Badly kept secrets

Published April 8, 2016
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

POLITICAL pundits everywhere are having a field day with the Panama Papers, which have brought to light the murky business dealings of a wide cross section of the world’s elites. The usual Pakistani suspects find their names on the list, and are now scrambling to prove their innocence; our sitting prime minister foremost among them. The stakes are high — the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland leaves no room for doubt.

Yet in contrast with countries like Iceland, the land of the pure is tainted with so-called corruption scandals on an almost daily basis. The credibility of mainstream politicians is so poor that another exposé only confirms what we already know, rather than signifying a decisive shift in what passes for public opinion. Chances are, then, that Nawaz Sharif & co will weather this latest storm, even while the chattering classes will heap more scorn on politics and lament the ‘failure’ of democracy.

Of course, the Panama Papers will be frontline news for some days yet, because it is the sort of issue upon which our sensation-seeking corporate media thrives. Meanwhile, other stories will continue to be reported in a much less critical manner, as if it is only politicians and democracy that deserve to be subject to editorial comment.

One such story (which surfaces every few months) concerns the ‘foreign hand’ active in Balochistan. Starting with the ‘revelations’ that an ex-Indian naval officer operating as a spy was caught red-handed by the authorities — a fact that said individual corroborated in a choreographed media presentation — a plethora of statements have followed; all bolstering the narrative that unrest in Balochistan is not due to a home-grown insurgency, but to the sinister designs of our evil neighbours.


Commentary about Balochistan has almost dried up.


In some ways, this is old news — both the narrative and the contrived manner in which it is presented to a media-enslaved public. But what never ceases to surprise is the complete absence of critical commentary. Perhaps it would be asking too much for media reporting to be more than just a regurgitation of ISPR press releases — but surely one can expect purportedly independent writers, who operate outside the straitjacket of media bosses, to ask: what is really happening in Balochistan?

Certainly, there are individuals who have consistently raised difficult questions about the Baloch national question, and not just of the state. Some do so on these very pages. But it would be remiss to ignore the fact that commentary about the situation in Balochistan has virtually dried up over the past year or so. And this stands in stark contrast to the preceding period when the issue of missing persons (which culminated in the long march of the relatives of disappeared Baloch activists) became a matter of significant public importance in the country.

The turning point was the murder of Sabeen Mahmud in late April 2015. The official investigation suggested that her killers were not in the least bit concerned with the Baloch missing persons event that Sabeen had hosted on the night of her murder. Yet ever since that fateful incident, critical debate about Balochistan which had been steadily increasing, both within the media and the political mainstream, lost steam. It is now conspicuous by its almost complete absence.

It is not by chance that the forceful reassertion of the state’s tired narrative on Balochistan’s ‘problem’ has coincided with the military’s re-emergence as the arbiter in Pakistani politics.

Given how much we hear about the ‘foreign hand’, it is ironic that this re-emergence is to a large extent fuelled by ties that the men in khaki have forged with foreign patrons, and particularly China. Which is to suggest that critical perspectives on Balo­chis­tan are likely to be severely constra­ined in the months and years to come, as China’s ‘development’ footprint within Pakistan — and Balochistan specifically — becomes ever more prominent.

Yet quite aside from the legitimacy that the establishment draws from external supporters, the absence of critical comment speaks to the lack of independence — and courage — of the Pakistani intelligentsia. I do not wish to dismiss the many brave men and women who do take up issues that are generally considered taboo. However, these many are still relatively few, when weighed against the many more that tow the official line on ‘corruption’, the excesses of politicians, and the hopelessness of our democratic project.

What is now being exposed by the Panama Papers is the result of initiatives taken by investigative journalists whose independence explains their ground-breaking work. Of course, serious observers have long been aware that the world’s rich and famous bend the rules wherever they can to guard their privileges. Offshore dealings are tried and tested strategies of elites everywhere — yet the significance of the Panama Papers is that they expose what was a poorly-kept secret. Many of Pakistan’s poorly-kept secrets need to be similarly exposed.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2016

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