NWFP: ‘liberation’ after MMA?

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

NWFP: ‘liberation’ after MMA?

A terrorist strike on Tuesday in Peshawar’s CD Market in Nishtarabad damaged 20 shops and wounded 25 innocent people, five of them seriously. The 4-kg bomb was meant to register the “pious” man’s protest against the “un-Islamic” entertainment of music. In a parallel development, the city’s official entertainment centre, the Nishtar Hall, was being refurbished to resume the cultural activities banned by the now-defunct MMA government. False piety could neither stop entertainment nor persuade the terrorists to spare the province. Will the NWFP now regain its old character, after the exit of clerical rule?

After five years’ ban on culture, the JUIF and Jama’at-e Islami are hardly better placed to win at the level of their win in 2002. By the alliance’s own assessment, it is not going to win the 70 seats in a house of 124 that it won last time. Now it is estimated that it will win only 35 seats, the bulk of the rest going to the PPP and ANP, both pro-culture in their outlook. The clergy has come a cropper. After coming to power in the province in 2002, the alliance banned all musical and vocal entertainment and successfully tore down all hoardings displaying women in ads. The Jama’at, which tried unsuccessfully to deface ad hoardings in Lahore, was heady with success achieved in Peshawar and the rest of the NWFP.

The MMA banned Peshawar’s famous theatre at Nishtar Hall and ran all the musicians and singers out of the city. Pride of Performance singer Gulzar Alam and his family faced government-backed persecution in 2003 when 27 police officials forced themselves into their home without arrest warrants and took away Alam’s three sons and a brother. Earlier, the singer was arrested from a marriage function because of the “ban on music” put in place by the MMA government. The police also broke his harmonium as a gesture of the inauguration of a clerical utopia.

There was an exodus of entertainers from Peshawar after that. All musicians and makers of musical instruments — for centuries part of Pashtun culture — either accepted their pauperised new state or ran down to Punjab. The new order was clearly a copy of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan brought to an end in 2001. The intent of the Taliban was clear to the singers of Kabul. Famous vocalist Nashnaass — the pride of Kabul’s Nauruz festivals — whose cassettes in Pashto and Persian were sold in all parts of the Pashtun-dominated regions of Pakistan, decided to leave his homeland and flee to the West.

Strangely, the “revolution” against entertainment and foreign franchises was spearheaded by the Jama’at and its aggressive Shabab-e Milli youth organisation, while the more pragmatic JUIF sat back and saw itself being upstaged by the more radical Jama’at. This was the forerunner of what was going to follow in the shape of the Hasba Bill. The bill envisaged the formation of a moral police to ensure that all public officials offered their prayers regularly, to force traders to shut their businesses during prayers, and suspend TV channels at prayer times, with no appeal against its summary lashings lying in any court. In its early form, the bill also contained a reference to the duty of looking after the “guests” (Al Qaeda) residing in Pakistan.

The real casualty of the new Islamisation in the province under the MMA was the economy. It took a steep dive when foreign investors ran out of the NWFP to save their lives. The Hasba Bill obsession of the clergy was mostly responsible for the international organisations’ misgivings about the province’s economic health. The JUIF leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not help much when in 2003 he announced at a public meeting that Aimal Kasi, a self-proclaimed assassin, should be the role model of young Pakistanis. The Peshawar Bar Association upped the ante by taking out a procession with banners warning the United States that Pakistan had “nukes it could use against America”.

What followed was something that the MMA lived to regret: an Al Qaeda-Taliban onslaught that did not recognise the MMA government as a friend. The government steadily lost territory to the vigilante forces it had unleashed. The chief minister, Akram Durrani, used the mantra of blaming all Al Qaeda terrorism of Baitullah Mehsud on the “intelligence agencies” of the federal government. All that is gone now. It is quite possible that the JUIF is itself relieved that it is no longer presiding over a shipwreck of governance. It is definitely time for the people of the province to go back to normal life.

The elections in the NWFP are going to be the most crucial ones, IMO, in terms of gaging how much, if at all, Taliban ideology has crept into mainstream Pakistan.

The article presents a hopeful picture though, one of people who have tried, and found sadly wanting, the obscurantist and isolationist ideology of the Mullahs.

 

[roadrunner]

The elections in the NWFP are going to be the most crucial ones, IMO, in terms of gaging how much, if at all, Taliban ideology has crept into mainstream Pakistan.

The article presents a hopeful picture though, one of people who have tried, and found sadly wanting, the obscurantist and isolationist ideology of the Mullahs.

The MMA don't have a hope of winning in the NWFP when the next elections come around. Then again Musharraf doesn't either , but he'll have enough seats elsewhere.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

The MMA don't have a hope of winning in the NWFP when the next elections come around. Then again Musharraf doesn't either , but he'll have enough seats elsewhere.

to that!

 

[EagleEyes]

The next powerful person comes into my mind is BB. She might get some votes which wont end up in Musharrafs account.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I for one am really interested in seeing how much of a role the media is going to play in this election - almost every channel and newspaper is talking up the "betrayal of democracy" by BB, her constant pandering to the US, and how this will discredit her, including some of her senior leadership.

Is the avg. Pakistani going to take note, and refuse to vote for someone being described as lacking principles?

Or does the party have enough votes "lined up", if enough Pakistanis do not exercise their electoral responsibility, to win regardless?

On the issue of the "senior leadership" of the PPP - if they choose not to follow their principles and stick with BB, despite their criticism of her actions, then they really are no better than her.

 

[niaz]

I for one am really interested in seeing how much of a role the media is going to play in this election - almost every channel and newspaper is talking up the "betrayal of democracy" by BB, her constant pandering to the US, and how this will discredit her, including some of her senior leadership.

Is the avg. Pakistani going to take note, and refuse to vote for someone being described as lacking principles?

Or does the party have enough votes "lined up", if enough Pakistanis do not exercise their electoral responsibility, to win regardless?

On the issue of the "senior leadership" of the PPP - if they choose not to follow their principles and stick with BB, despite their criticism of her actions, then they really are no better than her.

IMO Pak media in general and Urdu press in particular are anti liberalism and pro talibaan/ MMA. The news is given a spin which tilts it in the Islamists favour. For example in the case of LM affair, Geo TV anchor Hamid Mir made heroes of the criminal ghazi brothers. There were numerous interviews of the LM students. It reminded me of 1930's Chicago where gang leaders became legends. Even in uS today all news is heavily spun in Israel's favour.

Every thing has its pro and cons and having a free media means that one gets to know what the TV reporter wants to show, which is not necessarily the factual postion. This is legacy of the long Zia era where Islamists were prefrentially promoted in every walk of life specially in the media. I was surprised to know that even the respected columnist Irshad Haqqani was at one time member of JI and editor of JI paper 'Tasneem".

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

What is the power of the vernacular media?

How did they affect the last elections? Any idea?

 

[Spring Onion]

What is the power of the vernacular media?

How did they affect the last elections? Any idea?

Did not Sir nor it will as here we see parties get votes on basis of their personality worships or family matter pluse huge chunk of votes through casting bogus votes using fake ID cards specially of women and PPP is the expert in this practice.