Here we go again – London’s atrocity exemplifies the banality of terrorism and the banality of the responses to terrorism

Pakistan’s leaders love using laughably outrageous metaphors in describing the country’s relationship with China, yet the truth is that this so-called alliance means almost nothing positive for the Pakistani economy.

All of Islamabad – indeed all of Pakistan – appears to be bending over backwards in laying out the red carpet to welcome Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. But the fact of the matter is that China will give Pakistan almost nothing, and this two-day trip is really only being made by the Chinese premier to avoid slapping Islamabad in the face completely, after having made his first trip abroad a three-day visit to India, in a key signal about the real shifts in Chinese foreign policy.

Pakistanis love to proclaim China as our “all-weather friend. In his last visit to China, former Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani described the relationship as “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey.”

On this trip, Premier Li described the relationship as “a tree, now exuberant with abundant fruits”.

This was not him being poetic. It was delivering a message that nobody in Pakistan seems to have gotten: that China’s ties with Pakistan are not some eternal alliance of friends, but a strictly utilitarian relationship in which Beijing uses Islamabad occasionally to scare the living daylights out of the United States and India to get what it wants in its negotiations with Washington and New Delhi, and then abandons Pakistan once that transaction is completed.

A look at the numbers suggests that the Islamabad-Beijing relationship has had very little benefit for Pakistan as whole.

In the 12-year period between July 2000 and June 2012, net foreign investment in Pakistan amounted to about $29 billion, according to the State Bank of Pakistan. Of that, just $0.8 billion came from China, and nearly all of that was China Mobile’s investment in Zong.

China’s investment in Pakistan is less than that of tiny Netherlands, which invested $1.4 billion during that time. The supposed “Great Satan” – the United States – invested the most in Pakistan: $7.7 billion, or more than a quarter of all foreign investment in the country. There is only one major Chinese company with actual investments in Pakistan: China Mobile. The number of major US companies investing in Pakistan? More than 30.

In Pakistan’s terms of trade with China, the relationship is virtually colonial in nature. In 2012, China sold Pakistan about $6.6 billion worth of goods, mostly electronic equipment and machinery. Pakistan sold China about $2.6 billion worth of goods, nearly all of that cotton yarn. By contrast, Pakistan runs a trade surplus with both the United States and the European Union.

But what about Gwadar Port and its benefits to Pakistan, one might be tempted to ask. There is no denying that Gwadar – if developed properly – can deliver massive economic gains to Pakistan as a whole and especially the impoverished people of Balochistan. The problem is that this is exactly what we said when we handed over the Saindak copper and gold mines to China a decade ago. How’s that working out for us? Not very well, by the looks of the Balochistan and federal governments’ revenues, and the utter lack of development in that area.

What about other Chinese companies building infrastructure in Pakistan? They are simply contractors being paid for construction work on projects financed mostly by Pakistani taxpayers or donations from the US, EU or multilateral donors.

The truth is that China is much more serious about its economic relationship with India than with Pakistan. Here is how we know: in Islamabad, the Chinese premier will, at best, sign a few memoranda of understanding, essentially worthless pieces of paper that say nothing of substance. In India, the visit was marked by Chinese companies signing legally binding contracts with their Indian counterparts worth billions of dollars. China’s trade with India is worth $68 billion and the two countries are on track to take it to $100 billion in two years.

The sooner Pakistan wakes up from the “China is our friend” delusion, the sooner we will stop giving control of the country’s economic resources for almost nothing in return. The harsh reality is that Pakistan means almost nothing to China, and that is why the relationship with Beijing has yielded almost no tangible benefits for the Pakistani economy.

Originally published by Tribune Pakistan

In recent days, the PML-N and PTI have announced their readiness to talk to the TTP. What a shame. In effect, these two parties — one soon to govern Pakistan, the other to govern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — are saying they’re willing to hunker down with monsters who shoot schoolgirls at point-blank range, gun down health workers in Pakistan’s sickest regions, and brandish severed heads, by the hair and with gusto, as the cameras roll.

It’s actually not the idea of talking to savages that I find objectionable. After all, history is rife with examples of governments negotiating with sadistic forces. In some cases—think the Irish Republican Army and Colombia’s FARC rebels—these efforts have actually been quite successful, and resulted in peaceful outcomes.

What bothers me (as an outsider, admittedly) is the fact that talking to the Pakistani Taliban simply doesn’t make sense, and for three simple reasons.

First, the TTP has repeatedly reneged on previous peace deals. In 2009, following several years’ worth of alleged agreements with the state, the TTP did not lay down itsarms. Instead it lay claim to Swat—and instituted a reign of terror. If another olive branch is officially extended to KP-based Taliban forces, expect an emboldened TTP to regroup before establishingnew areas of violently enforced authority that ban girls from going to school and stifle free expression — including the social media that helped fuel the PTI’s rise. This scenario would not only be gloomy, but alsoironic—given that the PTI’s message of change has targeted, in part, educated, tech-savvy urbanites, including many women.

Second, the TTP wants to demolish Pakistan’s political system; it often articulates its fervent desire to destroy “anti-Islamic” democracy.While much has been made of the TTP’s campaign of election-related violence against Pakistan’s secular political parties, spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan has also insinuated that all participants in the democratic system are fair game — including, presumably, the PTI and PML-N. “We are not expecting any good from the other parties either, who are supporters of the same system, but why they are not targeted is our own prerogative to decide,” he explained ominously to Dawn.com several weeks back.

The third reason why it makes little sense to talk to the TTP is that the government doesn’t operate from a position of strength. Experts often say it’s best to negotiate when your interlocutor is on the defensive. The TTP, however, is very much on the offensive. Its highly organised, and wholly uncontested, assault on political parties this election season came on the heels of a relentless rash of attacks in KP that had analysts speaking of the “potential loss” of Peshawar to the TTP. By agreeing to talk now, you’re effectively surrendering — or at the very least, acknowledging your fundamental vulnerability.

Stop being hypocritical, you might say. The US government supports dialogue with the Afghan Taliban, so why lambast Pakistan’s willingness to talk to the TTP?

This may sound like a reasonable rebuttal — but it’s not. Some members of the Afghan Taliban, unlike those of the TTP, have expressed a willingness to participate in a future democratic Afghan government (already, in fact,some Afghan government officials are former Taliban fighters). The Afghan Taliban appears open to operating within the existing political system, and not necessarily intent on obliterating it. It also has no legacy of reneging on peace agreements (though to be fair, it’s never concluded one).

At any rate, the comparison being made here is a shaky one. One case involves a state wishing to negotiate with an indigenous anti-government insurgency. The other involves a foreign power wanting to talk with a local entity that it previously overthrew in a military intervention. This amounts to comparing apples and elephants.

A more convincing argument in favor of talking to the TTP is this: Despite the heroic efforts of the Pakistan Army, military strategies have failed to quell the Pakistani Taliban’s insurgency.

Originally published by Dawn Pakistan

At China’s National People’s Congress earlier this year, China’s new leader Xi Jinping outlined his vision for China’s renaissance. Evoking the imagery of the Chinese dream, Xi spoke of his vision for a strong prosperous and happy nation, which would provide opportunities and rewards for all those who worked hard.

It is still unclear what the Chinese dream will mean for China, the Chinese and the rest of the world. At this year’s London Asia Literary Festival, Jonathan Fenby author of Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There, and Where It Is Heading and Gerard Lemos author of The End of the Chinese Dream: Why Chinese People Fear the Future gave their thoughts on the Chinese dream and why so many Chinese are cynical about what Xi’s dream means for them.

Fenby contextualises this scepticism in the maelstrom of the enormous economic revolution which has unleashed untold social challenges. Continuing food safety crisis, smog covered cities and overflowing sewerages are just the outward signs of the brewing discontent. Given these issues, Fenby suggests that the large majority of Chinese dream of something very basic –  material wealth.

Lemos, whose first acquaintance with the Chinese dream was in 2006 when he developed an initiative in Chong Qing to create wish trees (where students wrote and hung their hopes for the future), agrees that most of China dreams of material wealth. In particular, they want equality of access to health care, education and employment, a difficult goal in an increasingly divided society.

This increasing income inequality has left many very cynical about the willingness and capacity of the Chinese State to improve their livelihoods and opportunities.

Both Denby and Lemos agree that it is perhaps the pervasive corruption in China that is the greatest barrier to economic mobility, as the masses can ill afford to pay the bribes required to access the best schools, healthcare and employment opportunities. As the elite and their children – the princelings of society, continue to play on their social connections, inequality, resentment and mistrust grows.

While Xi is very much aware of these issues and focused on improving living standards and cracking down on corruption, Fenby and Lemos doubt whether change is possible given the broader cultural and structural constructs underlying these issues.

Whilst outsiders may be concerned about what the Chinese dream means for the China’s geo-political power, Fenby and Lemos contend that most Chinese care little about China’s positions as a super power. Although the Chinese do want due respect from foreign powers, they are largely focused on their own individual empowerment. Their dream is unashamedly inward and materialistic. Nonetheless it is clear that in a nation of 1.3 billion, no dream can ever be contained. The ripples of the dream will surely continue to surge outwards.

Jonathan Fenby’s Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There, and Where It Is Heading is available in paper back from Foyles and your local independent bookshop at £9.37. A Kindle version is currently unavailable.

Gerard Lemos’s The End of the Chinese Dream: Why Chinese People Fear the Future is available in paper back from Foyles and your local independent bookshop at £9.34.

Last week The Festival of Asian Literature at Asia House brought us this panel discussion featuring poet and playwright, Siddhartha Bose, TV chef Ravinder Bhogal, DJs Nihal and Bobby Friction and chaired by journalist and author, Satnam Sanghera.

With a discussion so broadly defined, Sanghera didn’t stand much of a chance in terms of keeping it on course but this was, nonetheless, a fascinating opportunity to eke out what is meant by the idea of “British Asian”.

The panel itself showed quite sharply who tends to identify with the term “British Asian”, whilst Nihal and Friction, born here in the seventies, define themselves in this way, it wasn’t the same for Bhogal or Bose who were born abroad.

Friction suggests that the term was specific to a certain time, when the few South Asians in the country banded together against “a white monolithic mainstream culture”. He and Nihal noted with regret that younger generations have fragmented from this umbrella term, identifying instead by region or country of origin, or religion.

For whom, then, do media such as Eastern Eye or BBC Asian Network cater when younger migrants’ children don’t aggregate to the British Asian group? Perhaps just contemporaries of Friction and Nihal?

Friction cited how in the nineties, US Asians praised the confidence with which their British counterparts “fused cultures”, whereas Nihal claims that current views of British Asians abroad tends to be one of being extreme, “going on about how desi [they] are”.

For the Asians that grew up during the same period as Friction and Nihal, though, there was a strong and united Other against which to form the British Asian identity. Coming in at the tail end of that, even I remember the euphoria of recognition that came of hearing “So Contagious” by Truth Hurts in a public space. Friction told us “I DJ-ed because every cell in my body wanted to go out screaming against the mainstream culture.”

Friction grew up in the seventies when Asians were still sparse, for him British Asian culture started off as just what his family did “secretly” at home. He expressed this identity through art, atomized through university, until he found the “Asian underground” music scene.

Rather than Nitin Sawney or Talvin Singh, Nihal cited artists such as Juggy D, Ri$hi Rich and Jay Sean as the first artists to really resonate with British Asians, suggesting the prior only appealed to the “intelligentsia”. Conversely, an audience member argued that Jay Sean was simply “stealing someone else’s culture” and that true British Asian music was much earlier Asian Dub Foundation drawing authenticity from how closely influenced the music was by South Asian styles.

Nihal defended Jay Sean as an Asian artist though, which sat awkwardly with his own comments earlier, when he said of Mani from the Stone Roses, “he’s Asian, but how much does he rep Asian-ness”? The iteration of Jay Sean that attained the number one spot in the Billboard chart with “Down” was one completely disinfected of the Asian influences that had made him so successful in this niche during his early career.

The discussion turned to how British Asian music artists fail to address social issues such as forced marriage or religious extremism in their music. This is an endemic paradox around migrant minority subcultures which is amplified in an environment of multiculturalism. The conservative mores which have been transported from a South Asia of the sixties and seventies by migrant parents are rarely challenged. Progressive lifestyles are often hidden from families leading to a lack of overall support for outward-facing openness.

For example, migrants’ anxiety to move into the middle class constantly sees them foisting children into the professions.

Whilst the panellists all had diverse backgrounds, most could unite on their parents’ disapproval with regards to their careers in creative industries. Bhogal found her family didn’t understand her previous work as a fashion stylist. A problem alleviated by her move into cooking which was better received, harking back to her youth in an “Austen-esque household” where the four sisters would gather to cook. Only Nihal didn’t suffer the same problem, his parents, both professionals, were happy to see him do something different.

Of course, question of “what is cool?” came under close examination. Friction described how in the early nineties the mainstream media seized the idea of “The New Asian Cool”, writing articles and following the pioneers of the scene. Nihal described parallels between this and the current Afrobeat trend amongst “Guardian-readers”.

The BBC sitcom, Citizen Khan does well to demonstrate that the motifs of British Asian culture that were moulded during that early phase remain the same assumptions used to describe British Asians today. These stereotypes have led to a fatigue in the appetite for the “garden-variety” of ethnic minority; British Asians are familiar, homogenous and unchanging. If cool, then, is novelty, this well-known flavour of British Asian culture had its heyday with “Mundian To Bach Ke”, the only bhangra track you’re likely to encounter in a mainstream club even now.

At the same time there’s the anxiety that comes as a hangover from colonialism, are we measuring our cool against criteria defined by the “dominant culture”?

Nihal described his wife’s reaction to how mainstream society views Asians in this country as an American Sri Lankan, “I get the impression that they don’t like you here.” Perhaps this is why younger generations of Asians are defining themselves outside of the bounds of the British Asian identity – to escape the baggage of the chicken tikka masala and the host of other assumptions that come alongside being brown and British in the eyes of a mainstream media trained by Goodness Gracious Me.

Over recent years there have been threats that the BBC Asian Network would be cut. Friction, though, claims that this cannot happen due to the demographic changes over the coming forty years which will see the Asian community grow hugely. If this purpose is to be fulfilled the BBC Asian Network needs to support British Asians to re-define themselves and grow as a community by being more outward-facing, less insular and exclusive. Moving towards eclectic and multi-layered identities and music like M.I.A. (curiously absent from the discussion).

Even the panelists felt that the term “British Asian”, or perhaps the perception of “British Asian” in the British consciousness, hindered them more that it helped. Bhogal said she felt “lassoed” by it and Friction felt that it was problematic because the mainstream looks at Asians through stereotypes. At the same time, as Nihal noted, the entire panel is successful today because of their British Asian heritage, “we’ve all played the Asian card”. British Asians are incentivized not to develop and change, by their families, communities and by societal expectations, but Asian media and Asian artists have it in their hands to change these perceptions, although this might mean letting go of an old fond identity.

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif in his pre-parliamentary address in Lahore on Monday said that if there was an option to talk to the Taliban with the hope of making the country peaceful, they should take it. 

“We have never bad-mouthed anyone in our election campaign,” Sharif said in a slight to his opponents, Express News reported. “We accepted everyone’s mandate.”

“We will help the provincial governments in whatever way, but then there should be an end to the ongoing violence,” the prime minister-elect said.

Nawaz said holding negotiations is the only way to effectively solve problems.

“We have lost several lives, our economy is deteriorating… If Taliban offers us an option to have dialogue, we should take it seriously. Why can’t we talk to the Taliban to make our country peaceful?”

Working on common agenda

He said that affairs of the country should be given precedence over politics.

“All political parties need to work on one common agenda for the betterment of the country and this is what I reiterated when I went to Shaukat Khanum Hospital (to visit Imran Khan),” he added.

PML-N won the highest number of National Assembly seats in the general elections that took place in the country on May 11, establishing a simple majority in the centre. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) who won in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the elections has formed its own government in the province.

Originally published by Tribune Pakistan

RELIGIOUS parties have generally failed to perform at the ballot box in Pakistan and their offshoots — parties based on sect — have fared even worse. This trend sustained itself in the 2013 general elections as both Shia and Sunni parties fared dismally. Shia grouping Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, which was contesting elections for the first time, as well as the Sunni far-right Muttahida Deeni Mahaz alliance, which contained the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (successor of Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan) under its umbrella, failed to convince voters to give them a shot at power. The MWM only managed to secure one Balochistan Assembly seat while the MDM failed to get any candidates into the assemblies, though ASWJ leader Ahmed Ludhianvi lost by a whisker to the PML-N in the Jhang National Assembly seat he was contesting.

Sectarian politics came to the fore in the Ziaul Haq era; it was given oxygen by the dictator’s ‘Islamisation’ campaign while the influence of Saudi Arabia and Iran in local politics was also a factor in its growth as far-right Sunni groups such as the SSP were formed in reaction to a more pronounced Shia political identity in Pakistan after Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Since then overtly Shia and Sunni parties have become a permanent feature on the political landscape. While the voter has repeatedly rejected sect-based groups, their rise, growth and continued presence points to key issues that must be addressed by mainstream parties. For example the MWM’s rise, which campaigned against the targeting of Shias, came about because many Shias felt the major political parties did little to protect them from sectarian militants. Such grievances appear justified. Hence if mainstream parties fail to address sectarian violence, they may face further alienation of the Shia voter.

But, the fact remains that most Shias and Sunnis in Pakistan do not vote along communal lines. For that matter, even Islamist parties have failed to attract the voter in this country. Hence Shias and other religious groups that feel victimised need to engage with political parties; the future lies in convergence with the political mainstream. As for the major parties, they need to reassure voters of all creeds that their rights will be protected and that they will work to build a society free of sectarianism. Regarding groups like the ASWJ who lost by small margins, this is indeed a troubling indication. However, this can also be countered by mainstream political parties by ensuring good governance and the rule of law, thus taking the wind out of the extremists’ sails.

Originally published by Dawn Pakistan

The term “Islamophobia” is everywhere, but its meanings work at cross purposes – to liberals, it refers to discrimination and hate crimes that can be addressed through existing laws, but to fundamentalists, it refers to offenses against religion that must be addressed through censorship or death.

Ever since the Iraq war, and to a lesser extent prior to it, popular perception has had it that humanitarian intervention is a cause célèbre of the right rather than the left.

One might even go so far as to say that, until the 2008 financial crisis hit and reignited the squabble between Keynesians and austerity hawks, the single biggest area of disagreement between left and right was on foreign policy.

“Hawks”, “neocons” and “imperialists” were invariably of the right whereas “doves”, “peaceniks” and “stoppers” were, with a few exceptions, on the left.

As with most attempts at compartmentalising political ideologies there were of course glaring exceptions. While many on the left were instinctively uneasy at the concept of George W Bush’s “war on terror”, others conceded that, to paraphrase American author Peter Beinart, liberal principles could be threatened by forces other than western conservatism.

In other words, totalitarianism – whether in its Islamist or secular guise – required a firm, and where appropriate, military response.

When it was first created in 2005, the London-based Henry Jackson Society (HJS) appeared to offer a base for those on the centre-left and right who believed in a variant of “muscular liberalism”. Much like the senator after whom it was named, the HJS sought to fuse a concern for social justice at home with a hardline approach to totalitarianism and autocracy abroad.

As a result the organisation attracted broad parliamentary support, including 11 Labour MPs, who continue to sit on the organisation’s advisory council to this day.

In February, Labour’s shadow secretary for defence, Jim Murphy, even gave a speech on policy at an event organised by the HJS.

According to those who’ve worked behind the scenes at the HJS, however, in recent years the organisation has degenerated into something that is anything but liberal.

The associate director of the HJS is Douglas Murray, a columnist for the Spectator and Standpoint, who joined the organisation in April 2011. In March, Murray wrote an articlefollowing the release of the results of the 2011 census in which he bemoaned the fact that in “23 of London’s 33 boroughs ‘white Britons’ are now in a minority”.

It wasn’t so much integration that Murray wanted to talk about, however, but skin colour:

“We long ago reached the point where the only thing white Britons can do is to remain silent about the change in their country. Ignored for a generation, they are expected to get on, silently but happily, with abolishing themselves, accepting the knocks and respecting the loss of their country. ‘Get over it. It’s nothing new. You’re terrible. You’re nothing’.”

In 2009 Murray also described Robert Spencer, the leader of a group calling itself “Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)”, as a “very brilliant scholar and writer”.

A number of years before Murray saw fit to praise this “brilliant scholar”, the latter wrote that there was “no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists”.

And just to keep you up to date, this week Murray effectively endorsed Ukip in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

The spirit of intolerance at the HJS appears also to extend to those who have taken issue with Murray’s rhetoric.

Marko Attila Hoare, a former senior member of the Henry Jackson Society who left the organisation in 2012, told me that his opposition to Murray’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views saw him driven out of the organisation.

“It rapidly became clear that Murray had not tamed his politics, and that actually they were becoming the politics of the whole organisation,” Hoare told me.

Murray’s boss, HJS executive director Alan Mendoza, has form too. In March of this year he claimed that the increasing European Muslim population was to blame for Europe’s “anti-Israel feelings”, adding that the voices of Muslims “are heard well above the average Europeans”.

Eleven Labour MPs are still associated with this organisation. How, one wonders, do the views of the Henry Jackson Society sit with one-nation Labour?

I wrote to all 11 Labour MPs with my concerns about the Henry Jackson Society but none were available for comment.

Originally published by Left Foot Forward

How will elections change this awful situation, especially since ethnic Baluch parties have done poorly? Talk of reconciliation with Baluch nationalists comes cheap, but trust is lacking

Thankfully they are over and done with, and only a few hundred – not a few thousand – lives were lost. The PPP’s rout was extremely well-deserved. It is headed for the dustbin of history unless, by some miracle, it miraculously reinvents itself as a non-dynastic mission-driven party. One feels somewhat sorrier for the ANP in spite of its general ineptness and inability to deliver on honest governance. But it was targeted by TTP fanatics and, in the words of Asfandyar Wali Khan, the election campaign became a matter of “picking up the dead, carrying their funerals and taking the wounded to hospitals”. The long anticipated tsunami, it turned out, belonged to Nawaz Sharif. This victory of a center-right leader may not be much to celebrate but, at least for now, he is acting as a statesman and saying many of the right things. Meanwhile a certain disappointed cricketer, who kowtows to the Taliban and justifies their every atrocity, is venting his spleen from his hospital bed.

Breathless commentators have termed these elections “historic”. But what exactly will they change? Contenders had competing claims of how they served local communities, and won or lost largely on those grounds. Quite properly, those who had pocketed too much were booted out. Musical chairs are always fun to watch as various players jockey for personal power. But there was no battle of ideas. Many deeper issues were only barely touched, if at all. Here are three:

Foreign Relations

Pakistan’s steady descent into chaos and terrorism is fundamentally connected with the conduct of its foreign policy, at the core of which has been the export of jihad into Kashmir and Afghanistan. Apart from the international condemnation that this has earned for Pakistan, the blowback has been devastating. Fortunately, there now is some glimmer of recognition and a desire to change this.

Although he did not make it a major election issue, Nawaz Sharif’s keenness to normalize relations with India is probably genuine. But does that really matter? After all, Zardari too had been keen but his efforts were made largely ineffective after the Mumbai attacks. A normalization would amount to a fundamental reorientation of the Pakistani state – a reorientation that will be resisted tooth and nail by jihadist forces on Pakistani soil that operate with full knowledge and consent of the Army. Relations with Afghanistan and the United States, as well as nuclear policy, are considered by the Army as matters which are far too important to be left to politicians.

Still, there is hope that Nawaz Sharif might be able to pull some weight. The army has been weakened and divided by the relentless insurgencies it has had to fight, and its confidence shaken by insider attacks. General Kayani’s successor will formally be chosen by the prime minister. Here will lie the first test.

Baluchistan

Expelled just after the elections, Declan Walsh, correspondent for the Guardian and the New York Times, had written a moving account of the situation in Baluchistan: “The bodies [of abducted Baloch youth] surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognizable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.”

How will elections change this awful situation, especially since ethnic Baluch parties have done poorly? Talk of reconciliation with Baluch nationalists comes cheap, but trust is lacking. For decades the Baluch have complained of ill-treatment. They say their natural wealth has been expropriated by Punjab and that Baluchistan’s natural gas reached remote Punjabi towns long before it was available in Quetta – and then only because an army cantonment needed it. Baluch representation in the civil and the military bureaucracy remains close to zero.

Fearful Minorities

Pakistan’s religious minorities – Ahmadis, Shias, Hindus, Christians – are watching, not rejoicing. The call to create a more open and tolerant society was too weak to be heard during the election rumpus. Several Islamic extremists were candidates themselves, an indication that in today’s political climate extremism is no longer to be considered extremism. No public outrage followed as, in the run up to the elections, the TTP took upon itself the role of kingmaker by murdering hundreds they deemed as too secular or liberal.

The state’s performance in protecting minorities has been dismal. It has stood as a silent spectator to the daily murder of those citizens whose particular variant of Islam differs from that of the majority. Shia neighborhoods have been devastated by suicide attacks, and men identified by Shia names like Abbas and Jafri have been dragged out from buses and executed Gestapo style. Ominously, the PMLN hosts active, well known, Shia killers in its party’s ranks. Ahmadis have nowhere to go. The police remain unconcerned when they are murdered, or have their graveyards dug up and desecrated openly by the local powers-that-be. Although Sind was traditionally much more tolerant than Punjab, Hindus have fled Sind en masse.

Conclusion

A country’s politics reflects the underlying social relations between its communities, relations with the rest of the world, and the distribution of economic power. The recent election brought none of these fundamentals under serious questioning. Unlike the 1970′s election campaign of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto – who had made grand promises for land reform and redistribution of wealth that he never intended to fulfill – this time around large issues were not even on the agenda. Instead we had Cricketer Khan’s hopelessly wild claims: corruption to be eliminated in 90 days; the same educational syllabi to be enforced in Waziristan and Kurram as in Lahore and Karachi; and the end of terrorism once Pakistan starts shooting down American drones.

A prediction: in the initial period Pakistan is likely to see a somewhat more efficient and less corrupt government, more hours of electricity, improved tax collection, and hopefully a tad less extremist violence as well. This will come as a relief to weary Pakistanis. But shortly thereafter it will become business as usual. “Shortly” could mean six months, or a year. In the absence of a drastic reorientation of basic attitudes, longer is unlikely.

Originally published by ViewPoint