not without first inviting the destruction of everything around them.
As noted here, Syria’s chief problem has to do with the complete absence of anything good “in play” in the battle space. Who today among the civilized, contained, and reasoning should care to support, essentially, Maher al-Assad’s established and continuing sadism?
Who of contemporary western bent should care to see the mixed bag of Islamist rebels, Al Qaeda among them, prevail?
Syria has become the dense sucking black star of the Islamic Small Wars.
None should be surprised about loose chemical warheads or rebels (allegedly) mixing up their own small batches of burning chlorine-based clouds.
Wikipedia’s report of deaths-to-date ascribed to the civil war: between 69,390 and 82,130. “On 13 February 2013, the United Nations put out an estimate of 70,000 that had died in the war.”
Whatever figure you choose, it’s pretty bad.
And there’s no need to tidy up the Syrian slaughterhouse and its deep well of death with a figure – 70,000 – as fat and round as it is unfathomable: “A boy of 12 sees his best friend shot through the heart. Another of 15 is held in a cell with 150 other people, and taken out every day to be put in a giant wheel and burnt with cigarettes” (Reuters, March 13, 2013).
Presuming that most are not reading this “in-country”, imagine having that obscenity taking place in your backyard.
Countermeasures?
Fill the moats, drop the portcullis, and set free those birds with the baked clay!
All of that the Jews have done and continue to do in the defense of the children of Israel.
And truth to tell when faced with so devouring a black and burning hole in the fabric of our humanity globally as Syria has become, it is to the defense of humanity — all God’s children — for which the “Zionist entity” strikes at the weapons centers and shipments that would bring to the whole world nothing less than the same insensate burning.
Hi, X — the “Sunni world” has deep investments in the west and in western trade and concomitant cooperation with the west, so on that broad basis, I believe, it proves itself the better partner in addressing Islamic expansion. The Ayatollah, Hamas, and Hezbollah — the active sworn enemies of Israel and the west — have cursed Shiite Islam in light of western interests as well as global interests in peace.
Iran’s shipments of rockets to Syria (for relay to and use by Hezbollah as well as Assad) signals a bump in Iran’s genocidal war on the “Zionist Entity”. In the experience of the Jews, this is the work of God pulling Israel into a defensive but active position: i.e., the people have once again been threatened with annihilation, the enemy is powerful, and it has shifted from stubborn Big Talk to “arming up” on Israel’s border — and Israel, which has every right to defend herself, will not only do so, but probably, as it has for thousands of years, change the course of history a little bit for the better.
I’ve mentioned many times, Usman, that there were no good guys within the Syrian “battle space” — and the “guys” outside of it, Putin and Obama, add non-Hezbollah Lebanese and then the Israelis, haven’t had a way toward dealing with any of the parties involved! In a very real sense, Syrians have been lost for a while and the effects of Saudi vs. Iran rivalry in the region have been making themselves felt.
If Syria’s rebel forces could both overrun the Assad regime _and reject the establishment of a hard Sunni line and its backers_ then Syrians might recover their state and stand for themselves instead of as proxies to NATO / Sunni / Saudi power as well as Russian / Iranian / Shiite power.
Sound impossible?
Ninety percent of the bloodshed has to do with the content of minds, and I believe minds can and will turn themselves in a good direction, but it might take some assistance to get them there.
* * *
From the moment Maher al-Assad set loose an army absent of any apparent rules of engagement, Syria embarked on a war that could have no other end then to keep the state embroiled in conflict.
The civilian cry for justice and revenge alone would forestall peace with the state as constituted.
Of course, there’s more to the story than that posed by civil war against a despotic family.
Russia’s post-Soviet neglect of its client for all but business and defense concerns contributed to Syria’s “weak link” status in the middle east. The odd political bedfellow with an Iran beneath the Ayatollah’s black wing has only added to the Assad’s isolation. The family hasn’t really been in power in support of religious fanaticism, but that other fanatic passion for “Jew hate” has nonetheless sufficed to partially position the state as an Iranian proxy, and that in turn, plus population, has made the state a contemplated morsel for the House of Saud.
All around, Syria serves as the latest emblem of a weak state to be battered between superpowers and eaten alive by jackals.
For diplomats and professional war game enthusiasts, one might suppose that Iran’s smuggling rockets to Israel fits with some wise Pentagon planning, a conceit I would wish not the least bit true.
For the religious, this confluence of malignant forces — of grandiose messianic ambition in the person of Ayatollah Khamenei, of unsurpassed ambition and greed on the part of what my correspondent called “Sunni Islam” (which I read as Saudi Arabian ambition, expansion, and regional rivalry), of tangent involvement by Russia, the United States, and NATO — one may look to God perhaps arranging one more defensive war for the Jews and all of an Israel that with God will not tolerate in its enemy’s camps the presence of accurate and deadly rockets within range of her children.
The AlJazeera video only glances a reference, about four seconds, at the the shipping of arms between Iran and Syria. If it were an honest outfit, it would have reported on arms trafficking between Iran and Syria first, then the relationship that has made Syria partially dependent on Iranian financing and military support, and then, perhaps this is asking too much, the common bonding in Jew hate and the hatred of the “Zionist entity” that primarily serves to mask the essential impotence of the leadership of both states, an impotence etched into permanent consciousness by the blood and suffering of their own people at their own hands — a thing observable from Evin Prison to Maher al-Assad’s casual firing into passersby on an opposite street corner.
Q: Setting aside Iranian and other outside influence, do you view Shiite-Sunni rivalry and cultural-political organization of Iraqi society as modifiable or irreparably fixed?
A: It wasn’t much of a problem in the past – there was a time when Sunni and Shia Islamists cooperated against the influence of Sunni and Shia Arab nationalists. The problem of authoritarianism inevitably exposed that Sunnis controlled the top, and the rise of Islamism region wide pushed the Shiite protesters of the 1970’s to clash with the Sunni security apparatus. (The first major clash was in 1936 during which a Shiite revolt was brutally put down). The rise of Shiite Islamism in neighbouring Iran created a collusion between Arab nationalism and Sunni Islamism that persists today. Even Lebanese and Syrian Shiites and Alawis are publicly vilified as Persians in all kinds of derogatory language.
It is absolutely modifiable. But given the damage that’s been done, and the resilience of the forces driving it, it may well last for decades more.
Source note: I asked the question on a closed Facebook group, and the respondent, Abdelwahab Al Jaza’iri in Dubai, provided what I’ve accepted as a very good and distilled answer providing background for recent events in Iraq, and it is with his permission that I post the same here.
The beleaguered General Musharraf is in such dire straits these days that it is with a heavy heart indeed that one pens these lines–with heavy heart because one is a personal witness to the qualities of head and heart of the esteemed General. To witness such a man bandied about like a common criminal is a painful sight indeed.
What cannot be denied is that he certainly is the man who took over the country extra legally, held its constitution in abeyance, suspended the basic rights of its citizens, beat up and imprisoned at will an enlightened section of its society, had a sitting Chief Justice of Supreme Court manhandled by lowly cops then fired him from his job and sacked dozens of other judges who refused to play to his tunes.
These indeed are serious crimes in any civilized society ruled by the word of law. But who will cast the first stone in our country. And here is where the biggest of the ironies lies. Those baying for the blood of the General are not exactly babes in the woods.
The wolf pack jumping at the General’s throat is formed of four distinct set of actors i.e. The PML Nawaz Group, the Pakistan People’s Party, the judiciary and the religious right. While every Johnny come lately knows the reason for the religious right’s reason for going after the General, let us have a quick look at the moral credentials of the other three subsets crying for the General’s blood from a moral high ground.
The first subset of the wolf pack is led by a man who goes by the name of Nawaz Sharif and whose political mentor was another General of the yore, who was twice sacked for corruption as Prime Minister of Pakistan forcing that eminent columnist Ayaz Amir to recently call the two brothers as the ‘loan artists’, who wanted to himself become the Ameer-ul-Momineen once, who launched a physical attack on the Supreme Court of Pakistan through a goon squad, who was elected as the Leader of the Pakistan Muslim League and subsequently the IJI (Islamic Democratic Alliance) by the ISI (Pakistan’s Intelligence Agency) as documented in the testimony of the then Army Chief in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, who got thrown into a lockup by General Musharraf from where he managed to slink out after accepting exile to another country in the most shameful of manners.
He today has taken up the flag of justice and is crying himself hoarse hurling threats all around with not a morsel of shame visible on his well-fed façade.
The second subset is led by a man who is also the President of Pakistan, a man who goes by the name of Asif Zardari and who was once affectionately called “Mr. Ten Percent” because of the alleged 10% extortion he forced on people during the various PPP governments, who in 1990 was arrested on charges of blackmail for attaching a bomb to a Pakistani businessman, who stands accused of taking unaccounted millions of Rupees from local Pakistani banks for forestation of Pakistan, who maintained a polo ground in the Prime Ministerial residential compound, who finally admitted owning a £4.35m estate in Surrey, England after denying its ownership for years (including a 20-room mansion and two farms on 365 acres, or 1.5 km², of land), about whom a Swiss investigating magistrate had amassed enough evidence to indict him for a proper jail term and who is alleged to have a role in the brazen murder of his brother-in-law. He has risen up today to become the very personification of virtue grinning like a Cheshire cat all the while.
That leaves the Judiciary–the Holy Cows. If one recalls correctly, in the year 2000, after the proclamation of PCO (Provisional Constitutional Oreder), an Oath of Office for Judges called Order-2000 was issued that required that judiciary to take oath of office under PCO. Four judges, including Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, answering the call of conscience, refused to take oath under the PCO. Rather than becoming a part of a PCO Supreme Court, they resigned and promptly vacated their offices. To fill the positions in the PCO Supreme Court General Musharraf appointed other judges including, among others, none other than Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of Pakistan today. General Musharraf’s extra-constitutional acts were legitimized by this very PCO Supreme Court, and the Parliament elected under General Musharraf legitimized everything including the PCO Supreme Court by the Legal Framework Order, 2002.
And just to refresh the memory, here is the wording of Article 6 of Pakistan’s Constitution dealing with High Treason.
(1) Any person who abrogates or subverts or suspends or holds in abeyance, or attempts or conspires to abrogate or subvert or suspend or hold in abeyance, the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by any other unconstitutional means shall be guilty of high treason.
(2) Any person aiding or abetting [or collaborating] the acts mentioned in clause (1) shall likewise be guilty of high treason.
(2A) An act of high treason mentioned in clause (1) or clause (2) shall not be validated by any court including the Supreme Court and a High Court.]
(3) [Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament)] shall by law provide for the punishment of persons found guilty of high treason.
In scribe’s opinion the whole charade of the General’s trial should start crumbling sooner than later. For if the General is tried for any of his ‘crimes’, his abettors should not be far behind in line.
So it is not without a reason that the first thing the scribe wants to do after seeing all this hollow moralizing is reach for the sick bag.
So sit tight General. And while you do that, let us all pray;
“O lord who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, have mercy on us.”
—-
Canadian resident Anwaar Hussain is a former Pakistani F-16 fighter pilot and a graduate of Quaid-E-Azam University of Islamabad with a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies.
Pakistani moderates/liberals until now have opted to stay way lower on the radar.
There is no doubt this society is becoming less receptive with each passing day.
Fanaticism in Pakistan is just another day, but could the reason for this on-wheel progression be the absence of an easily accessible alternative narrative?
The abundance of ultra-right wing misinformation and propaganda is something, which people like us meet daily through various media. This material is being channeled through every media known to the dictionary. Where is the equally vocal liberal narrative, needed to confront the populist, ultra-right wing version? Those days are long gone when a silent majority of Pakistani moderates existed. People, who engage the masses, are well aware and concerned with this development.
Pakistan is truly a magical land, where any well has to reach out to people, for quenching their thirst, instead of people coming to the well, to get theirs quenched.
So, an alternative narrative to this rhetoric of hate and ignorance has to be channeled in a manner to Pakistani masses, that it is comprehendible and a source of least contention.
The song has been immensely popular amongst all classes. Its ‘controversial’ lines were digested in most cases by the listeners, with smiles drawn to their faces. The reason being that, the message was comprehendible for many Pakistanis who understood Punjabi (if not spoke); the manner in which it was presented also blunted possible criticism from the far right.
Lines holding rebellious disapproval of society’s collective behavior, did certainly make Pakistanis scratch their heads.
The song at some level was successful in engaging the largest segment of Pakistanis, whom liberals consider outcasts and are content with calling, “simpletons”. Too bad there wasn’t more from the band!
Taimur Rehman’s “Jhoot ka sir ooncha” based on Jalib’s poetry was another inspiration. Forums like “Khudi” and RSOP are also making a difference in whatever narrow space they are provided with.
Just like politicians have been facing allegations of ‘drawing room’ politics, I think Pakistani moderates and liberals too should engage in introspection. Engaging the “simpleton” is the key, some liberal forums had that opportunity, to engage this segment of Pakistanis. They instead have since recently, started using this opportunity for misdemeanors and provoking the masses instead.
They were initially doing a pretty good job, addressing the easy comprehension and accessibility problem, rather effectively.
This tells us that this engagement needs to be carried out in some prescribed bounds, so that offense is minimal, while the message is also conveyed tactfully. If anything is done to the contrary, then it would be just like providing fodder to conspiracy theorists and ultra- wing wingers, hell bent upon proving liberals to be enemies of state and the religion of majority.
We must learn this and learn it quickly, that the space available for liberals to maneuver in this highly intransigent society is very reedy.
To make any difference would require a mixture of perseverance and sugar coating one’s message.
Today we see many liberal forums on Facebook and Tweets from the “enlightened ones”. There is all sort of discourse on politics, religion, notions of ‘ghairat’ etc. Ideological rhetoric is being splashed against groups and pages walls, but I ask you, what I used to ask my own self: Frankly speaking, it doesn’t make much of a difference, because rightists don’t give a fish about all this blabbering.
Liberals immersed in their drawing room culture and extreme cynicism keep on crying all day long about the injustices and ignorance in our society, but do not engage “The Simpleton”.
Exchange of ideas between the “enlightened ones” alone can’t make miracles.
The rationale has to trickle down to the common man in a comprehendible and “toned down” language, for things to change for good. Presently, this is not happening, liberals are content with communicating amongst closed communities, which give little space to simpletons. They need to at least start pitching their version to a larger audience. When you do not engage other side in a rational dialogue and put forth your options, how do you expect it to start thinking out of the “establishment’s box”?
There are numerous forums, which attract far greater following (from the age group of 15-30, mainly) than liberal forums. These basically promote the same tattered versions of history and farfetched conspiracy theories, which today’s Pakistani liberal-moderate detests with all his/her power of reason.
Present day Pakistani moderates and liberals have yet to embrace this fact that social media is a revolution in itself.
While, in Pakistan’s case it is an opportunity unparalleled by any other, since the past three ‘lost’ decades. This media of all others could provide a robust platform for objective discourse, ultimately concluding itself in reshaping public opinion and redirection of priorities (in matters encompassing state and religion).
Over 8 Million Pakistanis maintain regular Facebook accounts.
The number of internet users in Pakistan is over 20 Million with 11.5% internet penetration, per ITU statistics. Internet penetration in Pakistan is second highest after India in South Asia. Pakistan is amongst the top thirty countries with most Facebook users, while the breakup of the Pakistani Facebook users in terms of age groups tells us that, 98% of Pakistani Facebook users are between the age group of 13-44.
Intellectuals have been writing extensively on how Evangelists and Televangelists targeted Pakistani middle class youth, since the 80-90’s. They penetrated universities and colleges. They then made inroads to the electronic media. Even Pakistani pop music industry was approached, resulting in transformation of two singers, Junaid Jamshed into an evangelical and Ali Azmat into a Televangelist.
The religious conversion of Pakistani cricketers is not news unheard, either.
Without spiting the evangelicals and televangelists for what they did, I would like to guide the attention of my readers to the success their strategy bore. There are lessons to be learned from the strategy adopted by these groups. They mainly targeted youth, which had humongous amounts of potential and were easy to manipulate after a decade long fundamentalist indoctrination during Zia’s regime.
They invested in the FUTURE.
Visibly evangelicals and televangelists cashed this situation big time.
How are the liberals and moderates utilizing the social media?
Liberals and moderates aren’t approaching their fellow countrymen and women with their versions of the story, they instead keep attributing all ills of the country to role of state agencies, the government, army, clergy (religion itself at times-society isn’t ready for that, yet), Saudis, right leaning media and Zaid Hamid without making any serious effort to play their part in bringing some lucidity to this freak show.
This all happens in small restricted groups, composing liberals, hence, no trickling down.
It is often observed that these episodes transform into bashing or disowning Pakistan after getting frustrated.
Does bashing the only place we could call as ‘home’ in the name of realism help? The answer would certainly be in negation.
Then what could be done?
Rational argument never goes unheard, if your addressee refuses to accept the validity of your rational argument on your face, he/she will certainly give it a thought once trying to sleep at night. There is something about a rational argument, that some part of it always seeps deeper into the skin and touches hearts. Even if, some of it seeps in, consider you have a job well done at your hands.
Key will always be the same, keep pitching the liberal narrative in easy access and comprehension of the simpletons.
Availability of options will provide people with choices, something, which they really never had before.
On 4 January 2011, Salman Taseer, a liberal human rights campaigner and the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and most powerful province, was killed by Mumtaz Qadri, his bodyguard, for insulting Prophet Muhammad. Taseer‟s „crime‟ was that he had stood up for Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian woman, sentenced to death for insulting Prophet Muhammad. Taseer‟s murder fused the educated, the less educated, and the illiterate into an Islamistnationalist unity
Abbas Zaidi’s review of the motivations involved and license taken in the January 4, 2011 murder of Salman Taseer takes a fair look at Pakistan’s “God Mob” (my term) in its pervasive national aspect.
Just one paragraph before the conclusion, Zaidi makes this point that runs slantwise to my own interest in “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)”, a bastard mix of the clinical descriptions of bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder lifted out of psychology proper and into political psychology and sociology:
“Based on the preceding discussion, a point may be added to the definition of postcolonial insanity: Postcolonial insanity is enchantment with grand narratives which are held to be universal in their reach, inviolability, and truthfulness.”
Bipolar indulgence in grandiose and messianic delusion and manic expression; narcissistic resistance to criticism while obsessed with one’s own powers . . . and there they are doing their thing, system-wide, soaking Pakistan in blood accompanied (outside of the body of the state) by near universal condemnation.
While the event hosting these speakers — “Profiles in Courage: Human Rights Defenders in the Struggle to End Violence Against Women” — took place in New York City early last month, the testimony tells of atmospheres in which women live (meaning in which everyone lives) in several of our world’s muddied and persistently dimmed quarters. Continue reading →
When I was a little iddle boy, debates like the one at the address above would have fallen into the category that is “thinking about the unthinkable”. These days, that unthinkable has to be thought about around the world, not only on the Korean peninsula or around Kashmir in the completely absurd India vs. Pakistan debacle or other now old nuclear armed regions but in the middle east as well, and there not only Israel (perhaps) vs. Whoever (this playing the anti-Semites line of rant) but Whoever vs. Whoever.
During the above debate, those who tune in will hear description of the thinking that would be at work in a “poly-nuclear”middle east.
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