5 Reasons Kidnapping of Pakistani Activists Matters to You
Up to nine secular activists have disappeared in Pakistan as families scramble for news. Here’s why their disappearances matters.
BY ELLIOT FRIEDLAND
Demonstrators demanding the recovery of missing activist Salman Haider outside the Karachi Press Club.
Over the weekend, several prominent Pakistani activists disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Activists from Pakistan are speculating that the government is behind the spate of disappearances in which at least four but possibly up to nine activists were kidnapped. Supporters of the missing activists have taken to the streets to demand they are recovered. They are sharing messages of support on social media using #RecoverSalmanHaider and #RecoverAllActivists.
Here are five reasons we should all care about what’s happening in Pakistan:
These are the people fighting against the ideology of extremism
Pakistan is a large country which in the past has sheltered radical Islamist groups such as the Taliban. It’s where Osama bin Laden was able to hide out for years before he was finally brought to justice. One of the two founding fathers of modern extremist Islam, Abu A’la Maududi, was Pakistani.
Yet there is a growing movement of secularists in Pakistan who are struggling against the extremism within their country and who want to make Pakistan a better place. If they succeed, what we will see coming out of Pakistan is more and more educated integrated anti-extremist Muslims and less and less extremists affiliated with groups like the Taliban.
This will have a knock-on impact internationally and will reduce the amount of extremism in the world, including the amount of extremism in the United States. Their success will protect those who value secularism as a way of life around the world
If the activists currently disappearing in Pakistan are wiped out, Pakistan will become more extreme which will lead to the Muslim world in general becoming more extreme.
Pakistan Has Nuclear Weapons
Pakistan just tested a nuclear-capable missile from a submarine. This development reportedly gives Pakistan second-strike capabilities, meaning that even if the country is wiped out by a nuclear strike, Pakistan would be able to respond by firing nuclear warheads from strategically-placed submarines.
If a country with such capabilities eliminates all its secularly-minded and rational thinkers and becomes completely overcome by theocratic Islamist ideology, then this nuclear arsenal will be in the hands of Islamist extremists.
That would be a serious national security risk to the United States of America.
Other Countries Will Follow Suit
If the persecution of secularist and anti-extremist activist continues in Pakistan unabated and without significant international opposition, other countries will take note. Pakistan is a U.S. ally and the beneficiary of significant sums of aid money for decades. Last year, President Obama proposed $860 million in aid to Pakistan, which was a significant drop in the aid usually provided by the United States.
If America or other countries which have relations with Pakistan do nothing to stand up for the rights of secularists in Pakistan, countries such as Turkey and Indonesia will take note. The Turkish parliament is currently discussing increased powers for the Islamist President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Indonesia is currently putting the governor of Jakarta (a non-Muslim) on trial for alleged blasphemy.
These countries may see America’s failure to protect secularism in Pakistan as a green light to persecute activists in their own countries.
Are we entering a permanent era where there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills?
Work means everything to us Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labour, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning, purpose and structure to our everyday lives – at any rate, we’re pretty sure that it gets us out of bed, pays the bills, makes us feel responsible, and keeps us away from daytime TV.
These beliefs are no longer plausible. In fact, they’ve become ridiculous, because there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.
These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump – addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding or demeaning it is. But ‘full employment’ is not the way to restore our faith in hard work, or in playing by the rules, or in whatever else sounds good. The official unemployment rate in the United States is already below 6 per cent, which is pretty close to what economists used to call ‘full employment’, but income inequality hasn’t changed a bit. Shitty jobs for everyone won’t solve any social problems we now face.
Don’t take my word for it, look at the numbers. Already a fourth of the adults actually employed in the US are paid wages lowerthan would lift them above the official poverty line – and so a fifth of American children live in poverty. Almost half of employed adults in this country are eligible for food stamps (most of those who are eligible don’t apply). The market in labour has broken down, along with most others.
Those jobs that disappeared in the Great Recession just aren’t coming back, regardless of what the unemployment rate tells you – the net gain in jobs since 2000 still stands at zero – and if they do return from the dead, they’ll be zombies, those contingent, part-time or minimum-wage jobs where the bosses shuffle your shift from week to week: welcome to Wal-Mart, where food stamps are a benefit.
And don’t tell me that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour solves the problem. No one can doubt the moral significance of the movement. But at this rate of pay, you pass the official poverty line only after working 29 hours a week. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25. Working a 40-hour week, you would have to make $10 an hour to reach the official poverty line. What, exactly, is the point of earning a paycheck that isn’t a living wage, except to prove that you have a work ethic?
In his talk on 13 December 2016 chaired by Dr Masuma Hasan, he emphasised Germany’s strong relationship with Pakistan pointing out in that regard that the name of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, is very significant because he studied in Germany and was awarded his PhD from Munich University. He also highlighted that it is high time for Pakistan to realign its tactics in its own neighbourhood because in today’s global politics, economic power is more important than military or strategic power.
The talk revolved around Pakistan’s role in the international community, its interconnectedness as well as its increasing isolation from global politics. Professor Schetter stressed the need for the narrative in the region to shift from geopolitics to geo-economics. In his view:
Power depends on economics and not on military forces or approaches.
He attempted to explain how despite the economic development within Pakistan via the CPEC being considered positively, in reality many of Pakistan’s neighbours were several steps ahead with economic engagements on more fronts and with several countries simultaneously.
These projects include the Chabahar Port, as well as several other Eurasian projects where a new economic corridor was being built up. Thus, he said, it was imperative that Pakistan engaged economically with other countries, in specific its immediate neighbours.
India, he said, was in a much better position economically and had tapped into this advantage internationally, while Pakistan had over the years lost trust in several quarters, and one such was in Central Asia.
Professor Schetter is also director for research at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), and will be the first member to represent peace and conflict research in the Board. He has written extensively as well as worked in the field in countries such as Afghanistan, India, Iran, Pakistan, and in certain Central Asian states such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He shared several anecdotes with regards to his travels which highlighted an increasing isolation of Pakistan in a global context and said:
A couple of years ago I was invited by a think tank in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. When we talked about Eurasian projects … they shared their fears mostly about Afghanistan and its growing Islamism. But Pakistan was considered the real problem. There is a great loss of trust in respect to Pakistan while there is a great deal of trust in India.
Turning his attention to India, he said both countries needed to resolve their political issues which contributed to instability in the region. Trust building, increased economic trade, multi-track diplomacy was needed between the two, as was a departure from nationalist, territorial logic. He several times, during his talk, also emphasised on the German government’s support towards helping Pakistan resolve its issues.
Innovation is essential, according to Professor Schetter, towards Pakistan becoming more connected with the world. One such way, he elaborated, was to set up a knowledge-based economy which the country lagged behind in.
The CPEC was also debated on and in his discourse, his word of caution concerning China’s engagement in Pakistan centred on whether China really considered Pakistan a friend or a mere economic partner. He said that feudalism and the biradri system is preventing any social change in Pakistan’s society.
However, some of his observations regarding Pakistan were counter-argued by Dr Masuma Hasan. She specially negated his view about how the country needed more social change to economically evolve and said:
I think there are very few countries in the world, under-developed or developed, in which there has been so much social change as in Pakistan. It is estimated that within the next few years, 50 per cent of Pakistan’s population is going to be urban, which is a big social change.
She also spoke about how issues of feudalism and the biradari system in Pakistan are seen by western scholarship in a stereotypical way. Summing up, she concluded:
Why don’t you focus on how these systems have broken down? How so much change has come about in traditional power relations? Go into the field and you will see the change.
Germany’s consul general Rainer Schmiedchen was also present at the occasion and expressed his desire of more joint research projects between Pakistan and Germany.
It was also said that China’s focus is not on Gwadar, but Eurasia, building high-speed railway system between China, Central Asia and Russia to Europe. It will make traffic of Kabul from China to Europe much easier and cost effective in comparison to sea route. Pakistan deserves a better image because if you follow German media, Pakistan is always mentioned when something bad has happened connected to religious extremism and violence and sometimes Germans got the impression that Pakistani politics was using insecurity in the country to attract international politics.
Though it is just a road between two countries, Pakistan and China, CPEC is highly critical and provides Pakistan much potential to become a cross road, linking several countries. Many of its neighbours have also already stepped up similar activity. Iran’s Chahbahar harbour, close to Gwadar is an example. Moreover, Iran has already built up a full corridor to Turkmenistan, working it to link Afghanistan to Central Asia. On the other side, the Turkmenistan has built a new railway system to Afghanistan.
Professor Schetter placed key value on the Indo-Pak relationship for the whole region. There is a need of economic cooperation between both countries, as it is a tool for trust building. Germany has very good contacts in economic sector of both countries and could play a role of bridge for Indo-Pak economic cooperation. He was also critical of the relationship between Pakistan and China saying that “friendship” is not the right word to describe it. China only advancing its own economic interests and now Pakistan has to think hard about if it will only depend on China or will it take the time to enter into new partnerships elsewhere.
