A Call for Complexity
We must ask complex questions and be willing to handle equally complicated answers.
As sad and horrific as it is, when the media exploits the tragic shooting of a child to rally support for an overly simplified political position, you know something is wrong. Reality is always more complex-and loathing the Taliban is fast becoming idiomatic language.
We must unequivocally condemn the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, an intelligent child, alive to her reality, and an advocate for social change. We must support efforts towards female education in Taliban-heavy areas and everywhere. But, we must also discover the facts and question the simplistic morality th New York Times resents: the bad Taliban, painted in broad strokes as an irremediably barbaric, authoritarian, misogynist, monolithic entity and the rest of us united in our desire to put an end to obscurantist views.
“What can Pakistan and its allies do to either work with the Taliban on reform initiatives, or stop it from terrorizing civilians?” the NYT asks.
Working with them, as the question suggests, seems rhetorical, even disingenuous, given the paper’s own general reporting on Pakistan and especially when the attempted murder came at the heels of a political party’s march to Waziristan to do something just like that. The real message is “Only stopping them will work. You can not engage with criminals.”
Surely, these self-righteous fictions, endorsed and constructed by some of the most powerful media houses, justify a certain way of thinking which is as dangerous as that of the TTP. Against the backdrop of the NYT’s other coverage of Pakistan including its editoral stance on drones as a necessity, the segment on Malala appears to buttress a fiction designed to shut down criticism of drones and ignore how many civilians die in these strikes. Drones, too, are criminal.
Since Malala is the starting point for this debate, let’s look at what was she is saying about the nature of war, Let’s examine what happened in her hometown in Swat after Fazlullah declared war on girls’ education, and the Pakistan military responded with artillery. Did Swat ever return to normalcy? How successful were government efforts to rebuild it?
And, there are also questions about the state’s role in the diminishing opportunities for education. Why, for instance, were NGOs and the government not the spokespersons for education reform in Swat? The state has done little to provide education reform in Swat or for that matter other parts of Pakistan where the TTP finds its recruits. Women’s education is not simply an issue in the north-west of Pakistan. Sindh, in particular, lags behind even parts of FATA.
Finally, there are questions about the media’s ethics. Why did the BBC seek an extremely readable Anne Frank-like agent to write for them? Shouldn’t it have relied on reporters who understand the dangers implicit in such documentation and can make informed decisions about it instead of a teenage girl?
More broadly, there are structural issues that we must address which do not make much of an appearance in framings like that of the NYT. The legal status of FATA is an example. It effectively means that people from FATA lack constitutional cover and, therefore, suffer. We must ask how the Pakistani state has reneged on its social obligations to the people of this region.
It is reductionist to say that if we remove the Taliban, the state will automatically uphold its responsibilities to the people. The state has abdicated its responsibility and has in fact worked in the interest of selected groups that provide support to the Taliban movement.
We must address how the business of war has become a way of survival from the narcotics smuggling routes that crisscross our region to the American dollars that bloat our military. It is common knowledge that the U.S. supported the mujahideen in the 1980s, but it’s almost as if it should not matter. It does. Groups like the Taliban sustain themselves long term due to institutional backing. That’s why history matters.
One cannot wipe the slate with extreme warfare and hope that the menace of the Taliban will disappear. Becoming fixated on the Taliban and simplistic dichotomies will get us nowhere. We have to get into the mess with all the knowledge of the past and present and a positive agenda for structural social reform. We must ask complex questions and be willing to handle equally complicated answers even if such things elude the NYT.
Abira Ashfaq is a lawyer based in Karachi. She teaches law and writes about social issues.
Source
OP: Media in the West has oversimplified the issue that Malala represents by solely blaming the Taliban without looking at other issues at hand and have endangered many lives, so much so that Malala has even requested for a college in Pakistan to NOT be renamed after her ince the students fear terrorist attacks. As another article (How not to talk about Malala) from the same source states The American media has falsely convinced its viewers that Malala was shot because she wanted to go to school. It is unfortunate that most viewers have accepted this narrative and failed to ask simple questions like, “Is Malala the only girl in all of Pakistan who goes to school?” The average Muslim woman, or even the average Pakistani woman, does not get shot on a daily basis; millions of girls and women go to school daily, even if there are still many families who deny education to their daughters. Yet, for the American media, Malala has become a stand-in for the condition of the generic Muslim woman. Yes, there are issues in the Muslim world-including Pakistan-but many of the experiences of women in the Muslim world are shared by our sisters in the non-Muslim world. Highlighting one Pakistani girl’s case, and misrepresenting it as an attack on any Muslim woman who wants to go to school, not only trivializes the issue but also diverts attention from women’s mistreatment in the rest of the world-including the so-called Western world.
As sad and horrific as it is, when the media exploits the tragic shooting of a child to rally support for an overly simplified political position, you know something is wrong. Reality is always more complex-and loathing the Taliban is fast becoming idiomatic language.
We must unequivocally condemn the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, an intelligent child, alive to her reality, and an advocate for social change. We must support efforts towards female education in Taliban-heavy areas and everywhere. But, we must also discover the facts and question the simplistic morality th New York Times resents: the bad Taliban, painted in broad strokes as an irremediably barbaric, authoritarian, misogynist, monolithic entity and the rest of us united in our desire to put an end to obscurantist views.
“What can Pakistan and its allies do to either work with the Taliban on reform initiatives, or stop it from terrorizing civilians?” the NYT asks.
Working with them, as the question suggests, seems rhetorical, even disingenuous, given the paper’s own general reporting on Pakistan and especially when the attempted murder came at the heels of a political party’s march to Waziristan to do something just like that. The real message is “Only stopping them will work. You can not engage with criminals.”
Surely, these self-righteous fictions, endorsed and constructed by some of the most powerful media houses, justify a certain way of thinking which is as dangerous as that of the TTP. Against the backdrop of the NYT’s other coverage of Pakistan including its editoral stance on drones as a necessity, the segment on Malala appears to buttress a fiction designed to shut down criticism of drones and ignore how many civilians die in these strikes. Drones, too, are criminal.
Since Malala is the starting point for this debate, let’s look at what was she is saying about the nature of war, Let’s examine what happened in her hometown in Swat after Fazlullah declared war on girls’ education, and the Pakistan military responded with artillery. Did Swat ever return to normalcy? How successful were government efforts to rebuild it?
And, there are also questions about the state’s role in the diminishing opportunities for education. Why, for instance, were NGOs and the government not the spokespersons for education reform in Swat? The state has done little to provide education reform in Swat or for that matter other parts of Pakistan where the TTP finds its recruits. Women’s education is not simply an issue in the north-west of Pakistan. Sindh, in particular, lags behind even parts of FATA.
Finally, there are questions about the media’s ethics. Why did the BBC seek an extremely readable Anne Frank-like agent to write for them? Shouldn’t it have relied on reporters who understand the dangers implicit in such documentation and can make informed decisions about it instead of a teenage girl?
More broadly, there are structural issues that we must address which do not make much of an appearance in framings like that of the NYT. The legal status of FATA is an example. It effectively means that people from FATA lack constitutional cover and, therefore, suffer. We must ask how the Pakistani state has reneged on its social obligations to the people of this region.
It is reductionist to say that if we remove the Taliban, the state will automatically uphold its responsibilities to the people. The state has abdicated its responsibility and has in fact worked in the interest of selected groups that provide support to the Taliban movement.
We must address how the business of war has become a way of survival from the narcotics smuggling routes that crisscross our region to the American dollars that bloat our military. It is common knowledge that the U.S. supported the mujahideen in the 1980s, but it’s almost as if it should not matter. It does. Groups like the Taliban sustain themselves long term due to institutional backing. That’s why history matters.
One cannot wipe the slate with extreme warfare and hope that the menace of the Taliban will disappear. Becoming fixated on the Taliban and simplistic dichotomies will get us nowhere. We have to get into the mess with all the knowledge of the past and present and a positive agenda for structural social reform. We must ask complex questions and be willing to handle equally complicated answers even if such things elude the NYT.
Abira Ashfaq is a lawyer based in Karachi. She teaches law and writes about social issues.
Source
OP: Media in the West has oversimplified the issue that Malala represents by solely blaming the Taliban without looking at other issues at hand and have endangered many lives, so much so that Malala has even requested for a college in Pakistan to NOT be renamed after her ince the students fear terrorist attacks. As another article (How not to talk about Malala) from the same source states The American media has falsely convinced its viewers that Malala was shot because she wanted to go to school. It is unfortunate that most viewers have accepted this narrative and failed to ask simple questions like, “Is Malala the only girl in all of Pakistan who goes to school?” The average Muslim woman, or even the average Pakistani woman, does not get shot on a daily basis; millions of girls and women go to school daily, even if there are still many families who deny education to their daughters. Yet, for the American media, Malala has become a stand-in for the condition of the generic Muslim woman. Yes, there are issues in the Muslim world-including Pakistan-but many of the experiences of women in the Muslim world are shared by our sisters in the non-Muslim world. Highlighting one Pakistani girl’s case, and misrepresenting it as an attack on any Muslim woman who wants to go to school, not only trivializes the issue but also diverts attention from women’s mistreatment in the rest of the world-including the so-called Western world.