Today, August 14, Pakistan marks the anniversary of its independence. Over the weekend the Pakistani diaspora celebrated, although this report from Devon Street in Chicago suggests the party was a muted and anguished one.
This morning, I took a tour of the Pakistani blogosphere and found it, as usual, disappointing. A few bloggers offered bombastic statements of national pride. Others commented on the party preparations, or lack thereof. There don’t seem to be that many Pakistani bloggers to begin with, nor Pakistani-American bloggers for that matter (a fact that we deplore here at the Mutiny), so I wasn’t really expecting anything in particular; even so, the paucity of offerings, in both quantity and quality, struck me as symptomatic of, well, something.
We get a lot of anti-Pakistan mudslinging here on the comment threads, and though we try to keep up with and get rid of the most egregious and bigoted statements, the best way Pakistan’s image could improve would be through a flood of free, contentious, provocative, educative speech by Pakistanis and their friends. The Web is only one venue, of course, and it is obviously biased toward those with access to computers and the Internet, but to not make better use of such a ready resource is really a shame.
So it’s with pleasure that I introduce you, on this Pakistan Independence Day, to Watandost, the weblog of Hassan Abbas, a Pakistani former government official and writer who now lives in Boston. It’s a one-stop shop for news stories and web links that will be of interest to anyone who wishes for a democratic and peaceful Pakistan within a democratic and peaceful South Asia.
Abbas doesn’t write original content at his blog: he posts useful stories and lets them do the talking. However, he is the author of a book that I wish I’d heard of earlier. It’s called Pakistans Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and Americas War on Terror, and here is part of the review in the Boston Globe by Farah Stockman:
Although it is a political history, parts of Hassan Abbas’s new book, “Pakistan’s Drift Into Extremism,” reads like someone whispering family secrets. Instead of the crazy old aunt or the secret adoption, Abbas speaks intimately about the dizzying array of generals deposing presidents and presidents plotting against prime ministers that have whirled through the country’s 57-year existence. …
But this 267-page history is also part psychological profile of the larger-than-life personalities of the Pakistani army and their convenient love affair with extremist religious elements who gave birth to the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. …
Abbas’s book is unique in that he is speaking as a Pakistani to his own people. In its most important form, the book is a truth-telling, undressing heroes, myths, and psychologies that school textbooks in Pakistan lionize. …
Abbas shows how, hours after its tumultuous birth as a nation separate from the largely Hindu India, Pakistan faced an identity crisis that has plagued it to this day. He shows how the two great tug-of-wars — between being Muslim or secular, being a democracy or a dictatorship — intertwined.
This, one senses, is the point of all the drama and history that Abbas regales his readers with, across the decades and fiascoes of Pakistan’s often back-stabbing, and occasionally virtuous, political and military leaders. …
The last chapter reads like a doctor writing a prescription. If Pakistan is to be saved from intolerant mullahs, it must make peace with India on Kashmir and reduce the role of the military in politics, despite the strong US support for Musharraf, a key ally in the war on terror.
“The people of Pakistan yearn for true democracy,” Abbas writes. “For this dream to become a reality, Pakistan’s military establishment has to take a back seat.”
If you are genuinely interested in the path to peace in South Asia, I recommend you bookmark Abbas’s page. I would love to know if readers have other resources to share. I would obviously love to hear from Pakistani-Americans reading this post. And if you have read Abbas’s book, I’d love to know what you thought of it.
Pakistan is a country in tough shape, for reasons that don’t need much repeating here. To the Pakistani political and military elite, I can’t wish much of anything good. To ordinary Pakistanis and the Pakistani diaspora, I wish a happy independence day and much fortitude.
Peace.
