No Quarter For Half Wits Please

Why is there so much fuss about how we die and not about how we live? This is what I have been thinking in the two weeks since I last filed a column. A lot has happened during those two weeks. The Taliban withdrew from Buner. The stampede of political bewilderbeasts their approach started led to as consensual a consensus as we are likely to see in this lifetime. The army entered Swat. The stream of IDPs that started from FATA some months ago became a river as the operation against militants spread across the area. An aid drive was launched, locally and internationally, with warnings of an ‘impending humanitarian disaster’ replacing headlines about ‘the menace of extremism’. For many there is no difference really, in the foundations of both those fears. Humanitarian disasters are bad because they kill people. Extremism is a menace because it kills people. Again I ask, why is there so much fuss about how we die and not how we live?

Since the beginning of the military operation in Swat, criticism of the government and the army has become more subdued. Columnists have turned their pens away from the usually preferred targets and television anchors are gently reminding guests who voice anything other than ‘shabaash betas’ that it is not perhaps ‘the time to be critical’. We must, in this hour of national crisis, stand shoulder to shoulder behind our leaders and our soldiers. We must do this because our leaders need our support and encouragement to continue their tentative steps down the road of dawning realization. We must do this because our soldiers are willing to die for us. Here is my problem with that position: I am not George Bush.

Whatever time it is or might be, morning, evening, night, dawn, dusk, twilight, it is never as simple as ‘either you are with us or against us’. There is room enough in patriotism for dissent, and there is room enough in belief for doubt. So I will not hold off on criticizing our leadership because they are not toddlers that need their hands held on the first day of pre-school but rather willful adults whose lack of vision has contributed greatly to the situation we are in today. And I will not hold off on our army because I do not see why a soldier’s death is any more noble a sacrifice than a mother dying in childbirth.

Death is what it is, an end to the journey. Perhaps it is time we paid more attention to that journey. The future of this country does not depend solely on whether the Taliban are defeated, or the countless displaced people able to weather the long, hot summer ahead. The future of this country depends just as much on the lesson we must learn from this chapter in the history we are collectively writing, i.e. we must fight to imbue everyone’s life with dignity as much as we persist in imbuing certain people’s death with meaning.

The tendency to value death over life is not only indigenous to Pakistan. Across the globe populations are held hostage to the fear of death, the threat of death, the impending approach of death by their governments, corporations, clerics, gurus, each other. One country attacks another, one religion another religion, one sect another sect, one ethnicity another ethnicity, because ‘if we don’t kill them first they will kill us’. The original merchants of death i.e. arm manufacturers, dealers and the armies and private militias that buy them wield a disproportionate amount of power in the making of policy. Pharmaceutical companies probably spend more money on researching and distributing medicines that hint at delaying death rather than on improving the quality of life. Death is a mechanism of control as much as it is something to control. But death is inevitable, and in our contemplation of the manner and time at which it might strike us we choose sometimes not to think about day to day experiences, the pleasure, pain, delight, laughter, conflict, drama etc that add up to the value of life itself.

But you cannot think about one without thinking about the other. And because you cannot think about one without thinking about the other, you cannot salute the soldiers sharing their rations with the people still trapped in the Swat valley without asking why their superiors continue to face accusations of collaborating with the extremists. You cannot celebrate the recent coming together of diverse political entities without continuing to ask why they were so divided in the first place. Why was the fact that extremists were amidst the general population, stifling physical freedom and cultural and intellectual vibrancy as well as maiming/shooting/torturing/burning with acid/beheading etc not enough to ring alarm bells? Why was the threat of actual physical danger to themselves needed to motivate so many parliamentarians into adopting a position they should have adopted years ago? Why? Because they’re selfish, unimaginative, bottom feeders, and in my books a belated whitewashing of their credentials doesn’t make them any less so.

Here’s a selection of things they could do that might. One, get over India. Stop stressing themselves (and us) out over the worst possible tomorrow- one in which our neighboring country would presumably drop their dreams of economic prosperity and spiritual well being to forcibly adopt another 170 million angry Muslims because damnit they just make such delightful house pets you know- and focus on the most bearable today. Two, get over themselves. Stop partaking in pointless free trips locally and abroad that accomplish little other than getting their names in the news, awarding themselves additional perks and privileges, cease and desist with the VIP cavalcades, make salary rises dependent on the actual passage of legislation and stop putting passport sized mug shots of themselves on appeals for aid. Three, do what is necessary to protect everyone rather than a select few. Let the police guard ordinary citizens instead of ministers’ homes and cultivate in themselves and those they lead a mindset that will prevent ongoing humanitarian disasters like the following in the future.

Here is a statistic to pin on the wall, next to the 1.5 million IDPs and the 33% of NWFP with a Taliban presence etc. Since 1970, the Edhi Welfare Trust alone has recovered 68,000 dead infants from garbage dumps across the country. 98% of those killed or abandoned infants were girls.