Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Deciphering Pakistani Politics

Children may draw with crayons, the cartoon balloon, and the odd expressive noun, but adults burdened by greater responsibilities have rather to perfect their penmanship and both draw and write with fine sharp points.

Dr. Tariq Masood's note in NaiTazi [1], an online publication reached through the workings of the Pakistan Muslim League, may well strike to the heart of the Rubic's Cube that belies Pakistani politics.

First, the problem, according to Dr. Masood: "Due to domination and control of opportunists, hypocrites, and power as well as money hunger persons in Pakistani politics, public are seriously hit by administrative victimization and judicial injustice along with economical disaster and social polarization."

The solution, according to Dr. Masood: "It is the need of time that the Political Parties of Pakistan should be organized properly by considering the necessity of Cadres at Union Council, Taluka and District as well as Provincial and National level."  In the letter, there are several reasonable thoughts on the underlying concept of governance by cadre, provided one accepts that notion as reasonable on its face.

Moving on with the one letter . . . .

"Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. [3:104]."

And there you have one facet of Pakistan's Fall 2007 emergency and the nearly intractable structure, language too, that maintains an insensible struggle between the divine and profane, the corrupt and holy, the ideal in living in community and the plain human, pragmatic, practical, and responsible nature of contemporary national administration involving globally integrated industrial, scientific, and trade systems.

The Big Military-Industrial Complex Bogey

This dimension of Pakistani politics, so embroiled in anti-American sentiment, may be one to which most Americans can relate: what to do with the generals who, and if they're anything like their American counterparts, are fairly minted to produce upper-echelon executive leadership services, first to defense contractors, and then to every entity from banks to shopping malls?

I think there's both more and less to the ascendence of martial personalities in capitalist circles, and truth to tell, many don't fare well out of the service.  Still, there's business to be had and money to be made in one's late 50's, 60's, and 70's and those boys (I'm sure there are some girls out there too) know how to do it.

For Pakistan, the military dictatorship headed up by President Musharraf has meant stirring the pot, subtracting inredients, usually, and generally trying to formulate a benevolent political society where discension, jealousy, and rivalry may well be considered a part of the language.

Anne, not to drift too far off-topic, had the telltale experience one Sunday morning of hauling her Lutheran self off to a more conservative denomination where, in casual social exchange, she was told she hadn't been baptized "the right way".  The business of degrading others along the lines of spiritual belief and practice may be as universal a thing as religious sentiment itself, but here in the good ol' USA, such opinions are more likely to drive personal affiliations from one denominational roof to another: the broad impact on national politics exists but goes only so far--certainly not far enough to grow and activate Christian or other militias without severe consequences from local, state, and national law enforcement.  About Pakistan, for those of us dipping into the news out of Pakistan, we're not so sure of what the state's response might be given any number of changes in regime.

Still, and ask any Burmese student you happen to know, politics at the end of a gun barrel, anyone's gun barrel, suffers from an illegitimacy all its own.

For Haider Mehdi, publishing in the Indust-Asia Online Journal, the military is the bogey: "Unless remedial steps are taken to absolutely roll back and completely block future military interventions in the political process of the country, the prospects of this nation’s survival remain despairingly bleak." [2]

Mehdi goes on to provide a plan for neutralizing the Pakistani military in relation to the internal politics of the state.  In the fourth point of ten declarations, he writes, "From now on, Pakistan’s armed forces will not take part in any military operation in which citizens of Pakistan or the civilian population is targeted."

And "woe to the wicked" sings Don Quixote de La Mancha, for with that, the heavily armed fortess that students and their guides made of Lal Masjid would most certainly by now have acquired the nuclear part of its arsenal.

In the treason committed against King George of England, Ben Franklin addressed his peers at the Declaration by saying, "We shall all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately."

From the cursory glance, and I will try to grow that over time, Pakistan's many leaders face a similar challenge in terms of developing sufficient common ground--animosity toward a leader is not enough--to garner and secure one another's cooperation in the development of a contemporary politics.

Even though Al Qaeda may have little interest in other than theocracy, others may, but producing a positive social binding, that is, finding the common things to be in favor of rather than the obvious few to be against, proves a mighty challenge.

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1. Tariq, Masood.  "Problems and Political Parties of Pakistan."  NaiTazi.com, December 14, 2007.

2. Mehdi, Haider.  "Re-Inventing the COAS."  Indus-Asia Online Journal, December 13, 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Shouts of Fire, No Smoke, Many Mirrors on the Kurdistan Frontier

It's hard hiding a war, or, despite the lessons bestowed by the how-to movie Wag the Dog, pretending to have one, but something like one or the other seems to have happened on the border of Iraqi Kurdistan this month.

Abid Mustafa's essay [1] for Global Research provides background on Turkish political mechanics, and it helps make sense of the timing of the Turkish military build-up--hard to hide that--on the frontier, the U.S. Armenian Genocide Bill, may it again rest in peace a good long while, and even, possibly, the latest in Kurdish obfuscation: what is going on Out There, this 7th day of December, Google has yet to tell.

Although such as Reuters may note, "The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK or Kongra-Gel), founded in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group, has been fighting for an independent Kurdish state," a cursory look at the PKK paints the picture of the romantic freedom fighter with varying levels of cause, or none, as member and leadership rolls churn with time and original fervor drifts around a multipurposed alternative idealism.

Somewhere, on the backside of a mountain, figuratively, or scattered through the social weave of tens of thousands of Kurds, there are approximately 3,000 PKK rebels (literally, and whose names the governments purport to know), and how an army, any army, may fight them except by killing any and all around them, one might wish to know. 

"The Turkish military said Saturday that it had inflicted "significant losses" on a group of Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq, though it offered no evidence for its claim," reported The New York Times earlier this week.[3]

Well, where are the bodies?

Then, presuming the cold earth has preserved those bodies or fire not eaten their bones, where might be the authentication as PKK?

Try this for Orwellian gymnastics: after reporting that spokesmen for the PKK, also the Kurdish Democratic Party, and the "commander of Iraqi border protection forces in Dohuk Province" denied that attacks had taken place or that Turkish special forces had crossed the frontier, the clip goes right on with, "The operation occurred a day after the Turkish cabinet granted final permisson to the military to make a cross-border strike." [3]

The mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan may be less developed by industrial standards, but one may suppose, or hope, the area hasn't been isolated from the Internet by the local equivalent of a Burmese military junta.

Perhaps I read too closely, but the end of the NYT article notes the positions of the journalists reporting the story: Sabrina Tavernise--Istanbul; Stephen Farrell--Baghdad; Khalid al-Ansary--Baghdad; and "Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Sulaimaniya and Diyala."

One cannot fault journalists or the organizations that support their work of reporting from the edges in any of the Islam Small Wars and hot zones--for that, you may well fault me, and I would have to accept the criticism--but one may appeal to warrior authorities of all stripe to leave journalists to their jobs or, really, reconsider the sensibility of their own agendas.

In the meantime, there's got to be someone on the frontier with a satellite uplink to the web: pray we hear from that party.

Reference:

1. Mustafa, Abid.  "Turkey's military operation in Iraq: Limited incursion or full scale invasion?"  Global Research, December 2, 2007.

2. "FACTBOX-Turksih incursions into Northern Iraq."  Reuters AlertNet, December 1, 2007.

3. Tavernise, Sabrina and Stephen Farrell.  "Turkey Says It Attacked Kurdish Fighters in Iraq."  The New York Times, December 2, 2007.

Winter, Cumberland Valley, Maryland

I chose the town for proximity to the replication of a bar at which I danced for ten years; I chose the apartment complex's location in relation to the neighborhoods and amenities associated with the city's "North End"; on the apartment itself, a small two-bedroom corner unit with a balcony abutting woods to one side and the footprint of a local developer's home directly out the back, I got just plain lucky.

It's Friday morning, and we have just finished watching Anthony Quinn in The Shoes of the Fisherman, a marvelous way to wake up, revisit the 1960's, study film, and here, I think, draw down my journey into what I once called "computtering"--i.e., fiddling with and lately building the hardware and software systems for my photography, music, and writing. 

I am done composing the computer and may again look out the window now and then.

Leaves (Obligatory)

Off the 'Net and Back

I suppose I won't be done building the new computer until I officially remove the old one from the iTunes registry.  Nonetheless, it's good to be back online with much updated technology (Asus motherboard, Pentium dual-core, Western Digital "Jaguar" and Seagate "Barracuda" drives, etc., also a color correct LaCie 320 monitor).

The medium hasn't been the message for at least a decade and neither will be the computing system or the Internet.

Among the thoughts driving this round, which included my building the "box" from scratch, was to get the technology set to let me do the things I do while leaving room to upgrade to, say, 64-bit applications when, if ever, that makes sense for my small enterprise.

Also, the expanded competence in building and administering the unit should abet upgrades within the system, that as opposed to buying a new box off the retail shelf every three or four years.

Who thought photography (or poetry) would ever become so expensive.

All in all, it's done.

I'd like to say the world seems not to have changed much during my  month-long absence from the Internet (the new build was inspired by a monitor that crapped out after about 15 minutes of use plus mechanical equipment failure on the motherboard in the Athlon 64 box), but it has changed remarkably.

Pervez Musharraf, for one thing, has taken to wearing mufti full-time (many had refused to see that coming).

Somalia has a new Prime Minister.

Life in Gaza stinks more by the week, especially for those with but loose interest in politics and religion, which leaves suffering without recourse to sense of any kind--to others, of course, what Gaza suffers matches life in war zones around the world in the way of reduced public services and increased rates of disease and mortality.

One hopes for change.

One always does.