BLASPHEMY

Pakistan ‘vigilantes’ behind rise in online blasphemy cases


By AFP
October 14, 2024

The families of young Pakistanis say their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online

 - Copyright AFP Aamir QURESHI

Zain Zaman JANJUA

Aroosa Khan’s son was chatting on WhatsApp but suddenly found himself the target of “vigilante” investigators who accused him of having committed blasphemy online, a crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.

The 27-year-old is one in hundreds of young men standing trial in Pakistan courts accused of making blasphemous statements online or in WhatsApp groups, an offence for which arrests have exploded in recent years.

Many of the cases are being brought to trial by private “vigilante groups” led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.

The families of young Pakistanis, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants, say that their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online before being arrested.

“Our lives have been turned upside down,” Khan told AFP, saying that her son, who has not been named for security reasons, had been tricked into sharing blasphemous content in the messaging app.

One local police report suggests that the vigilantes may be motivated by financial gains.

One such group was responsible for the conviction of 27 people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty over the past three years.

Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated accusations can incite public outrage and lead to lynchings.

While they date back to colonial times, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were ramped up in the 1980s when dictator Zia ul-Haq campaigned to “Islamicise” society.

AFP has attended multiple court hearings in the capital Islamabad, where young men are being prosecuted by private vigilante groups and the FIA for blasphemous online content.

Among them is Aroosa’s son — who had joined a WhatsApp group for job-seekers and was contacted by a woman.

She sent him an image of women with Quranic verses printed on their bodies, his mother said, adding that the contact then “denied having sent it and asked Ahmed to send it back to her to understand what he was talking about”.

He was later arrested and prosecuted by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).



– ‘Noble cause’ –



The most active private investigation group is the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), which told AFP they are prosecuting more than 300 cases.

Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of the private investigation group’s leaders, told AFP that more than a dozen volunteers track online blasphemy, believing that “God has chosen them for this noble cause”.

“We are not beheading anyone; we are following a legal course,” Farooqi told AFP outside a courtroom that heard 15 blasphemy cases, all filed by his group.

He said that most of the accused were addicted to pornography and were disrespecting revered Islamic figures by using their names and dubbing voices attributed to them over pornographic content.

He acknowledged that women were involved in tracking and arresting the men, but they were not members of his group.

Cases can drag through the courts for years, though death penalties are often commuted to life in prison on appeal at the Supreme Court and Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy.

A special court, attended by AFP, was formed in September to expedite the dozens of pending cases.



– ‘Vested agenda’ –



The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) reported that multiple vigilante groups were working in a “dedicated manner” to “witch-hunt” people for online expression or to fabricate blasphemy evidence using social media with “vested agendas”.

“All such groups are formalised by self-declared defenders of majoritarian Islam,” the group said in a report published in 2023.

A 2024 report by police in Punjab province, the country’s most populous province, that was leaked to the media said that “a suspicious gang was trapping youth in blasphemy cases”.

“The Blasphemy Business” report was sent to the FIA with recommendations to launch a thorough inquiry to determine the source of the vigilante groups’ funding.

Two FIA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had received the report but denied that their office was acting on the tips of vigilante groups.

The FIA did not respond to requests for official comment.

An official involved in prosecuting the cases told AFP outside the court: “Not a single person arrested was trapped by any manner. They committed the crime.”

“The law is very clear about it, and we have to enforce it as long as the law is there.”

Arafat Mazhar, the director of Alliance Against Blasphemy Politics, a group advocating against the misuse of blasphemy laws, told AFP that the alarming rise in cases was not because people “are suddenly more blasphemous”.

He said the rise in the use of messaging apps and social media and the ease of sharing and forwarding content was a significant factor.



– Shunned –



The accused struggle to find defence lawyers willing to represent them and the slightest accusation can turn an entire family into pariahs.

Nafeesa Ahmed, whose brother is accused of sharing blasphemous images on WhatsApp and whose names have also been changed, said her family was shunned by close relatives.

“There is a massive cost that families of accused are bearing. First of all, our security or lives are at risk,” she told AFP.

She said some of the families have sold thousands of dollars worth of houses and gold, given to brides on their wedding, to fight the cases.

Dozens of families which have formed a support group have protested in the capital calling for an independent commission to investigate the vigilante groups and their role in prosecuting Pakistanis for blasphemy.

“In this society, if someone commits a murder, he can survive because there are thousands of ways to come out of that but if someone is accused of blasphemy he cannot,” said Nafeesa.

“When it comes to blasphemy, the public has its own court and even family members will abandon you.”

SOCIETY: DEFYING THE MOB

Masood Lohar

Published October 13, 2024 
EOS/DAWN

PAKISTAN

Thousands turn up to demand justice for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar in his hometown of Umerkot, Sindh on September 25, 2024 | Social Media


The swiftness with which the blasphemy allegation against Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, a 36-year-old doctor at a government hospital in Sindh’s Umerkot district, spiralled into violent bloodlust, reflects the deadly intersection of religious extremism, personal vendettas and mob violence.

It did not matter that the alleged blasphemous remarks appeared on the doctor’s social media account, which he insisted had been hacked. The people wanted blood, and the police, it seems, were too willing to comply. A hardline cleric announced a bounty of five million rupees, while local law enforcement went into hyperdrive to apprehend the doctor.

OF MURDERERS AND SAVIOURS


The doctor was arrested by the Umerkot police from Karachi a day later, on September 18. He was killed a little after midnight on the same day, according to a high-level police report, “in a staged encounter” that took place in the jurisdiction of Sindhri police.

The local police in-charge, Sindhri Station House Officer (SHO) Niaz Khoso, claimed that the doctor was killed “unintentionally”, but the doctor’s family and rights group disputed the claim.

The day after the murder, the SHO, along with high-ranking police officials from Mirpurkhas and Umerkot, were seen in video clips uploaded on social media being feted as heroes by the same hardline cleric who had offered the reward for killing the doctor. The videos also show a local lawmaker, part of the Pakistan Peoples Party, congratulating the policemen.

The groundswell of support for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, who was murdered over blasphemy allegations, eloquently articulates Sindh’s culture of tolerance, rooted in its Sufi traditions…

In one of the videos, the now-suspended SHO can be heard saying that he wasn’t worthy of such a task, but was grateful to God for giving him the opportunity, while referring to Dr Kumbhar’s extrajudicial killing.

Meanwhile, the doctor’s family wasn’t allowed to perform funeral rites, and an enraged mob snatched the body and set it on fire. A brave Hindu youth, Premo Kohli, tried to protest and protect the body, but the mob attacked him as well. Despite that, he still retrieved the badly burnt body once the enraged mob had left.

The incident spread terror throughout Umerkot, the only district in Pakistan with a Hindu majority. There was palpable fear of a blasphemy accusation, like a sword dangling on their heads, and many felt that they could be ‘next.’

But what was truly worrisome was the emerging complicity of the police, who had played the role of the executioner. A week earlier, another blasphemy accused had been shot dead while in police custody in Quetta, with the cop hailed as a hero.

Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar



AN UNEQUIVOCAL RESPONSE

But unlike the reaction in Quetta, and in the majority of blasphemy cases elsewhere in the country, the public response in Sindh was altogether different.

It likely has as much to do with the brave act of the Hindu youth, who stopped the lynch mob from completely burning the body, as it does with Sindh’s long history of Sufi saints.

A week after the murder, on September 25, thousands of people from across Sindh flocked to Dr Kumbhar’s village to take part in his funeral, in an unequivocal response to right-wing bigotry. Manji Faqeer, a prominent folk artist, sang Sufi tunes at the grave as it was garlanded with petals.

This defiance is the product of the deeply ingrained culture of religious tolerance and interfaith harmony that Sindh has maintained over thousands of years. It dates back to poets and saints of the Sufi genre, such as Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Sachal Sarmast and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, who are revered for their message of love, peace and harmony.

This is also reflected in numbers. According to a study by the Centre for Research and Security Studies, published in 2022, 89 people were killed in Pakistan for allegedly committing blasphemy between 1947 and 2021. There were roughly 1,500 accusations and cases during this period. Of those, 1,098 cases — more than 70 percent — were in Punjab. In the same period, Sindh reported 173 cases.

With their latest and most unequivocal response to blasphemy accusations, the people of Sindh have compelled the provincial government to take action. Since then, several high-ranking police officials have been booked in the case, along with the cleric who offered the reward for Dr Shahnawaz’s murder.

A HISTORY OF INJUSTICE

A similar pushback was witnessed in the case of Mashal Khan, who was murdered on the campus of a university in Mardan by a mob in 2017, but it tapered off with the accused acquitted.

Many other cases have followed a similar trajectory, with the blasphemy accused either murdered, going into exile or forced to rot in prison — with the recurring theme being that they are denied the right to fair trial.

It includes academic Junaid Hafeez, who was given the death penalty over social media posts. In 2014, a year after his arrest, his lawyer was gunned down in his office. Hafeez was given the death penalty in 2019 and remains on death row.

The case of 14-year-old Rimsha Tahir of Islamabad is equally chilling, after a court found that she was wrongly accused of blasphemy. The cleric accused of planting the evidence was, however, acquitted after witnesses retracted their statements.

Even in the case of the recent murder of the blasphemy accused at a police station in Quetta, the victim’s family has pardoned the policeman, meaning that he would get away scot-free.

EMBOLDENING FANATICISM

The frequency with which those who instigate blasphemy accusations and take part in mob violence escape justice has emboldened many others. This can be tracked by the increase in not just the number of reported blasphemy cases, but also the recent spate of attacks on places of worship belonging to Pakistan’s persecuted Ahmaddiya community.

The cases in which the perpetrators have to face justice is rare, such as that of the murder of Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara. Many in civil society believe that the death sentences handed out to the perpetrators were given due to the victim being a foreign national and the resultant outcry over it globally.

The systemic abuse of blasphemy laws has tarnished Pakistan’s image globally, and gives credence to the perception that there are strong strands of religious intolerance and extremism in the country.

The horrific spectacle of vigilante ‘justice’ inflicted by lynch mobs, captured in real-time on cell phones by individuals taking part in it — and often shared with pride on social media — speaks volumes about how deeply entrenched the exploitation of religious sentiments is in Pakistan.

The strange and chilling fact is that the blasphemy laws themselves are almost never enforced in these cases. The mobs circumvent the legal system to seize power and administer their own form of ‘justice.’

A CLARION CALL OF RESISTANCE

But as opposed to previous episodes of mob violence, where response to the violence and brutality has often been limited — if not completely muted — the response from the people of Sindh has been clear: they want to stand against such injustice.

The groundswell of support for the victim and his family, who continue to face harassment from religious hardliners, has provided a template for people in other parts of the country to take a stand against those preaching violence.

The swiftness of this organic response, which saw a province-wide mobilisation, and support from the rest of the country, is a reminder that the culture of resistance and tolerance remains strong in Sindh. It eloquently articulates the need to protect those accused of blasphemy so that they get a fair trial.

The state must now respond in a similar manner, by instituting legal reforms to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated.

The writer is a climate change expert and the founder of Clifton Urban Forest. He can be contacted at mlohar@gmail.com.
X: @masoodlohar

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 13th, 2024

SMOKERS’ CORNER: SAFEGUARDING SINDH

Nadeem F. Paracha 

Published October 6, 2024

Illustration by Abro

Last week, protests erupted in Umerkot, a city located at the edge of the Thar Desert in Sindh. The protests were held to condemn the extrajudicial killing of a doctor who had been accused of committing blasphemy. The Sindh government confirmed that the accused was killed by the cops who had arrested him. His dead body was then snatched by some ‘fanatics’ and set on fire.


This horrific incident shocked a large number of ethnic Sindhis, who are in majority in Sindh outside the province’s multi-ethnic capital, Karachi. For over two decades now, Sindhi media and Sindhi scholars have been airing concerns about the ‘radicalisation’ of Sindhis.

However, the Sindhi-majority regions of Sindh have not witnessed as many incidents of ‘religiously motivated violence’, as have the country’s other provinces — especially Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). For example, according to a 2022 report, out of a total of 1,415 cases of blasphemy registered by the police between 1947 and 2021, 1,098 were in Punjab and just 173 in Sindh.

Even though there were even fewer such cases registered in KP and Balochistan, these two provinces (and Punjab) have witnessed far more incidents of sectarian violence and Islamist militancy than Sindh. However, Sindh’s ethnically diverse capital Karachi is somewhat of an exception. Its streets witnessed sectarian warfare in the early 1980s and then, from the mid-2000s, the city became a hub for various Islamist groups to raise money for their militant activities, through extortion, kidnappings, robberies, etc.



Incidents of violence and killings in the name of religion in Sindh are the remnants of a state-sponsored project that is no longer in play — but also indicate that secular forces need to secure social spaces they have abdicated to extremists

In 1979, the state had started to roll out an ‘Islamisation’ project. Sindh, apart from its capital Karachi, somewhat succeeded in avoiding the impact of the project. Over the decades, though, the project began to mutate and started to be navigated from below. It eventually fell in the lap of multiple segments of the polity. These segments began to use the contents of the project for lucrative evangelical purposes, and to accumulate social power. In many cases, the contents were also used to bolster anti-state Islamist militancy.

Karachi, despite being impacted by the outcomes of the project, has remained largely secular due to its diverse ethnic make-up, massive size and cosmopolitan nature. The rest of the province, on the other hand, which has a Sindhi majority, has often frustrated many attempts to radicalise this majority. This is largely due to the inherently pluralistic and ‘moderate’ disposition of Sindhis.

In a 2021 study, the Karachi-based researcher Imtiaz Ali noted that “Sindhis have unwaveringly discarded those who have denied their traditions of tolerance.” According to Ali, “the progressive literature widely circulated in Sindh has played a huge role in developing resilient minds.” Ali adds that Sindh’s arts are influenced by Sindhi poetry that is largely feminine in nature and tightly tied to Sufism. This has shielded Sindhis from being overwhelmed by the outcomes of the ‘Islamisation’ project that has wreaked havoc in Punjab and KP.

Those concerned about the rising incidents of religious extremism among Sindhis are of the view that the incidents are the outcome of the resources and effort that the state once invested in its bid to ‘Islamise’ the Sindhis. These efforts were part of a larger scheme formulated by the state that wanted to ‘Islamise’ polities in Sindh, Balochistan and KP. The state believed that ‘political Islam’ and a vigorous propagation of Islamic rituals were effective tools to neutralise Baloch, Sindhi and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms.

The scheme was a success in KP, mainly due to Pakistan’s role in the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, which was lavishly bankrolled by the US and Saudi Arabia. Some political commentators have suggested that, since Pakhtuns by nature are religious, the state was able to lure them towards more extreme expressions of the faith. These expressions were being propagated by the state and by its Islamist assets to romanticise the Afghan insurgency against Soviet troops. As a result, secular Pakhtun sub-nationalism lost a lot of traction in KP.





The scheme to radicalise the ethnic Baloch in this regard was not as successful, though. Baloch society can be conservative, but it is inherently secular. Most Baloch insurgencies before the recent one were driven by leftist ideas. However, Balochistan’s ‘Pakhtun belt’ was more receptive to the ways of the scheme.

Indeed, while the overriding purpose of the scheme was to neutralise Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms, one of the spillovers of the scheme and of the ‘Islamisation’ project was the eventual radicalisation of Punjab — the country’s largest and most powerful province. In fact, the scheme was often viewed by non-Punjabi sub-nationalists as the work of Punjabi elites. This is thus a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Another ironic outcome has been the recent alliance between secular Baloch separatists and militant Islamists in Balochistan.

However, the claim that such schemes are still being rolled out may not hold much truth anymore. With China firmly in the picture and anti-state Islamist militancy stalling Pakistan’s new economic and regional aspirations, the state is now trying to assert itself against the outcomes of its own schemes. It is clearly planning to completely overcome these, even if this requires an entirely reformed state structure in the areas of economics, judiciary and even within the military establishment. This is unfolding in plain sight.

This is why the increasing frequency of sporadic, religiously motivated violence in Sindh is probably a belated outcome of a scheme that is no longer in play. This violence in Sindh is more the handiwork of groups who, years ago, had entered through a window that was opened in Sindh by the scheme. Gradually, through madrassas [religious schools], these groups began to flex the contents of the now-defunct ‘Islamisation’ project. The groups are trying to accumulate social power and influence because they have found no mentionable electoral traction in the province.

The ‘left-liberal’ Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) remains Sindh’s largest political party. It has won four consecutive elections in Sindh, from 2008 onwards. Its vote bank has continued to swell. The sweeping PPP wins in Sindh have made sure that no Islamist groups or their allies are able to enter the Sindh assembly. Sindhi sub-nationalists, who were once at the forefront of maintaining the indigenous secular disposition of Sindhis, have disintegrated. In fact, recently they were seen riding on the coattails of conservative/anti-PPP Sindhi elites.

With Sindh electorally secured, the PPP will have to invest a lot more in the social areas that have been vacated by the Sindhi sub-nationalists and are being occupied by the radical Islamists. It’s time that the party secures these areas as well.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 6th, 2024

NON-FICTION: A GLORIFIED HISTORY OF SINDH

Soonha Abro 

Published October 13, 2024

Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…)
By Dr Maqbool A. Halepota
Halo Publishing International, Texas, USA
ISBN 978-1-63765-584-9
444pp.

Dr Maqbool A. Halepota’s Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…) is an ambitious project that attempts to chronicle the rich history of Sindh from 2600 BCE up to present times. This includes the prehistoric period in Sindh, the Indus Civilisation and discovery of Mohenjo Daro, the Vedic age, the conquest of Sindh by the Arabs, the indigenous Sindhi rulers, and the British colonial period in the province.

He, then, provides an account of the post-1947 period, including Pakistan’s martial law periods, as well as some important political movements, such as the anti-One Unit movement and the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD). The author also touches upon the movements and spread of the global Sindhi diaspora and, briefly, the future outlook for Sindhis.


The book is a rather informative and somewhat enjoyable read. The portions on prehistoric Sindh, especially its origins, as well as the reigns of the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs, were particularly interesting because these are not very familiar topics for Pakistani readers. In fact, it would be an excellent idea to include more of such material in school history textbooks, so our young children can begin learning about these portions of our local history at a young age, irrespective of whether they are Sindhis or not.

The process of rediscovering the history of the Indus Civilisation and the excavation of Mohenjo-Daro, in much greater detail than the tiny portions on the topic one read in history textbooks during school, proved to be an immensely enjoyable experience and informative. Readers interested in learning more about the various aspects of Sindh’s history can also benefit a lot from the excellent bibliography included at the end of the book.


An ambitious and informative book about the history, culture and politics of Sindh through the ages is not critically rigorous enough but could still serve as a starting point for future research

For a book of such a huge magnitude and potential, it regrettably contains some glaring editorial errors. It includes some unfortunate factual errors, which could have been easily verified through a simple Google search. For instance, the year of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s death is incorrectly cited as 1947 on page 167, instead of 1948. Furthermore, the citations given throughout the text are rather disorganised. Another particularly bothersome aspect of the book is that it lacks an index, without which it is quite difficult to search for any specific information within the book. This will make it rather difficult to use for any scholars researching on Sindh.

Moreover, the book also lacks consistency in the transliterations of non-English words, mostly from Arabic and Sanskrit, and occasionally from Sindhi. This inconsistency adversely impacts one’s reading experience, because one is unaware of how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. The author has also neglected to provide a clarifying ‘Note on Transliterations’ that describes the correct pronunciations of all the non-English words used throughout the book. Such notes are considered an important convention in academic writing.

However, for a book directed at a more general readership, a suitable solution would be to do away entirely with transliterations and corresponding diacritic marks. It is acceptable to do so when writing an academic text directed at a more general audience, instead of a purely academic one. Collectively, these weaknesses spoil one’s general enjoyment of reading this most informative book. This issue could have been dealt with by the text undergoing a much more meticulous editorial process and guidance to the author.

Finally, this book claims to present the ‘glorious’ history of Sindh to the readers, especially directed at those hailing from Sindh. Indeed, the history of Sindh is immensely rich and intriguing for any history enthusiast. It is also true that Sindh has been plagued by numerous serious problems throughout its history, and continues to be affected by them even today. The painstaking research that went into writing this book is undeniable. However, these historical facts are presented with hyperboles, unsubstantiated claims and a complete lack of critique.

For example, the first half of the book, which tells the story of Sindh’s origins, its prehistoric, Vedic and Arab past, is written in an overly glorifying tone. Then, the tone switches to that of lamentation in the second half, mourning the various discriminations and oppressions meted out to Sindhis throughout history. This could have been avoided completely by conducting a critical but deeply sensitive evaluation of the historical facts and examining them for their impact on the currently existing issues affecting Sindh. This would have made this book a truly definitive history of Sindh. By doing so, it would have genuinely benefited numerous generations of readers, Sindhi or not, and academic researchers across the world.

Despite its weaknesses, Sindhis in a Global Context is undeniably an important text about Sindh’s history. It is not the definitive historical work on Sindh that it had hoped to become but, nonetheless, it does provide several points that could help formulate further research questions in the future.

Although the author intends it to be read primarily by Sindhi youth, it would be of greater interest to readers who are actually enthusiastic about history, as well as academic readers and scholars seeking further knowledge about the rich history, culture and politics of Sindh. It would be useful if the book were made more accessible to readers, especially to its targeted readership, by making it available at bookshops and libraries within Pakistan.

The reviewer is pursuing an MPhil in English literature.

Her research focuses on various South Asian literary traditions, including Anglophone literatures of South Asia, feminist literary criticism, resistance movements and resistance poetry, as well as Urdu and Sindhi literatures

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 13th, 2024

PAKISTAN

Restless natives

Adopting a national security perspective makes a state see the world in terms of threats and conspiracies. 

Umair Javed

Published October 14, 2024

DAWN

IN the national security perspective on Pakistan, the country is besieged by hostile forces seeking to undermine the security apparatus and/or alter its geographic integrity altogether.

On this list, the identity of external hostile forces remains largely unchanged since 1947, though the Americans tend to drop in and out depending on regional considerations.

The list of internal collaborators/ fifth columnists sees a bit more churn. At various times, it has featured communists, socialists, mainstream political parties questioning military rule, mainstream political parties demanding federalism, mainstream political parties seeking constitutional rule, a few shades of Sharia-demanding Islamists, and, of course, ethnonationalists striving for political and cultural autonomy.

While most others go in and out depending on political circumstances, and the communists/ socialists remain a figment of the distant past, ethnonationalists occupy a great deal of head and policy space for national security policymakers and thinkers (the latter term used here very broadly).

A common narration from their perspective is that ethnonationalist movements — principally the Pakhtun nationalists in KP and the Baloch nationalists in Balochistan (Bengalis in the past, and occasionally, Sindhis and Mohajirs too) — never accepted Pakistani statehood. In line with aspirations of self-determination, these groups sought independence or merger with neighbouring states from day one.

This was their default position at the time of statehood, which the Pakistani state — like any other territory-protecting entity — had no option but to deal with as a security threat. In other words, according to this perspective, the state’s relationship with these political groups didn’t turn sour because of the actions of the state; instead, one side was committed to rejecting the state from the outset.

Hard-liners did not necessarily have the upper hand in movements from day one.

Like most ideas that states, especially insecure ones, believe, there may be an occasional figment of truth in it. Hard-liners and maximalists are present in any social and political movement, and there is no reason ethnic movements would be different.

But where the NatSec lot gets its analysis wrong is in its reading of history. Hard-liners did not necessarily have the upper hand in movements from day one. Instead, the turn towards secessionism usually emerged because of the chain of events featuring the state’s national security apparatus and various identity groups.

The clearest example of this phenomenon is in the case of Bangla nationalism between 1947 and 1971. The Muslim League won its heaviest mandate in the 1946 elections in East Bengal on an explicit platform for an autonomous state for Indian Muslims. The same region saw considerable mobilisation for the Muslim nationalist cause in the years leading up to statehood, and Bengali Leaguers formed a central part of the party leadership.

The relationship soured post-1947 because of denial of linguistic rights and the forced centralisation of provincial government functions. The rout of the Muslim League at the hands of the United Front coalition in the 1954 election was, in fact, a symptom of malignant central rule, and not necessarily a reflection of repressed secessionism.

Instead of accommodation through the democratic process, the security state doubled down on centralisation through the One Unit scheme, inequitable distribution of resources, and continued repression of provincial politicians. The final straw was a denial of the Awami League’s popular mandate after the 1970 election.

In its current iteration, the Baloch insurgency appears to unfold broadly along the same pattern. Its origins lie in the heavy-handedness of a military regime against a popular politician, leading to the latter’s killing. Barring occasional efforts by elected central governments to forge a representative arrangement, the province’s governance is outsourced to the security establishment.

In frequent displays of viceregal power, parties are created at a whim, election results are manipulated or repressed, assembly compositions are curated, citizens are disappeared, and non-violent social movements for rights — whether in Gwadar or the BYC — are policed, harassed, and criminalised. If there was a guidebook for how to empower hard-liners, it would likely include all of these steps.

The same pattern is now visible in KP. The case here is even more exasperating, since Pakhtun nationalism was largely accommodated within federal politics by the late 1990s. If anything, the rise of the PTI — a party with countrywide appeal paying homage to Pakistaniat — and its entrenched popularity in the province showed the region’s politics evolving towards a different, more centripetal, direction.

What changed? Militarised rule of the province’s peripheries, regional dynamics created by the imperial excursion in Afghanistan, and the absence of any transparency or accountability of security policies helped provide conditions for ethnic rights-based mobilisation through the PTM.

Whatever its critics may say, there is no denying PTM’s organic appeal. It speaks to the marginalised reality of large swathes of the population; a marginalisation, which the state has enabled, if not outright created. And like clockwork, the response has been to coerce its supporters, subjugate its leaders, and declare it to be a proscribed organisation.

The final, and frankly surreal, straw is the chain of events leading to PTI becoming accommodating of ethnic nationalist undertones in its politics, with parts of its leadership and its support base finding common cause with the PTM. In a truly remarkable feat of own-goalism, the biggest civilian proponent of both Pakistani nationalism and centralised state power is now a sceptic. This is the grand total of what denial of an electoral mandate, harassment and coercion, and pitting province against province will likely achieve.

Adopting a national security perspective makes a state see the world in terms of threats and conspiracies. But there is a reason why most successful states, ie, those with stable, productive relations with their citizens, only draw on this perspective as one among several.

Most will prioritise development, enhancement of human capability, and cultural fulfilment as valuable goals as well. Not the Pakistani state, though. Blinkers on, it stumbles into one conflict with its own population after the other. And then wonders why so many act hostile to it.

The writer teaches sociology at Lums.

X: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2024

Disgraced media

Muna Khan 

Published October 13, 2024 

DAWN

LAST week, I wrote a piece on Western media’s coverage of the war in Gaza for Prism on the Dawn website. I re-read part of Edward Said’s 1981 book Covering Islam on how the Western media distorts the portrayal of Islam and depictions of Muslims as “fanatical, violent, lustful and irrational”. I often return to this book as it remains relevant. It’s a sad indictment on the Western media whose reporting on Muslims and Palestinians has resulted in their dehumanisation over the decades.

Despite knowing all this, I felt foolish when I read how The New York Times told its staff to restrict using words like ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ and avoid ‘occupied territories’ in their reporting on Gaza. This was revealed by The Intercept in April which received a copy of the internal memo the paper sent to its staff. They also told staff not to use the word ‘Palestine’ “except in very rare cases”. It is mind-boggling.

However, acclaimed author Pankaj Mishra was not shocked when the draft of an article wherein he criticised Israel, submitted to a Canadian newspaper, was returned to him with ‘Israel’ removed.

Mishra, the recipient of a $75,000 Weston International Award for his non-fiction writing, was going to deliver a lecture in Toronto last month. Winners get an excerpt from their lecture published in the leading newspaper The Globe and Mail. The paper, however, edited that excerpt with reportedly all 17 instances of Israel cut out. Mishra pulled the excerpt after receiving the edits.


It was a political decision to attempt to edit Mishra’s excerpt.

In an interview to The Breach last month, Mishra said he was not surprised as it was “part of a continuum of such attempts that I’ve personally encountered to suppress and stifle criticism of Israel”.

One of the lines cut from the excerpt said: “My own sporadic attempts to tackle the subject in the past made me aware of an insidious Western regimen of repressions and prohibitions.”

The paper also cut: “Even the liquidation of Gaza, which unlike many atrocities, has been live-streamed by both its perpetrators and victims, is daily obfuscated, if not denied, by the main organs of the Western media.”

Clearly, it was a political decision to attempt to edit Mishra’s excerpt and speaks to the Western media’s complicity in covering up the true scale of the crimes committed in Palestine and everywhere else. Lest we forget, the US declared war on Iraq under the guise of destroying weapons of mass destruction; they declared war on Afghanistan to, among other reasons, liberate the women. The government of the day finds powerful allies in papers who support (read: cheer) such policies and it is no different in the case of Gaza.

“We have faced a consistent regime of censorship and suppression,” Mishra told The Breach. “Not just Palestinians, not just Arabs, you talk to even some of the most successful writers of non-Western ancestry, and each one of them will tell you many, many stories about editors saying ‘We can’t do this. Can you change that? Can you rephrase that?’”

Non-white writers often have to acquiesce because they want to be published and options elsewhere are limited. This is how the arts and entertainment as well as the publishing industry manages people of colour by ‘keeping them in their place’.

Perhaps one of the most influential intellectuals in the US right now, Ta-Nehisi Coates, is facing the brunt of Big American media’s wrath about his new book The Message which chronicles, among other trips, his 10-day experience in Gaza and Israel in 2023. He has described his trip as “revelatory”; that he didn’t think Americans understood the extent of “what we’re doing there”, adding that he uses ‘we’ bec­ause it wouldn’t be possible without US support.

“I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn str­a­nger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes in his book, an excerpt that has widely been shared. But he is subject to much attack, the usual accusations of antisemitism, for telling the truth, which his detractors tell you is ‘his truth’. I find this practice of adding pronouns to truth tiresome; truth is meant to be universal and this idea of my truth reeks of a sense of entitlement in the face of what we can see on TV screens.

I laud Mishra for withdrawing his excerpt and refusing to accept the paper’s discriminatory edits. His is a small example of the pushback we’re seeing to the Israeli-Western media narrative shoved down our throats. Al Jazeera ran a story last week featuring BBC and CNN journalists “alleging pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles”. I’m sorry it took so long for the truth (see what I did there?) to arrive but I hope it will pick up pace and more audiences will see it for what it is: not the journalism everyone deserves.

The writer is an instructor of journalism.
X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2024

Burying the lede in Gaza for 75 years

The double standards exhibited in the Western media when it comes to reporting on Gaza have only widened the mistrust between it and the audience.

Muna Khan 

Published October 6, 2024

“You cannot continue to victimise someone else just because you yourself were a victim once — there has to be a limit.”

Edward Said wrote this nearly 50 years ago, but the limits he wrote about have long been crossed by Israel’s powerful propaganda machine, which has found plenty of allies in the Western media.

How else do you explain the continued circulation of the false story about the 40 beheaded babies — which emerged in Israel’s Kfar Aza Kibbutz following Hamas’ attack on Israel — one year ago? The story quickly made global headlines and received condemnation, including from US President Joe Biden, whose staff, it later emerged, had cautioned him from mentioning it.

Yet, those cautions fell on deaf ears when Biden said he had seen those images and then had to retract. When history reviews that moment, it will likely put Biden’s lies down to his old age and confused state of mind. However, to those of us long familiar with how “we” are reported on, we know “they” only see the worst of us.

As Said wrote in his book Orientalism in 1975: “In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.”

The Palestinian Arab, thus, must be put in its place.

While US presidents, sitting and hopeful, are quick to believe Israel’s version, it is nonetheless shocking to see them defend the damage caused by Israel’s airstrike on Rafah in May which, to be precise, charred to death scores of children. This was days after the International Court of Justice had ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah. Israel would describe it as a “tragic mistake.” Unlike the imaginary 40 beheaded Israeli babies, here we saw a father hold up a decapitated baby in Rafah, but it did not make the headlines. Only prominent diaspora writers, with links to the Arab or Muslim-majority countries, wrote about it on their Substacks or social media; perhaps there was an op-ed or two in left leaning papers like The Guardian.

Were it for not social media, and phones recording the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, we would be dependent on Israel’s manipulation of these falsehoods. They do this to garner support, to shape policy, to ensure that any sympathy toward Palestine is quickly turned into a “do you support Hamas?”. And they have mammoth support from Western media and scholars and influencers.

As law professor, Khaled Beydoun, wrote following the Rafah massacre: “On a landscape ravaged by unhinged Israeli militarism and unchecked American might, the lie of headless Israeli children means everything; while the truth of beheaded Palestinian children means nothing.”

More than the depiction of Hamas as terrorists — that fighters hide in hospitals or among civilians, the sexual assault claims or the inability to accurately document the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, I am appalled at the Western media’s ignorance on the children impacted by this war. The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimated in March that at least 13,000 children had been killed by Israel, yet headlines did not show this. As one study showed, of 1,100 news articles surveyed between Oct 7 to Nov 25, only two mentioned young Palestinian victims. At least 6,000 children were killed during the aforementioned period. This is truly abhorrent.

Dehumanisation in plain sight

Said had warned about the dehumanisation of the Palestinians in his writing, letting us know just how much had been invested in extinguishing Palestinians. But perhaps, even he would be dismayed by the lack of humanity in the portrayal of Palestinians as mere bodies.

British data journalist, Mona Chalabi, has been documenting how Palestinians are reported on. She wrote on Instagram: “While Israeli victims are documented as people who were loved, Palestinians are uprooted, even in death.” Chalabi has been producing neatly packaged datasets documenting Israeli violence against Palestinians and how the media aids in the spread of their version. “Palestinian deaths are often mentioned in the context of vengeance (“retaliation”/“retaliatory”/“retaliated” appear 190 times in this dataset) and, unlike Israeli deaths/hostages, these victims are rarely mentioned by name.”

In her analysis of BBC News’ language for Israelis vs Palestinians, she found: “Israelis reject any comparison between the way Hamas kills civilians and the way Palestinian civilians die in their air strikes.”

The BBC also deserves special mention for their bias as documented in research which analysed stories between October 10 and December 2, 2023. They examined how many times words like “massacred” were used for Israelis (23) versus Palestinians (1) in that period.

Unsurprisingly, they found machine bias against Palestinians.

Meanwhile, many independent media have reported on the bias in US media coverage. The Intercept, for example, said “iterations of Israel and Israeli received more mention in New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli deaths.”

William Youmans, writing in Dawn MENA Media — an organisation founded by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 before his brutal murder in Istanbul — discusses a study he conducted on US TV shows like Meet the Press (NBC), Face the Nation (CBS), This Week (ABC) and Fox News Sunday (FOX) between mid October and mid-January. He found framing around Gaza “aligned far more with pro-Israel talking points”.

He references another study on cable news shows which “found pervasive patterns of privileging pro-Israel framing and narratives.” It also found that by the time 11,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by early November, the Israeli hostages held in Gaza “were still getting more attention on American cable TV news.”

As Youmans notes, when the media reports Palestinians as “being left to die”, (and not by whom or how) it “softens Israel’s culpability.”

Ryan Grims’ story in The Intercept in April echoes similar findings. People who only get their news from cable “are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in the war in general.” Meanwhile, people who get their news from social media, podcasts or Youtube “generally side with the Palestinians, believe Israel is committing war crimes and genocide, and consider the issue of significant importance.”

An April report published in the The Intercept exposed an internal New York Times memo, instructing staff to limit the use of Palestine “except in very rare cases.” The memo also asked staff to restrict words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land. This was done under the guise of maintaining “objectivity”, New York Times staffers told The Intercept.

“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” The Intercept quotes a NYT newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”

These are not style guidelines. The dotted i’s and crossed t’s seem to be about deferring to Israel. What else explains their use of emotive words like “slaughtering” and “massacre” for Israelis, not Palestinians?




Decades of dehumanising Palestinians in the Western media has resulted in this genocide in Gaza. I am not calling it a genocide simply because I side with Palestine, or can see who the aggressor is, or because I saw the video of the father with his beheaded baby in Rafah.

The United Nations Human Rights (UNHR) council also says it’s a genocide. But it does not seem to matter to world leaders, the UN, the international courts, policy-makers etc. The presidential debate in the US saw both candidates clamouring over one another to prove their loyalty to Israel. But for many Arab and Muslim Americans, the issue of Gaza weighs heavily on their mind as they prepare to cast their vote, or not, in the November polls.

Silence is complicity

Tomes can, have and will be written on the media bias that favours Israel. But the uptick in coverage criticising this media bias can be put down to the way audiences consume news today. It also speaks to an age-old problem of lack of diversity in newsrooms, and one that isn’t simply about employing different races as much as it is about not having Global South perspectives.

Two BBC journalists resigned in October 2023 accusing the organisation of bias in its coverage of the issue. Jazmine Hughes, magazine editor of The New York Times, resigned in November 2023 after objections were raised to her signing a petition by the Writers against the War in Gaza. About 1,000 US based journalists signed a petition calling on Western editors to “use precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organisations including apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

An Associated Press reporter was asked by his employer to remove his name from the petition. David Velasco, editor of Artforum magazine, which published an open letter on the same issue and was signed by thousands of artists, was fired. The Los Angeles Times disallowed three staffers from reporting on Gaza if they signed a strongly worded letter criticising Israel, according to Semafor media.

Malak Silmi, a Palestinian American freelance journalist, wrote about why she quit journalism in the US in a moving piece for Al Jazeera in January this year. “I saw the journalism that I wanted to be a part of and that was possible, but learned that its standards could not be applied to my people. I saw the efforts that were put into getting the facts right and centering local Ukrainian voices. I saw what was possible for others but not for the Palestinian people.”

The double standards exhibited in the media have only widened the mistrust between it and the audience.

Legacy papers like the Wall Street Journal published a story in January suggesting links between Hamas and 12 workers of UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The paper cited Israeli evidence when it reported that 12 members participated in the attack. However, as Semafor reported, it was an unsubstantiated claim. Responding to the claims, the paper’s editor, Elena Cherney, wrote: “The fact that the Israeli claims haven’t been backed up by solid evidence doesn’t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back, or that there is a correctable error here.”

This story had significant repercussions including a freeze on $450 million in aid from several countries at a time Gaza desperately needed it. It still needs it.

While the paper stands by the story, its former standards editor, Richard Boudreaux, admitted the Wall Street Journal, “leaned too heavily on Israeli voices and did not include enough Arab perspectives.”

This is exactly how Israel’s occupation is justified, how Palestinian deaths are reported.
Gen Z is here to turn the tide

Public opinion, however, has shown an appetite for more informed balance, writes Youmans. This explains the rise of social media platforms as sources of news for younger audiences no longer consuming print or TV or cable, save shows like John Oliver or Jon Stewart, who are providing alternative viewpoints.

The younger generation has been instrumental in leading pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the US, despite harsh consequences and also harsh media portrayals describing them as dangerous. They have stood up to opposing protestors, university administrators, the police, even security guards like the one at City University of New York who told them he supports genocide and “killing all you guys.” Although he was suspended by the college, there was scant attention to this story compared to the many about a Palestinian protestor at Columbia who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” The university said it banned him from campus. Guess which of the two aforementioned was described as violent and a danger to society?

This young generation’s steadfastness is remarkable; they have found ways to bypass tactics like shadow banning. They have made lists of products to boycott, they are calling out all attempts to muzzle their speech in favour of Palestine.

Heck, the Western media even turned on Greta Thunberg after she voiced her support for Palestine. She was arrested in Copenhagen at a pro-Palestine rally last month.

This shift, however small, in news consumption is something the media has to come to terms with if it wants to regain lost credibility, especially with younger audiences. A poll by YouGov and The Economist in January found that half of Biden’s voters in 2020 said Israel was committing a genocide in Israel. Only 20 per cent said that was not the case. This is despite all the aforementioned media bias and internal memos on how to report on Gaza and the blackout on the genocide in Gaza.

The media just can’t parrot US foreign policy directives, which heavily side with Israel. They did it with Iraq under George W. Bush, swallowing the weapons of mass destruction narrative whole, without so much as asking a question. Now, it appears they are practicing embedded journalism with (and for) Israel, with one or two stories on Palestine thrown in for the appearance of fairness.

Edward Said wrote that Israel was in a state of delusion about itself. “In some ways, it is true that Israel’s early history as a pioneering new state was that of a utopian cult, sustained by people much of whose energy was in shutting out their surroundings while they lived the fantasy of a heroic and pure enterprise. How damaging and how tragic this collective delusion has been is more evident with the passing of each day. How long will the awakening take, and how much more pain will have to be felt, before the opening of eyes is fully accomplished?”

Something’s got to give. I don’t know what or when.

The writer is co-producer and host of Unpressedented, a podcast on the media landscape in Pakistan. The writer is an instructor of journalism.

PAKISTAN

The plight of female farmers

Aslam Memon | Dr Muhammad Ismail Kumbhar 

Published October 14, 2024

DAWN 


Climate change is becoming one of the most significant concerns for agricultural workers worldwide, particularly in susceptible areas like Sindh. As temperatures rise and weather patterns grow more irregular, the farming sector, which is the foundation of Sindh’s economy, suffers significantly.

Female farm workers, who account for a sizable share of the labour force, are among those most affected by these developments. There are different challenges that female agricultural labourers in Sindh confront as temperatures rise and weather patterns become more unpredictable.

Women play an important part in agriculture in Sindh, completing chores such as sowing, weeding, harvesting, and post-harvest processing. Despite their critical role, female agricultural workers frequently lack recognition, sufficient compensation, and access to resources such as land, credit, and technology.

They typically labour in tougher settings and are more susceptible to external shocks such as climate change. Rising temperatures, in particular, have exacerbated existing inequities, making people’s lives more difficult.

Extreme heat events have become more common as a result of climate change. Rising temperatures make it harder for female agricultural labourers to do physically demanding activities, especially when many work long hours in the fields under the searing heat. This causes heat-related ailments like heat exhaustion, dehydration, and heat stroke. The absence of healthcare services in rural Sindh exacerbates these health risks, giving women limited options for medical treatment.


Agricultural labour puts a huge strain on women, who are pushed to work longer hours without receiving equal compensation

Furthermore, the physical strain of working in extreme temperatures is especially difficult for pregnant women and elderly workers, putting them at a higher risk of major health issues.

Changing climate has also resulted in more frequent droughts, unpredictable rainfall, and catastrophic weather events like floods. These changes reduce crop yields, resulting in lower revenue for agricultural households. Female workers, who frequently get paid on a piece-rate basis, experience monetary vulnerability when crops fail or harvests are delayed due to unfavourable weather conditions.

As agricultural output decreases, many women face growing food insecurity, both for their families and themselves. Women are frequently the last to eat in rural households, and climate-related food shortages exacerbate this gendered inequity. With decreased agricultural output and salaries, female agricultural workers are more likely to sink deeper into poverty.

Water is crucial for agriculture, and its shortage as a result of climate change is causing anxiety in Sindh. Female workers are often responsible for collecting water for home consumption, a task that has become increasingly difficult as water sources dry up or become contaminated.

This dual responsibility — managing both agricultural work and home water needs — puts an additional demand on women’s time and energy.

Furthermore, as climate change damages agriculture, there is increasing pressure on rural populations to move in quest of better economic prospects.

In other circumstances, male family members might migrate to urban areas, leaving women to handle both agricultural and household duties on their own. This “feminisation of agriculture” can put a huge strain on female workers, who are pushed to work longer hours without receiving equal compensation or support.

Beyond that, climate-related disasters, such as flooding, can displace entire households. Displacement carries with it other issues, such as land loss, disruption of traditional livelihoods, and greater exposure to gender-based violence in temporary shelters and camps.

Addressing the issues confronting female agricultural workers in Sindh needs gender-sensitive policy interventions and actions. Female agricultural workers require better access to resources such as land, loans, and agricultural technologies to help them adapt to climate change. Government programmes should prioritise providing women with the resources and information they need to engage in climate-resilient farming techniques.

There is an urgent need to enhance access to healthcare services in rural regions, particularly among women. Furthermore, social protection plans such as crop insurance, healthcare benefits, and income assistance programmes should be tailored to include female agricultural workers, who are frequently excluded from such benefits.

Women should be trained in climate adaptation measures such as effective water use, heat-resistant crop types, and sustainable farming practices. Education initiatives aimed at rural women can also promote knowledge about the dangers of heat exposure, as well as the significance of staying hydrated and protecting their health during hot weather.

Policymakers must ensure that climate change mitigation and adaptation plans address women’s special needs and vulnerabilities. Gender-sensitive methods of disaster management, agricultural policy, and resource allocation are crucial for mitigating climate change’s disproportionate impact on women workers.

Aslam Memon is the director of, and Muhammad Ismail Kumbhar is a professor at the Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 14th, 2024

US or China?

Touqir Hussain

Published October 12, 2024 

DAWN

THE challenges that China poses to America exceed those witnessed during the Cold War, according to US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. US policies reflecting this perception have been a source of much upheaval in US-China ties. But the latest developments raise hopes that relations may finally be stabilising.

The visit to China by Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, that had capped months of his unpublicised talks with Wangi Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, and the exchange of cabinet-level officials, besides two meetings between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, reportedly resulted in clarity on some fundamental issues. The US-China competition is intense, structural, and expansive, covering the economic, security and technology fields, but the two countries seem to have reached a consensus that they must manage it responsibly.

Will the US still tell countries to choose between Beijing and Washington? US diplomacy “is not about forcing countries to choose”, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in 2022, “It’s about giving them a choice.” The position has been confirmed by the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. Speaking to the Foreign Policy magazine after Sullivan’s visit to China in late August, he said the US is not asking countries to choose. “The world does not work like this anymore,” he added. Obviously, the US has learnt its lesson after the failure of its debt-trap rhetoric and being told by country after country that forcing a choice on them would not work.

While the US was busy in this futile campaign and in building military alliances against a hypothetical military threat from China, Beijing was hard at work expanding its economic footprint globally. By the time the US woke up, it was no longer possible to force a choice on anyone. Most countries, especially in Asia, where the US-China competition would have been fierce, had made their choice: they would have strong economic ties with China but look to the US as a security provider, given their own issues with Beijing. China has an edge in geo-economics, America in geopolitics and military power.


Most countries, especially in Asia, have made their choice.

Each year, the Yusof Ishak Institute of the National University of Singapore polls opinion leaders from Asean countries. In this year’s poll, the majority of respondents, for the first time, picked China over the US when asked who Asean should align with if forced to choose. The US is seen as a distant and unreliable power.

In courting the Global South, the US has obviously fallen behind the curve. It has belatedly set up the Asia Pacific Economic Forum, which has so far shown little progress. Its Build Back Better World initiative to fund infrastructure projects would be largely led by the private sector and may not be competitive against China. Yet this initiative and the APEF give countries another option.

The globalised, integrated and interdependent post-Cold War world offers great possibilities for prosperity, allowing countries to rise economically and militarily following the devolution of global power once monopolised by two superpowers. The US-China rivalry now gives them space to de-risk overdependence on either of them. Their ambitions find common purpose with both China and America. It is an ideal situation, especially for the middle powers, to hedge against any possible threat from China yet concert with Beijing through BRICS and the SCO against US hegemony. The alliance system has become polygamous as countries multi-align and multi-network.

Pakistan’s fear of being pressured to choose between China and the US is overblown. US interests — both direct and indirect — in Pakistan would be limited but sustainable. The US is interested in Pakistan’s stability as an un­­stable Pakistan would foster militancy, en­­danger its nuclear assets, and raise the prospect of an India-Pakistan conflict. China’s economic ties with Pakistan may be helpful in so far as they contribute to Pakistan’s stability. Washington is also interested in Pakistan due to Afghanistan and counterterrorism.

Regarding indirect interests, America does not want Pakistan to completely fall in the Chinese orbit as this might lead to such cooperation with China, like militarisation of Gwadar, that would undermine the Indo-Pacific strategy. For the same reason, the US would not want Pakistan to upset the strategic balance with India.

As for Pakistan’s interests, its strategic ties with China remain vital to them but if Pakistan also had good relations with the US, both Washington and Beijing would have an incentive to keep the ties strong. But for that Pakistan needs to gain internal strength and stability to enhance its appeal to them. A weak Pakistan will have no freedom of choice.

The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct professor Georgetown University and Visiting Senior Research Fellow National University of Singapore.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2024

US lighting the match to Taiwan separation

By SHI YU | China Daily | Updated: 2024-10-14 

BALOCHISTAN

A radical shift in insurgency

Muhammad Amir Rana 

Published October 13, 2024

DAWN

THE Baloch insurgency has undergone a drastic shift, with the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) playing a key role in reshaping the movement. Meanwhile, security institutions are struggling to adapt their counter-insurgency strategies to keep pace with these changes.

Last week’s attack on Chinese nationals in Karachi by the BLA showcased its growing operational capabilities, as its suicide squad successfully targeted a heavily protected convoy of Chinese nationals. The BLA has a history of launching high-intensity terrorist attacks in Karachi, and the recent attack was its 11th out of a total of 17 — five attacks were carried out by the banned Balochistan Liberation Front and one by the banned Baloch Nationalist Army.

It was the fourth strike on Chinese interests in the city since 2012, and one of the worst since the attack on the teaching staff at the Confucius Institute of the University of Karachi. The area around Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport is part of a high-security zone. Previously, it was the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which breached airport security in 2014 and launched a terrorist onslaught inside the premises.

The Aug 26 terrorist wave on the major highways of Balochistan exposed the BLA’s intentions to take its violent campaign to another level, but it was also an indication that the group had achieved something unusual, which was contributing to its operational strength. After the Oct 6 attack in Karachi, the BLA revealed the secret behind its renewed violent strength — Zirab, the ‘intelligence and analysis’ wing of the insurgent group set up around one and a half years ago. ‘Zirab’ is a Persian word, also used in the Balochi language, meaning ‘underwater’. There is also a city by that name in Iran. The strategic choice of the name reflects the BLA’s deliberate approach to branding what it refers to as its intelligence unit.

This unit has contributed to enhancing the proscribed group’s ability to plan and execute terrorist attacks, as it did in the Karachi attack while gathering and analysing information about Chinese presence in the city. It is assumed that previously, the BLA was mainly reliant on Baloch recruits and violent Sindhi nationalist groups to launch its attacks in Karachi, but now it appears to have developed a sophisticated intelligence network in the metropolis. The group claims that Zirab spent over a year conducting intelligence work, which enabled its recent attacks on Chinese nationals.


The broad-brush approach is a key issue that has exacerbated terrorist acts.

The BLA has been actively recruiting educated Baloch youth, and following its use of female suicide bombers against security personnel, the establishment of an ‘intelligence wing’ was anticipated. The group’s indoctrination of educated Baloch youth is now enabling it to maximise its capabilities and transform the insurgent movement.

This shift is evident in the banned outfit’s rapidly evolving targets and tactics, marking an unprecedented change in Pakistan’s insurgency history. These developments can be compared to the transformation of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. The Taliban had exploited the young and had also had external support from many fronts, including Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. The BLA also has external support from some of Pakistan’s neighbours who are critical of the country.

The state’s response, unfortunately, has not kept pace with the rapidly evolving insurgency. The security institutions have invested heavily in costly security paraphernalia, developed SOPs, and employed conventional tactics. However, these measures have so far not proved to be effective in quelling the terrorists. The issue of missing persons has also reached a critical point, with its political and security costs escalating rapidly.

External support for the insurgency can be instrumental in enhancing its operational capabilities, but the insurgents derive power for their political and ideological arguments from misplaced state policies, which have failed to resolve the crisis in Balochistan. The state’s counter-insurgency strategy hasn’t produced the desired results and is only increasing the cost of war. It is true that the strategy has a political component but that has been hijacked by certain spoilers of peace in Balochistan. Some of them include contractors, there are some in politics and some can even be found in security institutions. Their nexus has become a significant hurdle in the resolution of the conflict.

State institutions heavily rely on these elements to shape their political policies. These elements may oppose dialogue with the Baloch youth, civil society, and the genuine political leadership. They label all legitimate Baloch representatives as insurgents. This broad-brush approach is a key issue that has exacerbated the insurgency in the province.

State institutions only use the term ‘dialogue’ in certain contexts, especially when it comes to religious groups, whether it is the TTP or the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan. The reason is evident: religion remains a crucial ingredient in the crafting of nationhood, and state institutions firmly believe that religious groups cannot go to the extent of breaking the country. Though the TTP is out to disprove this concept through its actions, the state institutions have yet to review this stance.

State institutions must re-evaluate their political and strategic concepts. They must shift towards a belief that dialogue is more viable with marginalised communities and that it can trigger a healing process. However, this shift also requires the power elite to increase the pool of resource beneficiaries and trust the marginalised.

The state may need a fourfold strategy to counter the Balochistan insurgency effectively. The first two components of this strategy should focus on countering operations and enhancing analysis capabilities. Additionally, the state should work to develop mechanisms with its neighbours, Afghanistan and Iran, to discourage their support for those carrying out terrorist attacks. These countries will undoubtedly have their own demands, which should be brought into the public domain for open discussion. The well-known and oft-proposed political strategy suggests finding a viable resolution for the missing persons issue and immediately initiating a multilayered dialogue with Baloch society.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2024

THE DARK HEART OF ZIONISM

As Israel conducts a genocide in Palestine, bombs Lebanon, Yemen and Syria and seeks to pull Iran into a wider war, the Middle East teeters at the brink of what could potentially morph into a new world war.

Ejaz Haider 

Published October 13, 2024 

EOS/DAWN


“Listen up — there’s no war that will end all wars…War is a perfect, self-contained being.” — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore


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“On the hill we had been at the start of something: of a new era in which conflict surges, shifts or fades but doesn’t end, in which the most you can hope for is not peace, or the arrival of a better age, but only to remain safe as long as possible…The outpost was the beginning. Its end was still the beginning…The Pumpkin is gone, but nothing is over.”

— Matti Friedman, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War

PREAMBLE

Iran’s missile attack at three military targets in Israel on the night of October 1, 2024 has brought the Middle East close to vertical escalation. Iran’s attack was a response to Israel’s targeted killing of the Chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and multiple assassinations of Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, including the killing of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

For its part, Israel has promised a punishing response at a time and place of its choosing. What that response might be is outside the scope of this article. What I seek to do here is to get to the basic problem that has brought the region to a major violence spiral with the potential to impact global geopolitics. That problem, in one word, is Zionism. It began even before the United Nations’ Partition Plan. Without getting rid of that plague, Middle East’s generational war will surge, shift or fade but never end. It’s an existential war with many battles at multiple fronts.

HOW DID THE REGION GET HERE?

Most Western news, commentary and analyses will have everyone believe that this war and Israel’s response began on October 7, 2023 with Hamas breaching Gaza’s “iron wall” and attacking Israeli military bases and Kibbutzim close to Gaza. What Israel has since done, goes the line, is mere self-defence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While violence had begun before the British left Palestine, let’s take the Nakba [catastrophe], the expulsion of Palestinians from their land in May 1948, as the starting point. Britain gave up its mandate on May 15 and the war began.


As Israel conducts a genocide in Palestine, bombs Lebanon, Yemen and Syria and seeks to pull Iran into a wider war, the Middle East teeters at the brink of what could potentially morph into a new world war. But the issue at the heart of this dangerous conflagration is neither security nor self-defence but the contradictions in Israel’s founding political ideology

Some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, at the time nearly half of Mandatory Palestine’s Arab population, were expelled from their homes by Zionist terrorist organisations such as Haganah and Irgun, which then became the Israeli Defence Forces by the end of May. More than 15,000 were killed as part of ethnic cleansing. During this Zionist campaign, up to 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed.

Further, as Israeli historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar show in a paper published online on September 19, 2022, titled, ‘Cast Thy Bread: Israeli Biological Warfare During the 1948 War’, Haganah’s science corps (known by its Hebrew initials HEMED) was instrumental in poisoning village wells in an operation code-named ‘Cast Thy Bread.’ This programme was fully supported by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, a Russian Jew trained as a biochemist. Ben-Gurion was to become Israel’s first prime minister while Weizmann became Israel’s first president.

In an essay reviewing Tom Segev’s biography of Ben-Gurion, and titled ’From ‘Virtuous Boy’ to Murderous Fanatic: David Ben-Gurion and the Palestinians’, Dr Jeremy Salt writes: “Ben-Gurion and the man he had grown to despise, Chaim Weizmann, were delighted at the spectacle of deserted villages and towns and rich agricultural farmland. It was all theirs now. Hundreds of villages were destroyed, not as the unavoidable consequence of war but because the Palestinians could not come back to what had been destroyed.”

That this policy of expelling and exterminating the Palestinians was — and remains — a deliberate one is clear from statements by various Zionist leaders, including Ben-Gurion himself. They knew then and they know now that they have stolen a people’s land. As Morris noted in his book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Ben-Gurion understood clearly that Arabs would not accept this theft:

“Years later, after the establishment of Israel, [Ben-Gurion] expatiated on the Arab perspective in a conversation with the Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann: ‘I don’t understand your optimism… Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural…We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?’”

Ben-Gurion is not the only one. Yitzhak Shamir, a former terrorist and later Israel’s prime minister, wrote a letter to the king of Morocco and told His Majesty — quoted by Mohamed Heikal in Illusions of Triumph: An Arab View of the Gulf War — that “We [Israelis] understand their dreams very well, but unfortunately here we have a conflict between two dreams… we agree to the Palestinians having a dream, but they should understand that it is impossible.”

There’s absolute clarity here about the expansionist and exclusionary Zionist approach. There can never be a sovereign Palestinian state. In the best possible scenario, to quote Ami Ayalon, former admiral and later head of the Shabak (intelligence service known as Shin Bet), “Peace was more important than absolute historical justice.”


While violence had begun before the British left Palestine, let’s take the Nakba [catastrophe], the expulsion of Palestinians from their land in May 1948, as the starting point. Britain gave up its mandate on May 15 and the war began. Some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, at the time nearly half of Mandatory Palestine’s Arab population, were expelled from their homes by Zionist terrorist organisations. More than 15,000 were killed as part of ethnic cleansing.

The line, from Ayalon’s 2020 memoir, Friendly Fire: How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy, refers to his efforts to find a viable peace framework in collaboration with Palestinian philosopher and academic Sari Nusseibeh, who was then president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem and Arafat’s top man in Jerusalem before he fell out with Arafat. That was the quid for the quo.

Ayalon’s contradistinction between peace and historical justice in and of itself refers to two facts that inform even peace-seeking Zionists: that historical justice abhors the existence in Palestine of a settler-colonial project, but that Israel being a “reality”, there must be some peace framework which can allow Israel and the Palestinians to live together by allowing the latter agency over their affairs, something the Oslo Agreements failed to do.

Ayalon is also one of those Israelis who believes, as he told Le Monde in an interview on January 24, 2024, “If we refuse peace, what awaits us will be even more violent than October 7.” Recently, as noted by Professor Joseph Massad in an op-ed for Middle East Eye, Ayalon told the Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv: “As far as the Palestinians are concerned, they lost their land, which is why when people ask me, what would you do if you were Palestinian? I say that if someone came and stole my land, the land of Israel, I would fight him without limits.”

Possibly the best account of the contradiction at the heart of Zionism, which Times of Israel in an article called “defining”, comes through in a speech by Moshe Dayan in April 1956 at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, barely a mile away from Gaza. Dayan was then the chief of the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF). Roi Rutenberg (or Rothberg as some writings name him) was a young officer and in charge of the Kibbutz’s security. He was captured and killed by a group of Palestinians and Egyptians. Dayan spoke at his funeral:

“Yesterday with daybreak, Roi was murdered…Let us not hurl blame at the murderers. Why should we complain of their hatred for us? Eight years have they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and seen, with their own eyes, how we have made a homeland of the soil and the villages where they and their forebears once dwelt.”

And what was the lesson Dayan drew from this? That this historical injustice must be reversed? No. And that’s where we constantly bump into the contradiction that lies at the dark heart of Zionism. Dayan went on to speak of “the destiny of our generation in its full cruelty”, which requires that “if the hope of our destruction is to perish, we must be, morning and evening, armed and ready.

“A generation of settlement are we, and without the steel helmet and the maw of the cannon, we shall not plant a tree, nor build a house…and without the barbed wire fence and the machine gun, we shall not pave a path nor drill for water…The gates of Gaza were too heavy for [Roi’s] shoulders, and they crushed him.”

Sixty-seven years later, the gates of Gaza and its “iron wall” — the reference to Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s essay, ‘The Iron Wall’ — became too heavy for another set of Roi Rutenbergs, crumbling under the weight and demand of historical justice. The steel helmet and the maw of the cannon, now replaced by terrifying Israeli air power and the munitions it can deliver, continue to fail in the mission of subjugating the Palestinians.

As I have noted in this space before, even Jabotinsky understood this contradiction. Political paterfamilias of right-wing Israeli political party Likud and supreme commander of the terrorist group Irgun, Jabotinsky had no empathy for the Palestinians but, as a pragmatist, was more forthright and unapologetic about “Zionist colonisation.”

Jews must be the majority, he contended; there must be an “iron wall” separating Jews from Arabs and “justice” must be enforced — once the wall has been built and the Jews are strong, Arabs would come and sue for peace and accept the terms of co-existence, as dictated by the Jewish state.

Again, like Dayan, he thought the wall wouldn’t collapse under the weight of injustice. Like Dayan he was wrong. But where both of them were right was in the thinking that, without repression, Dayan’s steel helmets and canons, Israelis “shall not pave a path nor drill for water.” And that brings us to the red-herring called the “two-state solution.”

Women and children being ‘deported’ from the Palestinian village of Tantura, three weeks after the Israeli takeover in 1948: it is clear from statements by various Zionist leaders that this policy of expelling and exterminating the Palestinians was, and remains, a deliberate one | Benno Rothenberg Collection



TWO-STATE SOLUTION WAS DEAD ON ARRIVAL

Statehood in international law is informed by much debate. Scholars of international law have noted that, while legality and laws require a clear explication and codification of norms and concepts in legal instruments, such codification as a prerequisite for statehood escapes objectivity.

This is important for our present purpose, unpacking Zionism and the violence that inheres in it. Jewish populations from Europe and North America (later the Middle East too) declared themselves a Jewish nation and came to Palestine in multiple batches to create a Jewish state: a nation of colonial settlers coming to claim a state on the basis of their ancient exile from Canaan. But there already existed a nation in Palestine, the Palestinians. The Jews, however, got a state for themselves on the basis of the United Nations’ acceptance of their “right” to have a state.

While the UN also accepted the right of the Palestinians to have a state alongside the Jewish state, the Palestinians were not prepared to accept an imperial decision that flowed from and was the expression of post-World War II power relationships and the security architecture. This was true of the Jews too. They had not come to Canaan to share the land with the Palestinians. It was theirs. The Bible had promised the “chosen people” the Holy Land.

That led to armed conflict and the Nakba. The Jews got a state under the UN resolution and then expanded it, first in 1948 and then 1967 through wars. After 1967, they began building settlements on occupied Palestinian land, the territory demarcated by the UN for a Palestinian state. The Oslo Agreements, which Palestinian academic Edward Said described as “a Palestinian Versailles”, gave the Palestinians a mere 22 percent of the land they were entitled to under the UN scheme.

Even that truncated territory was to be divided into Areas A, B and C. As Yitzhak Rabin said in his October 5, 1995 speech to the Knesset, this was not a sovereign arrangement, not a “state”: “We would like this [Palestinian Municipal Authority (PA)] to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

This was to be an administrative arrangement for peace, not a relationship between two sovereign entities.

While debates on the issue of statehood continue to inform international law and comparative politics, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 is often cited as the criteria for statehood, and the Convention now has a place in customary international law. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention says “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications — a permanent population, a defined territory, government and capacity to enter into relations with other states.” These are essentially the attributes of sovereignty.

Article 3 of the Montevideo Convention also declares that statehood is not contingent upon recognition by other states. This is also consistent with the current practice of recognition.

This argument essentially flows from the “declarative” school. In contrast, the “constitutive” school stipulates that a state only becomes a state when it is recognised by other states — ie once the Montevideo criteria are met in fact, those facts should be recognised by other states. Since there are no accepted global criteria to determine statehood and recognition becomes a matter of political and geopolitical interests, the constitutive criterion becomes untenable in practice.

This is an important point with reference to recognition of a Palestinian state for two reasons. One, in the absence of a universal standard, individual states can decide the issue of recognition; two, while many states have recognised Palestine as a state, many others, notably the United States and Israel, have refused to do so. This refusal is of course in violation both of the UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) as well as the spirit of the Oslo Agreements. Yet, it brings into sharp salience the geopolitical factors at play.

Among other reasons, the refusal by the US and Israel to accept Palestinian statehood is related to the concept of self-defence. If Palestine is accepted as a state, then it must exercise its right to self-defence as a sovereign state, a right also enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Palestine’s right to self-defence would effectively deprive Israel and its Zionist supporters of the narrative that brands the Palestinian armed resistance as “terrorism”, a characterisation meant to free Israelis of the moral and legal burden of perpetrating and perpetuating violence against them and to present the Palestinians as barbarians, anti-Semites and human animals.

The narrative of terrorism is not just a matter of semantics. Nor is it just a cognitive exercise. It’s about ascribing meanings to words in a particular setting and the effects they can create. They denote power relationships and are about exercising control and power.

Joseph Massad notes in his 2006 book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: “The Israelis seem to believe that the only way Palestinians can repudiate terrorism is by internalising it as their identity first…If Palestinians refuse the designation as one that is self-chosen, then they will have the same objective power as the Israelis in identifying who the real terrorist is.”

Palestinians sit on the rubble of their home after an Israeli attack in Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip on April 18, 2024: if Israel cannot find peace with the Palestinians, Israel won’t find peace | Reuters



IF NOT TWO-STATE THEN WHAT?

During a recent conference abroad, I had this discussion with a former foreign minister of Pakistan. He said that Israel would never accept a one-state solution. He was right. But the issue is not about Israel’s acceptance. Israel, as noted above, has not accepted a two-state solution either, a Palestinian state which has the attributes of a state, as understood and accepted by International Law.

The core point today, as it was when Zionism’s father Theodore Herzl and others before him spoke of Zionism and the imperial powers helped them achieve that dream, is that Zionism is a settler-colonial project, bio-imperlialism, if you will, to put a variation on Michel Foucault’s term that seeks to control and subjugate the bodies and lives of Palestinians. The issue at the heart of all the violence is not Judaism but Zionism.

There were Arab and Iberian Jews (Mizrahi and Sephardi) in Arab lands much before the imperial powers decided to resolve Europe’s Jewish problem by foisting it on the Palestinians. The most important point that is constantly evaded is simple: peace and Zionism do not go together. Peace requires syncretism and assimilation; Zionism, to go back to Dayan’s words, “steel helmet and maw of the cannon.”

Just days ago I heard a professor on Al Jazeera argue that, while the French, despite the pieds noirs [Europeans born in French-ruled Algeria], could go back to France, Israelis cannot and therefore it is politically and morally incorrect to take that approach. The argument seems to ignore that Israelis are quite candid in suggesting that the Palestinians should leave and be subsumed in the various Arab states. But even leaving that aside, the professor’s argument did not offer statistics on how many Israelis hold dual nationality and how Israel has populated the illegal settlements through state incentives.

The argument for one state is not about pushing the Jews out of Palestine but establishing a normal, democratic state without the racist and supremacist toxicity of Zionism. It is a measure of entrenched power interests that a solution that would be considered perfectly normal in any other setting should become a non-starter in the context of a Jewish state that also claims to be a democracy but refuses to grant equal citizenship rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Even before the 2018 basic law defining Israel as a Jewish nation-state, Palestinian citizens of Israel — distinct from Palestinians in Occupied Territories — have been agitating the point about equal citizenship. The second intifada began in 2000 after demonstrations broke out in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque. About a month after that visit, during one of the protests, Israeli police opened fire and killed 13 Palestinian boys. Twelve of the killed were Israeli citizens.

Israel set up a Commission under Justice Theodor Or to inquire into what had happened. Despite obvious biases, the Or Commission could not evade certain facts, such as discrimination against Arab Israelis, noting that “Arab citizens live in a reality in which they are discriminated against” by the state.

The task of implementing the recommendations of the Or Commission was given to an inter-ministerial committee headed by justice minister Yosef Lapid. As Professor Mahmood Mamdani notes in his book Neither Settler Nor Native: “The refusal to take seriously the Or Commission’s seemingly modest proposal that Israel actually do what it claims it does — treat Jewish and Palestinian citizens equally — demonstrates just how radical that idea really is.

“Equal citizenship threatens fundamentally the Zionist foundation of the state of Israel. A state in which non-Jews have the same rights as Jews would still be a home for Jews, even a majority population of Jews. But it would not be a Jewish state.”

Once again, we are thrown back to the central problem: Zionism. The only solution to that problem, as noted by multiple discerning scholars and observers, including the Jewish ones: de-Zionisation. And de-Zionisation, as Mamdani notes, has to be along the lines of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Everything else, on the pretext of the sublime and high diplomacy, is just a lie, regardless of which high pedestal it might be mouthed from.

How scared the Israelis are of that model is evidenced by what Ayalon writes in his memoir: [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s] explanation for his urgency sounded like something straight from a People’s Voice pamphlet: “If the day comes when the two- state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

EPILOGUE

Israel has tried many strategies. It has fought wars, tried to keep the Palestinians under the jackboot, discriminated against them, subjected them to daily humiliations, killed them, hampered innocent movement, destroyed their properties, businesses and dreams, arrested, tortured and jailed them, put collaborators in their midst, reached out to criminal Middle East rulers to prescind the Palestinians from the equation of a grand, overarching peace. None of that has worked.

As Ayalon has noted, if Israel cannot find peace with the Palestinians, Israel won’t find peace. The steel helmet and the maw of the cannon can only go this far and no more. Violence cannot beget deterrence in a generational, attritional war.

With each iteration, even when losing in statistical terms, the resistance gets stronger and learns. Technology has a way of getting cheaper through commodification and lateral diffusion. Every round, instead of deterrence, steels the resolve of the resistance to come back and challenge the Zionist oppression. This is not a linear war. This war is a perfect, self-contained being.

This is what the late Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad El-Sarraj meant when he told Ami Ayelon at a conference in London, “In our mutual experience of collective trauma, we are at long last equals.” But unlike Jabotinsky and Dayan, Shamir, Begin, Sharon and now Netanyahu, Ami Ayalon got it right:

“The more I thought about it, however, the more I had to acknowledge that we Israelis had never felt more defeated. How could we call ourselves winners if we were afraid to board a bus or sit in a bar? I can’t say how long I remained lost in thought but, in that interlude, all my assumptions of war crumbled.”

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 13th, 2024

 

Study Highlights Potential and Challenges of Onboard Carbon Capture

Report used Stena's MR tanker as the basis saying the class could lead industry adoption (Stena Bulk)

Published Oct 10, 2024 5:35 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

An engineering study exploring the potential for the use of carbon capture aboard vessels highlights the feasibility of the technology both for retrofits and newbuilds demonstrating that it can be a key step in the efforts to reach the IMO’s decarbonization goals. The results showed despite the high current costs of the technology it could significantly extend the economic life of a vessel while also achieving meaningful reductions in CO2 emissions with a small fuel penalty.

The study was launched 18 months ago as a cooperation between the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD), and Stena Bulk together with a consortium of the world’s leading maritime organizations. The goal was to identify the potential for using carbon capture as well as practical barriers, such as port readiness, which need to be addressed before OCCS can be widely adopted across the maritime industry.

“OCCS has gained traction in recent years as a feasible approach to meet the 2023 IMO revised GHG emissions reduction targets,” said Professor Lynn Loo, CEO of GCMD. “However, its adoption faces numerous hurdles, including the need to balance the tension between maximizing CO2 capture rates while maintaining commercially acceptable CapEx and OpEx.”

For the engineering study, they selected a medium range tanker highlighting that it is a common class of vessel with 1,700 in operation in the 40,000 to 50,000 dwt range. However, they note that it is not the most efficient segment but if successful with the technology it could lead to broader adoption in the industry.

Working with Stena Bulk they studied the Stena Impero (49,683 dwt), a modern product tanker built in 2018. The vessel uses a common two-stroke MAN diesel engine for propulsion and is currently fitted with an exhaust scrubber.

The engineering project analyzed the design and cost implications of retrofitting a carbon capture system on the vessel. It found that the technology could reduce the vessel’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by as much as 20 percent per year, with a fuel consumption penalty of just under 10 percent.? 

The cost of building and installing the full system on the Stena Impero was estimated at $13.6 million, with an abatement cost of avoided CO2 for the first-of-a-kind prototype evaluated at $769/ton CO2. However, the consortium believes that further research and development will drive down costs, making OCCS increasingly viable for the shipping industry. 

With the use of OCCS technology, the report concludes that the Stena Impero could maintain its CII rating of “C and better” for an additional nine years. The vessel would be able to remain in compliance until the end of its economic life, assuming a CII reduction factor of two percent from 2027 onwards.

Dr. Michael Traver, head of OGCI’s Transport Workstream called the study a “major milestone in understanding the potential of using carbon capture technology.” The technical feasibility demonstrated in the project he said “is highly encouraging.”

The study also looked at incorporating OCCS on newbuild vessels, with the findings that improvements to capture rate and fuel penalty may be achieved using more efficient engines, heat pumps, and alternative solvents.  

“For OCCS systems to be practical, the industry needs to manage captured CO2 effectively. To this end, GCMD has previously completed a study to define the operational envelope for offloading onboard captured CO2, contributing to the whole-of-system approach to emissions reduction via carbon capture,” commented Professor Loo.

The study provides quantitative insights on managing the trade-offs between the actual cost of operating OCCS and its emissions reduction potential. It also highlights that many challenges remain to be addressed.  This includes the lack of a defined regulatory framework and operational challenges include recurring additional costs due to fuel penalty, amine solvent replenishment, manpower, maintenance, and offloading services.  

The study points out that offloading captured CO2 is in its nascency, with a lack of national and port policies for accounting for captured CO2 and its final deposition. There is also a lack of infrastructure at ports to support offloading and storage.  The results are detailed in a 139-page report released by GCMD.

They are calling for collaboration and support from stakeholders across the value chain needed to develop offloading infrastructure and onshore storage. Logistical and policy support for permanent sequestration or utilization of the offloaded CO2 they conclude will also be necessary to encourage the adoption of OCCS solutions.