A Skyful of Lies
The recent upsurge in the streets of the Arab world has been force-multiplied by the planned (and unplanned) use of both internet and the media, Twitter, Facebook, Al-Jazeera, CNN, etc have all chipped in. Joining the dominos Tunisia and Egypt that have fallen, Yemen, Algeria and Bahrain are tottering, Libya is now in a state of virtual civil war. After vicious “remedial” action, the King of Bahrain decided good sense was the better part of bull-headedness in calling off his troops from the streets. With his Eastern Region in protestor control, Muammar Gaddafi is behaving as the mad man that he is to hang on to his last bastion in Tripoli. US and EU leaders repeatedly cautioned the authoritarian regimes they were previously not only comfortable (but virtually in bed) with against the naked use of brute force, including fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships in Libya, against largely peaceful demonstrations. The commentators may be speaking different languages to describe the unprecedented images on TV screens, the content is the same.
How the modern revolution has been conceived, nurtured and implemented is by itself a study. To win a battle without bloodying swords” (Tsun Tse Tzu), the media (and now the internet) can be used and/or misused. Nik Gowing’s book, “Skyful of Lies and Black Swans” qualifies as a modern day primer for today’s practitioners of political science across the divide from democracy to dictatorship to understand the “new art of war”. Stephen Stern holds Nik Gowing’s analysis as daunting but completely dispelling, “Information now travels around the world so fast and in such quantities that all kinds of organisations – governments, businesses – are struggling to respond fast enough or effectively enough. As a result, there is a new vulnerability, fragility and brittleness of power which weakens both the credibility and accountability of governments, the security organs and corporate institutions. This often occurs at the height of a crisis, just when you need clarity from senior executives. No matter that the information – noise – which is being spread may be inaccurate, or only partly true. Leaders have to respond, and faster than used to be necessary. The new core challenge is the tyranny of the timeline”. Awash in money and resources and complacent about the expanse of their power, the Arab regimes were not geared to cope with the blinding speed that information dissemination played in the upheavals.
Mixed Signals
The President of Pakistan, General Parvez Musharraf, met US President Bush in New York last Sunday evening. Earlier, he had addressed the UN General Assembly. Given that after sending democracy into temporary limbo he became an international pariah a scant two years (and a month ago), for the Pakistani President the visit has been a triumph of sorts, for the personal risks he has taken in the last 60 days it brought only mixed rewards. In meetings en route in Teheran, Istanbul, Paris and London, Parvez Musharraf scored heavily in getting effusive support for Pakistan as a frontline state in the “war on terrorism”. But it was the last stop that counted. Under dire pressure from the frenzy building in the streets, the Pakistani intelligentsia had high hopes that the US would take concrete and tangible measures to reverse the Pakistani public perception that the US is friendly with Pakistan only when it has use for it, and then leaves Pakistan to fend for itself in paying the economic and political price for the privilege of that rather limited (by need) friendship.
As a symbol of tangible support, Pakistan needed debt relief that would be more like debt forgiveness, something that would more than offset the political and economic fallout being acutely felt in Pakistan because of the US attack on Afghanistan. Pakistan suffered economically (and continues to suffer) because we were then left in the lurch after the Afghan War in the 80s, sad experience shows that the present aid package announced for Pakistan is meagre compared to the economic hardships that the present Afghan War is now forcing on Pakistan. US$ 1 billion is hardly peanuts, but in the context of what we really need it may as well as be chicken feed. One must be grateful for small blessings however, for even the US$ 1 billion aid package that we did get will ameliorate to a small extent the burden of the war which is being increasingly felt in the streets and homes of Pakistan. In material terms it may be in lost man hours and in export manufacturing orders, in emotional terms the cost cannot even begin to be counted.