| July 23, 2008 | Wednesday | Rajab 19, 1429 |
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The view from Passamaquoddy Bay
I have been fortunate enough to have visited many lovely parts of the world, but none more so than where I am now, overlooking Passamaquoddy Bay in the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
I have spent alternate summers here for the past eight years, and the house we borrow is located close to the water from where we can see the coastline of the state of Maine on a clear day. The mist is clearing as I write this, and the water is as calm as a pond. The magical notes of the late Ustad Vilayat Khan playing Raga Khamaj are streaming from my laptop speakers.
The nearby town of St Andrews seems to have been left behind by the passage of time. The houses are mostly clapboard, some of them from the 18th century. People smile and nod as you walk past, and most drivers will stop to allow you to cross the road, even when you are not at a crossing.
Most Canadians I have met have been amazingly polite, and are almost invariably law-abiding and civic-minded. Small wonder, then, that major Canadian cities are rated very highly in most quality-of-life indices.
Currently, the issue generating much controversy in the media here is the case of Omar Khadr, a young Canadian Muslim presently incarcerated at the infamous American prison in Guantanamo Bay. He was taken to Afghanistan by his father when he was 16, just before the American-led invasion, and was scooped up to be questioned about the death of an American soldier at the house where he was staying. It has emerged that Canadian security service personnel grilled him under stressful conditions, and the government has been forced by Khadr’s lawyers to release video footage of the prisoner’s interrogation. The distressing images have ignited a huge debate about the obligation of the state to intervene to obtain the release of a Canadian citizen. The letters to newspapers are full of indignation at the sight of a vulnerable young Canadian being abandoned in the legal black hole that is the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.
James McCall writes from Toronto: “Whatever Omar Khadr did or didn’t do, he should be tried in Canada, as a Canadian citizen, in a Canadian court…” And Susan Lipsett asks from Vancouver: “Has the government, in its zeal to please the Bush administration, lost its sense of humanity?”
The extensive media coverage of Afghanistan reflects the deep concern felt here about the Canadian troops serving under the Nato flag.
Over the past six years, scores have been killed and wounded, and with each death, there is much soul-searching about the Canadian role in that distant land. The profile of each casualty is prominently published, and funerals are widely covered. The loss of young Canadians is deeply mourned across the country. Detailed maps of the area they died in are printed, and in-depth reporting informs newspaper readers and TV audiences about the terrain and social conditions of the districts and towns the fighting is taking place in.
Contrast this attitude with the indifference we Pakistanis feel about our troops who are despatched to different trouble spots under the UN flag. Nobody cares about the battlegrounds they fight on, or the countries and crises that took them there. They go there unsung, and occasionally die unmourned. No Pakistani politician visits them, and our media does not bother to send correspondents to cover their peacekeeping efforts. Successive governments have profited by these UN assignments as the money the exchequer receives far exceeds what these soldiers get. The only time they make the news is when some bad apples are caught committing crimes. And then there is the usual set of denials as a practised cover-up kicks in.
This same difference in attitude towards the death of citizens is visible in how we approach acts of terrorism. In the West, each casualty is the subject of intense media coverage, combined with an effort to understand the underlying causes of the alienation that leads to this kind of violence. In our part of the world, we are far more fatalistic and callous. After each bloody terrorist attack, we shrug our shoulders and it’s back to business as usual until the next suicide bombing. It is this indifference and acceptance of violent means to change the status quo that encourages ruthless killers to continue on their rampage.
Years ago, I remember my son putting this question to I.A.Rehman, the activist, journalist, and tireless advocate for human rights and civilised values. “Why,” Shakir asked. “Do Western governments and societies make such a song and dance over the killing of a single citizen, when we lose far more people to terrorism?” Rehman Sahib’s answer has stayed with me since that evening we spent at my flat in Karachi: “It is because Western societies place more value on the lives of their citizens than we do.” “Ah”, I can hear some readers protesting. “But why does this humanity disappear in the West’s callous treatment of non-Western (mostly Muslim) people?” This is a valid question, but it still does not justify how we treat our own citizens.
Our indifference to human life extends to other creatures as well: the treatment of animals in Pakistan is a national disgrace. Many Pakistanis are not merely indifferent, they are actively cruel: when Shakir was quite little, I used to take him to the zoos in Lahore and Karachi. More often than not, I had to intervene to prevent young kids from tormenting monkeys by prodding them with sticks. And how many times have we all seen boys throwing stones at scrawny dogs? Neither laws nor civil society protect those unable to speak for themselves, whether they are human or animals.
A few weeks ago while I was in England, I came across a prominent news story that restored my faith in humanity. It seems a cow had fallen off a mountain track, and landed on a ledge where it was stranded. All efforts to send down a climber to attach the panicky animal to a sling failed. Finally, the army sent a helicopter to lift the cow to safety. Although the Defence Ministry had earlier threatened to send the bill for the operation to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), they decided to write off the cost as a training exercise.
To me, the entire incident says a lot for the English respect for life. Clearly, we have a long way to travel to reach this level of civilization. But meanwhile, I am glad to report that some young animal rights activists have formed an organisation called the Pakistani Animal Welfare Society (or, most appropriately, PAWS). Such an initiative deserves our admiration and our support.
