Seeing the enemies as inhuman

Less than six months before the outbreak of the First World War, my grandmother, Margaret Fisk, gave my father William a 360-page book of imperial adventure, Tom Graham VC: A Story of the Afghan War. "Presented to Willie by his Mother," she wrote in thick pencil inside the front cover. "Willie" would have been almost 15 years old.

Only after my father's death in 1992 did I inherit this book, with its handsome, engraved hardboard cover embossed with a British Victoria Cross, and only last month did I read the book.

An adventure by William Johnston and published in 1900, it tells the story of the son of a British mine-owner who grows up in the northern English port of Seaton and, forced to leave school and become an apprentice clerk because of his father's sudden impoverishment, joins the British Army underage.

Tom Graham is posted to a British unit in County Cork in the south-west of Ireland - he even kisses the Blarney stone - and then travels to India and to the Second Afghan War where he is gazetted a Second Lieutenant in a Highland regiment.

As he stands at his father's grave in the local churchyard before leaving for the army, Tom vows that "he would lead a pure, clean and upright life". The story is typical of my father's generation, a rip-roaring, racist story of British heroism and Muslim savagery.

The real-life murder of the British embassy staff in Kabul in 1879 provoked a British military response and Tom Graham marches into Afghanistan with his regiment. Within days, Tom is driving his bayonet "up to the nozzle" into the chest of an Afghan, a "swarthy giant, his eyes glaring with hate".

In the Kurrum Valley, Graham fights off "infuriated tribesmen, drunk with lust and plunder". The author notes that whenever British troops fell into Afghan hands, "their bodies were dreadfully mutilated and dishonoured by those fiends in human form". Afghans are a "villainous" lot at one point in the text, "rascals" at another and, of course, "fiends in human form".

The text is not only racist but also anti-Islamic. "Boy readers," the author pontificates, "may not know that it was the sole object of every Afghan engaged in the war of 1878-80 to cut to pieces every heretic he could come across. The more pieces cut out of the unfortunate Britisher the higher his summit of bliss in Paradise."

After Graham is wounded in Kabul, the Afghans - in the words of his Irish-born army doctor - have become "murtherin villains, the black niggers". A British artillery officer urges his men to fire at close-packed Afghan tribesmen with the assurance that his cannon fire "will scatter the flies".

It's not difficult to see how easily my father's world of "pure, clean and upright" Britons bestialized its enemies. Though there are a few references to the "boldness" of Afghan tribesmen, no attempt is made to explain their actions. The notion that Afghans do not want foreigners invading and occupying their country does not exist in the story.

But, of course, history is not kind to latter-day liberals. For I have in my library another book of the period, a sensitive and thoughtful biography of Henry Mortimer Durand - the man who drew the "Durand Line" between Afghanistan and the British Raj - which includes a replica of an original letter sent by the real-life Durand to his biographer's sister.

On 12 December 1879, he recalls, "Two Squadrons of the 9th Lancers were ordered to charge a large force of Afghans in the hope of saving our guns. The charge failed, and some of our dead were afterwards found dreadfully mutilated by Afghan knives... I saw it all."

The problem is clear. The Afghans really did chop bits off young Englishmen - later historical works would make it quite clear what bits these authors were talking about - just as Iraqis kicked the head off an American mercenary in Fallujah on March 30 this year and hanged his burned remains, along with those of a colleague, from the girder of an old British railway bridge over the Euphrates river.

Our enemies are savages. So are we. First we learn to hate our enemies and bestialize them - and then we bellow our wrath and take our revenge when our enemies oblige us by behaving in exactly the way we expect them to. And then we torture them and humiliate them.

The present-day equivalent of Tom Graham VC is Hollywood, with its poisonous, racist portrayal of Arabs and Muslims. True to form, our enemies turned out, on September 11, 2001, to be as terrible as our movies made them out to be. One day, some serious research might be conducted into how far the pilot killers modelled themselves on Hollywood's version of their ruthlessness.

But it's not difficult to see how the American thugs at the Abu Ghraib prison acquired their cruelty. Born-again Christians who no doubt publicly wished to be seen upholding a "pure, clean and upright life" treated the Iraqis as if they were "fiends in human form", as "fanatics", as "flies".

Hadn't the US proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, described America's enemies as "dead-enders", "die-hards", "terrorists"? When the young woman involved in this torture expressed her surprise at all the fuss, I immediately understood why.

Not because what she did was routine - though it clearly was - but because that is how she was told to treat these Iraqi prisoners.Hadn't they been killing American soldiers, setting off car bombs, murdering schoolchildren? Hollywood turned into reality.

Now maybe you don't think that entertainment influences the young, that Tom Graham VC could no more influence a young Englishman than Hollywood could bend the mind of the American guards at Abu Ghraib.

Well, you would be wrong. For Bill Fisk - the "Willie" of that dedication almost a century ago - was also taken from school in a northern English seaport because his father Edward could no longer support him.

He was apprenticed to a clerk, in Birkenhead. In the few notes he left before his death, Bill recalled that he tried to join the British Army underage; he travelled to Fulwood Barracks in Preston to join the Royal Field Artillery on August 15, 1914, 11 days after the start of the First World War and almost exactly six months after his mother had given him Tom Graham.

Successful in enlisting two years later, Bill Fisk, too, was sent to a British battalion in County Cork. I even have a pale sepia snapshot of him then, kissing the Blarney stone.

Two years later, in France, my father was gazetted a Second Lieutenant in the King's Liverpool Regiment. Was he not consciously following the life of the fictional Tom Graham?

No, Bill Fisk didn't torture prisoners - at the end of the First World War, with great nobility, he refused to command a firing party ordered to execute an Australian soldier for murder. But don't tell me we aren't conditioned by what we read and what we see as a child. All his life, Bill Fisk talked about "niggers", demeaned the Irish and talked about the "Yellow Peril" - the Chinese - as the world's greatest danger. He was a man of the Victorian age. I fear the American torturers in Iraq are creatures of our century. For if you are taught to despise your enemy as inhuman, you will - if you get the chance - cease to be a human yourself. - (c) The Independent

Can't find Osama? Look for Che's ghost

Without the usual fanfare, the United States recently added two powerful Maoist groups in India to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. On the same day, on April 30, it also named two Sikh extremist bodies as new entrants to its hall of ill-repute. What does this move portend for India and indeed for the rest of South Asia?

The two Maoist groups banned by the US are the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) operating in Bihar and Jharkhand and the Peoples' War Group (PWG). The latter's writ runs, often more widely than the Indian government's, in five states that adjoin the Dandakaranya forest region - Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Orissa.

The US Army is already actively assisting the Nepal government in its war against Nepali Maoist insurgents. The move, among its other uses, has enabled unprecedented American military activity close to India's borders and right up to China's soft underbelly in Tibet.

Engagement with Maoist rebels and other left-wing guerillas is not new to the GIs. It was once their staple ideological pursuit when anti-communism drove the American side of the Cold War.

But it took a backseat when the world's most powerful military machine turned on its creation, the Islamic militants. Once their favourite allies, they became America's main quarry.

Something else has been cooking. In the dense forests of India's northeastern Mizoram state, Indian, Nepali and American troops are training hard for jungle warfare, and the picture becomes a little clearer. It is a tripartite crackdown on left-wing extremists.

Just last month, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani travelled in a rath, a make-believe mythical Hindu chariot placed over a Japanese truck, first from north to south and then from east to west across the country to whip up support for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's election campaign.

On the first leg of the journey he faced the threat of the PWG, which is known to take lethal aim at local politicians and police. On the west-to-east journey, Mr Advani traversed vast stretches controlled by the Maoists in Bihar and Jharkhand.

If we believe in Mr Vajpayee's dream of building a string of national highways to link up the country more securely, the project would have to roughly follow the two paths that Mr Advani took for his journey.

Any highway along the two corridors will serve two strategic purposes: one, it will open the hitherto impenetrable leftist terrain to the security forces, and, two, it would also expose the traditionally loyal Maoist cadres to the lure of lucre.

As business prospects burgeon in these areas, fuelled by the gas pipelines that are proposed to accompany the highways, prospects of development in these chronically neglected areas will be brighter.

The project has thus intensified global strategic interest in the way India handles its Maoist challenge. And since the left-wing insurgents draw sustenance from the hidebound caste system that exploits the tribespeople and the Dalits, any military engagement would lead to a bloodbath as is happening in Nepal. But this is a cost that the Indian establishment appears ready to meet.

Another reason for speeding up the anti-Maoist campaign stems from the rise of right-wing Hindu groups who have taken power in India. Their anti-communism is congenital as is their suspicion of the minorities, primarily the Muslims and Christians. However, it is not so much the religious revivalist wing of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that views the communists as a prime threat but the more cosmopolitan faction of the party.

Among the leading BJP ideologues is journalist-turned-politician Arun Shourie who was among the first to liken the threat from Osama bin Laden's terrorism to what he saw as the menace from the cult of Che Guevara. This is what Mr Shourie, a former World Bank official, wrote on December 12, 2001, just a day before the attack on the Indian parliament.

"There is no kind way to prosecute a war; war is death and destruction, it is blood and gore. Those who recoil from what war entails should mobilize the people at the first sign of extremist ideology so that the terrorists are forestalled, and the state does not ultimately have to move against them - in fact, the kind who shout the loudest once war begins are the very kind who in the preceding years have lent a verisimilitude of legitimacy to the fabrications of such groups," he wrote in the widely read newspaper, The Indian Express.

In an attack on the liberal school of politics, Mr Shourie said it was necessary to jettison political correctness. "Few things have prevented the West from waking up in time to the dangers that Islamic terrorism today constitutes for it as notions of what is politically correct.

The verbal terrorism by which notions of what is correct and what is not, the dominant intellectual group in India - the leftists - has enforced the norms (that have) disabled the ruling groups, and, through them, the country, to the point of paralysis.

Standing up to that verbal terrorism, liberating discourse from those notions is the first requisite of fighting the war against terrorism in India." The determination with which the US has heeded Mr Shourie's call, even if it is three years after it was made, could signal the beginning of a big chapter in Indo-American cooperation.

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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is among dozens of Hindu preachers who literally have Indian politicians eat out of their hands. Come election time and politicians are making a beeline for the Afro-haired Sathya Sai Baba, or the pleasant talking Guru Ma Ji, or some such mystic who predicts their future by reading their palms, or looking into their eyes or peeping into their minds with closed eyes. It's a billion dollar industry.

So influential is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar that last Friday US President George Bush received him in the Oval Office at the White House. "I am very glad you are here. Please keep us in your prayers," Mr Bush was quoted by The Times of India as saying to the seer. Let's see what tidings the Hindu guru brings for the beleaguered American president as the war on terrorism recoils on his political future.

Italian traveller on 35,000-km expedition

Italian traveller 74-year-old Piero Ciacchella says he enjoys being footloose and fancy-free. Currently, he is on an expedition which began in Venice on March 22 and would end in Melbourne in August. Driving a specially-designed vehicle, he will cover at least 35,000 kilometres.

"In 1952, I hitchhiked to the White Sea as a student. I travelled alone, braving the perils of the journey and feasting my eyes on the wonderful scenery at the same time. The trip quickened my curiosity about the world," the intrepid traveller, who was in Karachi a few days back, recalls.

Born in Genoa in 1930, Mr Ciacchella started his career as a sales engineer and rose to become president of a company which dealt in semiconductor devices. "As a corporate executive, I naturally made frequent business trips to different parts of the world. But such trips do not allow one to go sightseeing. After my retirement, I packed my bags and became a full-time traveller," he says.

In 2000, Mr Ciacchella travelled 19,000 kilometres covering Libya, Egypt and Jordan. The second expedition, which lasted 122 days, was undertaken in 2001 during which he covered 25,000 kilometres from Italy to Mongolia. The third expedition, which began in 2002, covered the American continent from Alaska to Argentina.

"Since I travel alone, I have to do everything myself. I drive, prepare the food, check out maps, go over weather reports, write articles about my travelling experiences and post them on a website, and repair punctured tyres if need be. I generally cover 300 kilometres a day," he explains.

While Mr Ciacchella is assisted by the Italian ministry of foreign affairs and is in regular communication with his relatives and well-wishers over a satellite phone, he says he is mindful of the hazards a traveller has to face in a post-9/11 world.

"I have figured out that it is dangerous to travel at night. I therefore set out in the morning and travel till 3pm. I start to look for a place to spend the night before the sunset.

I avoid isolated places and break my journey near petrol pumps, restaurants and police stations. I offer espressos to locals and try to befriend them. I prefer small towns to big cities, and enjoy spending leisurely evenings in idle chit-chat," he says.

Mr Ciacchella says he is in love with deserts. "At night there is absolute silence in the deserts. Since I have been to all the major deserts of the world, I can say that, as a rule, the inhabitants are vastly different from towns people. I once spent a couple of days with a bedouin in a Jordanian desert.

At the end of the stay, I asked him to tell me if he needed anything. He said he did. I thought to myself that I was about to receive the bedouin's invoices for his hospitality. Instead, he asked me to inform him about my safe arrival in the next town as soon as I got there. I was really touched by his good- hearted ness," he says.

Living in Defence

Defence is supposed to be the best place to live in the city, or at least that's what those who live there are reminded ad nauseam day in, day out. Call up a real estate agent and he will tell you that prices for property in DHA are skyrocketing.

Among the various reasons for this sharp increase in prices is a rise in remittances from Pakistanis overseas, an inflow of investment into the country after 9/11, and the lack of suitable alternatives offering a reasonably high rate of return.

Besides, there is the grand Creek City housing project, which the DHA, through its contractor, has already begun constructing. In fact, those who go for a drive to Devil's Point, past the DHA Creek Club, the Carlton Hotel and the DHA Golf Club will find that the construction area has taken into its fold a public road.

Getting permission to do this should have been no problem, especially since the party undertaking the construction project and the one which authorizes that a public thoroughfare can be closed off to the public happen to be the same.

But let's not forget that only a few hundred people were chosen to bid for this lavish housing project - with two bedroom apartments sold for Rs6 million and larger penthouses for upwards of a crore. But not everybody has it so good, even if they happen to live in Defence.

For instance, let's take the example of stray dogs. Defence's vast expanses, especially in Phases VI, VII and VIII lend themselves to ideal breeding grounds for a rapidly burgeoning stray dog population.

The rise in numbers seems to have reached epidemic proportions now and most residents of these phases will vouch for the fact that not a single night goes by without disturbance from the dogs barking outside their windows, as if the plague descended on them.

This is not all. The DHA did have the good sense to paste large notices in Urdu on the sides of empty plots warning local residents not to throw garbage, but it seems most residents of this 'posh' area choose to ignore this piece of good advice and treat all empty plots in their neighbourhood as giant trash cans.

Then, almost every other street has a manhole without a cover. And, now, with the advent of summer, it has more than its fair share of power breakdowns and voltage fluctuations.

All this is compounded by the fact that the DHA - manned by serving and retired army officers - often takes matters in its own hands without first ascertaining the views of its mostly civilian residential population.

Two recent things highlight the way in which the authority works. For several months now, parking on the main Zamzama road is prohibited. This is fine, but the prohibition applies even at night when the traffic volume does not warrant a no-parking zone.

And cars parked in violation of the restriction are towed not by the traffic police but by the DHA's own security staff. The authority needs to make this arrangement public and the law which allows its security staff to take on a traffic police role.

In addition, the authority recently placed large concrete bricks to reduce access to various traffic intersections (so that no traffic cuts across a main khayaban). This also seems okay in principle but there is little logic to the selection because some intersections, which have speed-breakers on all approach roads and are not particularly prone to accidents, have also been blocked.

Say no to tobacco

A friend recently paid a visit to PIA's Sidco centre office, where there are a number of signs that clearly tell you not to smoke. "I requested the officer who was booking my ticket to ask an offender to stub out his cigarette.

Instead she looked up apologetically, and said: 'Why don't you try? It's impolite for us, on duty, to ask a client not to smoke. It would be easier if you do so.' And the smoker went about his business happily, much to my consternation," the friend recalls.

On May 31 some 108 countries, signatory to the World Health Organization's Tobacco Free Initiative, will observe the World No Tobacco Day. Unfortunately, Pakistan is not on the list. Let alone a ban on smoking in public, we cannot even check smoking in 'no smoking' zones for fear of being at the receiving end of a reprimand.

Nobody seems to be serious, not even the policy-makers. For why else would the guidelines laid down by the director-general of the health department be flouted with such impunity as in the case of the one that says: "The distribution and promotion of cigarettes in colleges, universities and other educational institutions will be prohibited."

Another directive reads: "Tobacco will not be advertised in or within an area of 50 metres of registered schools and sports centres..." The latter is possible if the parents and school administrations join hands with the police and have those selling cigarettes or tobacco near educational institutions removed.

And while there has been some effort to create public awareness about the hazards of cigarette smoking, no one has paid much attention to the more lethal version of tobacco - the gutka, which is a concoction of betel nut powder, tobacco and aromatic chemicals.

Visit Ibrahim Hyderi, or even Baba Island, fishermen's villages in the vicinity of Karachi, and you will see a whole generation of young adults, even children as young as eight and ten, endlessly chewing gutka. It's time a campaign against it was started on May 31.

Burnes Road

A welcome development for pedestrians and motorists on Burnes Road, perhaps Karachi's oldest food locality, was the widening of the road and the rebuilding of the footpath so that it could run without the usual obstacles.

But this good work has been cancelled out by the return of encroachments on both the footpath and the road which were removed when development work was taking place. The food vendors are back as well as shops for typists and other entrepreneurs.

Restaurants also encroach on the footpath with their cookers and utensils jutting out on to the road as well as seating arrangements for customers in spaces that should be utilized for parking.

It's time the shopkeepers of Burnes Road along with the city government made an effort to revamp the area so that it regains the premier position it once held as Karachi's most visited place for cheap and quality food.

Selective coverage

Most newsmen are accustomed to being mistreated in the line of duty. But they should be excused for taking umbrage at being stopped from covering a function they are expressly invited to attend.

A function was recently organized by the First Women Bank in honour of the prime minister's adviser on women development, Nilofer Bakhtiar. According to the invitation card, the newsmen were asked to cover the speeches made by the FWB president and Ms Bakhtiar as well as the meeting between the bank's officials and its clients, including businesswomen and representatives of non-governmental organizations.

But the newsmen were allowed to attend only the first part of the meeting. The next session, which was expected to witness fireworks, went unreported. A bank spokesperson put the blame on Ms Bakhtiar, saying that she did not want the press to be present during the meeting. But the same spokesperson called the reporters later in the day and asked them to include a certain remark made by Ms Bakhtiar in their news stories.

If the bank and the government adviser did not want any media coverage of the event, they should not have invited the press at all.

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.