Recently (March 11, 2016) the New York Times published an Op-Ed by novelist Aatish Taseer (“My Father’s Killer’s Funeral”), son of Salmaan Taseer, the former governor of the Pakistani Punjab who was assassinated by one of his bodyguards in the early days of 2011.

The killer, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, became a hero of sorts in Pakistan, a cause célèbre for a significant portion of the population—mortifying and infuriating to others. Many may remember that Governor Taseer was murdered because he came to the defense of a Christian woman, Asslya Noreen—or as she is often referred to, Asia, or Aasia, Bibi—who was convicted under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws and sentenced to hang.

Salmaan Taseer spoke in Noreen’s defense and more broadly questioned the blasphemy laws themselves. For this offense to the sensibilities of a vocal group of Pakistanis—no one really knows how large—he was despised, threatened, and eventually assassinated. Never denying his act, Qadri was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to hang as well. He attracted a substantial following for having done nothing remarkable either before or after murdering the man he had been contracted to protect. The size of the following became apparent at his funeral, when upwards of 100,000 people crowded the streets of Rawalpindi, making it the perhaps the largest funeral gathering for a private individual in the history of the country.

In his Op-Ed Aatish laments what this large turnout, in the wake of so much extremist bloodshed in the years that have intervened between his father’s murder and his murderer’s funeral, says about the radicalization of Pakistani society. Indeed the fact that Qadri could be convicted, that all appeals and requests for amnesty were denied, was considered by many to be a victory for sanity and the rule of law.

The whole series of events, from the original blasphemy accusations through to Qadri’s funeral, are dispiriting for anyone who cares about Pakistan. Having spent a year teaching and doing research in Lahore—an old and beautiful city barely 30 miles from the village where Noreen was accused of blasphemy—I count myself in that number.

That some people of whatever background are willing to take advantage of sketchy legal mechanisms to target an outsider is hardly surprising. Wherever you find yourself, there are vindictive persons willing to take such actions. (It’s one of the reasons why laws related to speech are so deeply troublesome, even setting aside the idea of “free” speech.)

That the governor of the most populous province in a nuclear-armed country of 200 million should be the target of an assassination for pointing out the likely spuriousness of the charge against Noreen—as well as the shaky ground of the Pakistani blasphemy laws—is also understandable. That is, so long as we imagine a lone fanatic.

That a man like Qadri became a hero to many? That is painful to accept.

The angry and alienated in every country flock to unlikely causes and make celebrities out of non-entities who happen to echo their rage back to them, allowing them to drown out their uncertainties and anxieties and bask in a feeling of superiority—no matter how bad things get in the as a result or what brutalities come to fruition.

Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister who was herself assassinated, reportedly once said that to be a politician in her country you have to be willing to risk your life. A reality she was more than intimately familiar with, since her own father Zulfikar Bhutto—also a Prime Minister in his time and the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party—was hanged by the military government of General Zia ul-Haq (who himself died while still in office).

In Pakistan, where trust in public institutions is virtually nonexistent, politics by murder, by pseudo-mob, by gang fights between the hired thugs of one boss or quasi-fuedal lordling or another are commonplaces. They are expected. Military intervention in the nominally democratic process is recurrent—and both dreaded and yet somehow also welcomed: the army is seen as the one institution able to bring order to a country that is almost ungovernable from the center.

And now I have to think about my own country—the United States of America—which if it is not quite ready to fall apart, is at least flirting with the kind of politics that leads down that road. Let me be clear—I am not talking about the Chicago protestors who shut down a Trump rally. Tactically some may argue that this “escalation” is bound to lead to more of the same—particularly with Trump egging his supporters on. The Chicago shutdown was not about violence, but about people making themselves heard over the voice of a megalomaniacal bully propped up with a personal fortune. Chicagoans showed they were not afraid—and they could in many ways afford to do this because their strength was real.

It would be a mistake, however, to reason by cliche in the naive hope that bully Trump will back down now that he’s been stood up to. Even if that worked on the playground—and frankly I wouldn’t give it better than 50-50 even there—it doesn’t work with a guy who can send other people to do his dirty work. There are so many ways this can get worse—and very few indeed for it to get better. The deeper issue is what Pakistan knows only too well: once the writ of the state, supported primarily not by guns and spies and drones but by the more-or-less willing consent of the governed, starts to break down, it’s very difficult to put on the brakes.

Posted on January 19, 2013

My sabbatical semester-or the functional equivalent, a competitively-awarded research semester-is coming rapidly to a close. In a few days I will leave behind my laptop desk and comfortable chair at Garner Narrative in Louisville, Kentucky for a short visit with my family in (the vicinity of) Portland, Oregon and then return to a hectic teaching schedule in Abu Dhabi.

This is the first time since I completed my doctorate that I have had an extended period to read, write, and reflect. Though I have worked on a variety of things, the core project has been a book manuscript dealing with political identity formation in Pakistan and the ways in which many Pakistanis wield conspiracy theories as a tool for distancing themselves from a naïve political realism.

The approaching return to Abu Dhabi along with the on-going writing and reflection about Pakistan has put me in mind of a post I wrote back in early 2010 (An “Open Letter to President Obama,” January 7, 2010), which subsequently was incorporated into a work of art by my wife and partner Angie Reed Garner (Siren, 2010).

Because the older content on this blog is lost, I will reproduce the text of the original letter here, rescued from cyber-oblivion by its incorporation in Siren.

Open Letter to President Obama

7 January 2010

Dear Mr. President,

I am an American. My wife and I live in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where I teach anthropology at Zayed University. There is a large population of Pakistani expatriates living here. They work as laborers on construction projects, as tailors, running Laundromats and mom and pop stores, and famously as taxi drivers. Of this last group many are from the Pashtun ethnic group, from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province [now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa]. As many of these Pashtun taxi drivers are eager to talk to anyone who will listen about the plight of their country, I end up in many en route conversations.

Today my wife and I got into an Arabian taxi just outside my university and immediately I could tell that the driver was distraught, on the verge of exhaustion or perhaps tears. As I got in he looked at me with wide eyes.

“Were you about ready to quit for the day?” I asked, sensing something was amiss, like he didn’t really want us in his cab.

“No, it’s okay, sir,” he said. “Just-good afternoon.”

I quickly negotiated for him to take us to the local shopping mall.

“Are you from London, sir?” he asked.

“United States,” I said.

“Ah, America.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged, “America.”

“Tell Obama, sir, to please stop the killing.”

“Yes, I’ll try,” I said.

The distance to destination was short, barely half a mile, but the traffic was heavy and the conversation continued.

“Too much,” he said. “It’s too much. Too much fighting. Too much bombing.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I know.”

“One bomb,” he said, holding up a finger, “two hundred and fifty people. Children. Women. Too much.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Peshawar,” he said.

“Too many killed. My house bombed. Taliban. We don’t know Taliban.”

“Mujay ahpsohs hey,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Do you say you’re welcome to someone who thanks you for an expression of sympathy under such circumstances?

“I was cutting the trees,” he continued. “You know? I was with my father, my family, and then it came, huge, huge, a mortar, a bomb, right there. The Pakistan army. And the fathers, the parents, they don’t think of themselves, but of their children. They say, ‘This here is dangerous, come away.’ But I said to my father, ‘It’s danger everywhere. Everywhere.’”

“Too much money,” he said. “Everyone cares too much about the money, not about people. Everyone wants money. America has too much money. But in the end we all go back to God. With my own eyes I have seen nine killed.”

He said this as we pulled up to the taxi stand at the mall. I paid him, tipped the usual amount.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

“Shukria,” I said, “Thank you.”

The complications, of course, are immense. But the human plea to stop the killing is hard to turn away from. In my more pragmatic moments, for example in a recent conversation I had with a retired UAE general, I recognized that it isn’t so easy to do.

General O.: “Do you think it will be a disaster if the U.S. stays in Afghanistan?”

Me: “Yes.”

General O.: “Do you think it will be a disaster if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan?”

Me: “Yes.”

General O.: “That is the definition of a quagmire.”

* * * * * *

A recent New York Times editorial (January 6, 2013, “Choices on Afghanistan,” http://tinyurl.com/b8ubtqw ) suggests that:

“If Mr. Obama cannot find a way to go to zero troops, he should approve only the minimum number needed, of mostly Special Operations commandos, to hunt down insurgents and serve as a deterrent against the Taliban retaking Kabul and Al Qaeda re-establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan.”

The Times in its editorials is as close to a consensus of the “liberal-realist elite” as exists. It is another gloss on the conversation I had with my Emirati friend back in early 2010, saying essentially that in an ideal world the United States would leave Afghanistan; in the real world leaving might turn out to be as bad or worse as staying.

In truth, I don’t know what will happen in Afghanistan if the US pulls every last soldier, sailor, marine, covert operative, private military contractor, and drone operator out of the country. The most likely scenario may be a reversion to the pre-Taliban, post-Soviet state of regionally ensconced dueling warlords. What I do know is that the presence of a relative handful of Special Ops troops will not prevent that from happening. The remnant of the American invasion of Afghanistan President Obama is ready to impose will not be a deterrent force, but the bones of a hit squad.

When the upshot of a decade-long occupation is that the US will leave behind a crew of high tech hit men, there is something seriously, fatally wrong with our policies. To review some of the costs of the war thus far:

In Treasure: American tax payers have spent about $641 billion thus far (see the recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report, or go to the http://costofwar.com/ ), though the real costs, when long-term treatment of veterans injured physically or psychologically, replacement of military materials, and so on is factored in will likely be much higher (see Linda Bilmes blog @ http://threetrilliondollarwar.org/ for an ongoing discussion of the complex issues around estimating the full costs of these wars).

In American casualties: 2,176 American fatalities ( http://icasualties.org/oef/ or see Congressional Research Office reports as they are released, e.g. for 2012), and 17,674 wounded ( http://icasualties.org/OEF/USCasualtiesByState.aspx ). Of course the “wounded” figure does not include those who will later be diagnosed (or simply suffer from) Traumatic Brain Injury (the result of the brain sloshing about in the brain-case even when the head is protected by the latest gee-whiz helmets or Post Traumatic Stress).

In civilian deaths: At 15,000 Afghan civilian deaths ( http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians ), according to United Nations estimates.

The case remains complex, but an open-ended, large-scale occupation of Afghanistan is not on the table–nor would I support such an occupation. Not only because such a quixotic endeavor would surely break the United States, later if not sooner, the same way it was the catalyst that broke the (far more anemic) Soviet economy and prestige of its military, but because the project was, from the start, morally and strategically flawed. At this point the continuation of the current project in Afghanistan has become a folly, grounded in little more than sunk cost fallacy and wishful thinking.

A couple of recent, thoughtful articles on the Forever War:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe

http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/01/11/drone-strikes/

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