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Gender matters
Rosemary Bechler
Jane Powell
In celebration of International Women's Day, 2009, Jane Powell, formerly of Greenham Common, talks to 50.50 editor, Rosemary Bechler, about the role women and girls might play in improving the prospects for one of the most delicate conversations of all.
6 - 03 - 2009
Jane Powell has devoted a large part of her life to two very different universes, both of which are based on gender identity - Greenham Common where women chose a different way of life, and the campaign against living miserably (CALM), aimed at bringing the suicide rate down among young men. Jane launched CALM as a pilot for the UK's Department of Health in Manchester in 1997, and returned to launch it as a charity in 2006.
RB: Jane - a recent blog I wrote about Greenham Common received noticeably fewer hits than other parts of the discussion: why do you think there is so little interest in that historic experiment?
JP: All of us who were there have quite deliberately avoided making media capital out of that fact - and this has no doubt contributed to the lack of profile. But it has meant that Greenham has become invisible. People who subsequently lived in trees or are part of the Plane Stupid campaign make deliberate use of the media, and the difference shows.
We felt that it was wrong to exploit what we did for the sake of media coverage: the whole culture of the camp was about an anarchy that rejected leadership hierarchies, spokespeople and a nice table for press enquiries. Greenham was the reverse of that. We made decisions based on current circumstances. We didn't stick to one set of rules. Everybody was listened to and had a right to ‘be', provided it didn't interfere with others. It was anti-authoritarian and very affirmative of the people living there. Books written about Greenham, such as On the Perimeter, are hilarious because they so totally missed what made the place so brilliant.
RB: So, what was so important about the experience for the women involved?
JP: It allowed women to really be who they were. It brought together women of very different backgrounds and classes and ages - working class women together with women who had been in powerful positions, civil servants for example, women working in health or social welfare, miners' wives, kids from the local schools, young vulnerable women. I remember the circulation of a Molesworth newsletter which said: ‘This is how you get over the fence. You dress in dark and sensible clothes. You go over in the middle of the night. You get a piece of carpet for the barbed wire and make sure that you're all prepared...' It was funny to read because we had just led a completely impractically dressed cross-section of women into the base in the middle of the day. One of them was wearing a very long floaty gown and another needed to be helped because she was extremely old and infirm - and actually it was much more fun doing that than pretending to be in the army and attacking the fence as if you were a soldier. It was more open, more chaotic certainly, more sociable, and far more powerful.
There always were very strong women there, so there were constant arguments, some of them very bitter. It wasn't an easy place to be. But the fact that Camp couldn't be ‘cleaned up' by somebody taking over and telling everyone else how to behave - that was what was so fantastic.
RB: Crossing over the private/public divide was also important...
JP: Yes, the other thing about it which is even less talked about is the fact that women were not just coming together to talk about cruise missiles - but this fantastic mix of people all out of their different boxes were talking about peace and society in a far broader manner - poverty, sexuality, the environment, nuclear testing, food mountains, in a way that was and felt innovative. We could do this because we weren't centrally organised and everyone did their own thing. And as such it was very hard for the authorities to tackle. They couldn't cut off the head. If they arrested one woman, we wouldn't all just go away.
RB: What could they do, for example, about women hanging pretty things on the fence...?
JP: I must confess I didn't much like the resulting litter trail, but I guess it was symbolic! They could evict us. They could take away all of our stuff and they could imprison us. Prison never worked very well because it gave us too much publicity. But the evictions were nasty, very gruelling. You would suddenly lose all your food and shelter. But other women would arrive at camp, with some food, or hot food, or plastic, or a pram - always a very good thing - or a sofa. And the camps suddenly sprang back to life as if by magic.
Non-violence was essential. The business about enforcing your will on somebody else - which is what violence is - was a non-starter. So at camp meetings - which were legendary - we would go round and round and round the circle and give everybody space to say what they thought until there was a collective decision. The anarchy and the non-violence were core components for the women involved and in a way were the same thing.
RB: So after having your own family, how did you end up in the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)?
JP: I was asked to launch CALM by the Department of Health. The suicide rate for young men was climbing, and most of those suicides were committed by young men who were not accessing any kind of help. The idea was to create a helpline which young men would identify with, and a service which be useful to them. I was asked to go to Manchester, an area where the suicide rate was highest at the time, and to use music and/or sports (neither of which I knew anything about) to brand the campaign and reach young men (another area about which I knew nothing). The idea of the project was to provide callers with support and practical advice and information. Not just a listening service. The point was to brand it in a way which would reach our audience. The suicide of young men at that point had never crossed my radar, and I confess I dreaded the challenge.
But I became totally engaged when I started to get involved. I didn't have to work hard persuading people to get on board. Radio stations, djs, clubowners, and miscellaneous young men responded easily, positively and with real pleasure to the idea of getting involved, and took an active part in the campaign. Which was amazing and inspiring. And a rare treat.
The other reason I became particularly interested was that when I looked at the suicide rates and how they were changing, I realised it wasn't just about Manchester. Young male suicide was a global phenomenon. There is a pattern to it that started in the seventies, when the suicide rate starts shooting up, and continues until the late 90s. In the 30 and 40 age group it is still rising now. And regardless of age, depressed men tend not to talk to anyone. Moreover, they are three-four times more likely to kill themselves than are young women. Unlike young men, young women will talk about their problems to families, strangers, friends.
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Click to view World suicide statistics
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Where you have countries at war or with particular political and social instability, as in some parts of Eastern Europe, the suicide rate is particularly high in young men. But what struck me was that almost every single country in the world is significantly affected by this pattern of young male suicide. So why? Each country has its own response, and everything that can be measured is - levels of poverty, obesity, crime, diet, hospital care etc. What can't be measured so easily is cultural change, social attitudes, changes in gender, the media. And here there have been profound changes since the 70s, when young male suicide rates started to rise. What appears to be the case is that many young men simply don't feel able to live up to our, or their, expectations. So this issue isn't just about Bridgend, or even suicide in Britain. I believe it is about gender.
RB: Since the seventies, you think men have had a worse time of it?
JP: It has been a period of monumental change. And the fact is that if so many more young men commit suicide than young women across the world over the same period of time, you cannot get away from the fact that this is something to do with what it is to be a man in this period of time - in the last forty years. Talk to people engaged in this campaign or to the parents of suicides and the impression you get is that it is hard being the kind of man you are expected to be, and very hard coping with not reaching that goal. I don't think you can look at the suicide curve during that period without thinking that this is something to do with changes happening to gender relations within society at the same time.
RB: Do you find yourself agreeing with the Pope's end-of-year message for 2008, therefore, on the need to defend gender roles as God designed them for the human species?
JP: Not at all. This isn't about abandoning equality for women. With my dying breath I would not advocate that, any more than bringing back slavery - the abolition of which also caused a lot of upheaval.
Moreover, cutting seems to have ballooned in both sexes. (Again, a lot of the boys won't go and see their GPs or anyone else.) And I agree that there are still huge problems involved in growing up as a young woman as we see in eating disorders and indeed suicide attempts. But if we are going to have an impact on the suicide rate in young men - it seems to me that we have to recognise the existence of an identity crisis in being a young guy.
If you take on board the bigger picture, then you see that the male suicide rate has gone up as the position of women has changed alongside rapid changes in technology and the media. Young men don't feel able to fulfil either their own expectations or ours, and since they are not supposed to talk about how they feel - or access any kind of help - their frustrations take different forms - drink, violence and suicide. We need to tackle these. There needs to be a discussion, and we need to look at where the problems are and what is going wrong.
RB: It is not a simple picture, is it? You might think women have liberated themselves rather successfully, if very unevenly, in some ways: men just have to catch up. But the first complication is that we are dealing here with a relationship of fundamental inequality between those two stereotypes. Changes to one side of the gender equation necessarily have an intimate impact on the other, not least at the level of power.
JP: There is the gender backlash. There are elements of society who have dug themselves into entrenched positions and refused to engage in any sort of dialogue about what it means to be a guy or a woman. And the media have demonised men trying to talk about issues in the same way that they demonised feminists. That has been fantastically detrimental, that self-imposed entrenchment. And the result is that it leaves a lot of young men in particular without any way to turn. These are the ones who don't want to be the strong silent caveman types, but who see women having it every way they want.
RB: There's the backlash at the individual level, but there are also the power structures that keep gender in place regardless of individual choices. The Vatican is an obvious example, but there are much more elusive processes - such as the whole notion of authority, or the role of patriotism, war, aggressive competition. These vast structures of meaning and of ‘power over' are all under attack in these less deferential, more diverse times: but they too are fighting back. In the developed world, it seems to me gender emancipation has been hijacked until it seems only to be about wielding the same kinds of power. Why should that be attractive? This is, after all, about people's pursuit of meaningful and happy lives...
JP: The changes in mass communication and media had a huge impact in the 70s and the 80s - offering people completely different types of roles. But these things are very muddling for all concerned. It's relatively recent that men beating up their wives became socially unacceptable. You can't do it any more. Yet, switch on the tv and it's full of men being violent towards women. And whilst we are all meant to be in favour of equality of opportunity - there is still the social expectation that a real man will earn more than his girlfriend or wife, and not be found at the sandpit with his kids during the week.
RB: Of course we are told that the media can only reflect what young people want and who they are out there: take the business about Sachsgate: that was the excuse. On the whole, the impression we are given is of an inexorable process of brutalisation.
JP: It's a huge problem. Young guys are surrounded by images of who they are not and who they don't want to be. How are they going to keep their women if they don't feel able to be like the guy in the advert? And often the portrayal of young men in the media is a degrading caricature. The women are smart, pretty and career-oriented and the young man is just a dork, an unresponsive lump. But our campaign proves that this isn't what young men are like today, and it's not what they want.
Peer group pressure in your late teens when you are most insecure is horrendous. If you look into the suicide instances, quite often it is very nice, sensitive, decent types who suspect that they are never going to fit in - a little too different from the prevailing macho model, and bullied as a result. Bullying, of course, has always gone on at some level, only now it has been turned into a feature of celebrity life /reality tv. With those who are being bullied hoping for their five minutes of fame.
The one thing that is not discussed is the nature of masculinity. And women have to be involved in that debate. Not in an accusatory way. Both sides need to unpick the gender relationship and look more closely at some of its versions and component parts, together. There are assumptions and problems on both sides. Until we have that discussion, I'm convinced that the suicide rate isn't going to change.
RB: This is where CALM comes in, and the response of young men, as you say, has been very positive...
JP: I am nothing less than inspired by the way that 15 to 25 yr. olds love this campaign, and get involved in it. That's what makes this an exciting campaign, the very real desire - a vehement desire for change. With a constant stream of emails saying "I'm please to see the website there. It's really important that you continue." "It's good to have somewhere to talk without being judged." And the guys in their 30s and 40s want to get involved too, and give a hand up to the younger ones. You can hear the sigh of relief across the board that this is something which says it's there for them, it's OK to be a guy and there's no judgement or expectation about who you should be.
Pretty similar to the relief I felt at having the space to be myself at Greenham. So for me, this is a continuum. If you go back to Greenham the core elements were anarchy and diversity, and non-violence. The diversity of interests and mutual acceptance of the women at camp - interested in the environment, nurturing, lesbianism, the military, sharing a central set of beliefs in non-violence - this is what made the campaign so strong.
CALM supporters range across the social and life experience spectrum. Some have experienced the kind of bullying I was talking about: many not at all. They range in age from 9 to middle age: from kids in care to city men in suits. But they're coming together around the desire to find a space defined by and for themselves.
RB: What has worked best?
JP: The CALM website, it was decided from the beginning, would not be a site created by health professionals paid to provide a service to young men. CALM is of and about young men. This is absolutely central to the campaign. But it isn't prescriptive. Look at Nuts or Loaded and you will see that they both have quite a conformist agenda of who you ought to want to be. Inevitably, the CALM website is quite messy and chaotic.
The language is very important: it is not about victimisation. It isn't at all like those awful images of young men holding their heads in despair. Our website is much more upbeat because our audience blanks out these kinds of messages: they want to be positive. There are some gems in terms of videos and articles - but it isn't dogmatic or judgmental. Our ads - the Save The Male, Gulf war and the Union Jack ads - have been created by young men, and they respond very positively to those ads. I get constant e-mails from men who want a piece of CALM, who want to be a creative part of it, want to be involved. The push is from below. It has amazed me. It is that set of beliefs and values that we have tried to keep alive in our branding of the campaign.
Music is very important to CALM, and music/ entertainment/humour is the environment within which it sits. Core to the campaign is the idea of overturning the notion that the strong and silent type is anything to aim for. Being silent is being a victim. So, ‘Being silent isn't being strong' is our core message. And we use music and young mens' peers to communicate that message. Take the Beatbox Ad: this has had a really strong response. Real people, djs, artists, musicians, talking about stuff. A great ad.
As a result, it is a positive campaign concerning gender and aspirations, diversity and creating a space for men to exist and feel good about who they are. CALM, like Greenham, is a dynamic, lived campaign fuelled from below, by men from an incredibly diverse range of ages and backgrounds who are creative and want to be involved and engaged with what we do next. Yes - it feels like home.
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SuperMedia: the future as “networked journalism”
Charlie Beckett
New-media communication tools are making possible a profound shift in the way journalism is conceived and practised. The impact will be on the public sphere and democracy itself, says Charlie Beckett.
10 - 06 - 2008
From bloggers in China to "netroots" activists in the United States, new forms of journalism are reshaping political communications - and therefore politics itself. The success of Barack Obama's campaign for his party's nomination in the US presidential election has depended crucially on internet mobilisation. The unprecedented openness of the response to the Sichuan earthquake was also conditioned by citizen journalism and the hyper-textuality of modern media. The influence of new forms of communication is pervasive, the opportunities legion. But is the business of journalism up to the challenge?
Charlie Beckett is a journalist and director of Polis, the centre for research and debate in to journalism at the London School of Economics and the London College of Communication. He is the author of SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). His blog is here.
For further details of Polis and extracts from SuperMedia, click here.
Also by Charlie Beckett in openDemocracy:
"The media and Africa: doing bad by doing ‘good'?" (18 June 2007)New-media technology is only having a serious effect because of its impact on established journalism. The way that the vast bulk of public and commercial media is changing is more important than the emergence of citizen journalism or the independent blogosphere. Together they offer the opportunity to transform the news media into a more open, trustworthy and useful forum for information and debate. Saving journalism will not in itself save the world. That is down to people and politicians. But a healthier local and global news media is a necessary precondition for international development and security.
My book SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) is an attempt to move on from the rather tiresome trench warfare of "new" versus "old" media or "citizen" versus "professional" journalist. The public is now increasingly doing it for themselves. That is great. Traditional media is also showing great enterprise in going online and becoming more interactive. That is good too. The interesting question now is how these changes will inform each other. I think that the result will be a transformation of journalism production that is a much bigger and deeper challenge to the news media than it realises.
A process, not a product
As it becomes non-linear and open-sourced, journalism changes. This is about more than posting a comment on a blog or sending in a photo to a website. The claims that traditional media is made for authority, objectivity and quality will be challenged. I think that the business, moral and political case for journalism is best made when it embraces these changes. To retain value journalism must engage with the public. It must shift power from the newsroom to the connected online and digital world. It must become "networked".
We are in a world where data is vital to daily and lifetime decision-making for individuals. Interaction and analysis are crucial to community cohesion. Fluid information-flows are the lifeblood of the information-based economies emerging globally and locally. And in a complex world where multifaceted issues such as migration and climate change are both difficult and unavoidable, the media forum and its potential for dialogue and debate about such concerns is vital to a healthy public sphere.
"Networked journalism" means opening up the production process from start to finish - and beyond. It already has the tools: email, mobile-phones, digital cameras, online editing, web-cams, texting, and remote controls. This is channelled through new communication processes like crowd-sourcing, Twitter, YouTube, and wikis as well as blogs and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).
Networked journalism is a process not a product. The journalist still reports, edits, packages the news. But the process is continually shared. The networked journalist changes from being a gatekeeper who delivers to a facilitator who connects.
Also in openDemocracy on journalism in the age of new media:
Sidney Blumenthal, "Walter Lippmann and American journalism today" (31 October 2007)
Philip Bennett, "The media and the war: seeing the human" (20 November 2007)
Tony Curzon Price, "The blind newsmaker" (26 January 2008)
Catalina Holguín, "Colombia: networks of dissent and power" (4 February 2008)
Charles Leadbeater, "Democracy in the network age: time to WeThink" (5 March 2008)
Ivy Wang, "China's netizens and Tibet: a Guangzhou report" (8 April 2008)
What does that mean in practice? At one level this a very practical thing that takes traditional journalism and liberates it through public participation. Take the example of the Fort Myers News Press newspaper in Florida. In the wake of hurricane Katrina the enterprising editor got her lawyers to force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release all its data on relief payments to townspeople. The data provided was far too extensive for the paper's journalists to process. So instead they put it all online and asked their readers to do the searching. Within twenty-four hours, 60,000 searches were made throwing up all kinds of leads for the journalists to follow up and publish. Neither journalists nor public could have done this on their own. The combination of skills and resources opened up a story in a way that allowed both to challenge the authorities.
Just think about how many other ways you could exploit similar techniques to mine public knowledge. Imagine how that act of networked journalism added real value to that community. And in an era when regional newspapers in many countries (the United States included) are disappearing, I believe it offers a paradigm for established journalism to survive and thrive but with a new social role.
There will always be attempts to limit people speaking for themselves. Traditional journalists will patronise it as "anarchy" or "unprofessional" and "unreliable". Repressive authorities will recognise the challenge to their control over the established media. This is why it is so important that anyone seeking to sustain freedom of expression should seek to build networked journalism.
African lessons
Take Kenya. An excellent report on media coverage of the conflict that followed the disputed election in December 2007 makes it clear that all types of media made mistakes (see Jamal Abdi & James Deane, The Kenyan 2007 Elections and Their Aftermath: The Role of Media and Communication, BBC World Service Trust, April 2008). Everyone from the international news organisations to the local community radio stations contributed in some way to escalating tensions. Some journalists became voices for hatred as well as understanding. News cannot avoid reporting conflict. Networked journalism cannot give any guarantees of peace, love and understanding. But a journalism that builds in greater public participation surely implies a media that is at least more accountable to its community?
What Africa needs is support to build public participation in all types of news media. It needs to build on what is working, not western models of traditional journalism. For example, in Africa mobile-phones are transforming the way that people communicate. It is creating a platform that networked journalism could exploit in a way that could leapfrog western media developments.
Initiatives like the SMS polls project conducted by Media Focus On Africa (MFOA) tapped into this. Listeners to commercial radio shows were able to interact on the issues discussed. MFOA also created a network of citizen reporters that fed material via mobile-phone and video into an internationally accessible news website.
African bloggers like Cédric Kalonji are also doing networked journalism for themselves. He works for Radio Okapi in the Democratic Republic of Congo but his own photo-based blog adds a whole new dimension to his work, linking him to the francophone blogosphere.
Networked journalism is about a shift in power. If you allow the public to help drive your agenda you are sharing editing. By gathering from the public you are compromising your ownership of editorial material. You are losing control of authority and impartiality. Some people see these as grave dangers. I do not.
Traditional media has always had power without responsibility. Journalism has resisted being held to account - often rightly, for the news media has to be allowed the independence to prod and provoke. But this means that it can claim no innate moral superiority over the citizen or networked journalist. The established media has been biased, incompetent and greedy for too long to complain now its monopoly has been broken (see Nick Davies, Flat Earth News [Chatto, 2008]). Instead, it should recognise an opportunity to reinvent what is good about journalism.
Stories will be more grounded in people's lives if the newsroom doors are opened up. The key concept here is relevance. This does not mean lowest common denominator journalism. If that were the case then outstanding media like the BBC or the Economist would not be thriving as they are. But it does mean that the journalist has to go where the public is. In communication terms, that means places like social-networking sites. That will change the "language" and techniques that journalists adopt. Just as advertising has become personalised and viral, so journalism will have to get closer to the communities that it is talking to, be they geographical or subject-specific.
Think about how this opens up the space for a more participatory politics at all levels. Imagine how it can inform a more deliberative democracy. Instead of claiming a special dispensation, the journalist will now become part of a network of responsibilities and relevance. It's where I have always thought good journalism belonged.
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Sharia law comes to the Swat valley (India-Pakistan conflict)
(This week's shooting of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore reminded Pakistanis of the extent to which their country is under attack by Islamist extremists. With terrorist strikes in the country's major cities becoming an increasingly common phenomenon, liberal and secular Pakistan has been shaken to the core by a Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked tribal insurgency that is spilling out of control from the country's rugged borderlands in Afghanistan.
But one of the sharpest wake-up calls was delivered not by the bomb or the gun, but by the pen. In February, the provincial government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) reached an agreement with insurgents in the Swat valley, winning a ceasefire in exchange for allowing elements of sharia law to be imposed upon the region. Already, Islamists have moved to ban education for girls, the culmination of a bombing campaign against girls' schools. That the Swat valley - a picturesque tourist hotspot not far from the capital Islamabad - is now in the firm grasp of Islamists is a measure of Pakistan's plight.
Ghazal Mahtab reports from the Swat valley on life under the Taliban. A version of this piece was published in Afghanistan Monitor. - Editor's note)
The recent "peace deal" agreed on 16 February between the NWFP provincial government and the Taliban-linked militant group Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), "Movement for Enforcing Mohammad's Sharia Laws" has sent shockwaves across Pakistan. Although the federal government supports the deal as part of "efforts to bring peace and negotiated settlement" to the region, many Pakistanis worry that under the cover of negotiations the NWFP is being converted stealthily into a safe haven for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their social mores.
Since 2007, the Pakistan military has been battling insurgents in the Swat valley, a former tourist hotspot in the northwest of the country, not far from the Afghan border to the west and the capital Islamabad to the east. Under the deal, the government will implement elements of sharia law in the region of Malakand in the NWFP, an area which includes the Swat valley. The military's presence in the area will also be toned down, with troops redeployed to designated camps and forts.
Politicians argue that the deal has the consent of the people of the region. Information Minister Sherry Rehman claims that "the public will of the population of the Swat region is at the centre of all efforts and it should be taken into account while debating the merits of this agreement." But critics argue that a majority of local people in Swat are against the deal, despite demonstrations mobilised by the deal's Islamist proponents in its support.
The costs of compromise
Residents of the valley remain vulnerable to intimidation and violence by the militants that has drastically curbed public life, especially for women. Describing the education of girls as "un-Islamic", militants in Swat have destroyed 191 schools including 122 for girls since 2007. Eventually, on 24 December 2008, Maulana Shah Dauran, a Taliban spokesman, announced that girls' education would be outlawed in the valley from 15 January and issued a warning that all girls' schools would have to be closed by the set deadline.
According to retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Nawaz, a former Interior Minister and Defense Secretary, "People in Swat are living in fear of militants and they have no other choice but to praise the accord."
Maulana Sufi Muhammad, who negotiated and sealed the sharia law enforcement deal in Swat with local government officials, is the founder of TNSM. The movement, however, is now headed by his son-in-law, the religious cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, known as "Maulana Radio" for his illegal nightly FM station, broadcasting his latest fatwas (religious edicts), preaching extremism, and defending Taliban actions.
Sufi Muhammad sent thousands of Pakistani militants to Afghanistan to fight American forces alongside Taliban insurgents after the US invaded the country in 2001.
He was arrested by security forces in Pakistan in 2002 and TNSM was banned by the government, but he was released last year after agreeing to "renounce violence" and help work towards peace in the region.
Under the peace deal the government will introduce a sharia-based judicial system in parts of NWFP, including the Malakand division, home to around three million people. The system, as the NWFP chief minister pointed out in a news conference, would be run by the same judicial officers, under the same procedural laws, as elsewhere in the country. According to the government, the only Islamic content in the law is the nomenclature, with the substitution of English titles for courts and officials with Arabic ones (e.g. changing title from "judge" to "qazi")
Sharia in the "picturesque" valley
On the ground, the evidence points to a much darker picture. Islamists in the valley remain bent on imposing harsh interpretations of sharia on women and public activity. The sharia makes it compulsory for women to cover themselves from head to toe in public and be accompanied by an immediate relative when venturing outside their homes. Though sharia in its original scriptural form doesn't directly proscribe women from schools or from working, modern interpretations can bend sharia in a particularly chauvinist direction, barring women from public life and education. The outlawing of women's education by the Taliban in Swat combined with threats to "cut the throat of any girl above seven years old who was not veiled on the street" is part of such a harsh interpretation of sharia.
At the same time, sharia law formalises and enforces the tribal and traditional beliefs in the society to an extent that one hardly can distinguish between a requirement of sharia and a tribal custom. The requirement for men to wear traditional clothes (the "shalwar kameez"), grow beards and wear caps when outside their homes brings religious authority to traditional social habits.
Taliban militants ordered men in Swat to grow beards by 25 January and wear caps when outside, or face potentially gruesome punishments, such as risking having acid thrown at them. Barber shops in different areas had been ordered to stop offering shaves to customers.
Under sharia and its interpretations, entertainment is strictly limited. Since 2007, Taliban radicals in Swat have targeted and burnt down CD, TV, computer and music shops. Those in the entertainment industry shared the fate of the shops; a dancing girl, Shabana, who defied the Taliban's ban on entertainment and dancing was murdered, and her bullet-ridden body - strewn with bank notes, CDs of her dance performances and pictures from her photo album - was discovered in the centre of Mingora, the main city in Swat.
The sharia laws also sanction public executions for convicted murderers and adulterers and amputations of those found guilty of thefts.
Not a solution
The "peace deal" between the NWFP provincial government and TNSM has been greeted with concern and reservations by NATO, British and American officials. Western officials remember in particular how the Waziristan Accord of 2006 allowed Taliban and other Islamist fighters the chance to re-group and re-arm in the rugged borderlands, safe from the intervention of the Pakistani government.
According to Lt. Gen. Hamid Nawaz, the accord reflects the government's growing "weakness and helplessness." Since the insurgency began in the valley in 2007, more than 1,200 policemen, civil servants and Swat residents have died in shelling by the army or from attacks sanctioned by the Taliban. Tens of thousands of residents have fled the conflict, swelling Pakistan's already large ranks of internally displaced people.
The deal has also reminded many Pakistanis in the country's main cities of the increasingly precarious position of liberal rights and values in the country. Critics have condemned the deal, accusing the government of surrendering to extremist elements by allowing local leaders in northwestern region to introduce sharia law which, they fear, will stoke more violence in the long-run and lead to Talibanisation of Pakistan.
In an interview with the SAMAA news channel, Brigadier Mahmood Shah, the ex-chief of security in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (an autonomous region along the border with Afghanistan), termed the deal merely a "temporary relief" and "not a solution to long-lasting peace." He pointed out how similar agreements had been made in the past in neighbouring areas (like the Waziristan Accord), but all they did was allow the militants to breathing room to regroup and to re-arm.
Speaking to Geo news, Iqbal Haider, former Federal Law Minister and prominent human right activist, said that "the document signed by the NWFP government and Sufi Muhammad does not include one word about restoring peace... the document is unlawful and extra-constitutional." Haider insisted that "truth will be sifted from falsehood soon and the people will know that such types of accords will not get rid of terrorism, religious fanaticism and extremism."
Nevertheless, Pakistan's beleaguered president, Asif Ali Zardari "defended" the deal and stated that use of force alone will not solve Pakistan's problems. A "multi-pronged strategy, which includes economic program, force, and dialogue" has to be used. The Pakistani government insists the deal should be seen in a "positive manner".
Senior provincial minister Bashir Bilor said, "Our condition for accepting their demand was that they establish peace. We are hopeful; with the cooperation of Sufi Mohammad, we will restore peace."
Islamabad has the difficult task of spinning the deal to its western allies. While Pakistan's federal government and the NWFP provincial government have stated that "establishment of complete peace is imperative for the implementation of the accord", NATO has described the accord as a "negative development". "We should all be concerned by a situation in which extremists would have a safe haven." said James Appathurai, a NATO spokesman. "I do not want to doubt the good faith of the Pakistani government, but it's clear that the region is suffering very badly from extremists and we would not want it to get worse".
Jennifer Wilkes, the spokesperson of the British High Commission in Pakistan, echoed such doubts. "We have concerns. Previous peace deals have not provided a comprehensive and long-term solution to Swat's problems. Britain wants the current peace deal to end violence, not create space for further violence." Such arrangements "need to be clear, robust and monitored long-term, and include enforceable measures on cross-border movement to tackle cross-border militancy" in Afghanistan.
But the geopolitical exigencies of the deal will be lost on the residents of Swat, who face the prospect of living under the sway of fundamentalists.
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Lashkar-e-Taiba: a profile
Raja Karthikeya, 5 - 12 - 2008
The group allegedly behind the Mumbai attacks is dangerous in its capacity for innovation and adaptation
The Mumbai attacks have brought renewed focus on Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had hitherto been seen as merely a Kashmiri separatist group. Indian investigators suspect the outfit to be involved in last week's run-and-gun rampage that left nearly two hundred people dead in Mumbai. A serious look at Lashkar's background and tactics suggest that it is unlike any terrorist group that has operated in India or indeed in the international arena.
History
Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Righteous") originated in the mid 1990s as the militant arm of Markaz Dawatul Irshad, an Islamist organization founded in the late 1980s by Hafiz Mohamed Saeed, a professor of theology at Punjab Engineering College. Lashkar's grew in prominence after Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence decided in the early 1990s to stop supporting groups that sought an independent Kashmir (e.g. Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front) to groups that supported Kashmir's annexation by Pakistan. Raja Karthikeya Gundu is a Junior Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
Composition
From the beginning, Lashkar was unique from the other Kashmiri separatist groups. Its members were not ethnic Kashmiris, but were predominantly Pakistanis, from Punjab province. (This in fact, places it at odds in strict ideological terms, with the dogma of Maulana Mawdudi, the founder of the Jamat-e-Islami and thence of political Islam in Pakistan. According to Maududi, it is un-Islamic "for the citizens of a country to stage jihad against another country if the two countries have diplomatic relations").
Lashkar's recruits are mostly from the middle and lower classes, and an overwhelming majority of them have college education. Most young recruits do not join Lashkar to make a career in terrorism. They join it motivated in equal part by religious conviction, and a desire for adventure and a sense of purpose. Most recruits leave after two years of fighting across the border to return to Pakistan and pursue other careers.
Tactics
Lashkar in its early days discovered a simple and innovative tactic to spread terror - that of staging suicide attacks where armed men storm a secure location amidst a hail of grenades and gunfire. The expectation is to temporarily capture an area with no expectation of return and with the certainty of death in the subsequent shootout with security forces. The first instance of such an attack was the storming of the Border Security Force headquarters in 1999 in Bandipora in Jammu and Kashmir.
These "fidayeen" methods were backed by forced theological dogma and historical examples including that of Hasan al-Shibh, a Shia leader who rebelled against Seljuk Turks in the 11th century. The pro-Pakistan groups fighting in the Kashmir valley, which organised themselves into the United Jihad Council in 1994, found Lashkar an anomaly and for years, the group operated alone. When it joined the council in 2003, it steadily infiltrated and diluted the council's agenda from one of independence to joining Pakistan. This is believed to have caused the split between Kashmiri political parties advocating secession from India and the parallel militant movement. In terms of targets, Lashkar has often attacked soft targets like religious shrines and economic targets in order to stir sectarian strife even as its main targets remain symbols of state.
Ideology
From the perspective of ideology, Lashkar is unique within Pakistan in that it was born out of the Jamaat-Ahl-e-Hadith sect rather than the Deobandi sect like the majority of militant groups in the country. The Ahl-e-Hadith sect is a puritanical movement that opposes veneration of saints and occult practices and almost all facets of the Sufi strains of Islam historically popular in South Asia. In recent years however, the group has acquired ever greater Salafist overtones and there was even friction between Lashkar's founder and leaders of its parent Ahl-e-Hadith sect. It must be noted that Lashkar's ideology is not Luddite and the group embraces modern technology like mobile phones and TVs. (In fact, Hafiz Saeed has been interviewed several times on television.)
The Ahl-e-Hadith is the largest Islamic sect in Bangladesh and has more adherents in Bangladesh than in Pakistan. Hence, Indian suspicions of Lashkar strengthening its presence in Bangladesh as well in a bid to stir up trouble in India's north east since 2001, come as no surprise.
Links to global jihad
Many in the west did not know about Lashkar-e-Taiba before the Mumbai attacks. However, the group has appeared on the west's radar several times in the past decade. When the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles in 1998 into Taliban controlled Afghanistan as retaliation for the East Africa embassy blasts, several of the missiles inadvertently hit Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps. After the launch of the "war on terror", Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda leader was captured in March 2002 in a Lashkar safe-house in Pakistan. In 2004, Australia swiftly banned the group after the arrest of a French-born member of the group planning to strike targets in the country. In 2003, the FBI indicted 11 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba for training for jihad on paintball ranges in Virginia in the United States. In 2006-07, three relatives of Hafiz Saeed were arrested in Massachusetts for committing fraud with religious visas. Rashid Rauf, the Briton who was the chief accused in the 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners is also believed to be one of the Lashkar's recruits.
In a recent article, Steve Coll mentions a conversation with Lashkar's senior cadre in early 2008 where the latter proudly talk of a "HR policy" to allow junior members to go on leaves of absence to fight alongside the Taliban in western Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Coll also mentions the group's amphibious operations in the lake near its Lahore compound.)
Lashkar since 2001
When Pakistan banned Lashkar after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 under US pressure, the group appeared to splinter into several groups (e.g. Al Arifeen, Al Nasireen), but the core soon reincarnated as Jamat-ud-Dawa. Although the US banned the new avatar as a foreign terrorist organization in 2006, Musharraf refused to follow suit citing lack of evidence. In fact, Lashkar was arguably the only militant group banned by Pakistan after 9/11 which did not declare war against the Musharraf administration. Although Hafiz Saeed continued to make weekly sermons at the Qudsia mosque in Lahore, including hateful calls for jihad against the US, Israel and India, and even accused Pakistan's rulers of selling out to Americans, he never named Musharraf as a target. In a 2005 interview with NBC, Musharraf slipped up and argued that Lashkar had never been banned. The Musharraf administration turned a blind eye to the presence and activities of Lashkar.
After the 2002 ban, the group stepped up activities in India's hinterland. The most spectacular of these attacks was in 2006, when the group bombed the commuter train network in Mumbai killing 209 people. Simultaneously, Lashkar tried to exploit inter-religious tension within India, for instance through a suicide attack on a temple in western India in 2002 - an attack which bore eerie resemblance to the Mumbai attacks. The attack was claimed to be in revenge for the communal pogrom that killed thousands of Muslims earlier that year. Lashkar also raised money for its activities by claiming it was gathering funds for the benefit of riot victims. In short, Lashkar tried to set up action- reaction cycles which would further polarize Hindus and Muslims in India and create outright conflict between extremists of either religion. The Malegaon bombings by suspected Hindu militants suggest that Lashkar's agenda of division has blossomed poisonously.
Welfare activities
Inside Pakistan, since 2002, Jamat-ud-Dawa established itself as a charitable organization, raising millions of rupees in donations. It chose education as its main medium of proselytization and claims to now run 197 schools and at least one university in Pakistan. These schools are not all madrasas. Several of them are English medium and teach modern science and math. But in all of them, armed jihad is taught to the students as an obligatory duty. Besides schools, Jamat-ud-Dawa runs an ambulance service, hospitals and blood banks in Pakistan, and was involved in massive relief and rehabilitation activities after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir and after the October 2008 earthquake in Balochistan. The relief activities were accompanied by propaganda using loud speakers preaching armed jihad.
Perception within Pakistan
Although the group started with and continues to have a "liberate Kashmir" agenda, it has over the years metamorphosed into one with the agenda of creating a super-state by restoring "the throne of Delhi to Muslims". This species of nationalistic rhetoric merges comfortably with the group's pan-Islamist rhetoric. The group sees itself as a guardian of Pakistani and Muslim identity. Thus, in the eyes of many Pakistanis, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a "civilian militia". The group's members are generally seen as patriots. Unlike other radical groups with a Kashmir-based agenda, Lashkar has never entered Pakistani politics or displayed aspirations of political power. The group's compound near Lahore is a self-sustained community, not very different from those of religious cults.
Thus, while the majority of Pakistanis would not ever join the organization nor endorse its violence, they find the organization to be a just force of citizens fighting for an ideal, largely sympathizing with its anti-Americanism and anti-Indian sentiment. This understanding is important in seeing why the government of Pakistan may be reluctant to provoke the public by handing over Hafiz Saeed to the Indians.
In recent years, Lashkar has built up operations in Karachi in southern Pakistan, away from its traditional base in the north in Punjab.
Lashkar's threat
Lashkar's resilience and mutability are real causes for concern. Most terrorist groups do not survive ten years of operation. Lashkar has only grown stronger in its fourteen or so years of existence, despite bans by the US and Pakistan and the pressure on terrorist groups after 9/11. It has successfully adapted itself to the changing political environment in Pakistan (from democracy to dictatorship to democracy) and transformed itself from a largely militant organization to one with extensive philanthropic activities, without losing its capacity to commit terrorist acts outside Pakistan. It has attracted young, urban professionals and enjoys wide support within its constituency.
It has shed the lure of branding just like al-Qaeda and operates under a number of aliases. Its not-so-clandestine charity front and the charity's vigorous work in post-disaster relief operations have helped it raise millions of rupees which will help it survive international crackdowns. The Mumbai attacks testify to its intelligence gathering and planning capabilities in a hostile environment. Specific tactical details of the standoffs in Mumbai, (such as the blowing up of an elevator in order to take cover inside the elevator shaft) indicate the level of professionalism its cadres have achieved. The very modus operandi of the attack (an amphibious landing) could rank it alongside the Tamil Tigers in terms of innovation.
Last but not least, Lashkar's leadership is ambitious. Even if their agenda has been impacted by al-Qaeda, they aspire to achieve the status of "liberators" and will not be content to play second fiddle to any larger group. Thus, we must be prepared for more attacks from this group. Mumbai's tragedy may just have changed the game.
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Bangladesh imposes YouTube block
The video-sharing web site YouTube has been blocked by Bangladesh after a recording of a meeting between the PM and army officers was posted.
The meeting took place two days after a mutiny by border guards in Dhaka that left more than 70 people dead.
The recordings cover about 40 minutes of a three-hour meeting and reveal how angry many in the military were at the government's handling of the crisis.
YouTube had been blocked in the "national interest", officials said.
Hundreds of guardsmen have been arrested in connection with the mutiny but hundreds more are still being sought.
Jeered
The chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Zia Ahmed, said the decision to block access to YouTube, and another website, esnips, was taken because the audio recordings they hosted threatened to worsen the current situation.
"The government can take any decision to stop any activity that threatens national unity and integrity," he said.
The government has not said when the sites will be unblocked.
The meeting in question took place after the mutiny in the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) headquarters two weeks ago had collapsed. Some 54 army officers were among those killed.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina agreed to talk to officers to persuade them that her strategy to end the mutiny had worked and had in fact minimised casualties.
"We want answers," some of the officers, who numbered more than 2,000, shouted at Sheikh Hasina.
Her attempts to speak are often jeered and drowned out.
The BBC's Mark Dummett in Dhaka says there had been anger in the army over the government's decision to negotiate with the mutineers, rather than immediately sending in troops to crush their revolt.
Many in the army believe the move gave the border guards more time to kill the officers and rape their wives.
One officer at the meeting tells the prime minister: "I do not understand who gave you that idea that it has to be solved politically... rebellion has to be crushed with force.
"But you have not done that... politics is not applicable everywhere... if one tank would have gone there or a commando platoon landed there, the [BDR] would have fled like ants... but none went... all my officers were killed helplessly… and you failed to do anything."
Our correspondent says that outside the army, many in Bangladesh believe she handled the crisis well, though her government has undoubtedly been shaken and relations with the army remain low.
(Source:BBC)
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Europe’s eastern crisis: the reality-test
Anand Menon
An activist approach by the European Union towards the economc troubles on its eastern flank would do more harm than good, says Anand Menon.(First published 6/3/09)
9 - 03 - 2009
The outcome of the European Union summit in Brussels on 1 March 2009, intended in part to address the crisis afflicting some of the member-states of east-central Europe, was tame. It might be summed up as "pious declarations of solidarity, no hard cash". The response in many policy and media circles has been a mix of surprise and disappointment - tinged in many cases with alarm over the union's future. This is misconceived: for the reality is that the EU cannot deal in any meaningful way with the high-profile problems afflicting some of its members - and, for its own sake, shouldn't try.Anand Menon is professor of West European Politics and Director of the European Research Institute at the University of Birmingham.
His books include (edited with Colin Hay) European Politics (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Europe: The State of the Union (Atlantic Books 2008)
True, there is no doubt about the seriousness of the crisis. Hungary and Latvia have already had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Standard & Poor agency has downgraded Latvia's sovereign debt to junk status. The foreign direct investment (FDI) on which these countries have long relied on is drying up. 60% of Hungarian home and car loans are denominated in foreign currencies, with repayments rising exponentially as the florin continues its breakneck devaluation.
Moreover, the consequences of economic meltdown in the east will not be confined to the east. The three largest Austrian banks have lent the equivalent of almost 70% of Austrian GDP to customers in the region and hence will feel the full force of rising defaults. The Bank for International Settlements calculates that Eurozone banks have some $1.3 trillion in outstanding loans in east-central Europe. The steep devaluations in countries that are in the single market but outside the Eurozone will also make it very hard for Eurozone states to increase their exports and revive their industries.
But politics does not function on the basis of economic rationality. Why would western publics, reluctant enough to bail out their own banks, consent to rescuing foreign financial institutions? Those who claim that shared membership of the EU implies otherwise are committing what philosophers call a "category error". The EU is not a state but a grouping of states. EU citizens are not united by the kind of "we-feeling" that acts as such a potent cohesive within nation-states. The slogan "British jobs for British workers" used by Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown is indiscriminate in its exclusions - Italians as much as Indians.
A comparison with the United States is illuminating here. The major fiscal stimulus approved by Congress on 13 February 2009 consisted to a significant degree of cash intended to bail out struggling state governments. Certainly, it only passed after angry political debate. Yet that debate was ideological - pitting proponents of big and small government against each other. It was not a lengthy argument about whether "we" should help "them" but about the best way for Americans to help themselves.
Between nation and union
The European Union does not work this way. The reluctance of its member-states to contribute to its budget is instructive. This amounts to merely some 1% of European Union GDP (as opposed to around 40% in the average member-state). Those who contribute most to it contest even this paltry sum: indeed, a striking correlation can be tracked between increasing relative contributions and falling enthusiasm for European integration in countries like the Netherlands. Indeed, the EU budget only ever worked at all because Germany for many years bankrolled its partners via what was, to all intents and purposes, a form of delayed war reparations.
The point is that the EU is not an exercise in state-building but in state-strengthening. It is a tool deployed by member-states to allow them to provide for their own populations more effectively than they could by acting individually. Concomitantly, when they feel that they could better help themselves by taking initiatives on their own, they will do so. It is true that many of the bailouts undertaken by west European governments breach the spirit if not the letter of single-market laws. It is also shocking that the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has insisted that a condition of its car-industry rescue-package be guarantees about specifically French jobs.
Yet such evidence of nation-centred policy and instinct is understandable. Against it, the miracle of European integration is the degree to which member-states have complied and continue to comply with its laws, even in the absence of the kinds of coercive mechanism that allow states to impose their will on their populations.
The European Union system works on the basis of consensus, not coercion. It has no power to force a member-state to spend money against its will (or, indeed, to save it, as the demise of the stability pact in 2003 illustrated all too clearly). The European commission struggles to ensure respect for the single market at a time when governments are keen to spend money to protect national economies; if member-states decide to bend the rules at a time of economic crisis, there is little the commission can do about it. Its head, José Manuel Barroso, has neither the power nor the legitimacy to take on a Sarkozy.
Better, then, that he does not try (even assuming he would want to, given that he depends on the French president and fellow heads of state and government to secure a second term). Why raise expectations by promising EU action where none is possible? If the union tried to act boldly instead of tamely, the resultant backlash from populist politicians would merely undermine it still further, eroding its ability to carry out even those limited tasks for which it was created.
The surprise, disappointment and alarm that attend discussion of Europe's eastern crisis are therefore misplaced. It is not the first time that proponents of EU action risk weakening the union with their zeal. They should be careful what they wish for.
openDemocracy writers track the European Union's politics:
Aurore Wanlin, "The European Union at fifty: a second life" (15 March 2007)
Krzysztof Bobinski, "European unity: reality and myth" (21 March 2007)
Frank Vibert, "The European Union in 2057" (22 March 2057)
George Schőpflin, "The European Union's troubled birthday" (23 March 2007)
Kalypso Nicolaïdis & Philippe Herzog, "Europe at fifty: towards a new single act" (21 June 2007)
Krzysztof Bobinski, "The Polish confusion" (28 June 2007)
Michael Bruter, "European Union: from backdoor to front" (3 July 2007)
Kalypso Nicolaïdis & Simone Bunse, "The ‘European Union presidency': a practical compromise" (10 October 2007)
Katinka Barysch & Hugo Brady, "Europe's "reform treaty": ends and beginnings" (18 October 2007)
Ivan Krastev, "Europe's trance of unreality" (20 June 2008)
Krzysztof Bobinski, "Europe's coal-mine, Ireland's canary" (21 June 2008)
Ivan Krastev, "Europe's other legitimacy crisis" (23 July 2008)
Paul Gillespie, "The European Union and Russia after Georgia" (10 September 2008)
Krzysztof Bobinski, "Europe's politics of self - and others" (20 October 2008)
John Palmer, "The Czech Republic and Europe: uneasy presidency" (19 January 2009)
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