a importância de identificar o inimigo

 (publicado originalmente no Observador)

Os nomes das guerras costumam remeter para o sítio onde se combate, e aqueles que participam na guerra costumavam ser aqueles que estão no terreno e lutam nos campos de batalha. No entanto, tem havido guerras com outros tipos de nomes. Em 1945 George Orwell cunhou o nome “guerra fria” para descrever o tipo de relação que os EUA teriam com os países vizinhos por serem o único país com a bomba atómica. Como sabemos, a URSS e outros Estados rapidamente ganharam a sua capacidade nuclear e o mundo evoluiu para uma situação de tensão entre dois blocos concorrentes que recebeu precisamente esse nome – Guerra Fria – até à queda do Muro de Berlim e consequente esboroar do bloco soviético. Também o Presidente Lyndon Johnson chamou em 1964 às suas políticas públicas de “Guerra contra a Pobreza” (War on Poverty), George W. Bush declarou a “Guerra contra o Terrorismo” (Global War on Terrorism) em 2001 e, mais recentemente, temos ouvido vários líderes políticos a falar duma “Guerra contra a Pandemia”.

O problema destas denominações é que o inimigo se torna invisível, difuso, desfocado, múltiplo. Não se sabe bem quem é, ou sequer se é. Não é um inimigo palpável e com rosto. A alternativa não é arranjar um inimigo qualquer para dar sentido à nossa guerra, nem devemos atirar ao lado como alguém que diz que é preciso matar o homem branco, ou outros ainda para quem o grande problema são os ciganos. Esses bodes expiatórios servem para guerras que não são as nossas e, uma vez derrotados, o nosso problema persiste. Foi com simples distracções que nos entretivemos e, entretanto, não só perdemos tempo como eventualmente sacrificámos a paz de inocentes.

Muitas vezes, o politicamente correcto é simplesmente o correcto. Outras vezes, o politicamente correcto limita-nos a capacidade de identificar certeiramente aquilo e aqueles que combatemos. Voltemos a um problema nacional. A guerra no Afeganistão, também nossa porque envolveu 4500 militares portugueses — dois mortos em serviço — no âmbito da NATO, fez parte da Guerra contra o Terrorismo declarada pelos EUA cinco dias depois de sofrer os ataques de 11 de Setembro de 2001. Os atentados de 2001 e dos anos próximos tiveram um autor, a Al-Qaeda, e uma ideologia: o radicalismo islamista.

É claro que seria injusto culpar todo o Islão por causa duma franja minoritária e oportunista que apoia o terrorismo contra o Ocidente e o seu modo de vida. A maioria dos muçulmanos são tão pacíficos e normais como nós. No entanto, não podemos ignorar que os terroristas da Al-Qaeda, do ISIS, do Hezbollah e outros agem invocando motivos religiosos. Aqui, por complexos compreensíveis relacionados com o politicamente correcto, houve um esforço concertado para não relacionar aquela religião e os seus crentes com as ideias de radicalismo, terrorismo e violência. A meu ver, fizemos mal. Seria do nosso interesse e do interesse da maioria dos muçulmanos que tivéssemos juntado esforços para sinalizar os grupos, os líderes políticos e religiosos, as mesquitas e madraças que albergam as seitas ditas islâmicas mas que distorcem o Islão e instrumentalizam a fé dos homens e o nome de Deus para semear a violência e cometer crimes contra a humanidade.

Para além do mau nome que estes radicais dão ao Islão, a maior quantidade de mortos vítimas de atentados terroristas são… muçulmanos. Em vez de identificarmos o inimigo do terrorismo islamista e de o combatermos, cedemos primeiro ao politicamente correcto e depois cedemos também ao medo – sobretudo após os ataques a embaixadas dinamarquesas em 2005/6 por causa de caricaturas no Jyllands-Posten e o massacre do Charlie Hebdo em 2015.

Quando não identificamos o inimigo numa guerra, ele ganha uma vantagem desnecessária. Em sociedades democráticas como as nossas, os líderes têm contas a prestar para se manterem no poder e para continuarem a actuar. Quando a guerra é contra um inimigo vago e sem cara, quando após 20 anos já não sabemos o que fazemos numas montanhas longínquas e porque é que isso é tão importante para a nossa segurança e modo de vida, então a retirada é fatal e o sabor da derrota é amargo. Como já não compreendemos aquela guerra, ela torna-se aparentemente inútil e cara.

Queremos crer que os talibãs de hoje são melhores, mais moderados e humanistas que os de há 20 anos – mas as imagens e relatos mostram-nos o contrário. A Al-Qaeda continua, a Bin Laden sucedeu Al-Zawahiri e surgiu também um ISIS que semeia o terror até em Moçambique. Podemos pensar que ao sairmos do Afeganistão a guerra acabou, no entanto, o radicalismo islamista persiste como inimigo violento, perigoso e próximo. Devemos seguir a nossa vida sem a mudar, mas, se formos confrontados novamente com este inimigo, só ganhamos em identificá-lo melhor.

haverá alguma solução pacífica para o Paquistão?

Editorial que escrevi no sétimo número da revista Think South Asia:

---

In this edition we will put the focus on Pakistan, a country with more than 180 million people, being the 6^th most populous country in the world. We could roughly say that the story of Pakistan was marked by two partitions: the partition of India in 1947 and its own partition in 1971. But as History is more complex than that, we are dedicating this edition of Think South Asia magazine to Pakistan.

In the case of this country, etymology says a lot of its early history. The word “Pakistan” did not exist before 1933, when it was coined by the Muslim nationalist Mr Choudhry Rahmat Ali who, with other intellectuals, wanted to create a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia. According to scholars, the name has its origins in the acronym PAKSTAN, which results from Punjab + Afghani territories + Kashmir + Sindh + Baluchistan. An “i” was introduced amidst for reasons of pronunciation and the word resulting from this mix, “Pakistan”, was given to the new country in 1947. This very same word has also a meaning in Urdu and Persian languages: “land of the pure” or “land of the clean”.

So the country was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1947, at the same time as India was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru. Both were influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the 3 of them were fundamental for the independence of South Asian countries from the British. I write this raw background because after speaking with dozens of people about Pakistan, I saw literally everybody, both Islamists and Secularists quoting Jinnah for their advantage. Part of the problem is this: Jinnah had probably a clear vision about Pakistan, but he expressed it in such an ambiguous manner that this brought many consequences and questions until today. It is hard to find what the founder really meant for Pakistan, if a Muslim State or a State for Muslims.

The partition of India had serious problems because the idea was to give to Pakistan the Muslim-majority territories. Nevertheless, the borders were not clear at all and issues like Kashmir are yet today to be solved, with loss to the India/Pakistan relations.

Another problem was the creation of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which had a different culture and language from West Pakistan (the actual Pakistan). This generated many problems related to national identity and, in 1971, East Pakistan became independent with the help of India, and it is now the country known as Bangladesh. As a result of severe crimes against humanity, Bangladesh is now committed to punish the genocide criminals of 1971 through the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka. This is generating nowadays something we never saw in history: the Shahbag movement consists in the biggest set of protests against Muslim extremism in a Muslim-majority country. We should be interested in following these manifestations closely.

Internally, Pakistan also faces some important challenges. The way the “land of the clean” authorities’ deal with religious and ethnical minorities is far from being the most appropriate. You can find an article by Mr Wilson Chowdhry from the British Pakistani Christian Association where he points out clear cases of Minority Rights abuses and Human Rights violations that currently occur in Pakistan. This article is just the summary of a 500 pages report he recently launched in the House of Commons (Westminster, London), named “The Targeting of ‘Minority Others’ in Pakistan”. If you are interested in more details, I strongly advise you to search and read it.

The Blasphemy Law is perhaps the most symbolic issue for the Christians in Pakistan and Mrs Asia Bibi, who still is in jail and sentenced to death, is with no doubts their emblem. To see the importance of this issue, the Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti (Christian) and the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer (Muslim) were both killed because they supported Asia Bibi and were against the Blasphemy Law. Another issue of concern is Education, as we saw by what happened to the young Malala Yousafzai, or by analysing the hate-oriented official textbooks promoted by the government. Other cases exist, but Asia Bibi and Malala are perhaps the most well-known to the international community.

Concerning terrorism, the position of Pakistan is not better. In the beginning, Pakistan seemed to be an ally of the West against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. But soon we discovered they were not serious allies in the “war on terror”, when the Pakistani intelligence agencies kept the support to the Taliban, protected terrorist groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-i-Islam, or even when the authorities harboured the criminal Osama Bin Laden near a military complex in the city of Abbottabad. Regarding this, no one was jailed for helping Bin Laden to hide; the only person in prison is the physician Mr Shakil Afridi, who was accused of treason for cooperating with the CIA in finding Osama Bin Laden, and therefore tortured and sentenced to 33 years of imprisonment.

This problematic attitude of Pakistan towards terrorism is reflected in the most recent position of Afghanistan in its peace process. The Afghani Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin said on the 27^th of March 2013 that “Afghanistan is shocked by Pakistan's complacency in the nascent Afghan peace process and is ready to work without Islamabad's help on reconciliation”. Yet regarding Afghanistan, we publish in this edition a very strong message from the former Afghani Minister of Women’s Affairs Doctor Massouda Jalal, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day.

Well Afghanistan controls territories which in the past belonged to Baluchistan, a nation nowadays divided by Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The majority of the Baluchi people are in the Pakistani controlled side of the nation and they never gave up their struggle for freedom. The response from the Pakistani authorities is vehement and is becoming more violent, being now known as the Pakistani “kill and dump policy”.

In Baluchistan the Chinese are building and exploring the port of Gwadar, which is geopolitically important for several reasons Dr Siegfried Wolf from the Heidelberg University explains in his interesting article. Because of its rivalry and disputes with India, China is a natural ally of Pakistan. The Chinese are active in the whole of South Asia, investing not only in Gwadar, but also in Tricomalee in Sri Lanka, funding the Maoists in Nepal, illegally occupying lands in northern Bhutan, supporting the coup d’état in the Maldives... so we cannot exclude China from the South Asian equation.

The official response of the Pakistani authorities to Human Rights complaints is that the government “supports the minorities”, agrees and condemns the Human Rights abuses, and finally promises to take action “against culprits” and “external forces”. Contrastingly, the victims usually say the government is in “state of denial”.

In fact, it seems that government’s role in the country is limited. All the testimonies and experts on the country say that the Military and the Intelligence Agencies (the most famous is ISI, but there are several others) are the ones truly ruling the country, and governments are almost meaningless. The Islamic extremism is transversal to all these institutions. No one answered me so long who is ultimately controlling the country. No one knows. Perhaps at the end it is not one person controlling it, but several Islamists and not necessarily only in the top of the hierarchy. This is worrying when we think that Pakistan is a nuclear State.

One must think if the aid money we (the USA and the EU) continuously give to Pakistan to fight terrorism and promote Human Rights, Women’s Rights, Education, Civil Society Empowerment and many other development goals is being really well spent. We must be sure that these funds are helping those who really need and not being spent in the destabilisation of this already sensible region.

Regional cooperation in South Asia is not possible while these issues of terrorism, extremist education (in some madrasas and in public schools) and Human Rights abuses are not seriously tackled. Pakistan is a very important country in the region and the implementation of the rule of law and granted respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will benefit everybody regionally, beginning in Pakistan itself.

A critic should also propose solutions; nevertheless, I must leave here a simpler desire. I firmly hope that the Pakistani people could find in themselves the ability and strength enough to draw their own path of peace and respect for the Human Right of every single person.

These are some personal notes on Pakistan, but to know more about this fascinating country, nothing is better than taking a look to our country profile wonderfully written by Mst Sabikun Naher from the University of Dhaka.

Finally, I believe it is crucial to address two big issues in South Asia in general: water and corruption. Regarding water, we welcome the perspective of Mr João Moreira Pires, expert from Less Means More, writing on waste-water management as a development indicator. On the problem of corruption, the best is to return to the classics and read “Arthashastra” from Kautilya (also known as Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta). He says:

“Just as fish moving under water cannot possibly be found out either as drinking or not drinking water, so government servants employed in the government work cannot be found out (while) taking money (for themselves).”

These words written in the 4^th century b.C. during the Mauryan Empire could not be more valid today.

With special thanks to Manuel C.C.V.C., who helped me with the photos, this edition is dedicated to the Pakistani Christians and other minorities who suffer in life what we usually remember in this Lent and Easter season. Enjoy the readings and please do not hesitate to send your suggestions to the email antonio@sadf.eu

---

Publicado no site do South Asia Democratic Forum: www.sadf.eu

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthAsiaDemocraticForum

11 anos depois do 11 de Setembro

Editorial que escrevi no segundo número da revista Think South Asia, que edito com o apoio do South Asia Democratic Forum, assinalando os 11 anos do 11 de Setembro:

---

 

Most people remember exactly where they were when two planes crashed against the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York City, USA. I personally was on vacation and after I had heard a plane had crashed into the WTC, I saw live on television the second plane hitting the WTC, the third one hitting the Pentagon and of course news of the fourth plane crashing into the Pennsylvania countryside. I saw humanity falling down driven by greed, hate and extreme fanaticism.

Today we pin the date 9/11, eleven years after the tragedy. Back in 2001, training camps of Al-Qaeda were mainly in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime harboured these terrorists and all their facilities, while they ruled the Afghani people (and women in an oppressive special way) with tyranny. Western societies felt no option but to forcefully intervene in the faraway lands of Afghanistan. That story we know. But...what happened in the meantime what happens in the future?

 

In this 9/11 special edition of “Think South Asia” we hope you will gain an overall perspective on this issue as presented from different personalities and experts. We have the honour of presenting former Afghani Minister of Women’s Affairs (2004-06) Doctor Massouda Jalal’s in-depth interview, where she outlines the biggest threats and opportunities in Afghanistan and how Afghani women deserve to play an essential role in its future. Madame Ambassador Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović from NATO also gives us a most lucid interview which is not to be missed, where she reminds us that “The attacks of September 11, 2001 were not only against the United States, but against the principles and values shared by a global community of democratic nations”. The Executive Director of SADF, Mr. Paulo Casaca, shows us how we should be worried about the possibility of the Taliban being back in power in Afghanistan, while Doctor Siegfried Wolf from the University of Heidelberg calls our attention to China’s potential interests in all of this.

 

Without listing anymore reasons to read carefully this special edition of Think South Asia, I should end this note saying that I am happy to count on Mr Pedro Guerra’s country profile of Afghanistan and on Ms Anne Flanagan (last but not least) who gave us precious help with the English editing of the texts and many details which don’t appear but make all the difference. If by any chance there is a mistake, that is of course – and as always – the Editor’s fault. Nevertheless, I thank all of our contributors and the Think South Asia team for doing everything to honour the memory of this 9/11 day.

---

Publicado no site do South Asia Democratic Forum: www.sadf.eu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthAsiaDemocraticForum

Para fazer o download da revista Think South Asia 02: http://sadf.eu/thinksouthasia02.pdf