Crimes against women

WOMEN in Pakistan live in a state of perpetual fear. This raises questions about the rights of women especially in a country where they face violence, which often proves fatal, on a daily basis. And yet, so deeply entrenched are the medieval customs and values which allow such abuse that the violation of women’s rights is hardly considered an aberration in Pakistan. Incidents such as the ones reported in this paper on Saturday — ‘honour killing’ and domestic abuse that involved throwing acid on a woman’s body — are common and thus do not make headlines in the local press as they would in most parts of the civilised world. Clearly, media reminders are not enough. We have come to accept the way women are abused through tribal customs which kill women in the name of ‘honour’, for marrying men of their choice, and even jirga-sanctioned rape.

Crimes against women perpetuate a form of social organisation in which the male is all-powerful. Pakistan may be a patriarchal society but women comprise half the population. Thus the empowerment of women would mean strengthening the position of this significant percentage of the population — surely the welfare of such a large proportion of society cannot be ignored. So, what measures have been taken for the empowerment of women? The fact that our assemblies have a large number of women legislators than previously is indicative of change — but one which is favourable to women from the elite. Certainly this is a step forward from the times when the number of women parliamentarians was negligible. However, the fact is that the poor and destitute remain in the clutches of vicious traditions and only change at the grassroots level can rescue them from their predicament.

Government laws and actions must override social customs. Implementing legislation which makes violence against women in all its manifestations a criminal offence is an imperative measure. The Women’s Protection Act 2006 came into being with the aim of amending the Hudood Ordinance laws and improving the prospects of successfully prosecuting rape. However the problem arises at the stage of implementation. The government must ensure that police at the district level take notice of these cases — most of which go undetected — and bring the offenders to justice. Owing to a culture of corruption and gender bias, the police approach often works in favour of the man. Punishment and deterrence are key elements of the solution. If offenders are given adequate punishment it will dissuade others from committing the same crime. On the other hand, victims should be given full support instead of being ostracised. The government in collaboration with non-governmental organisations can ensure that the rights of women are protected and the laws implemented.

Tourism in the doldrums

AS recently as the late nineties, it was a rare summer day when you didn’t run into a western tourist, usually of the backpacking kind, in the more accessible parts of northern and north-western Pakistan. The Kaghan valley, Swat, Hunza and Skardu, among other picturesque settings, seemed to be favoured destinations and the coach from Timergarah in Dir to Chitral via Lowari Top carried a foreign contingent more often than not. All that changed in the aftermath of 9/11, but until a few years ago these areas still saw the more adventurous sort of foreign visitor. Now that flow has been choked to the faintest of trickles and in many an area no foreigner dares to tread. Even more alarmingly for the tourism industry, this fear is shared by many Pakistanis and the number of domestic tourists has also plummeted.

This is not surprising given the murderous events of recent years. Venturing into areas wracked by militancy means courting disaster at every turn, and few are willing to take such risks. The Swat valley, once a favourite haunt of Pakistani tourists and where locals now fear for their lives, has suffered grievously as a result. The enterprising people of Swat have long been dependent on tourism and businesses related to the industry — hotels, motels, eateries, gift shops and retail outlets, rent-a-car firms, trout farms, etc — have been dealt a crippling blow by the ongoing insurgency. It was estimated last year that some 12,000 Swatis and their families were directly dependent on the hospitality industry. Financially, they were already in dire straits in the summer of 2007. Their plight now doesn’t bear contemplation.

According to the tourism ministry, 2008 has seen a four per cent drop in foreign ‘tourists’. This may not be a staggering figure but it is most likely misleading because the FIA and immigration authorities do not distinguish between tourists and foreigners here on business. Nearly 558,000 foreigners had visited Pakistan by the end of August but the total surely included businessmen, NGO workers and officials of other international organisations, and possibly even diplomats. It is safe to say that genuine tourists were in a small minority on this fairly short list. The situation, unfortunately, is not going to improve anytime soon for the fight against militancy, despite some recent gains, is far from over and the scars could take even longer to heal. World Tourism Day, which was observed on Saturday, held little meaning for Pakistan.

Hazards of unsafe blood

UNSAFE blood transfusions pose innumerable health risks to patients. It should therefore be welcomed that health experts have launched guidelines underlining the importance of the acquisition and safe transfusion of blood. The Sindh health authorities are once again focusing on the need for the elimination of substandard blood banks where the commercialisation of blood donation is worsening the problem of drug usage. Thousands of drug addicts sell their blood to finance their habit. The problem is that insufficient screening of such blood will mean that diseases the substance users may have, such as HIV/Aids and blood-borne hepatitis, will be passed on to ill-informed patients. In this regard UNAIDS has noted that only 50 per cent of the 1.5 million bags of blood transfused annually in Pakistan are screened illustrating the magnitude of the problem. According to a report, this is compounded by the fact that medical equipment such as intravenous bags, syringes and other items are regularly reused leading to the transmission of diseases. Without safe practices, low-income, poverty-stricken patients seeking blood are at risk.

Blood transfusion authorities have been established to regulate blood transfusion and should play a central role in combating the menace of substandard blood banks. Regulatory mechanisms need to be strengthened and should involve the constant monitoring of blood banks to ensure safety. The provision of funds for blood screening will ensure that this important procedure is not overlooked. Also funds should be allocated for acquiring the required facilities and equipment while providing training to medical personnel. Inadequate financial support prevents blood banks from adhering to standard safety procedures. While these measures will ensure safe transfusion of blood, acquisition of blood is an area in dire need of attention. Voluntary blood donation should be encouraged. This can be done through blood donation drives in workplaces and universities and spreading awareness through the media to involve the general population. In a country where the healthcare system is marred by inadequacies, unsafe blood transfusion exacerbates the problem. Therefore it is in the interest of the health sector as a whole to promote safe blood transfusion practices.

OTHER VOICES - North American Press

The first debate

The New York Times

THE first presidential debate could not have come at a better time. We were afraid that the serious question of picking a new president in a time of peril, at home and abroad, was going to disappear in a fog of sophomoric attack ads, substance-free shouting about change and patriotism, and unrelenting political posturing.

The debate was generally a relief from the campaign’s nastiness … [and] Americans could see some differences between the candidates on correcting the regulatory disasters that led to the Wall Street crisis, on how to address the country’s grim fiscal problems and on national security. There were also differences in the candidates themselves. Mr McCain fumbled his way through the economic portion of the debate, while Mr Obama seemed clear and confident. Mr McCain was more fluent on foreign affairs, and scored points by repeatedly calling Mr Obama naïve and inexperienced.

Mr Obama has improved as a debater but needs to work on his counterpunch. Still, when Mr McCain suggested that Mr Obama was imprudent for talking publicly about attacking Al Qaeda sites in Pakistan, Mr Obama deftly parried by reminding voters that his rival once jokingly sang a song about bombing Iran….

Mr Obama dominated the economic portion of the debate, arguing that the Wall Street disaster was the fault of the Bush administration’s anti-regulation, pro-corporate culture. He called for a major overhaul of the financial regulatory system. Mr McCain stuck to his talking points, railing against greed and corruption.

Mr Obama said that he would begin to address the country’s deep deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy, while cutting them for the vast majority of American workers. But he dodged the question of what programmes he would have to sacrifice to help foot the proposed bailout’s $700bn price tag. Mr McCain dodged the same question with equal energy….

It was disturbing to see that Mr McCain seems to have learned nothing from the disastrous war in Iraq. He was still talking about winning, rather than how he was going to plan a necessary and responsible exit. And he steadfastly refused to acknowledge that the decision to invade Iraq was an enormous mistake.

Mr Obama offered no details on how he plans to get out of Iraq, but he offered an important truth when he said that the United States should never have invaded and can never win in Afghanistan as long as it is tied down in Iraq…. — (Sept 27)

The paradigm of power

“Power is everywhere not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” — Michel Foucault

POWER, being a complex concept, can be defined in different ways. Most of the time power is seen as an ability or right to control people or events. If we look at the history of mankind, we see people using the tool of violence to demonstrate their power and control others.

There was a time when large fighting forces and deadly weapons were considered important instruments of power. We then saw a change in the strategy as the focus shifted from large armies to more sophisticated weapons, espionage equipment and computerised weaponry. The urge, however, remained the same — controlling others by demonstrating one’s own power.

For a long time, the terms ‘control’ and ‘hegemony’ were associated with coercion, i.e. the use of force. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker, offers another view of hegemony in his seminal book Prison Notebooks written during 1929-35 in jail.

Gramsci refers to two approaches to hegemony; one is through spontaneous consent in which general directions are imposed by dominant groups on social life. According to him, this consent is caused by the prestige which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.

The second approach, according to Gramsci, is “through the apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively”. Supremacy through spontaneous consent is a clear reference to a discursive method which appears to be more effective than coercive tactics.

The discursive approach draws our attention to another defining attribute of power — influence. Thus we can see power as an ability to influence other people’s choices, behaviour and acts. Coercive power is usually used by the state ‘legally’ by exercising the authority vested in it. This suggests that ‘authority’ is a legalised version of power. Steven Luke, in his work, Power: A Radical View discusses three dimensions of influence.

The first two dimensions refer to decision-making and agenda-setting. The third dimension deals with shaping ideologies, perceptions and norms. Referring to the third dimension Luke suggests, “Is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial?” This dimension of power is closer to what Gramsci describes as spontaneous consent.

Foucault also delves into the issue of power. In fact, his search started with tracing the history of knowledge when he realised the strong connection between knowledge and power. Foucault discovered that with new knowledge and technologies, novel manifestations of power and control are invented. Instead of using the traditional violent power and destroying the opponent altogether, modern technologies have different strategies to control.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes the contemporary version of power, “…[I]t defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile bodies’”. These techniques of knowledge and power were initially used in isolated institutions like prisons, factories and schools, but later on they were employed in other contexts as well.

The role of discourse is crucial in the formation of knowledge. It is the discursive formation of objects that can construct a certain kind of knowledge that leads to new techniques of power and control. Power, by contemporary thinkers, is not viewed as a product but as a process which means that it is not fixed or located in place; it is rather transitory, fluid and relational in nature.

Power, in other words, as Foucault puts it, is relation which is structured by discourse. This suggests that the relationship of the powerful and powerless is not permanent, that is, the once powerful becomes powerless or vice versa in another moment in history. This has a direct implication for the possibility of resistance.

Foucault in The History of Sexuality refers to the points of resistance available in the dynamics of power, “the strictly relational character of power relationships [is such that] their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network.”

This view of power is optimistic in nature as it doesn’t lump power in one location and views it as a static object. On the contrary, it looks at power as something scattered around us in different networks. There is a constant struggle between power and its adversary and there are points of resistance available within the process of power for the act of resistance.

The writer is a director at Lahore School of Economics and the author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.

shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com

The Obama mantra

BACK in July, behind in the polls and stuck in neutral, John McCain’s campaign released its widely discussed TV adverts comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. They were mocked, but helped McCain gain traction. Something rang true to some segment of the American public.

If the Obama campaign were as canny — or cynical, take your choice — they would now have adverts out comparing McCain to a mythic character in American film. An aging starlet, a Norma Desmond whose celebrity has faded but, surrounded by courtiers, persists in behaving as if she were still the cynosure of Hollywood’s eye, saying: “All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

As I write, Congress has yet to reach a deal on the Wall Street bail-out. The Democrats and President Bush, interestingly, are largely in agreement and could pass a bill at any moment. But 100 conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have balked.

In this context, it’s been a singularly instructive week to observe the candidates’ competing management styles. Usually, how a candidate campaigns doesn’t really have that much to do with how he will govern.

An Obama mantra throughout has been “no drama Obama” — it’s the campaign’s way of saying he will engage in or indulge no acting out, no internal squabbling beyond legitimate disagreement, no leaking, no grandstanding. He’s run a tight ship, and the mantra is credited with having a lot to do with getting him this far.

He sometimes eschews drama to a fault, and one could argue he did so this week. I attended a press conference on Thursday night, after the White House negotiations had proved fruitless. He spoke for 10 minutes in a very circumspect fashion, and then answered a few questions in ... a very circumspect fashion.

Behind the scenes, Obama was apparently trying to play a constructive role. The New York Times reported of the meeting that “participants said Mr Obama peppered [treasury secretary] Henry Paulson with questions, while Mr McCain said little.”

By contrast, McCain has been almost entirely about the theatrics — trying to swoop into town and finagle it so he could either take credit for any deal or (more likely) grandly announce he would regretfully have to “put country first” and oppose it. He certainly hasn’t been engaged on a substantive level. He acknowledged to a Cleveland reporter on Tuesday he hadn’t read Paulson’s proposal, released two days earlier and running to all of three pages. Back in Washington, he clearly allied himself with the Republican intransigents. But as the Washington Post reported of a meeting between McCain and the GOP’s House leader about the conservatives’ alternative plan, “Neither man was familiar with the details of the proposal ... and up to the moment they departed for the White House Friday afternoon, neither had seen any description beyond news reports.” No wonder he said little.

Even McCain supporters will acknowledge high finance is not his strong suit. But in this matter, which will clearly consume a great deal of the next president’s time, McCain was concerned wholly with how to gain political advantage. He stood before the mirror, awaiting his close-up.

— The Guardian, London