Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteBrigands, militants, terrorists, and assorted whatnot can take bitter weather in the world's least hospitable environments, fire from superpowers, and a few knocks in the press, but what to do about affluence?
Two items in this week's news pose the same question: Turkey's land war to dismantle and stall out the reformation of the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq; the landslide victory of the Awami National Party, left winging and secular on Pakistan's most dangerous turf, i.e., the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) that fairly hosts the remnant (and through popular democratic expression marginalized) Al Qaeda and Taliban militancy.
In this latest round of EU, US, UN and blogger-watching foreign affairs, the Turks have found themselves, finally, with a clear license to do what Iraqi Kurdistan cannot or will not attempt, and that is severely deplete both the fighting and organizational enthusiasm of the intellectually long-drifted PKK.
With English Kurdistan's second language; with money and trade flowing across the border with Turkey, not coincidentally benefitting Turkish Kurdistan; with the world grown weary of death meted out to entirely disinterested (albeit fearful) civilians: the PKK has gotten its wish--Kurdistan exists, with borders and without, and worse, it's making money.
"President Jalal Talabani accepted an invitation from Turkish President Abdullah Gul to visit Turkey," says Reuters [1].
The Turkish incursion comprises a police action, and there's nothing left of political capital for turning that into an occupation or other form of territorial dispute between like-minded neighbors.
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I had not heard of the Awami National Party until this month when a bomb went off at one of its rallies prior to Pakistan's general elections [2].
Google "Awami National Party" (news) and check out the leads (or close enough to the top):
"The Pakistan People’ Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) agreed on Thursday to form coalition governments, including with the Awami National Party (ANP)"--Daily Times, "Nawaz, Zardari agree to form coalition govt," February 22, 2008.
"The ANP bagged 10 national assembly seats in the NWFP, where it also emerged as the largest party in the provincial assembly. It has won 18 seats in the 51-member provincial assembly and could form the provincial government with the PPP, which won seven seats, and the independents"--Rediff India Abroad, "Pak govt formation: Zardarwi meets Awami National Party chief," February 21, 2008.
"In Monday's vote, unofficial results after most seats were declared gave the alliance of religious parties just five seats in the 342-seat national parliament, a fraction of the 57 seats scooped in 2002. In the NWFP, where the country's Islamic insurgency is strongest, the mullahs got nine seats out of 96 in the provincial assembly, compared with 67 seats last time"--Globeandmail.com, "Voters roundly reject Islamist parties," February 20, 2008.
This, of course, is not referendum about "wealth"--not cash, certainly: it may be read as a referendum about accessing the benefits of modernity--education, health services, infrastructure for energy, transportation, and trade--without losing community identity and soul.
Although secular, there would seem nothing not Islamic nor patriotic in Pakistani terms about the Awami National Party, much less those who privately placed their ballots in the general election and essentially ejected from community politicals process some 58 "mullahs" to whom majority votes had been given or produced for the preceding term.
Personally, I'm going to interpret the ascendence of the Awami National Party as a triumph of reason in light of religion, a big step forward to producing beneficial services for those who very much want them free of the exploitive or extractive intent of once colonial or perceived imperial powers.
It is only good to fight with Kalashnikovs and bombs if there is something still to fight in that manner.
Kurdistan (in Iraq and Turkey--I don't know about Iranian and Syrian treatment at the moment) has won its autonomy and will get a "good deal" out of the oil fields upon which it sits, and it will probably absorb the Anglo-European ethos as well as its Turkish neighbor, but that with security enough to determine and balance its own cultural preferences beside the exigencies and expectations that come with living with so much larger a world.
Pakistan, finally, has elected an inarguably representative government.
For the many reasons, whether real or made up for political gain or comfort, it didn't much like President-come-General-come-President Pervez Musharraf, and on this round, so hard to call these elections "rigged", it let him know it.
In the light of history, and inside fewer than half a dozen years, changes in both the dominant Kurdish and Pakistani stances may be received on the world stage as nothing short of astonishing.
1. "Turkey launches land offensive into Iraq." Reuters, February 21, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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