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Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Mosharraf Zaidi
What is the most important aspect of the terrible and devastating week weve had in Pakistan? In the Margalla air crash and its ashes are the dreams of 152 families, destroyed by an accident that may not have been preventable, in any country. In the floods that continue to ravage Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, more than a million Pakistanis are affected, with nearly 1,200 killed, by a natural disaster whose force has been unprecedented in recent memory.
Should we embrace the calamities that befell Airblue Flight 202 and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as inevitable destiny? Both disasters took place under extreme weather conditions. Moreover, life and death, for people of faith all around the world, is in the hands of the Lordnot a pilot, or airline control, or meteorological department or even the government of a province.
Should we instead embrace reason? Flight 202 turned the wrong way, into a mountain it should never have been anywhere near. The floods are a product of nature, but the response to the floods is man-made. And it leaves lots to be desired. If those were our families that suffered at the hands of human error, after all, wouldnt we want some kind of accountability?
The broad question of being resigned to the fate of the loss of Pakistani lives in these tragedies, as opposed to agitating for answers about the cost of avoidable human error, is perhaps too philosophical. There are other less philosophical questions, too.
The conduct of the electronic media, which includes the biggest news channels and extends right down to the smallest, deserves some scrutiny. Im quite committed to avoiding blanket criticism of the Pakistani media. In part, this is out of common cause. As a writer, I am a part of this institution. In part, it is because I value the emergence of this institutionit is one of the most positive aspects of Pakistani society weve experienced since 1971. Without this media, our freedoms, and our ability to protect those freedoms, would be severely curtailed. Still, what possible explanation can justify having a graphic of a plane flying across a screen, ending in a mock explosion? Urdu-medium or English-medium, that kind of insensitivity is universally deplorable. Every news channel was guilty of the most inane and insensitive coverage.
Then again, we all watched. All of us.
And how can we forget how young our news producers, our anchors, our editors and even our executives are. The first major news event that the new media in Pakistan covered was the 2002 electionthe night Geo was born, and quite possibly, Aaj, ARY, Express, Dunya, and a host of others were all conceived. It has only been eight years. After trailblazing for the entire world, the greatest and most powerful news media of the world in the United States has gone from the heights reached by Walter Conkrite and Edward R Murrow to plumbing the depths of exploiting human frailty a la Sean Hannity and Megan Kelly. Pakistans news media is young enough to be cut some slack. Of course, the problems in the news media arent restricted to insensitivity. The partisanship within and among different media outlets is shocking. Partisan news analysis doesnt just mimic the political and ethnic divides in the country, it actively helps widen them.
We dont have to use every tragedy to stick a knife in ourselves and analyse our failings with perpetual intensity. Sometimes, perhaps we can just choose to focus on the positive.
One clear positive is how the reporting of the Margalla air crash, so comprehensive and so detailed, has exposed the myth of the Pakistani governments competence. For poor Pakistanis this myth has never existedwhich is why so many of them, especially in the rural areas, depend instead on individual and family patronage, rather than whatever protections a state should be providing.
For Pakistanis in our cities, who are blessed with a good source of income, of course there is no interaction with state services. Our dependence on bottled water, private schools, gated housing communities, private security guards and frequent trips abroad, but no trips outside our comfort zones within the country, blinds us to how incompetent the Pakistani state really is.
The National Disaster Management Authority is run by a man regarded as one of the most competent in the humanitarian space in Pakistan. Lt Gen (r) Nadeem Ahmad is a miracle-worker since the days when he first took over relief and rehabilitation in the earthquake-affected areas for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA). But even a miracle-worker cannot single-handedly transform the problem of a series of state agencies and institutions that keep mushrooming, all the while unaware of how they relate to each other. This problem starts right at the constitutional top. There is no defined regime for centre-province coordination. This is not a vertical imbalance in a federal state. This is much worse. This is vertical incongruence and incapacity, in a federation that has spent 63 years operating like a unitary state.
State incompetence, pilot error and media insensitivity are all valid things to be discussed in the face of devastating tragedies. There is something to be said, however, of what takes place on the ground when disaster hits Pakistan.
When we invest the bulk of our efforts in surgically examining every aspect of our failures in the face of disaster, we also invariably end up ignoring the individual and collective heroism of ordinary Pakistanis. This is not only an affront to the spirit of selfless giving and sacrifice of those Pakistanis that step it up in the face of tragedy. It is also the kind of self-defeating and misplaced integrity that dominates so much of our national discourse, in both the mainstream Urdu discourse, and the more self-conscious English-language conversation in Pakistan.
Minutes after the crash of Flight 202, hundreds of ordinary Pakistanis began to scale the Margallas to support search-and-rescue teams. Many watched on television, in the background of the inanity of anchors, and saw individuals that trekked for more than two hours in rain and mud to reach the crash site. The more people saw the scale of the tragedy, the greater the number of Islamabad citizens converged at the foothills to lend their support.
In the flood-affected Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as the scale and enormity of the devastation began to make itself apparent, Pakistanis began to mobilise support for relief efforts. This is an exercise Pakistanis have become accustomed to since 2005. We braved the earthquake, we braved the ongoing IDP crisis spurred by military action in Swat and FATA, and we are preparing to brave the devastation of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa floods.
Every time weve been led in this march of humanity, benevolence and heroism, by the resilience of the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwawhether they speak Pashto or not. Their Pashtunwali is infectious. No one has braved natural and man-made disaster like the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
As we continue to watch the carnage of floods and disasters, let us take a minute every day to be thankful for the resilience, heroism and Pashtunwali of our people. When times are bad, we must certainly introspectbut not at the cost of celebrating Pakistani heroism.
The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.
Mosharraf Zaidi
Celebrating our heroism
Mosharraf Zaidi
What is the most important aspect of the terrible and devastating week weve had in Pakistan? In the Margalla air crash and its ashes are the dreams of 152 families, destroyed by an accident that may not have been preventable, in any country. In the floods that continue to ravage Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, more than a million Pakistanis are affected, with nearly 1,200 killed, by a natural disaster whose force has been unprecedented in recent memory.
Should we embrace the calamities that befell Airblue Flight 202 and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as inevitable destiny? Both disasters took place under extreme weather conditions. Moreover, life and death, for people of faith all around the world, is in the hands of the Lordnot a pilot, or airline control, or meteorological department or even the government of a province.
Should we instead embrace reason? Flight 202 turned the wrong way, into a mountain it should never have been anywhere near. The floods are a product of nature, but the response to the floods is man-made. And it leaves lots to be desired. If those were our families that suffered at the hands of human error, after all, wouldnt we want some kind of accountability?
The broad question of being resigned to the fate of the loss of Pakistani lives in these tragedies, as opposed to agitating for answers about the cost of avoidable human error, is perhaps too philosophical. There are other less philosophical questions, too.
The conduct of the electronic media, which includes the biggest news channels and extends right down to the smallest, deserves some scrutiny. Im quite committed to avoiding blanket criticism of the Pakistani media. In part, this is out of common cause. As a writer, I am a part of this institution. In part, it is because I value the emergence of this institutionit is one of the most positive aspects of Pakistani society weve experienced since 1971. Without this media, our freedoms, and our ability to protect those freedoms, would be severely curtailed. Still, what possible explanation can justify having a graphic of a plane flying across a screen, ending in a mock explosion? Urdu-medium or English-medium, that kind of insensitivity is universally deplorable. Every news channel was guilty of the most inane and insensitive coverage.
Then again, we all watched. All of us.
And how can we forget how young our news producers, our anchors, our editors and even our executives are. The first major news event that the new media in Pakistan covered was the 2002 electionthe night Geo was born, and quite possibly, Aaj, ARY, Express, Dunya, and a host of others were all conceived. It has only been eight years. After trailblazing for the entire world, the greatest and most powerful news media of the world in the United States has gone from the heights reached by Walter Conkrite and Edward R Murrow to plumbing the depths of exploiting human frailty a la Sean Hannity and Megan Kelly. Pakistans news media is young enough to be cut some slack. Of course, the problems in the news media arent restricted to insensitivity. The partisanship within and among different media outlets is shocking. Partisan news analysis doesnt just mimic the political and ethnic divides in the country, it actively helps widen them.
We dont have to use every tragedy to stick a knife in ourselves and analyse our failings with perpetual intensity. Sometimes, perhaps we can just choose to focus on the positive.
One clear positive is how the reporting of the Margalla air crash, so comprehensive and so detailed, has exposed the myth of the Pakistani governments competence. For poor Pakistanis this myth has never existedwhich is why so many of them, especially in the rural areas, depend instead on individual and family patronage, rather than whatever protections a state should be providing.
For Pakistanis in our cities, who are blessed with a good source of income, of course there is no interaction with state services. Our dependence on bottled water, private schools, gated housing communities, private security guards and frequent trips abroad, but no trips outside our comfort zones within the country, blinds us to how incompetent the Pakistani state really is.
The National Disaster Management Authority is run by a man regarded as one of the most competent in the humanitarian space in Pakistan. Lt Gen (r) Nadeem Ahmad is a miracle-worker since the days when he first took over relief and rehabilitation in the earthquake-affected areas for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA). But even a miracle-worker cannot single-handedly transform the problem of a series of state agencies and institutions that keep mushrooming, all the while unaware of how they relate to each other. This problem starts right at the constitutional top. There is no defined regime for centre-province coordination. This is not a vertical imbalance in a federal state. This is much worse. This is vertical incongruence and incapacity, in a federation that has spent 63 years operating like a unitary state.
State incompetence, pilot error and media insensitivity are all valid things to be discussed in the face of devastating tragedies. There is something to be said, however, of what takes place on the ground when disaster hits Pakistan.
When we invest the bulk of our efforts in surgically examining every aspect of our failures in the face of disaster, we also invariably end up ignoring the individual and collective heroism of ordinary Pakistanis. This is not only an affront to the spirit of selfless giving and sacrifice of those Pakistanis that step it up in the face of tragedy. It is also the kind of self-defeating and misplaced integrity that dominates so much of our national discourse, in both the mainstream Urdu discourse, and the more self-conscious English-language conversation in Pakistan.
Minutes after the crash of Flight 202, hundreds of ordinary Pakistanis began to scale the Margallas to support search-and-rescue teams. Many watched on television, in the background of the inanity of anchors, and saw individuals that trekked for more than two hours in rain and mud to reach the crash site. The more people saw the scale of the tragedy, the greater the number of Islamabad citizens converged at the foothills to lend their support.
In the flood-affected Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as the scale and enormity of the devastation began to make itself apparent, Pakistanis began to mobilise support for relief efforts. This is an exercise Pakistanis have become accustomed to since 2005. We braved the earthquake, we braved the ongoing IDP crisis spurred by military action in Swat and FATA, and we are preparing to brave the devastation of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa floods.
Every time weve been led in this march of humanity, benevolence and heroism, by the resilience of the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwawhether they speak Pashto or not. Their Pashtunwali is infectious. No one has braved natural and man-made disaster like the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
As we continue to watch the carnage of floods and disasters, let us take a minute every day to be thankful for the resilience, heroism and Pashtunwali of our people. When times are bad, we must certainly introspectbut not at the cost of celebrating Pakistani heroism.
The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.
Mosharraf Zaidi
Celebrating our heroism
