The Wages Of Rawalpindi’s ‘Good Taliban’ Philosophy – OpEd

Pakistan's General Asim Munir. Photo Credit: ISPR, Wikipedia Commons

 September 8, 2024

By Nilesh Kunwar

Lure of Lucre

It was in the late seventies that CIA finalised its covert plan for waging proxy war against the then Soviet army in Afghanistan by using radicalised Islamic fighters [mujahideen]. Codenamed Operation Cyclone, this devious enterprise came as a windfall for Pakistan’s military dictator-turned-resident Gen Zia ul Haq as it led to a Faustian US-Pakistan bargain [or to put it more precisely, an unholy agreement between CIA and Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence or ISI].  

Operation Cyclone was a classic example of proxy war. While ISI was required to provide radicalised and trained manpower to fight the occupational Soviet army in Afghanistan, Washington would divert requisite military hardware to arm the fighters as well finances to sustain this venture through CIA. Since ISI physically distributed weapons, military equipment and funds received from CIA to mujahideen groups, substantial diversion of US weapons and money for Pakistan’s proxy war in J&K as well as for lining the pockets of Generals was no big deal for Rawalpindi. 

‘Poisoning’ Pakistani Society

The gains made by Pakistan in terms of extremely generous US military and financial aid packages were indeed enormous. In fact the lure for lucre was so compelling that Pakistan army’s leadership conveniently chose to disregard the inevitable negative consequences that its deeply flawed decision to host religiously indoctrinated Islamic fundamentalists on its soil portended for the hapless people of Pakistan. The saddest part is not Rawalpindi’s continuing state of denial but the pride with which Pakistan army Generals recall this abhorrent bargain that has claimed thousands of innocent lives.

During his 2010 interview given to Spiegel, Pakistan’s ex President and former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf nonchalantly admitted that “We [Pakistan army] poisoned Pakistani civil society for 10 years when we fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.” He went on to boast that “It was jihad, and we brought in militants from all over the world, with the West and Pakistan together in the lead role.”  This revelation was neither an emotional outburst nor an unintended or accidental utterance.

In 2019, Pakistani politician Farhatullah Babar shared an undated interview clip in which Gen Musharraf can clearly be heard saying that “…In 1979, we had introduced religious militancy in Afghanistan to benefit Pakistan and to push [the] Soviet out of the country. We brought Mujahideen from all over the world, we trained them, supplied weapons. They were our heroes.” Not only this, he even admitted that “Haqqani was our hero. Osama bin Laden was our hero.” [Emphasis added].

What Musharraf euphemistically referred to as “religious militancy” actually preached intolerance, sanctified violence against innocents by brazenly misquoting/distorting Islamic teachings. However, thanks to its effective propagation in madrassas [Islamic seminaries], this fundamentalist interpretation found widespread traction amongst talibs [students] in an impressionable age. Religious extremism thus took root within Pakistani society and spread like wildfire and several terrorist groups espousing such repugnant ideology mushroomed.

One such fanatical terrorist group is Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] which shares Afghan Taliban’s skewed interpretation of Islam and wants to enforce it in Pakistan and therein lies the paradox- while Islamabad unconditionally endorses the regressive brand of Islam imposed by Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan, it doesn’t want TTP to do likewise in Pakistan. However, many locals in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province [which was a major religious indoctrination center since the late seventies] approve of TTP’s aim to establish sharia [Islamic religious laws] in Pakistan.

Rawalpindi’s Ambivalent Anti-Terrorism Policy

The Pakistan army makes it a point to repeatedly announce its zero-tolerance for terrorism and keeps reminding the world that it has made the maximum sacrifices in its war against terrorism. While the Pakistan army has definitely suffered inordinately high casualties due to terrorist violence, this doesn’t prove that its famous “We are going after terrorists of all hue and colour” claim made in 2014 during Operation Zarb-e-Azb anti-terrorist campaign in North Waziristan.

While the Pakistan army claimed to have killed more than 3,500 terrorists, surprisingly not even a single  terrorist belonging to the Haqqani network was either killed or captured. That BBC South Asia correspondent Andrew North’s news report was aptly captioned “All hues or some shades in North Waziristan” and mentioned that “… many reports, as well as footage obtained by the BBC, suggest some militants at least got away and some shades of “terrorist” may still be safe.” [Emphasis added].

Rather than taking the menace of terrorism by its horns, Rawalpindi has been brokering peace agreements with various terrorist groups like the Shakai agreement [2004], Sararogha Peace Agreement [2005], Waziristan Accord [2006] and Swat Agreement [2008]. The Pakistan army has also facilitated several unwritten peace deals; some such agreements include those with terrorist leaders Hafiz Gul Bahadur [North Waziristan], Faqir Muhammad [Bajaur Agency] and Lashkar-i-Islami [Khyber Agency].

The fact that despite making several concessions to terrorist groups, none of these agreements endured just goes to prove that terrorists can never be trusted. However, despite being repeatedly backstabbed, Rawalpindi continued to appease TTP and in its desperate bid to make peace with this terrorist group [which was responsible for killing 134 school children in the gruesome 2014 Army School Peshawar massacre],  even unconditionally released more than a 100 TTP fighters in its custody convicted for killing Pakistan army soldiers as well as civilians. 

Prognosis

Pakistan army chief Gen Syed Asim Munir has been waxing eloquent on Rawalpindi’s zero tolerance towards terrorism and promising to slay this dragon- just like his predecessors did. And faithfully following the footsteps of previous army chiefs, he too is busy blaming all and sundry for the sorry state of affairs instead of taking timely and resolute action to tackle this scourge. 

So as far as Pakistan army’s war on terror is concerned, Gen Munir has little to boast about other than attempting to discredit TTP by challenging its Islamic credentials and referring to it as Fitna al-Khawarij [the first religious-political breakaway group in the history of Islam]. He has also provided quasi-legitimacy to suppression to freedom of expression by coining the phrase “digital terrorism” to encompass actions that aim to create a gulf between state institutions and the people of Pakistan- a master stroke to muzzle growing public criticism of Pakistan army’s continuing meddling in political affairs and judicial matters.  

Till now, both Islamabad and Rawalpindi have been primarily accusing foreign powers for fuelling terrorism in Pakistan. However, Gen Munir has taken his ‘digital terrorism’ argument to a different level by classifying inimical forces working acting against national interests into “malicious actors, subversive proxies, and the facilitators of Pakistan’s external and internal adversaries” changing the existing outlook on this issue and preventing constructive criticism of institutions by equating the same with treason!

It’s therefore most likely that Rawalpindi will continue with its reactive anti-terrorism strategy based on indiscriminate use of brute force and terrorising people through enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. That such an inhuman approach will only further aggravate the already precarious situation in Pakistan is obvious, but Rawalpindi doesn’t need to worry because l the blame can conveniently be apportioned on ‘digital terrorists’ and “malicious actors, subversive proxies, and the facilitators of Pakistan’s external and internal adversaries.” 

Tailpiece: Despite Rawalpindi’s bombastic rhetoric aimed at diverting public attention from reality, it’s abundantly clear that the people of Pakistan are suffering [and will unfortunately continue to do so], only because the Pakistan army failed to eschew its puerile ‘good Taliban’ philosophy. 

But Rawalpindi can’t complain that it wasn’t warned- in 2011, didn’t the then US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during her Pakistan visit remind Pakistan army Generals that “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors… eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard”?

Nilesh Kunwar

Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and now after retirement is pursuing his favorite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think tanks.

Investing in clean air can saves lives and combat climate change

07 September 2024

The UN Secretary-General is marking ‘Clean Air Day’ with a call for global investment in solutions that tackle climate change and the increasing public health, environmental, and economic harm caused by air pollution.

This year’s International Day for Clean air and Blue SkiesOpens in new window, celebrated annually on 7 September, is focused on the theme ‘Invest in #CleanAirNow’ and highlights the economic, environmental and health benefits of investing in clean air.

The Day was established in 2019Opens in new window after the UN General Assembly noted how detrimental air pollutants are and recognised the importance of clean air for people’s lives.

UN chief António Guterres said pollution is a silent killer that can be stoppedOpens in new window and urged the world to “invest now, so we can breathe easy”.

Invest in clean air

Mr. Guterres highlighted how harmful pollution can be, noting that 99 per cent of humanity breathes polluted air which leads to millions of global premature deaths.

“Pollution is also choking economies and heating up our planet, adding fuel to the fire of the climate crisis,” the UN chief said. “And it disproportionally affects those most vulnerable in society, including women, children, and older persons.”

The Secretary-General said investing in clean air will take action from governments, businesses, development organizations and more at a regional and global level.

Mr. Guterres is encouraging the relevant stakeholders to decrease their use of fossil fuels, transition to clean cooking and increase air quality monitoring.
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“​​Investing in clean air saves lives, combats climate change, strengthens economies, builds fairer societies, and advances the Sustainable Development GoalsOpens in new window,” he said. “...let’s invest now so we can breathe easy knowing we are securing a healthier planet for all.”
Air quality and climate

Mr. Guterres’ message marking the international day highlights some of the challenges outlined in a new reportOpens in new window from the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMOOpens in new window), which details the impacts of climate change, wildfires and air pollution on human health.

The report noted that both the northern and southern hemispheres experienced “hyper-active wildfire seasons” in 2023 which caused numerous deaths and damaged livestock.

"The 2023 wildfire season set a multi-decade record in Canada in terms of total area burned, with seven times more hectares burned than the 1990–2013 average, according to the Canadian National Fire Database,” the report said.

The wildfires also worsened air quality in eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States.

For that reason, the WMO Deputy-Secretary-General Ko Barrett saidOpens in new window climate change and air quality cannot be treated separately.

“They go hand-in-hand and must be tackled together,” Ms. Barrett said. “It would be a win-win situation for the health of our planet, its people and our economies, to recognise the inter-relationship and act accordingly.”

‘It knows no borders’

Also recognising the need for global change as the international day for clear air approaches is the UN Environment Programme (UNEPOpens in new window) which described air pollution as the “biggest environmental health risk of our timeOpens in new window” noting that it worsens climate change, reduces agricultural productivity and causes economic loss.

Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director, said, “Every person on this planet has a right to breathe clean airOpens in new window, yet almost every person is having this right violated.”

Ms. Andersen echoed the UN chief’s call for there to be a global investment in clean air.

“We are asking nations and regions and cities to establish robust air quality standards,” she said.

“We are asking them to back renewable energy and sustainable transport to hold industry to account with strict emission standards, and to integrate air quality into climate action,” Ms. Andersen continued.

UNEP says if air pollution is tackled proactively, transformative change and healthy air can be achieved.

Fire breaks out at Kenya girls’ school days after inferno killed 21

A fire has broken out at a girls’ school in central Kenya just two days after a boarding school inferno killed 21 boys at another school.

Two days ago, a fire at a boys' boarding school killed at least 21 students 

[File: AP Photo]
Published On 7 Sep 20247 Sep 2024

Firefighters were battling a blaze at a girls’ school in central Kenya, just two days after an inferno killed 21 boys at another school.

The latest inferno, reported on Saturday evening, took place at Isiolo Girls High School, in Isiolo County in central Kenya.

At least 18 students killed in Kenya boarding school fire

Why have so many school fires occurred in Kenya?

“Around two to three buildings are on fire”, Isiolo County communications director Hussein Salesa told AFP news agency.

National police spokeswoman Resila Onyango said a fire incident had been reported at the school at around 8pm (17:00 GMT).

“Officers from Isiolo Sub County rushed to the scene and the fire has been contained with assistance by Kenya Defence Forces and Isiolo airport fire engines,” she said in a statement. “No injuries reported on the students and staff.”

The Kenya Red Cross also confirmed the incident, saying that a fire “has been reported” and that response teams have been “activated”.

Kenya’s Star news outlet reported that Saturday’s inferno “caused panic among parents and guardians even as locals rushed to the rescue of the students and property”.

The school lies about 140km (90 miles) to the northeast of the Hillside Endarasha Academy, where flames tore through a dormitory full of sleeping boys on Thursday night.

A fire ripped through the dormitory of a boarding school, killing at least 21 boys who were sleeping and injuring 27 others.
Do school fires occur frequently in Kenya?

Unfortunately, yes, particularly fires in boarding schools. In several cases, authorities have confirmed arson as the cause and have usually found students to be the culprits.

In 2016, Kenyan authorities documented 130 cases of school burnings related to student unrest. At least 63 arson cases were reported in 2018, according to parliamentary records.

The leading cause of school fires is arson, according to the findings of a study by University of Nairobi researcher Isaac Muasya. Faulty electrical appliances such as electric cookers and flammable substances such as cigarettes also pose a significant risk, Muasya’s study found.
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Brazil's X ban drives outraged Bolsonaro supporters to rally for 'free speech'

A few thousand supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have begun flooding Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally

ByELÉONORE HUGHES

 Associated Press

 and GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA Associated Press
September 7, 2024


SAO PAULO -- Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro began flooding Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally Saturday, buoyed by the government's blocking of tech billionaire Elon Musk's X platform, a ban they say is proof of their political persecution.

A few thousand demonstrators, clad in the yellow-and-green colors of Brazil's flag, poured onto Av. Paulista. References to the ban on X and images of Musk abounded.

“Thank you for defending our freedom,” read one banner praising the tech entrepreneur.

Saturday’s march is a test of Bolsonaro’s capacity to mobilize turnout ahead of the October municipal elections, even though Brazil's electoral court has barred him from running for office until 2030. It's also something of a referendum on X, whose suspension has raised eyebrows even among some of Bolsonaro's opponents all the while stoking the flames of Brazil's deep-seated political polarization.

“A country without liberty can't celebrate anything this day,” Bolsonaro wrote on his Instagram account Sept 4., urging Brazilians to stay away from official independence day parades and instead join him in Sao Paulo.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X’s nationwide ban on Aug. 30 after months of feuding with Musk over the limits of free speech. The powerful judge has spearheaded efforts to ban far-right users from spreading misinformation on social media, and he ramped up his clampdown after die-hard Bolsonaro supporters ransacked Congress and the presidential palace on Jan. 8, 2023, in an attempt to overturn Bolsonaro's defeat in the presidential election.

The ban is red meat to Bolsonaro’s allies, who have accused the judiciary and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government of colluding to silence their movement.

“Elon Musk has been a warrior for freedom of speech,” staunch Bolsonaro ally and lawmaker Bia Kicis said in an interview. “The right is being oppressed, massacred, because the left doesn’t want the right to exist.”

“Our liberties are in danger, we need to make our voices heard. De Moraes is a tyrant, he should be impeached, and people on the streets is the only thing that will convince politicians to do it,” added retiree Amaro Santos as he walked down the thoroughfare Saturday,

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has also urged Brazilians to turn out in droves for the rally, resharing someone else's post claiming that X’s ban had awakened people “to the fact that freedom isn’t free and needs to be fought for.” He's also created an X account, named for the controversial jurist, to publish sealed court orders directing X to shut down accounts deemed unlawful.

But De Moraes' decision to ban X was far from arbitrary, having been upheld by fellow Supreme Court justices. And while expression, online and elsewhere, is more easily censored under Brazil's laws than it is in the U.S., Musk has emerged as both a cause célèbre and a mouthpiece for unrestricted free speech.

Since 2019, X has shut down 226 accounts of far-right activities accused of undermining Brazil's democracy, including those of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s party, according to court records.

But when it refused to take action on some accounts, de Moraes warned last month that its legal representative could be arrested, prompting X to disband its local office. The U.S.-based company refused to name a new representative — as required in order to receive court notices — and de Moraes ordered its nationwide suspension until it did so.

A Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld de Moraes’ decision to block X days later, undermining Musk's efforts to cast him as an authoritarian bent on censoring political speech.

The more controversial component of his ruling was the levy of a whopping $9,000 daily fine for regular Brazilians using virtual private networks (VPNs) to access X.

“Some of these measures that have been adopted by the Supreme Court appear to be quite onerous and abusive,” said Andrei Roman, CEO of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel.

In the lead-up to Saturday's protest, some right-wing politicians defied de Moraes’ ban and brazenly used a VPN to publish posts on X, calling for people to partake in the protests.

The march in Sao Paulo is organized in parallel to official events to celebrate Brazil’s anniversary of independence from Portugal. Commemorations have been fraught with tension in recent years, as Bolsonaro used them while in office to rally supporters and show political strength.

Three years ago, he threatened to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis when he declared he would no longer abide de Moraes' rulings. He has since toned down the attacks — a reflection of his own delicate legal situation.

Bolsonaro has been indicted twice since his term ended in 2022, most recently for alleged money laundering in connection with undeclared diamonds from Saudi Arabia. De Moraes is overseeing an investigation into the Jan. 8 riot, including whether Bolsonaro had a role in inciting it.

___

AP Writers Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report. Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

The New York Review, of Books

Son of the Thin Man

Andrew Katzenstein, interviewed by Daniel Drake

“I suspect a lot of writers develop their style to offset qualities they otherwise find lacking in themselves.”


September 7, 2024

Andrew Katzenstein

This article is part of a regular series of conversations with the Review’s contributors; read past ones here and sign up for our e-mail newsletter to get them delivered to your inbox each week.

In our September 19 issue, Andrew Katzenstein writes about one of Hollywood’s most distinctive contributions to the world: “The hope is that in figuring out what we mean by ‘screwball comedy,’ we might be better able to understand just what it is about these films that transports us.” Surveying dozens of movies from the 1930s and 1940s—about quick-witted, love-smitten archaeologists, professors, reporters, heirs, heiresses, cardsharps, and gentlemen crooks—he tries to identify how the prewar era in studio filmmaking conspired to produce, in Pauline Kael’s words, a “steady flow of bright comedy.”

A former senior editor at the Review, Katzenstein is also a former musician and a frequent dabbler in the eclectic. In our pages he has written about, among many other subjects, the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, the European tradition of Kunstkammern, Alice Coltrane, and Thomas Bernhard, and, for Harper’s, Henrik Ibsen.

This week I e-mailed Katzenstein to ask him about Hollywood farces, what to watch when you’re depressed, and the sociability of writing.

Daniel Drake: What are your favorite screwball comedies?

Andrew Katzenstein: The Lady Eve is my favorite. Years ago I tried to memorize all the dialog—in case I ever found myself up the Amazon for a year, perhaps—and would often fall asleep while it played. I still find it a surprise and delight every time I watch it.

A favorite that I didn’t mention in the piece is Bachelor Mother. Ginger Rogers plays a department store worker who picks up a crying baby on the doorstep of an orphanage; everyone assumes the child is hers. It has an excellent cast (including David Niven and Charles Coburn) and script (by Norman Krasna, who had worked at Macy’s while in law school). It also doubles as a satire of the Production Code: Rogers’s supposed moral transgression makes fools out of those who are eager to find offense wherever they look, and the farce allows the movie to get away with a comic plot involving an unwed mother, which the Production Code Administration (PCA) would have otherwise suppressed.

If you had to hazard a definition of screwball—and perhaps a transhistorical one, which might allow for a modern film to be a screwball—what might it be?

Screwball comedy tends to slip out of whatever bounds critics put it in. Criteria that are too rigid prompt readers to come up with counterexamples, while criteria that are too loose can make a definition seem arbitrary. Genres are porous, and screwball comedy contains elements of other comedy subgenres—in fact, it emerged when a bunch of different styles came together in 1930s Hollywood. So a definition has to be precise yet flexible.

The most important aspects of the genre to me are its treatment of love plots—which are central to the films yet portrayed as a source of humor rather than sentimentality—along with the pace and variety of jokes. The humor in screwball comedies is a mix of high and low, with the sort of sophisticated dialog typical of 1920s Broadway drawing-room comedies mingling with cruder wordplay, as well as with silent-era slapstick and French bedroom farce. Screwball films, at least the good ones, never depend on just one type of gag, which is part of what makes them such a pleasure to watch.

Not coincidentally, I fell in love with the genre during periods of depression; the shifting styles of humor kept me engaged in a way few other films or TV shows could. The frantic first act of His Girl Friday may be the best distraction from melancholy that I’ve encountered. That film’s ending, with Rosalind Russell’s Hildy realizing she can never escape her adrenaline addiction even though she’s desperate to settle down, is also rather satisfying if you’re in a dark mood.

As I try to argue in the piece, what seems essential to the screwball style isn’t the existence of a particular censoring body such as the PCA (as some critics have argued) but the focus on social conventions and the awkward ways people try to get around them. The PCA forced writers to address this in a particularly energetic fashion, but every era has its rules and taboos, which are great targets for comedy.

The twenty-first-century film that best exemplifies screwball qualities is probably Intolerable Cruelty, the 2003 Coen brothers movie about a divorce lawyer and a gold digger who fall in love. Romance is treated as a game whose goals are sexual gratification and financial gain. Everyone is plotting something and no one says what they mean, so the constant deceit and circumlocution provide opportunities for all manner of wordplay, which the Coens have such a good ear for. George Clooney is rare among modern stars for his ability to make himself into a complete ass while remaining attractive, a feat that actors like William Powell and Cary Grant accomplished over and over again. Because the story’s legal trappings force a kind of propriety on the characters, the film’s style evokes the tactics screwball writers and directors employed to get around the censors.


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I understand that, in writing this essay, you watched nearly all of the 136 films identified by Grégoire Halbout in his book about the genre as the only screwball comedies. Why do you favor a sort of definitive, deadlift approach to writing an essay like this? Is it simply to be sure you don’t miss a trick?

I watched around eighty or ninety of Halbout’s 136 before writing the piece—enough, I suppose, to leave the impression that I’d seen more.

I don’t have credentials, there’s no reason why anyone would care what I think, yet I’m asking for readers’ attention. Having a handle on a subject just seems like part of the job. I have broad interests but shallow knowledge, and I often take on projects in a fit of delusional enthusiasm, which leaves me feeling like an interloper when the work begins. Research is necessary for me to believe I’m giving my subject and those who have written on it the respect they deserve. The odds are always high that someone has already said what I want to say, so it seems necessary to familiarize myself with the literature and give credit where it’s due.

Plus, the more I’ve read (or watched, or listened to), the easier it is to avoid repeating obvious facts that everybody mentions and that readers may already know. What’s the point of writing something that’s already been written?

Aside from a particular emphasis on jazz, your CV is charmingly hodgepodge. How do you decide what to write about? Is there a thread uniting your interests?

Sometimes I think of writing as an exorcism, a way of taking control of something that’s been consuming me. That was the case with the screwball piece. Other times I just think it would be fun to learn about something.

I’m constitutionally a dilettante, and I suffer from chronic esprit de l’escalier. Writing forces me to learn in a methodical way and allows me to speak in extreme slow motion (at least compared to conversation). I suspect a lot of writers develop their style to offset qualities they otherwise find lacking in themselves.

I knew you first as an editor—how do think your long experience editing has affected your approach to writing?

Editing is largely a rehearsal of all the ways a piece of writing might be misunderstood. In a mainstream publication like the Review, your readers are intelligent nonspecialists; you have to give them enough information to follow you without being condescending. If I learned to strike that balance in my own writing, it was by working with other editors at the magazine and learning to anticipate the sorts of things that might cause confusion. Sometimes this means spending most of the space you have on exposition rather than argumentation (which is very different from the kind of writing one has to do in school, where the person reading your work is already familiar with the subject), so you have to set up your argument by arranging facts carefully and with a kind of drama.

Editing also taught me that writing is an extremely social pursuit, not a solitary one. As in any workplace, you depend on people who have plenty of other things to worry about. Writing sloppily is like leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. The more I do to ensure that my writing is clean, easy to follow, and well-sourced, the easier it will be for the staff to get it to press. Of course, I still make mistakes and cause confusion, and I’m grateful when editors save me from myself.

What are you reading these days?

Mostly books for pieces I’m writing, and way too much political news. I did recently find a copy of The Scarith of Scornello, by Ingrid Rowland, at a library book sale. It’s about a Tuscan teenager who created fake Etruscan artifacts in the early seventeenth century and insisted on their authenticity despite numerous objections from scholars. It’s a surprising and informative history told like a true crime mystery, and, like everything Rowland writes, it’s a pleasure to read.


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Andrew Katzenstein

Andrew Katzenstein is a former member of the editorial staff of The New York Review. (September 2024)

Daniel Drake

Daniel Drake is on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books.

 

End the violence, distribute natural resources wealth fairly, pope tells PNG

BenarNews Staff
2024.09.07

Pope Francis delivers his speech at APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

 AP Photo/Mark Baker

The head of the Catholic Church Pope Francis has highlighted Papua New Guinea’s inequality and instability and called for an end to tribal violence during a public speech in the capital Port Moresby.

Speaking to government authorities and diplomats and huge crowds of PNG people, he also spoke out on women’s equality, fair distribution of wealth from natural resources and resolution of Bougainville’s independence aspirations.

He said it was his particular hope that tribal violence will come to an end, “for it causes many victims, prevents people from living in peace and hinders development.”

Pope Francis is presented with a wooden model of a traditional boat outside the APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, as he arrives with Papua New Guinea's Governor General Bob Dadae, left. [Gregorio Borgia/AP]

Deadly clashes between tribes regularly occur in the Pacific island nation of about 12 million people, including 49 killed in February in the mountainous Highlands. At least 16 people died in rioting in the capital Port Moresby a month earlier.

Stability for Papua New Guinea, which gained its independence from Australia in 1975, has remained elusive as it grapples with challenges such as corruption and lack of roads and basic healthcare in many regions. 

The Pope amended his written remarks, according to Associated Press, to include violence against women, saying women “are the ones who carry the country forward they give life, build and grow a country, let us not forget the women who are on the front line of human and spiritual development”

People dressed in traditional attire wait for the arrival of Pope Francis at Caritas Technical Secondary School in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. [Mark Baker/AP]

Domestic violence affects more than two-thirds of women in Papua New Guinea. In March 2019, more than 200 domestic violence and sexual violence cases were reported in Lae and Port Moresby, where over 23 murders alone were attributed to domestic violence.

The Pope singled out PNG’s rich natural resources which he said were “destined by God for the entire community. “

 “Even if outside experts and large international companies must be involved in the harnessing of these resources, it is only right that the needs of local people are given due consideration when distributing the proceeds and employing workers, in order to improve their living conditions” he said.

He appealed for the people of PNG to embark on the path that leads to fruitful cooperation for the benefit of all the people of the country.

The Pope also referred to the autonomous state of Bougainville, which is seeking independence from the PNG Central Government. An estimated 10,000-15,000 people died in a decade-long civil war between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea that ended with a peace agreement in 2001.

The Pope said fruitful cooperation can create the conditions in which the question of the status of Bougainville Island can also find a definitive solution while avoiding the rekindling of ancient tensions.

Pope Francis meets performers outside the APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, where Pope Francis and Papua New Guinea's Governor General Bob Dadae attended a traditional dance performance. [Gregorio Borgia/AP]

Today is the first full day of the Pope’s two-day visit to PNG, a country of devout Christians, of whom an estimated 31-percent are Catholics. 

Followers have walked for days through remote mountains while others have made long journeys by canoe to see the Pope.

Tomorrow the Pope will hold an open-air mass which is expected to be attended by thousands in the Sir John Guise stadium in the capital before flying to the border town of Vanimo for a brief visit. He departs Port Moresby on Monday morning. 

Francis is on an 11-day, four nation tour that began in Indonesia, he will head to East Timor next before his final stop in Singapore

Visiting Papua New Guinea, pope says

 natural resources must benefit all

By AFP
September 7, 2024


The 87-year-old pope is on a marathon 12-day visit to the Asia-Pacific - Copyright AFP Tiziana FABI
Clément MELKI

Pope Francis visited Papua New Guinea Saturday, where he called for vast natural resources to benefit the “entire community” — a politically charged demand in a nation where many believe their riches are being stolen or squandered.

Addressing political and business leaders, the 87-year-old pontiff hailed his hosts as being rich in culture and in natural resources — a nod to vast reserves of gold, copper, nickel, gas and timber.

But, he suggested, the tens of billions of dollars made from digging, dredging and drilling the earth needed to benefit more than a fraction of the country’s 12 million people.

“These goods are destined by God for the entire community,” Pope Francis said.

Despite its resource wealth, Papua New Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the Pacific.

Between a quarter and half the population lives in extreme poverty. Scarcely more than 10 percent of homes have electricity.

Even if “outside experts and large international companies must be involved in the harnessing of these resources”, they should not be the only ones to benefit, the pope said.

“It is only right that the needs of local people are given due consideration when distributing the proceeds and employing workers, to improve their living conditions,” he added.

It is a message likely to resonate with millions of Catholics in Papua New Guinea — and with millions more in resource-rich regions of Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.

Twenty-two-year-old pilgrim Jonathan Kais, from Manus Island, welcomed the pope’s remarks and said he hoped they would spur the government to provide better services.

“The service we receive in our villages by our leaders at the parliament, it’s not much (compared to) what they are getting from the resources of the country,” he told AFP.



– ‘Poverty hardly changed’ –



For decades, Papua New Guinea has been dotted with vast American, Australian, Canadian, European and Chinese-run mines.

A $19 billion project led by ExxonMobil has produced tens of millions of tonnes of liquified natural gas since operations began in 2014.

But economists have found little evidence that any of the projects have helped poor Papua New Guineans.

A recent World Bank study showed that between 2009 and 2018, the country’s gross domestic product per person grew by more than a third on the back of the resource boom.

“Poverty hardly changed over that time,” the report’s authors said.



– ‘Spiral of violence’ –



Pope Francis is on a marathon 12-day visit to the Asia-Pacific, visiting Indonesia, East Timor and Singapore as he promotes interfaith dialogue and embraces regions on the periphery of world affairs.

On Saturday he also made a plea for Papua New Guineans to “stop the spiral” of tribal violence that has killed untold numbers of people and displaced tens of thousands more.

“It is my particular hope that tribal violence will come to an end,” he said.

“It causes many victims, prevents people from living in peace and hinders development.”

There are few reliable estimates as to how many people have died during decades of tribal unrest between dozens of clans in the country’s Highlands.

But UN agencies estimate that about 100,000 people have been displaced by the cycle of retaliatory attacks, which have intensified in recent years.

The murders are often extremely violent, with victims hacked by machetes, burned, mutilated or tortured. Civilians, including pregnant women and children, have been targeted in the past.

An influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has made clashes much more deadly. Where bows, spears and clubs were once the weapons of choice, now tribesmen have a veritable armoury of SLR, AK-47, and M16 rifles.

Papua New Guinea’s stretched government has tried suppression, mediation, gun amnesties and a range of other strategies to control the situation, with little success.

But experts say the violence has little to do with ancient customs, and is more about the modern problems of a surging population, a breakdown in traditional rules of war, joblessness and the rising cost of living.

And there is growing concern that violence is spreading to other parts of the country.

In July, at least 27 people — among them 11 children — were massacred in Angoram District, not far from the northern coast.

Pope calls for greater care of indigenous

 populations in Papua New Guinea


Pope Francis visits Street Ministry and Callan Services in the Caritas Technical Secondary School in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Saturday. Photo by Alessandro Di Meo/EPA-EFE

Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Pope Francis said the world needs to address climate change while visiting the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea, which is partly endangered by a rising Pacific Ocean.

The Pope began his visit Friday in the nation where islanders living near coastal areas might have to relocate if waters rise too much. It's the Pope's second stop during an 11-day tour of four nations in the region.

Deforestation and pollution from mining operations also are affecting the nation's water supplies.

"Climate change is real," Papua New Guinea Governor-General Bob Dadae told the Pope Saturday in Port Moresby. "The rise in the sea level is affecting the livelihoods of our people.

He asked Francis. 87, to advocate for nations to do more to counteract climate change and exploitation of natural resources.

"While foreign companies are involved in resource extraction, it is only fair that local populations benefit from the income and labor to improve their living conditions," Francis said while advocating for the "common good" for all people.

The Pope also called for greater recognition of the roles women fulfill in Papua New Guinea and other nations.

Women "are the ones who carry the country forward, give life, build and grow a country," Francis said.

While meeting with Bishops, clergy and others later Saturday, Francis said it's important to care for the "marginalized and wounded,both morally and physically, by prejudice and superstition."

Pope Francis also visited the Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians, in Port Moresby Saturday, where he praised the work of missionaries to brought Christianity to the island nation.

"It is thanks to them, to their starts and restarts,that we are here and that despite the current challenges ... we continue to move forward without fear, knowing we are not alone," Francis said.

Francis traveled to Papua New Guinea after visiting Indonesia during his tour of four nations in Southeast Asia and Oceania from Monday through Thursday.

On Sunday, the pope will travel to Vanimo, a city in the northwesternmost province of Papua New Guinea.

The 11-day trip is the longest Francis has undertaken while Pope and concludes with visits to East Timor and Singapore.