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BEING one of those with an especial fondness for Lahore, I welcomed the news recently that after a gap of many years, the Horse and Cattle Show was recently put up at its traditional venue of Fortress Stadium. The news reports the next day carried accounts of tent-pegging, the beasts on display, the general sense of jubilation, etc — it was enough to give me a bit of the warm fuzzy feeling.
Then I read a letter published in this newspaper a few days later. The writer complained that the tattoo show had featured some 400 students from Peshawar, some of them the siblings of the children brutally cut down in the Dec 16 Army Public School massacre. The show comprised a re-enactment of the tragedy.
The taller children played the Taliban and shot others down. The victims fell to the ground, some playing dead and others being carried away by kids playing medics. There was a war sequence between the terrorists and the army. Eventually, the children walked off, some limping, some bandaged.
“And, finally, it ended,” said the letter-writer, “leaving us shocked, disturbed and angry at whoever thought this was a fantastic way to commence a ‘peace show’ for the viewing pleasure of families with children.”
One cannot but agree. Yes, it is obvious that Pakistan needs to take control of the narrative in terms of the Taliban — who were until quite recently being presented as errant ‘brothers of the faith’. But this sounds like a thoroughly crude and ill-advised way to go about it.
However, this means that the recognition has filtered in that in the sort of predicament that Pakistan faces vis-à-vis terrorism and militancy, success depends on a multi-faceted approach that targets societal attitudes as much as the men who peddle death. There is a need for unconventional approaches that address the different dimensions of the problem. Into this framework would fit the handful of songs and videos that have been made in the recent past about the military’s endeavours against the militant problem (though, like the Fortress Stadium spectacle, they tend to be ham-handed).
Success in defeating militancy depends on a multi-faceted approach.
Of course Pakistan is no stranger to building public support for a conflict through alternate means, the body of war songs — particularly those referring to the 1965 war — being an obvious example. Other countries and their societies are taking similar and other avenues, including those that can feel bizarre.
In Iraq, the state-run Iraqiya TV runs, in cooperation with the interior ministry, a weekly programme called In the grip of the law. In January, in a recording session that was written about by a BBC journalist, a couple of convicts are taken to a Baghdad area where several attacks by the self-styled Islamic State had taken place; the men were in jail as a result of having confessed to their involvement in these attacks. They are taken to the scene of their crimes to be berated by victims and their relatives, and to recount their role in the assault.
The show’s presenter Ahmad Hassan explains to the BBC: “Those at the forefront are naive, limited in awareness and knowledge. In prison, they reflect on the innocent blood they shed and feel abandoned by the IS. They get a reality shock.”
He adds that some 10 million people watch his show, especially in areas that are predominantly Shia. (In the Sunni areas there seem to be suspicions over the show, with some people telling the BBC reporter that the convicts the show brings on are more likely to have been the usual suspects rounded up and induced to confess. This, the reporter explains, is because Sunnis suffer more from state repression in Iraq, while the Shias have taken the brunt of attacks on civilian areas.)
On the other side of the spectrum, The Washington Post recently ran a feature that put together 11 videos made by groups and individuals in various parts of the Middle East that use gallows humour as a means of pushing back against the narrative about IS fighters that the group itself would like to (and does) project. Some of these videos are crude, sometimes the humour gets lost in translation, and some are indeed funny and might in the societal mindset undermine the IS.
In a similar feature, The Guardian quotes a young Syrian refugee in Turkey, one of a group of four who make films that ridicule the IS: “The entire world seems to be terrified of [IS], so we want to laugh at them, expose their hypocrisy and show that their interpretation of Islam does not represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims,” says Maen Watfe, 27. “The media, especially the Western media, obsessively reproduce [IS] propaganda portraying them as strong and intimidating. We want to show their weaknesses.”
There are many ways to skin a cat, it seems. One can only hope for good luck in the endeavour.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn March 16th , 2015
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