Return to Disturbia

In turmoil today, Pakistan was not any calmer when my job took me away exactly two years ago. 2007 had been a hellish year. Stoked by Musharraf’s crumbling regime, the emergence of suicide bombers as a weapon of choice for the extremists, a daredevil challenge to the state by the Red Mosque brigade, it had ended in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The state, it was said, was falling apart. But at the same time there was hope. An unprecedented consensus between political rivals against military rule, a strong civil society movement, Musharraf’s party getting trashed at the polls, an elected government taking office and a dictator’s humiliating exit somehow came across as signs of a nation struggling to come together. The hell fires of 2007 may have been harsh on the state, they had nevertheless served to bring the nation together.

Moving into 2008 and beyond, we saw some fairly robust politics. Pakistan’s most controversial political personality was elected as President by consensus. Despite the government’s reluctance, it was forced to reinstate a judiciary sacked by a dictator. But when the restored judiciary tried to run away with the situation, it was criticised by the same lawyer leaders who had been its staunchest supporters.

We lost administrative control of Swat to the extremists but a cell phone video of a girl being whipped for her alleged extra-marital indulgences helped us regain the space that extremist behaviour had secured in our minds. There was a dramatic swing in public opinion which eventually triggered a full-fledged military operation to wrest back the valley’s control and to stop the Taliban from extending their evil writ to the neighbouring districts. This coincided with a dramatic increase in US drone strikes under the Obama administration that punched huge holes in their organisational and leadership structures. Irrespective of the politics of these attacks, they hit where the Pakistan army couldn’t.

And then there was the 18th amendment, which finally disempowered the presidency 25 years after it was turned into a dictatorial citadel by the country’s blackest dictatorship. Pakistan even had a completely non-controversial cause to celebrate — its astonishingly talented cricketers pulling off a T20 World Cup win against all odds.

I have been back several times in these two years but as I landed here this time around, within hours I found myself wondering how much of this has been washed away by the floods. In the few days that I have been here, all that I see around me is a visible desire not to see, resulting in a disturbing disconnect between everything going on.

The last of the floods have yet to fall into the sea, but the daggers already stand drawn. Provinces are accusing each other of blowing up their losses in order to secure more than their fair share of rebuilding funds. The federal government, the provincial governments, the army and the NGO brigade are acting as four independent, and at times, mutually exclusive centres of relief and rehabilitation.

As if panicked by the attention focused on the floods, extremists have hit twice in the space of two days — their murderous evil coming as a reminder that no natural disaster can shift Pakistan’s attention from its frankensteins. On the other hand, the same US military that is pounding Pakistani territory with drone attacks is dropping food aid to millions of flood victims.

The media, meanwhile, is struggling to defend the indefensible that its cricketers have thrown up. The emphasis on the new, the current and the immediate so overwhelming that dozens dead in Quetta fell off TV tickers in less than 24 hours. Reality TV now is CCTV footage of an actual bombing. The sheer pace of the tragedies unfolding is mind blowing.

No wonder that all one sees is an overwhelming desire not to see. It is almost as if the situation has reversed in the last two years. Back then it was a state falling apart but held together by a nation determined to battle for a better future. Now, it looks like a nation falling apart but trapped in a state bolstered by promises of billions in rebuilding assistance. No wonder there is a desire not to see.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2010.