Violence: obsession or necessity

EJAZ HAIDER
The Friday Times; June 27-July 03, 2003 | Vol. XV, No. 18

IN THE PREFACE TO HIS PLAY “LEAR,” Edward Bond wrote: “I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future…It would be immoral not to write about violence.”

This statement, especially its operative part, is most interesting. While Bond acknowledges that violence shapes and obsesses our society, he, nonetheless, thinks that if we do not stop being violent we have no future. He thus implies that while violence is clear and present in human societies, it may not be a natural or even an essential condition: hence, the warning that unless it is stopped, we will not have a future. This is corroborated by what he says at another point in the preface: aggression is an ability but not a necessity. Is he right (the question eschews cases of gratuitous violence)?

No. Firstly, ability itself denotes necessity even when it lies dormant for long periods. It can come into play when the need arises. Further, in an evolutionary sense it could be part of the weapons of survival of a species. Secondly, could it be that violence is embedded in human existence rather than existing outside it, and therefore can neither be regarded as essentially unacceptable nor entirely eradicated?

Human beings have the unique ability to generate surplus. In other words, human existence is not just marked by a strict biogenetic programme, but in fact allows for a diversity of actions, an ability not found among other animals. This ability forms the basis for both human progress and regression. The process is interactive – progress and regression emanating from the same source – and creates one of the many antipathies that inform human existence. How then can violence be stopped entirely, which is what Bond implies, despite his clear understanding that all societies have shown a tendency towards it?

Take the example of a State.It sustains itself through a combination of law and power, both internally and externally. It may acquire its legitimacy through an historical process that combines elements of a socio-political contract but it possibly cannot retain its locus standi without either a monopoly over the instruments of violence or by coming across as the most powerful contender that can use violence more effectively than others. Interestingly, other contenders, too, can claim legitimacy for themselves but they become legitimate only when the claim is brought home through effective use of force (violence).

When Albert Camus’ rebel decides on ‘all or nothing’ the script in the struggle thereon unfolds through the use of violence and counter-violence even as the battle is waged in the name of rights and legalities (both in the sense of law and propriety). The nineteen hijackers who blew themselves up along with innocent passengers on September 11 have been declared terrorists. The United States has declared war on terrorism on the one hand and created chaos in at least two countries so far. The violence it has perpetrated doing so has been declared as a necessary tool to restore the state of “innocence” shattered by the terrorists. The discourse gets its acceptance not because it is embedded in any higher morality or is reinforced by any natural law but because the United States, as also other states in the world, can make it stick through force of arms and an ability greater than the terrorists to generate violence.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel/…Beneath the bleeding hands we feel/The sharp compassion of the healer’s art

Thus wrote T S Eliot in East Coker. In the dominant discourse, the US is the wounded surgeon and its sharp compassion (violence) the healer’s art (necessary) because its use of force is legitimate even as that legitimacy itself is underpinned by its effective control of the instruments of violence. Were this equation to change in favour of the terrorists, the discourse would undergo a reversal. This is the general equation that works between the defender and the challenger. And in a world marked by nation-states, the only way the challenger can be effective internally is by controlling the state’s coercive apparatus or blunting it through its own ability to generate violence. Externally, the more powerful state manages to defeat the weaker state or at least forces it to kowtow, as Thucydide’s famous Melian dialogue reveals.

Sometimes we call this realism. The great historian E H Carr critiqued realism by pointing out that realism is not without its imagination, its purpose. He thus established the dynamics between Utopia and Realism. Even as one utopia is demolished by weapons of realism, another one needs to be established: “The human will will continue to seek an escape from the logical consequences of realism in the vision of an international order which, as soon as it crystallizes itself into concrete political form, becomes tainted with self-interest and hypocrisy, and must once more be attacked with the instruments of realism.” It is this that the terrorists try to do, attacking a utopia through weapons of realism to establish their own version of an equitable society. Whether they are today’s Islamists in Green, yesterday’s Communists in Red, or before them the Russian revolutionaries of 1905, the nihilists who took their cue from Ivan Turgenev’s nihilistic hero, Bazarov – all of them looked for a utopia that challenged the existing utopia through weapons of realism.

Some do it in the name of God, others after losing Him and attempting to create the kingdom of man on earth. But that distinction does not matter in terms of aspiring to something other than that which exists, and the instruments that need to be employed to get there. None of this of course means that what ought to be, and is being striven for, is, or would be, ipso facto better than what is. It simply proves Carr’s exposition of the dynamics between contending utopias and the umbilical chord of realism that binds them in a destructive relationship.

But Bond is right when he says that human beings have no future unless they stop being violent. The basic principle that underscores the equation between law and power has not changed. But the instruments through which violence can be generated have undergone massive advancement. Ralph Lapp called it the ‘Tyranny of Weapons Technology’. If the 20th century saw more people killed than the 19th and the 21st century is likely to see even more killed (by driving the weaker states to acquire weapons of mass destruction), this will not be because we have become more cruel since Nero’s or Attila’s times but because we can kill more effectively simply because of our possession of more sophisticated instruments of violence.

The writer is News Editor of TFT and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times

National-interested again?

EJAZ HAIDER

If you want to know what the French mean by plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more it changes the more it remains the same), read the Inter-Services Public Relations press release following the 139th corps commanders’ conference, thank you.

There’s a laundry list of items in there but here’s the operative part: “Any effort to create divisions between [sic] important institutions of the Country [sic] is not in our national interest. The participants agreed that all of us should take cognisance of this unfortunate trend and put an end to it.”

The English-language, at least the modern one, cannot operate without the F-word in its multiple grammatical incarnations. Our equivalent of it is national interest and when we want to do someone in, we national-interest him. By now this unholy alliance of an adjective qualifying a noun should have made a place for itself as a verb in the OED. Perhaps it would by the time of the 140th corps commanders’ conference. In any case, our historical variation on Shelley’s maudlin “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind” has always been “If National Interest comes, can Army be far behind”.

But lest anyone think I am being facetious. This is serious affair, ladies and gentlemen. There should be no doubt that Pakistan faces today some of the toughest challenges in its history. Never before was it more important for us to stand together because if we fall, we will fall together, those in uniform as much as those out of it. And yet, it cannot be gainsaid that at this precise moment when we need to close ranks we stand divided as never before.
A binary has been created: the civil and the military. The civilians distrust the military; the military distrusts the civilians. The positions on both sides of the divide are entrenched and deterministic; neither is prepared to appreciate the subtleties that inform the complex equation called Pakistan. Who is to blame?

Primarily the military. Its thinking that Pakistan is in danger is correct; its assessment that those who are pressing for fundamental changes to counter those dangers are a threat is, however, deeply flawed. Sure, it is cornered; it is getting frustrated, deeply so, and it would want nothing more than to get out of the bind it has got itself in. But for it to think that it can do so through an institutional response that serves, yet again, to deepen the very divide that is the biggest threat to the country is to redefine the concepts of bounded rationality and systematic stupidity.

There can be no putting an end to this by addressing the nation as if the army is conducting a darbaar. And if the brass seriously thinks they can do that and everyone will fall in line, then they are adding to the threat rather than addressing it.

Let me say it again, a theme I have been at pains to articulate: the only way the military can attend to the current threat is by understanding clearly that they have to submit to the state and the people, not the other way round, that Pakistan is to be a state with an army and not, as the horrible Voltaire cliché we love to flog goes, an army with a state.

Victor Hugo said no army can fight an idea whose time has come. But the fact is, he was merely looking at the sweep of history and gleaning a basic lesson from it. Of course we have the choice to not heed the lesson which, for the most part, when hubris destroys is the story of colossal wreck, boundless and bare. But I’d rather we did.

Little does the army know that in another twist of irony its press release synced with the opening in Karachi of Pakistan’s first social media conference. While its media managers try to deal with what is emerging in the mainstream press, newspapers and tv channels, there is another kind of media evolving, taking shape and influencing the narrative. It is in an unregulated space and lack of regulation, for the most part, is built into this rough beast. For the most part it is terra incognita for the military’s media managers and they have no strategy to deal with it. It is this space where another narrative is taking shape and its shapers are totally alienated from the military.

Then there is the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. I know that this military-style message is in large measure directed towards that party. The question is: Why? Yes, the party was bitten by General Musharraf; yes, that experience makes up in large measure for the party’s stance today. But can anyone doubt that the message has a broader significance and is not to be read as Musharraf-specific?

When General Kayani took over, the army’s stock had plummeted even in the Punjab. In less than a year he turned it around. How? Simple. By being honest and forthright. The first time I interacted with him, he was DG-ISI. I noted after that meeting that he spoke little, listened carefully and asked questions that went straight to the heart of the problem. I was impressed. He evinced the same qualities in multiple interactions as army chief. And yet, he has got the baseline wrong and by doing that squandered the dividends of his own hard work.

The baseline is simple: the people of Pakistan are not opposed to the army; if they were, the army would not have got the support it did for its operations. But they are opposed to any institution that remains unaccountable. The army has to submit to them, not dictate to them from atop Mount GHQ, and definitely not national-interest them because nothing gets their goat as this does. Stoop and you will conquer them.

Equally, the civilian side has to understand that while remaining steadfast to our demand for both glasnost and perestroika, we have to appreciate the challenges the military faces. If they go down, we will too. Criticise them we must but let that be constructive. We regret the binary the military has managed to create but by treating the institution as an adversary we will only serve to deepen what we are opposed to – i.e., that states and societies cannot submit to binaries because they are essentially complex entities.

The military is behind the curve; the civilians ahead of it. The civilians should take a pause and the military better hurry to catch up with them. Dealing with the people is not a function of packaging logic, military-style, in a field service marching order.

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times

Grow up, young voters

Feisal H. Naqvi

Let’s be clear about one thing: The youth of Pakistan are not going to save this country.

I agree that it is wonderful to have an informed and educated youth calling for reform, but reform does not come from desire alone. Reform requires both political will and knowledge. And the youth of this country can supply neither.

Since it is more debateable, let me take the issue of political will first.

Political will means the desire of people in power to change that which is wrong about this country. The term ‘people in power’ includes not just politicians but also the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the military. None of the last three give a rat’s patootie about what young people think. On the other hand, each of the three can be affected by elected governments. So whatever little hope the Pakistani youth have of impacting political will is dependent entirely on political parties.

Political parties can mean either the established political parties or some new force. As far as the established parties are concerned, all the youthful enthusiasm in the world is not going to make a damn bit of difference. No matter how much the youth protest, the established parties are still going to present the people of this country in the next election with a slate of candidates ranging from the overtly criminal to the covertly corrupt. If a few individuals do become strongly identified with a popular demand for reform, they will be co-opted into existing power structures, perhaps even given a ministry or two. And then, as desire fades, they, too, will become indistinguishable from their former opponents.

But what about new parties, you say? What if Imran Khan or some other reformer rides a wave of popular support into power? After all, it has been done before: Look at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) and the 1970 elections.

There are two answers to that fond hope. The first is that Imran Khan is no ZAB. Pakistani politics is based on a first-past-the-post system with 272 directly-elected constituencies spread across the length and breadth of this country (all the rest are indirectly elected). In order to have a meaningful number of seats, Mr Khan would need not just massive support but well-distributed massive support. There is nothing that I have seen or read which comes close to indicating any such movement for him in Pakistan. His most recent jalsa in Peshawar — undoubtedly his most successful till date — netted him a grand total of about 10,000 people. Even if independent estimates are off by 50 per cent, that support would not be enough to get him a single seat in the National Assembly, even in Peshawar itself.

I do not mean to malign or belittle Mr Khan. I have immense respect for his determination. It is quite possible that I am completely wrong in my estimate of his popular standing. But let us just concede for now that an electoral tsunami in his favour looks somewhat unlikely.

My second point is quite different. Even if it can be assumed that Mr Khan will pull off a massive upset in the next election, he has yet to put forward any plan or a detailed set of policy prescriptions explaining how he is going to fix all the myriads of problems that Pakistan faces. Instead, Mr Khan’s response is that he will select technocrats, who will take care of all this for him.

Mr Khan’s response is not a workable solution. To begin with, Mr Khan, as prime minister, will not have the option of simply appointing technocrats to all ministerial posts. Instead, he will have to pick ministers from the ranks of his fellow members of parliament (with some limited exceptions). Unless Mr Khan has been busy persuading brilliant and honest technocrats to stand by him, he will not have an all-star team of governance experts from which to choose his cabinet.

The next point is more important. Irrespective of the quality of Mr Khan’s fellow parliamentarians, formulating policy whilst in power is simply not an option. The reason for this is simple: When you are in power, practically every single waking moment of your life is spent in dealing with urgent pressing problems. In the middle of this tumult, politicians do not have the luxury of stepping back and taking months to formulate policies.

Let me put this in cricketing terms: The time to learn technique is when you are practising. You can’t figure out how to bowl inswingers after you walk into the stadium.

The standard response to this view is that everything is okay in Pakistan, that all we need are some honest people at the top. This response is rubbish. Yes, we suffer from a plague of corruption. But replacing the current crop of ministers with well-meaning people is not going to solve our problems. Those problems are deep-seated and require structural reforms, not just new faces. To use another cricket example, getting rid of Salman Butt may have helped our match-fixing problem, but it didn’t teach our opening batsmen how to play outswingers.

Does that mean the youth of this country should give up hope? No, of course not. But we need to start growing up and stop treating our problems as minor. Imran Khan has no magic wand that he can wave to fix our problems. And if the young people of this country want to be taken seriously then they need to take politics in the same vein. What they need to demand is not just a pledge to be honest, but a pledge to be intelligent, a pledge to take our problems seriously.

I believe that Imran Khan is honest. But if he wants my vote, he needs to show me that he also knows what to do if he becomes prime minister. As for the youth of this country, I suggest that they take themselves and our problems more seriously. I’ve had enough of empty slogans: Sooner or later, they will too.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2011.

And yet it moves

In the days when I still taught jurisprudence to budding bureaucrats, my favourite topic was legal realism. Because if there was one idea which regularly exploded their minds, it was the concept that law was simply a tool, a means to social ends; and that, like any tool, it had to be judged by the results it produced.

Why is this concept such a big deal? It is a big deal because there are multiple aspects of governance in Pakistan where the systems in place simply do not work; see, for example, the legal system. Yet, there is no serious demand to change those systems. Instead, the assumption is that if a system does not work, it is because of something that we — the people — are doing wrong and that the systems themselves are fine.

By comparison, legal realism begins by rejecting the assumption that there is anything inherently sacred or desirable about a particular law. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, ditch it.

Legal realism may just seem like common sense by another name but it is much more radical than that. In his brilliant new book titledThe Long Divergence (Princeton University Press, 2010), Timur Kuran (professor of economics and Islamic studies at Duke University) writes how certain aspects of Islamic law (such as the law of inheritance) held back economic development of the Middle East for centuries. It is difficult to read the book and disagree with his conclusions. But does that mean we are willing to consider revising inheritance laws in Pakistan? I don’t think so.

Let me be honest here. I do not think that we as a society are ready to start applying legal realism to Islamic law. Rationalist jurisprudence in Islamic law died many centuries ago and has yet to be revived. But what is far more disturbing for me is that, even outside the boundaries of the ostensibly divine, we cling to modes of thought and action which no longer work.

Take, for example, our legal system. It is an indisputable fact that our legal system is comprehensively dysfunctional. As a lawyer who regularly advises investors, my standard advice is that they should assume they will not be able to enforce contracts in Pakistan and that they will not be able to recover amounts due to them within any commercially reasonable period of time.

It takes no great learning to understand that a legal system in which contracts can freely be broken and through which money cannot be recovered, is less than ideal from an economic perspective. And yet, there is no substantive effort being made to reform the legal system. Yes, a new judicial policy did come out in 2009. Yes, the new policy recognises that delay is a problem. But it rejects the contention that there is any fundamental flaw in the system. Instead, it explicitly states that it “seeks to achieve its objectives, by efficient utilisation of existing resources. We have to operate by remaining within the given legal/procedural framework. The laws are indeed time-tested”.

There is a phenomenon in social science called ‘path dependence’. One well-known example of this is the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard layout, which was originally adopted so as to keep the most-used letters as far away from each other as possible (and avoid mechanical problems). That mechanical restriction is no longer relevant but we are still stuck with an illogical arrangement of keys.

Pakistan’s legal system today, and especially our laws relating to land title, is a textbook example of ‘path dependence’. In brief, we have no system of recorded land title. Instead, all we have is a system that records who is liable to pay taxes on land. We have this system because back in the days when the Sultans of Delhi used to arrive as invaders from Kabul, they found it more convenient to dish out tax fiefdoms (i.e., jagirs) than to set up systems which recorded one’s title (unlike, for example, William the Conqueror). This system was then adopted by the Mughals and, when the Mughals collapsed, by their former dominions. When those dominions were then conquered by the East India Company, the systems in place continued, as they did when the East India Company was replaced, first by the British Raj and then by the independent state of Pakistan.

There are two reasons why all of this historical baggage is important. First, the vast majority of disputes in Pakistan relate to land. Second, the vast majority of those disputes would not exist if we had an intelligently designed and modern system of land laws.

To put it another way, our legal system does not work today because it is overwhelmed by the number of land-related disputes. And it is overwhelmed by land-related disputes because our inherited systems of land law encourage and reward frivolous litigation. Does that mean we should consider changing our laws? Absolutely. Are we going to? Not bloody likely.

To return to where we started, my fundamental point is that we must learn to judge laws by the results they produce. A law which produces lousy results is a lousy law, irrespective of why it exists. And a law which produces good results is a good law, irrespective of where it originates.

Many centuries ago, Galileo was called upon by Pope Urban VIII to recant his heretical position that the earth moved around the sun (or else lose his head). According to legend, Galileo reluctantly repeated what he was told but then, as he turned around, muttered “e pur si muove”. (And yet it moves).

Law is a means to social ends. When the ends move – and they do – it is necessary to change the means earlier adopted so as to continue to achieve those ends. We can pretend that societies don’t change and that social ends don’t change. And yet they move.

The mummy-daddy, burger-baby revolutionaries

By Feisal H. Naqvi

Pakistan’s most recent sensation is a young law student by the name of Zohair Toru, an enthusiastic, but somewhat muddled follower of Imran Khan, who had the good fortune, last Friday in Islamabad, to be interviewed by a television channel while protesting the release of Raymond Davis.

Fashionably coiffed with a semi-beehive hairdo reminiscent of the lead singers of The B-52s, the main thrust of Mr Toru’s complaintwas that as somebody trying to improve Pakistani society, he didn’t deserve to be pushed around by the police. Or as he plaintively wailed, “Police humai maray gi to inquilaab kaisey aye ga?”[1]

In the cosy little world of Pakistan’s intellectual vanguard (also known as the 50 people who talk to each other on Twitter), Mr Toru’s complaints have been much derided. His original interview has been widely circulated as has indeed his second interview in which the anchor told him, “Beta, cameray mein dekho. Achay lagtay ho; hero marka.”[2] The gist of the chatter is that Mr Toru is a vapid, empty-headed, mummy-daddy type who doesn’t realise that life is hard, that revolution is harder, that power flows from the barrel of a gun and that burger-babies like him should concentrate on their hairstyles and leave the heavy lifting to people who have read their Gramsci.

With all due respect to the beret-wearing poli-sci types, I think there is more to the story. Yes, Mr Toru is fantastically ignorant. Yes, he is deeply innocent of the realities of power. And yes, any revolution is going to be a long time a coming if it is dependent on people like him. But there are things to celebrate about this narrative as well.

First, let us first celebrate the fact that well-meaning, English-medium burger babies have been so roused from the depths of their traditional apathy that they are actually taking to the streets. Given the attention paid by Mr Toru to his personal appearance, not to mention his general unfamiliarity with the Urdu language, it does not seem as if he is part of the starving masses of Pakistan. In fact, given his age and general appearance, one could be forgiven for assuming that Mr Toru is more likely to be found sprawled on a couch with a PS3 controller in his hands than protesting on the streets. If Imran Khan has succeeded in penetrating the adamantine shell of apathy and indifference, which normally shields the wealthier individuals in this country, then more power to him. I don’t agree with much of what the PTI has to say — for example, their decision to join a great left-of-centre coalition while simultaneously spewing semi-jihadist rubbish — but, in this particular regard, the great Khan is entitled to take a bow. Bravo, sir.

Second, I think it is worth celebrating the fact that our burger-babies do not feel that it is appropriate for the police to push around non-violent protesters. This argument is so beautifully innocent, so perfectly divorced from all prior history and past experiences that one feels much like the fabled Grinch in taking a contrary view. However, the point here is not what is true, but what is believed to be true. I can argue now, and forever, that the colonial police was conceived back in 1860, as a paramilitary force tasked with thrashing the natives into submission (and that it has held true to its original conception). However, the point here is that stereotypes are self-reinforcing. If my concept of the police is of a bunch of thugs, then I will accept their thuggery with greater equanimity than if I conceive of them as public servants. Mr Toru may be historically, politically and factually wrong in his views of what the police in Pakistan can actually do. But he is historically, politically and factually right in demanding a police force which does not shove around non-violent protesters like him.

The final point in this regard is that we need more innocents in politics. I know that politics is inherently a dirty business. I also know that in Pakistan, it is a particularly dirty business. But if Pakistani politics is ever to become less of a straightforward extortion racket, it will be because idealistic people actually stick around and get involved in the mechanics of governance. Mr Toru may or may not be one of those who stick around. But, somebody like him eventually will. And we will all be the better for it.

This column appeared first in the Express Tribune on 25.3.2011.

---

[1] “How can we have a revolution if the police beats us?”

[2] “Look at the camera, son. You look good. Just like a hero”

 

A good end to a bad idea

By Feisal Naqvi

The Supreme Court’s investigation into all loan write-offs since 1972, recently came to an end when the court announced that the question as to whether or not any write-offs were politically motivated would be examined by a three-member committee headed by Justice (retd) Saleem Akhtar.

The decision to khudday line the problem into a committee makes sense because the investigation into loan write-offswas, from the very beginning, a bad idea.

It was a bad idea, firstly, because this was not a task that the Supreme Court could handle. Over the past 40 years, there have been, not just thousands, but tens of thousands of cases in which banks have written off loans. Each loan write-off involved a factual judgment call made by the bank in question that there was no more blood to be wrung out of that particular stone. Is it possible that some of those write-offs were politically motivated? Absolutely! But how were you going to find those particular needles in a vast haystack of instances? Was the Supreme Court going to carry out a factual inquiry in each and every case to determine whether or not there were other properties which could have been sold? Was the Supreme Court going to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of each instance to determine whether or not the write-off was made for ‘mala fide’ reasons? If so, what about all the other issues and cases requiring court attention?

It was a bad idea, secondly, because there comes a point in time when we have to let bygones be bygones. Yes, we went through a period of time — essentially 1974 to 1994 — when, in many cases, political power was grossly abused for material gains. But trying to peek through the murky remnants of decades-old financial documents leads nowhere. These deals are now dead and buried. Interring their bones would do no good. If the companies which got the write-offs went on to prosper, the write-offs were worth it. And if they died notwithstanding their write-offs, then what further purpose would have been served by stretching their desiccated remains on the rack?

Let us also remember that we have already been down this particular road to nowhere. In 1999, some fool sold the NAB law to General Musharraf and a whole organisation devoted to tracking down fraudulent write-offs was born. Did it succeed? Short answer, no. That would be why the NAB law was amended to allow the State Bank of Pakistan to ride herd on the NAB cowboys.

In any event, the root of the problem was not the fact that loans got written off but the fact that the nationalisation of banks by Bhutto Sr. had put politicians in charge of the banking system. That original sin has now been fixed with the privatisation of the major banks (MCB and ABL in 1991, UBL in 2002 and HBL in 2004). So, if banks lose money on bad write-offs, it is no longer the government’s problem or even ‘the people’s’ problem: It is the bank’s problem, or more correctly, the bank’s shareholders’ problem.

The write-off hullaballoo was also a bad idea because it catered to the populist perception that an unpaid loan is a crime. Unfortunately, it is a cold, hard fact of nature that businesses make money by taking risks. Sometimes the risks work out well and sometimes they work out badly. But the reason why banks charge interest on loans — oops, pardon me, mark-up — is so that they make enough money from the good loans to cover the losses from the bad loans. Those losses are an inevitable fact of doing business. They are to be minimised, but they are necessary and unavoidable. If anything, it is our idiotic obsession with minimising default risk which makes doing business so problematic in this country.

Let me explain. Suppose you have identified a promising business opportunity. Like many entrepreneurs, you need to borrow money. But if you go to a bank, they will force you to back up the loan, not just with property, but with a personal guarantee. Which means that if you fail, you lose not just your investment but, quite literally, the shirt off your back. And, thanks to the NAB law, a default could land you in jail for 14 years, even if it occurs despite your best efforts! Now, tell me, how many risks would you be willing to take?

This is not a minor issue. A failure to allow risks in business is much the same as a failure to allow business. The single most important legal step in business history was the development of the limited liability company. The reason is that this development let people put a cap on their risks, so that if the business went belly-up, the investors lost the value of their investments, but no more. This in turn produced a flood of investment which in turn led to, in aggregate and over time, far greater prosperity for all. In Pakistan, we have effectively destroyed the concept of limited liability and the consequences of that are evident for all to see.

The final point is that there is no cosmic unfairness in the fact that small defaulters get no respite from bad loans while big defaulters are able to finagle deals: That is inherent in the nature of business. To paraphrase Keynes, if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem. But if you owe the bank a billion dollars, then the bank has a problem. Yes, from the perspective of the small defaulter, that sucks. But, to repeat, that’s business. Get over it. Or come back when you have figured out how to rewrite the laws of finance.

This column appeared first in the Express Tribune on March 20, 2011.

 

Decency is never inappropriate

Communism has faded so far from public consciousness that there seems little difference between discussing the Bolsheviks and the Merovingians. But back when I studied Darkness at Noon, the Red Menace was very much still an extant threat.

The story of Darkness at Noon is that of Rubashov, a revolutionary communist, now himself imprisoned on charges of treason. As Rubashov rots in jail, he thinks about all the people he betrayed in order to further the cause he then believed in — even his own mistress. He tries to convince his torturers of his innocence, but to no avail. Eventually, he realises that his fealty to the Cause requires him to confess, even though he is innocent. He does so and is then executed.

In the Cliff Notes version of the book that remains seared into my brain, the moral of the story was as follows: The ends do not justify the means. Corrupt means will eventually only produce corrupt ends.

I mention all of this because of Ejaz Haider’s recent column on “Emergency Ethics.” So far as I understand it Ejaz’s argument is that this is not a time when we have the luxury of respecting the full panoply of human rights. Instead, he gave the example of Peru’s war against the Shining Path guerillas, as well as Britain’s decision to bomb German cities and civilians, as ways in which states have overcome mortal threats to their existence. We must, he concludes, “put a moratorium on our decency because that is the only way to ensure [our] survival in the long term.”

It is by now, fairly evident, that we live in troubled times. The murder of Salmaan Taseer was followed by a storm of outrage and then a slow fade into indifference. The murder of Shahbaz Bhatti has accelerated that process so that we went from shock to indifference in a few hours (as opposed to a few months). Can there be any doubt that this country is locked in a mortal struggle for its very soul? Do we really have the luxury of being decent to our opponents?

My answer is that we have no option but to be decent. We are fighting, not just for our lives, but for our ideals. If we believe in a humane order, we cannot achieve that goal through inhuman means.

The irony about this conversation is that we have just witnessed a terrible war in which the gung-ho approach has been tried and failed. Have we already forgotten what happened in Abu Ghraib, as well as the delight we all took in condemning the United States for its hypocrisy? What was Abu Ghraib except the institutionalisation of indecency?

Leaving aside the euphemisms, what exactly are we talking about here? Does Ejaz want our police to have the legal authority to torture suspects? Does he want the armed forces to have the power to carpet-bomb North Waziristan? Does he want the state to have the power to detain people indefinitely?

I ask these questions not to be unhelpful or condescending. The soldiers dying out there in the tribal areas are dying to keep my mushy liberal backside safe and it does not behoove me — or anybody else — to be flippant. And I am not. Instead, the argument I am making is that we are fighting, not just for physical survival, but for a set of values. Those values do not include torture and they do not include crimes against humanity. And I, for one, am willing to live with the consequences.

At the end of the day, I believe in this country, not as a gift from God, but as a creation of a compact between its peoples, an agreement to live and die by certain rules. Unlike Americans, I do not have the luxury of idealising the framers of my constitution. (Anybody so inclined should read those parts of the constitutional debates where Mian Mehmood Ali Kasuri is repeatedly interrupted by cries of “oye motay!”) Nonetheless, there is a fundamental wisdom distilled into this document, none more so than Article 233, which provides that certain fundamental rights can be suspended during an emergency, but not all. The rights which cannot be suspended include the right of habeas corpus (Art. 10) and the right not to be tortured (Art. 14). In other words, our most fundamental agreement provides that no matter what happens, we cannot and will not give up certain basic human dignities.

Let me put this argument a different way: every time we are confronted by a fresh outrage, this nation turns and asks itself, what kind of people could do such sick things? What kind of people can use a 15-year-old boy as a bomb? What kind of people would bomb a mosque full of worshippers? What kind of people would kill a person just because of his faith? Do we really want the answer to be “people like us”?

One of the few heartening things that came out last year was the yeh hum naheen movement. That simple statement — this is not us — meant a great deal to me. It showed me that there is a core gentleness in our character which rejects the violence and the hate being inflicted upon us in the name of our religion. Yes, I have heard all the cynical analyses, that Pakistan is an unfortunate mistake composed of nothing but the mongrel remnants of the subcontinent, that there is no ‘nation’ in any coherent sense of that term. My answer to that is very simple: We may not have been much of a nation in 1947 but we sure as hell are becoming one now.

To return to Ejaz’s suggestion, the purpose of this column is not to sneer at him. He is not only one of my dearest friends but also one of the most deeply learned people I know. But in this case, he is completely and utterly wrong. Decency is never inappropriate. Yeh hum naheen.

This column appeared first in the Express Tribune on March 6, 2011.