Writing on Egypt Again: This is the Beginning

I have stayed away from posting on Egypt in the past few months. There are many reasons for this, but the foremost amongst them is my absolute belief that only the Egyptians have the right to shape their narrative and their futures, and any writing at this point by foreigners distracts from their amazing struggle to sieze control of their own story.

This is really the reason I have not commented on the horrific Maspero violence by the country's military regime. I have also not commented on Maikel Nabil, even though in many ways, for an Indian, he embodies the greatest of our nonviolent traditions and we could take a lesson from him.

However, tonight I feel compelled to write. Not because Egypt's revolution has stalled or 'Arab Spring' has come to a halt (as many western commenters insist, perhaps all too wishfully). I write because I am tired of being asked why there are still protesters at Tahrir; why they are not more concerned with the country's economic development; why the country's activists are still fighting.

I find the questions depressing. Mostly because these questions are deeply imbued with imperialist views of the 'Arabs' and of Egypt. These are questions that assume that some how when the 'difficulties' are over, Egypt's elite (and how Fanonian is that!) will go back to doing business as usual with Europe and northern America. It ignores the possibility that by the time Egypt's revolution is complete (perhaps in a couple of decades), neither Europe nor America will have the hegemonic political or economic influence to even impact its future.

Also for the record, and just in case, here are my answers: the American Revolution would not have stopped when British conceded on tax rates. Neither would the French accept the pre-revolution heirarchies; and the Russians would scoff at the monarchy after their revolutions. The whole point of revolutions is that they leave nothing unturned.

So without appropriating the narrative space the Egyptians deserve for themselves, let me point to two blog posts I wrote earlier this year: one that considered the past, and the other that pointed the way to the future.

And I want to explicitly point out something I firmly believe: historically Egypt, Turkey and Persia have been the oldest and most clear centres of power in the region, and by extension in other parts of the world (especially Europe).  I believe that what we are witnessing is a resurgence of the three, in very different ways and levels. I also believe that the three will find their own spheres of influence and not necessarily go to war - there is little evidence that there is ample 'narcissism of minor differences' to make them compete in bloody ways for that regional power and influence.

This resurgence is all the more interesting (and perhaps possible) because it is occurring alongside the decline of western hegemony: US has shown itself incapable of maturing into history while western Europe is declining  into insignificance after nearly five hundred years of direct and indirect hegemony.

Back in March, I wrote: "In the long term, these convulsions of history are unescapable. They will continue - not on media schedules and not for the next few weeks - but into the next couple of decades as historic changes do!  At the end, those who put short term interests over long term paradigm shifts will find themselves on the wrong side of history."


I stand by that statement and the analysis even more than ever. What we are witnessing is not a blip in time but a massive and extraordinary change.  Not SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt Army's junta) nor USA's paid stooges, nor Saudi Arabia's useful idiots, nor Europe's favourite business boys will be able to withstand the wave that has risen.  And whether the revolutionaries stand or fall, live or die, are incarcerated or free, is immaterial. The change is inevitable. The only choice is the side we choose - within Egypt, and abroad - to stand. 


And this is why it is necessary to note tonight, even as pitched battles rage in Tahrir Square and Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt, and protests continue to shake up regimes in the region, that the revolution is not over. Not by a long shot!

No matter how much money and weapons (and 'non-lethal technologies') western nations continue to provide their stooges and clients in the region, the balance of power has already shifted. Yes the convulsions of history have not ceased; yes, the changes are incomplete. But there is no going back. It now only about waiting to see where the sands settle - and that is entirely the choice the people of Egypt (and elsewhere in the region). The rest of us are no more than spectators, and if we choose to be on the right side of history - allies.
http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.com/2011/03/arab-spring-shifting-sands-convulsing.html

Lessons Learned and Unlearned: 9/11 Ten Years Later

Ten years ago, I spent most of the September 11, scratching my head and trying to figure out how the assassination of the "Lion of Panjshir," Ahmad Shah Massoud would impact Afghanistan, and by extension, India.  Massoud had been assassinated two days before, and suddenly it seemed that Pakistan-backed Taliban were not only unstoppable but unbeatable.

I spoke that day to a friend, an Afghan refugee who worked on mental health issues for young children, trying to apply his education from Delhi University to people in the refugee camps in India.  At twenty-five, his homeland etched in his memory, yet his upbringing firmly done in north India, he would often hum Manna Dey's famous song, eliding both his longing for Afghanistan and his love for Bollywood in one go.  On September 11, 2001, I remember his desperation at Massoud's killing. "It is over. It is lost. We will never return."

Yet a few hours later, things had changed dramatically. All the channels had the same image of the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers. Although the myriad emotions continued to play havoc in my mind for a very long time (and inspired - and were worked out in - my second novel, With Krishna's Eyes), after those first anxious hours of phoning and locating friends and family, a ritual that follows terrorist attacks that we in India were already so accustomed to, and that the Americans learned on that bright September day, my focus turned back to figuring out the impact of the attacks.

The impact on America appeared clear: even in my years of living there, I had noticed a propensity to extreme positions, with little understanding of the long term consequences. In my twenties, and still a history buff, I had ascribed this American trait to a lack of historic grounding: most other nations have lived through - and more importantly - survived multiple depredations of war, famine, disease. Most of us, around the world, have embedded cultural memories, if that is not too much of a shorthand, of the possibilities of utter destruction; we take moments of peace and calm as anomalies, luxurious ones, but still rare and to be cherished. The US, on the other hand, has had a nearly charmed national life. Despite the hiccups of history, it seems to have eluded the travails that time brings to nations. Until of course you consider that five hundred years are merely a blink of an eye in time.

After 9/11, it was inevitable that US would go to war, all guns blazing. That in itself was a game-changer for Afghanistan. More importantly, for me, considering the impact of the attacks in New Delhi, the American urge for war would also be a huge game-changer for Pakistan.  What, of course, I could not foresee, on that evening of September 11, was the USA's idiotic and entirely self-defeating military action in Iraq.

And perhaps that is the other, unintended consequence of 9/11 that needs to be considered. USA obviously learnt no lesson, except that having achieved predictable sympathy for its military action against the Taliban, it grew quickly drunk on its own might and victim narratology, gave up all veneer of being anything but the newest avatar of imperialism. L'roi est mort, vive l'roi indeed!

Over a year later, as the American drums of war grew louder, the reports of swift but clear erosions of its democratic principles at home and international conventions abroad grew louder, I found myself in a long discussion with a motley group of journalist and analyst friends about USA's apparently unchecked and growing hegemony and the policies India needed to adopt to deal with it.

Since mid-90s as the impact of climate change has become apparent, I have argued that India's greatest challenge in the 21st century shall be an impending refugee crisis as increasing amounts of Bangladesh's low lying lands are swallowed by a rising sea. I have seen this as a creeping issue, reaching catastrophic proportions towards the middle of the century.  (An aside: having consistently analysed Pakistan's nuclear capacities in the past twenty years, I have always believed that India could - in the worst case scenario - suffer a devastating but not a mortal blow. The consequences of such a blow for Pakistan however would be fatal. And this is a completely political, military analysis not an emotional, human one).  However, with the changed global scenario in the aftermath of 911, and the increasing numbers of American projects gaming the break up of Pakistan, I found myself altering the factors, geographically and chronologically.

Even in 2002, it was apparent that Pakistan was rapidly heading towards failure as a state, with a potential break up. The erosion of Saudi Arabia's influence is a given, with the only crucial point being the time scale. It has neither a sustainable economy nor a clear model of human development that can replace its oil-based politico-economic influence in the future. At the same time, despite Pakistan's many apologists in the US, mostly Americans who had benefited from the Afghan-Soviet war, the writing has been clear on the wall.  This artificial buffer state as discussed in details in the Mountbatten papers, declassified by UK at the start of the millennium, has little to sustain it. The issue is not if Pakistan will splinter, but when and how. For India - at the risk of sounding cold - the issue is not of dealing with Pakistan until that date, but working out a strategy for containing the fall out when the inevitable occurs.

While our politicians will meekly declare that "a strong, stable Pakistan is in India's interest," few will go further. The splintering of the state would not only create issues of nuclear weapons falling into hands of various rogue non-state elements (see aside above), but also create a major humanitarian catastrophe. Fact still remains that we abut Pakistan's longest and most accessible border. Can we honestly say we will be able to turn away millions of clamouring civilians fleeing unimaginable violence, hunger and other travails, when Pakistan falls apart? Will we be able to withstand the enormous international pressure brought to bear upon us? And worse still, how would we cope with admitting millions of a people raised in what is mostly a dictatorship, mostly illiterate and brainwashed for three or more generations to hate everything about India? At the very least, we would have to write off all chances of seeing a "shining India" in any shape or form for many decades.

I still hold by this scenario that I sketched out at that discussion nearly ten years ago. The only change I make to it is this: our analysts and policy-makers are still avoiding all thought of it even as the date for facing this challenge grows ever closer, ever faster.  But there are other consequences of that September attack on the US, most unforeseen and not all devoid of hope and grim.

The "Arab Spring" is clearly on the way to disproving the myth of the global ummah as a monolith. As political aspirations drive major changes in the West Asia and North Africa, identities other than religious ones are occupying their rightful space in the political imaginary. This shattering of the simplistic myth of a monolithic global Muslim identity, one that has often meant that bulk of Indian Muslims have been seen as traitors to the Islamist cause by jihadist groups (and yet suspected of secret sympathy by far too many both in India and abroad), is also one that is backfiring on Pakistan. With Saudi Arabia demanding that Pakistan pay the piper with its own troops, Bahrain using Pakistani mercenaries to suppress its own populace, and other countries in the region discovering that religion alone is no foundation for political aspirations (a lesson that we all should have learned in 1971) means long-standing political disputes - internal and external - will need to be negotiated and discussed on different parameters.

The splintering of this monolith shall be most painful for Pakistan. As General Zia once quipped (and I paraphrase): If Turkey stopped being Muslim, it would still be Turkey; if Egypt stopped being Muslim, it would still be Egypt; but without Islam, Pakistan will just be India. The dangers of constructing an artificial national identity based solely on religion, and by exclusion of all else, have never been clearer!

Nowhere is this more important - for India at least - as in the case of Kashmir.  In the past ten years, India has benefited from USA's wars with foreign jihadis ignoring the region to fight elsewhere. Just the figures on ex-filtration of jihadis from Kashmir since 9/11 are evidence of this. This ex-filtration has contributed to the diminishing influence of the Kashmir separatists: each call for bandh has been less likely to be enforced with violence and therefore less likely to succeed; as fear diminishes, voter turn outs have improved and political engagement increases. However, much remains to be done, mostly by the Indian state and polity: a strengthened human rights commission (like the one that produced the recent report on the unidentified graves) is a good start, as is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proposed by Omar Abdullah.  Other steps need to be taken at centre and state levels which will be discussed in a different post (too many and too long for this one).  However one thing is clear: Kashmir ought to be, now and in future, off the agenda for any talks with Pakistan, or indeed elsewhere. There is no point "negotiating" a resolution with a state teetering on failure,and one that would likely cease to exist in the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, the above two factors - a failing Pakistan and the long term consequences (still many unseen but hinted clearly) of the "Arab Spring" - also point to one last point: it is time for India to grow out of its narrative of Partition. As identities other than religion come to fore, it is time for India to recognise that we need not be held hostage to the narratives of the past century. No where is this more obvious than in Kashmir which ought to be treated as another part of the nation-state and not in quick repeats as a spoilt child, a hostage, or a symbol of the success of our non-religious national identity. As changes sweep through West Asia and North Africa, the urge and need for victim narratives for Islam as well as the efficacies of usual red flags is being steadily eroded.

This provides us - India - a clear opportunity of forging a new national narrative that can move beyond simplistic Hindu-Muslim binaries. The internal political and economic impact of this can be extraordinary, while building on our long standing tradition of secularist polity.  Moreover, this realisation can help us re-forge earlier external links, formulate clearer foreign policy towards West Asia and north Africa, one based on mutual interests and not the fear of an imaginary fifth column within. This also would mean recalibrating our relationships with many nations around the globe, to our own advantage. (Again, too many steps and ideas on this but will write another post soon).

Ten years ago, there a fold in history that impacted all of us. Although much violence and sorrow has followed, it also opened up a moment of extraordinary opportunity, especially for us in India.  If we can sieze it, then when history is recorded, not too many decades in the future, the ghost of Partition would be seen to have been laid to rest on a bright September morning in New York. 

Arab Spring: Shifting Sands, Convulsing History

During the Egypt uprising, one reporter after another repeated the same mantra: the barrier of fear had been broken. And yet, once Mubarak stepped down and the media eye moved elsewhere, that mantra has not been heard nearly as often.

However in the month since Mubarak's downfall, there is ample evidence that the barrier of fear has indeed been broken. Along with that loss of fear, other walls have come tumbling down: of shame, false pride, hypocrisy: as Egyptians stormed the offices of secret police, people re-lived their torture, keen to explain and share.  They stepped inside torture devices to demonstrate the pain and humiliation they had experienced.  Men who had been raped as part of the ritual shaming by secret police spoke of their ordeals, often with heart-breaking humour mingled with awe-inspiring strength.  Young women detained, sexually assaulted and tortured by the Egyptian army have recorded and publicized their testimony in the past month, a cultural shift that is nearly cataclysmic in its symbolic and narrative worth: the shame is not of the victims but of the torturers who thought that rape and sexual assault can brand women as whores!  This is a courage of no small order!

The barrier of fear has also been broken in other parts of the region: Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, even the brutally oppressive Saudi Arabia and Syria are seeing unrest by ordinary people with extraordinary courage. The penalty for demanding basic human dignity by these young protesters is the use of tear gas, nerve gas, and even live ammunition at the demonstrations.  Moreover, the regimes are institutionally well-entrenched, identifying the key protesters and leaders, hunting them down, arresting, torturing and killing them beyond the eyes of the cameras.  That makes even the reporting of these protests and human rights abuses by the regimes acts of courage that few of us can begin to imagine.

As an aside, and once again, it is important to point to the involvement of women in these movements. And no, none of them fit the western feminist paradigms although they do echo many of the earlier (pre-colonial) traditions of women warriors and leaders in the region itself.  They are indicators that  it is time for new paradigms, and not only for nonwhite, non-western feminisms!

New paradigms are needed not only for feminism, but also for definitions of statehood, political franchise, strategic relations, political and cultural narratives.  We are in the midst of historic times where none of the old models and certainties can hold.

So what next?

It is obvious that the Arab Spring is not about to come to a standstill.  Despite media warnings and ponderous, well-paid analysts from big name think-tanks, these movements do not look to be dying down. Yes, Bahrain is being brutally crushed by a combination of sectarian political tactics, Saudi and GCC troops, and the regime's own mercenaries from Sunni majority countries. Yes, Libya has gone into armed conflict and international (some would call it western as if the UNSC resolutions and Gaddafi's killings of civilians never happened) intervention. Yes, Saudi and Syria appear to be brutally suppressing their own uprisings.  And yes, Yemen at the time of writing this has lived through a Bloody Friday and moving towards a coup or regime change (only time will tell).

Yet none of the events unfolding fit the currently existing theoretical and political models: Hamas and PL both cracked down on the youth demanding a united Palestinian front. Syrians are out in their thousands to demand change even as Vogue writes glowing articles about the dictator's "democratic" home and fashion plate wife (Hang on to that issue: it will be the equivalent of a praise piece for Marie Antoinette for our times; a true historic artefact!)  Morocco's king seems to be trying to outrun the breezes of Arab spring while Oman seems to be veering madly between reform and deep regime freeze.  Saudi kingdom has once again tried to buy off its population, a measure that seems almost sure to fail.

However, despite the specificities of history, culture and circumstance, the region is tied by a crucial commonality: the fear of regimes seems to have melted. The youth - often educated, disenfranchised, yet politically focussed, are stepping up to demand all the same privileges many in the western world take for granted: security, rule of law, a voice in their own lives and future, opportunity and human dignity.

Of course, many are facing apparently unsurmountable difficulties: the regimes are heavily armed by western weapons, often supported politically and economically by western powers.  Many have deep financial links with the "new global elite" who have little interest in welfare or even fate of the common people. Moreover, for decades, financial and geo-strategic interests have generally trumped human rights. That - I have said before - has been a short-sighted strategy especially on part of the western nations who at least talk of human rights. It is understandably a product of centuries of colonial thinking on part of Europe and by extension the US (and in a limited way, Russia).  Now, with the first breeze of Arab Spring, the lacunae in that policy lie exposed.

There is no stopping the change occurring in the region. Although there may be setbacks, brutal crackdowns, even temporary freezes in the uprisings, we stand at the beginning of a long process of historic change. Most importantly, none of it is really controllable by foreign powers, regardless of their financial, political and military interests. Just as Egypt and Tunisia threw off their dictators by themselves, and are continuing to stumble and struggle on the path to political growth on their own, the rest of the countries shall do the same.

An intervention - as in Libya - may be of temporary help but it is necessary to note that even the opposition council there has insisted that they be allowed to make the change for themselves. This is a key factor to keep in mind: assistance will be welcome (as has been the case in Libya) but the old colonialist paradigm of "saving people from themselves" is a long buried ideal.

It is also worth noting that it is not only western states who are unable to grasp, manage and react to these historic shifts. As the UN resolution on Libya demonstrated, India and Brazil are too tied their own postcolonial histories to be able to see into the future.  Russia and China have also reverted to knee-jerk "west vs rest" divisions, driven of course by their own business and political interests, although these seem shortsighted.

Unfortunately, in not too far future, all nations will have to choose whether their strategic goals match the new realities emerging in the region.  This means emerging powers like Brazil and India will need to decide whether an instinctive anti-western, postcolonial reaction still holds strategic value, or should they attempt to bring their decisions in line with the emerging realities of the region.  Both will have to decide whether they want to play postcolonial victims or take their rightful place in the future as political and economic powerhouses, especially as the latter comes with great responsibility.

As Libya shows, international lines are increasingly blurred and the only real way out is to actually LISTEN to the people: this is a lesson not only for the dictators in the region but also the international community that has long listened to dictators, tyrants and tottering monarchies instead of the people.

In the long term, these convulsions of history are unescapable. They will continue - not on media schedules and not for the next few weeks - but into the next couple of decades as historic changes do!  At the end, those who put short term interests over long term paradigm shifts will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

What the international community needs to do is to find a fragment of the courage displayed by the common people of the region and just learn to let go of old prejudices and paradigms.  It is a brave new world coming our way and while those in the region must live through the convulsions of history at great cost to themselves, the least the rest of us can do is to face them and the changing reality with new models of culture, power, and narratives.