Mosharraf Zaidi

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=153509

The New Platonic US-Pakistan Dialogue

Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Mosharraf Zaidi

With Pakistan ripe for the picking, India has seized the day. It summoned 120 of its ambassadors to Delhi for a conference to agree on talking points. There’s no lack of clarity in Delhi. From Sri Pranab Mukherjee on down, the Indian diplomatic offensive is sharp, compelling and consistent.

Here in Pakistan, things are a little different. For every Mukherjee Scud, there are a dozen Pakistani duds. Some fault Pakistani capacity. That’s unfair to the hundreds of very bright Foreign Office wallahs. Pakistani diplomats represent Pakistan. That sums up the nature of their professional challenge. It is a tough, tough job being a Pakistani diplomat. Message clarity and consistency is of utmost importance in diplomacy. When dozens of ambassadors, secretaries and ministers are speaking at once about the same issue, they had better be singing from the same sheet. The truth is Pakistan suffers from a lack of message clarity and consistency, because Pakistani policy itself has been unclear and inconsistent.

Unfortunately, those that are trying to bridge the consistency divide are most at risk of seeming inconsistent. One example of the dissonance is that of the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani. Even Haqqani’s supreme intellect, and his inspired charm can’t conceal the very large disconnect between his work as a post 9/11 Pakistan and terrorism guru in Washington DC, and his current role as ambassador of Pakistan to the US.

For the most part, for anyone trying to understand Pakistan Haqqani’s analysis is a useful read. With his encyclopaedic knowledge and photographic memory, Haqqani is a think-tank all unto himself. However, the standards by which we judge think tank analysts have to be fundamentally different from those that we use to judge diplomats. Think tanks, by very definition are spaces meant to open up the scope of discussion about a particular public issue. An embassy however is not a public square, a university or a think tank. It is the first and last mechanism of national security and international stability in an increasingly volatile world in which conventional war is an ever shrinking option (even for powerhouse militaries like India’s). There’s very little room to be caught flat-footed.

This is why while honest Pakistanis should have no trouble with the core of Haqqani’s arguments as a scholar, they should be concerned that his scholarship is the basis for calls within the conservative establishment in the US for a hard-line approach to Pakistan (see Nina Shae’s article in the National Review and The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and his recent column in the New York Times).

As the crown jewel in Pakistan’s foreign policy apparatus, Haqqani’s represents a uniquely cogent and powerful voice. That is why it is Haqqani’s name, rather than any number of the abundance of lesser lights within the PPP government, that is most often cited. With the incoming Obama administration, Pakistan’s foreign policy apparatus should brace itself for an army of well-prepared State Department officials, lead by the formidable and dazzling Hillary Clinton. Obama’s people aren’t neo-con cowboys, they’re pragmatic academics. Unlike the Republican Bushies, Obama Dems tend to read. And when it comes to Pakistan and terrorism, there’s a lot of reading material. Here’s the kind of conversation with Secretary of State in-waiting Hillary Clinton, that Ambassador Haqqani might be facing come Jan 20:

Clinton: Husain, we love what you and President Zardari are trying to do, but you guys need to clean up. I need you guys to nail these terrorists – they went way over the line with Mumbai. I am literally holding back Sri Pranab and Manmohan Ji with all my might.

Haqqani: Madam Secretary, as I said to the New York Times on Nov 27, 2008: “It is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken”.

Clinton: But Husain, on October 10, 2007 (not that long ago), you testified to the American people, through the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. In it you said that, “Pakistan continues to be a major centre for Islamist militancy… Radical Islamists who came from all over the world to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan went on to become allies of Pakistan’s military intelligence apparatus, which used them to fight Indian control over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir as well as to expand Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan.” So it seems that it may indeed be fair to blame Pakistan, no?

Haqqani: Madame Secretary, as I said to your friend George Stephanopolous on November 30, 2008, “The important thing is, everybody in the world is now coming round to agreeing that the government of Pakistan, the state of Pakistan, the military of Pakistan and even the intelligence services are not directly involved. That’s the good news.”

Clinton: George used to be a friend, but that’s off-topic. I remember right after the Daniel Pearl kidnapping, you wrote a marvellous op-ed in the New York Times. It was like an early Valentine’s Day gift for General Musharraf, published on Feb 13, 2002, and titled “Trying to Create a New Pakistan”. In it you said, that “For now, Pakistan’s leaders need to acknowledge that, in the strategic struggle with India, Pakistan nurtured the formation of terrorist cells that are capable of acts like kidnapping Mr. Pearl. If Pakistan is to make a clean break with such policies, it will have to begin cooperating with India by exchanging intelligence and agreeing to extradite wanted terrorists.”

Haqqani: Madame Secretary, I have been telling you and everyone else in Washington DC that the US needed to ditch the dictator Musharraf, but you and your government took too long to take action.

Clinton: Well, Musharraf’s been gone for four or five months now. Has your government begun to exchange intelligence with India? Has it handed over wanted terrorists? After all this is your advice to your country. Now you have a chance to carry out that advice.

Haqqani: As I said to Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Late Edition, on Nov 30, 2008, “Pakistan has made it very clear this time around Pakistan is not going to give any quarter to any terrorist groups and we want to work with India. We will cooperate in the investigation and we’ll make sure we get these guys if they have any connection to us.”

Clinton: It’s interesting that you mention the interview with Wolf. You see in all your written work you clearly stipulate that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a product of the ISI. But when Wolf Blitzer, asked you if LeT was created by Pakistani intelligence, you said “Well, there’s no way for me to know who created it.”

Haqqani: Madame Secretary there isn’t.

Clinton: Yes but in the Current Trends in Islamist Ideology (Volume 1, April 2005) paper you write that the LeT was, “founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (and) backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services.” Then in Volume 3 (Feb 2006) you write that, “Lashkar-e-Taiba is closely linked to the Saudi religious establishment, as well as to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence”. Again in Volume 4 (Nov 2006) you write that, “the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supported militant Sunni Islamist groups in the northwest frontier bordering Afghanistan, as well as in Punjab and Baluchistan.” And then, in your book, you write that the ISI directly pays the head of the LeT (on page 306), and that the “ISI was not too keen to offend its jihadi partners” by shutting them down (on page 303). Sounds like you do have a way of knowing who created the LeT.

Haqqani: Well, the LeT-ISI link is no more. As I keep saying, Pakistan’s government, its people, its military and its intelligence agencies are all clean. We have nothing to do with these non-state actors.

Clinton: Sounds great Husain. I wish I could believe you. You see it simply boggles the mind that within a year since when you testified to the House Armed Services Committee, that Pakistan has changed dramatically. What should I tell President Obama? What has changed that has suddenly cleaned up Pakistan?

Haqqani: I am so glad you asked Madame Secretary. It is democracy. As we keep saying, democracy is the best revenge. My government has come in and cleaned up the military, the intelligence services, the madressahs, the bureaucracy, the schools, the hospitals and the economy. But if you want us to continue to do this fabulous job, we still need that $10 billion that I keep asking for.

Clinton: Husain, maybe you forgot who you’re dealing with. I’m Hillary Clinton. I don’t scare easy. You will continue to do “this fabulous job” because you have to, because I said so. And oh, by the way, my country is almost as bankrupt as yours is. If you want money you’ll have to ask an emerging superpower, rather than a fading one. Maybe you should call Ratan Tata.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=153310

Urdu kay aakhree lamhay

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Mosharraf Zaidi

The glorious tales of wit, spirituality and love from Urdu’s golden age are sometimes so heavily infused with South Asian Latin (better known as Persian) that my generation of English-as-a-first-language Pakistanis are completely out of our depth when Grandpa or old-school uncles are in their element. Urdu has been sliding out of the national consciousness for so long now, that attempts to resuscitate it are perhaps too little, too late. After all, if this is what we wanted to do with Urdu, why did we treat the brothers from the Bay of Bengal with such unadulterated wrath when they asked the simple question, “Can we please conduct business in a language we are comfortable with?”

Back in the day, everyone from the Quaid to the UP and Punjab nawaabs were deeply committed to ensuring national unity, even if it meant pursuing a linguistic apartheid. This passion for Urdu, more than anything else, ended any chance of a successful union of the two grand wings of South Asian Islam’s political mainstreams. Stanley Wolpert quotes the Great Leader as having once said something to the effect that Urdu is Pakistan’s national language, and anyone who felt or thought otherwise was an enemy of the state. 

So that was that for East Pakistan, the intellectual jewel of the South Asian Muslim experience. The residual post-1971 Pakistan not only lost that jewel, it clearly also lost its lust for Urdu. It is nearly 40 years since the legitimate aspirations of Bangla-speaking Pakistanis were achieved through the independence of Bangladesh. It made sense to assume that the birth of Bangladesh should have been the beginning of the golden age of Urdu. What has happened to Urdu instead is a gut wrenchingly tragic story that will end in the ultimate death of the language. 

Three symptoms are particularly worrying for Urdu. The first has to do with the increasing invisibility of Urdu in symbols and instruments of the state. The second is the emergence of Roman Urdu. The third is the absence of a standardized and widely adhered to natural Urdu script. 

Starting with the formulation of laws in the country, to the oath taken by the president of the country, to the rather disturbing unconfirmed rumour about a judge insisting that all citizens appearing in his courtroom need to speak English–Urdu is increasingly invisible in matters of the state. The range of its invisibility is both at times gravely depressing and at times, just downright hilarious. 

When Islamabad’s Capital Development Authority (CDA), the bureaucratic dictatorship that runs the capital, installed shiny new bus shelters all across the city this summer, it did so in some cases at locations where a bus or van has never been, and will never be. The real rub however was the signs on the blank advertisement spaces on the bus shelters. The exact words were, “Use this Bus Shelter. PLEASE DON’T ABUSE IT!” 

It does not take the intelligence of Dr Abdus Salam to unscientifically conclude that an overwhelming majority of Islamabad’s patrons of public transport may not be able to digest the catchy and sophisticated English-language message. 

The absence of Urdu is not always funny however. When President Asif Ali Zardari took his oath of office with President Hamid Karzai in attendance, the contrast between a nation with a coherent identity and one without it could not have been clearer. The president of a country of 172 million took his oath in English, a language that (conservatively) more than 100 million of his citizens can neither speak, nor read, nor understand. Afghanistan has many, many problems–but one problem it does not have is linguistic confusion. Afghans speak Dari and Pashto without shame, and for the most part with much pride. 

We can tell that the slide of Urdu has reached epic proportions when the distribution of state patronage through politicians and their families begins to be disbursed in standardized templates that are in English. The recent cyber-hullabaloo about a letter from the prime minister’s sister asking government officials to treat people’s request favourably is an overblown reaction to one of the building blocks of “real” Pakistan–patronage, or “sifarish”. There is nothing scandalous about this. 

The scandal is that the infamous letter of “sifarish” letter is in English, and in utterly poor English at that. The irony could not be deeper. Here is a letter bearer (spelt “barer” in the actual template) who clearly does not know the English language. The letter he “bares” has been typed by a person who is clearly not comfortable typing the English language. The letter has been endorsed by someone to whom English is not natural or native. Most importantly, the letter is addressed to an employee of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (the same republic that was torn asunder to retain the supreme status of Urdu as the national language). And of course, the person it is addressed to is most likely also less than comfortable with the English language.

If this letter of “sifarish” had instead been delivered through a phone call, the conversation would most certainly have been in Urdu. Yet it is clear why the letter was in English–a langree, loolee English, at that. For a high-ranking public official to send someone a letter in Urdu would have made the “barer”, the sender, and the recipient all feel like they were part of something way below the level of a Prime Minister. 

This brings us to the second major sign of Urdu’s imminent death, the emergence of Roman Urdu. From the perspective of the English-as-a-first-language crowd, this has been a brilliant way to conceal the inadequacy of our Persian-script writing abilities. Most importantly, the takeover of Pakistan’s multinationals by the yuppie, English-as-a-first-language types allowed this slender minority to infuse the popular culture with a virtually new language where it could plug the gap between its own incompetence in the Urdu language, and the majority of Pakistanis who are equally incompetent in the English language. The imprint of this strange nexus between the burger minority and the bun kabab and daal roti majority is most visible in the fake American accents splattered all over the electronic media. The most painful element of Roman Urdu is how Roman Urdu is spoken. Its pronunciation is a tragicomedy: perfectly local boys and girls raised by hard working, decent Pakistani parents have decided all of a sudden to forget to roll their R’s, and inexplicably elongate their vowels. 

Since it is the 21st century, it is only appropriate that underpinning the cultural avalanche that is killing the Urdu language, is the third major symptom of Urdu’s imminent death: technology. Despite valiant individual efforts from stalwarts like Dr Sarmad Hussain of the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing, and Dr Attash Durrani, of the Centre for Excellence for Urdu Informatics, there is no single agreed-on standard for the use of a natural Urdu script in information and communication technologies. Several agreements have taken place in meetings since 2000–when this problem emerged as a major challenge. But such meetings and agreements have never resulted in a widely used or standardized script. The greatest proof is always in the pudding. The Jang and Nawai Waqt websites both use image files, rather than normal script to post their Urdu content on the Web. Websites that use Urdu script, such as the BBC Urdu site (itself a reality that is dripping with irony), and others like Google’s Urdu page, and the Iqbal Academy’s website use an unnatural script that looks more like Arabic. The natural Urdu script (that Jang uses for example) is called Nastaliq–and in 2008, there is still no standardized and widely used Nastaliq script. 

Urdu is not important because it is a unifier. History has taught us that in fact Urdu may not be much of a unifier at all, but it is a functional least common denominator. In a country of 172 million that desperately needs common denomination (and functionality), that’s important. There are less women, minorities, children or the disabled in Pakistan than there are citizens who cannot read, write or speak English. The tangible truth is that language is the greatest instrument of social exclusion in Pakistan. There can be no democracy in Pakistan without the rescue of the Urdu language, beginning with its patronization by symbols and instruments of the state.

The writer enjoys the resplendence of irony entailed in a call to save Urdu, in English. He can be reached through his website at www.mosharrafzaidi.com