A collaborator by any other name

WHILE clearing a path through the fog that modern politics hide behind, the film format is sometimes better than news. That is because in film, it is possible to chart a course through the what ifs of history. It has the often underestimated advantage of being able to give a human face to academic conjectures and is too often dismissed as ‘mere entertainment’, which is a pity because there are lessons to be learnt and parallels to be drawn.

Take, for example, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers, based on events that took place during the 1954 to 1962 Algerian war of independence. Told from the point of view of Ali la Pointe, who corresponds to the historical National Liberation Front (FLN) figure of the same name, the film illustrates how ordinary people are radicalised by an occupying army’s excesses. With a grainy cinema verite style and newsreel footage feel, the narrative focuses on the tactics of both the FLN insurgency and the French counter-insurgency, revisiting the atrocities committed by both sides against civilians.

Two scenes in particular hold lessons for modern Pakistan. In one segment, politicians raise with Colonel Mathieu, the head of the French counter-insurgency force and based on the historical figure Jacques Massu, the issue that the local and foreign press are raising questions about the increasingly brutal torture tactics being employed to break into revolutionary cells. In reply, the elegant Col Mathieu asks them to consider the “real question”, which is whether France wants to remain in Algeria. If it does, he says, there is no course other than increasingly brutal repression and counterinsurgency operations. An occupying force is by definition violent — it is not possible to be a benevolent dictator.

Here and now, there is a parallel situation. Considered dispassionately, the Unmentionables who still effectively run the country are no less than an occupying force, with laws and tactics akin to a colonial army. The institution holds on to its political and economic power by force, through repression both political and otherwise, and against the will of the general population.

In essence, that is the definition of an occupier.

Meanwhile, there are clear insurgency-like movements in parts of the country. In this situation, as Pontecorvo points out, both sides have little option but to resort to increasingly violent measures in which the prime victims are civilians. In constructing Col Mathieu as an elegant and cultured figure, Pontecorvo shows that a civilised veneer – or one of enlightened moderation – can disguise unforgivable brutality.

Another scene shows a group of Frenchmen socialising in the lawns of a palatial mansion, relaxed and at ease. Having finished their drinks and waved goodbye to their wives, the men – some of whom are policemen – drive to the Casbah and do their job: they plant a bomb. As they return towards the French quarters, the camera follows the dead and the injured inside the Casbah.

The point is clear, and relevant for Pakistan: state terrorism is perpetrated by ordinary people who are otherwise good fathers and husbands. But during a war of dominance over a country, definitions of duty and loyalty blur. Pontecorvo’s policemen are loyal to the French occupiers, and therefore violence against civilians becomes necessary. Pakistan’s policemen have been told that their duty is to uphold the writ of what is effectively still a military administration, and therefore resort to violence against unarmed lawyers and journalists.

Another film that echoes Pakistan’s current crisis, Marcos Zurinaga’s 1997 The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, underscores the fact that the occupier does not necessarily come from outside — the usurper can have many faces, including one like yours or mine. The film follows journalist Ricardo as he investigates the fate of the famous playwright and political agitator Frederico Garcia Lorca, who disappeared in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.

While based loosely on real events, the film is essentially fiction because history does not conclusively know what happened to Lorca. It is generally agreed, however, that he was amongst the over 50,000 civilians caught on the ‘wrong side’ and executed in the early days of the war — the numbers probably equally racked up by the Nationalists and the Republican/Loyalists. The indications are that Lorca was shot by Generalisimo Francisco Franco’s Nationalist side in August 1936, since the poet was associated with the Republican/Loyalists (as, incidentally, were Pablo Picasso, George Orwell and Ernest Hemmingway).

Ricardo’s investigations reveal the complex web of dependency, willing, reluctant or unrecognised collaboration and pragmatism that link the usurper with the citizenry. As Nationalists blame each other, the journalist finds that his lover’s father was, during the war, a Nazi sympathiser (both Mussolini and Hitler sent troops, aircraft and tanks to Franco) and, in the line of duty, pulled the trigger on Lorca.

Given the demographic of Pakistan’s English-speaking elite, it is safe to assume that many of the people reading this have links with the army, the police and the bureaucracy, either personally or through family and friends. Many, no doubt, have had to follow orders that were distasteful but were nevertheless executed in the line of duty. Zurinaga’s film points out that there are times when even staying silent against a usurper’s misadventures amounts to collaboration. However one may personally square it with one’s conscience – duty, economic necessity, the futility of resistance – a collaborator by any other name is still a collaborator.

From Brazil, no stranger to the violence, poverty and political upheaval that plague Pakistan, the writings of educationist Paulo Freire are relevant.

In the 60s, literacy was a requirement for voting in presidential elections but the majority of the country was illiterate. Freire developed a philosophy of education that incorporated classical approaches with those of modern Marxist and anti-colonial thinkers. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is considered an extension to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, which argues that native populations be provided with an education that is simultaneously new and modern – as opposed to traditional – and anti-colonial, as opposed to being simply an extension of the culture and practices of the coloniser, which is arguably the system of education in place in Pakistan. (Incidentally, Fanon, whose work has inspired anti-colonial liberation movements across the world, was a descendent of African slaves in Martinique and joined Algeria’s FLN after the revolution broke out.)

But to go back to Freire, his first opportunity to significantly apply his education theories came in 1962, when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days. The Brazilian government then approved the creation of thousands of similar cultural circles, and while a military coup (!) put an end to the effort in 1964, Freire’s work is nevertheless cited as one of the reasons behind the country’s high literacy rate (88.6 per cent in 2004).

His words hold meaning for Pakistan today: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Post script: Leonard Cohen’s song “Take this waltz” is an adapted translation of Lorca’s poem, “Little Viennese Waltz.” Cohen named his daughter Lorca.

— hmumtaz@dawn.com