Illiteracy causes Terrorism--Wishful Thinking?

Every once in a while someone I know—not to mention a million others, often highly educated Pakistani expats and not a few caucasians both in Western governments and even progressive circles, but also people in Pakistan—will express the thought that what is really causing all this extremism and fanaticism is that Pakistan, for example, has an abysmal literacy rate. And all we have to do is start 3 million schools, and we "wild and wooly gentlemen" of those crazy parts will hold hands and chant Rumi, if not sing kumbaya. One do-gooder just a couple of days ago was saying on NPR that you could run a whole school for a year in the money spent on maintaining one foreign soldier in Afghanistan.

I am not sure I agree.

These are two separate problems. Illiteracy might be fueling extremism, but the ideology behind it is very much the product of literate brains. The inflexible, extreme attitudes we see in a lot of Pakistan's Youth--on Facebook, for example--is the product of the tinkering with the EDUCATIONAL system and society by Gen. Ziaul Haque and his regime, not of illiteracy. Making people literate--rather than enlightened--only gives them the means to read and absorb things like Farhat Hashmi, "disturbing" emails, and so on. [Which is not limited to Pakistan or Muslims; for every Geo TV there is a Fox News; for every Mullah Rocketi, a Franklin Graham. But I digress.] Just consider a few points:

• Who was it that was most enamoured of the Sufis that brought Islam to what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India? (At least one or two of them literally students and friends of Rumi.) The educated elite of the day, or the poor, illiterate working folk?
• Who attends lectures by Farhat Hashmi and radical Western Muslim (like the Hizbut-Tahrir and some Americans I could mention) ? The taxi driver and the working class Muslim, or the professionals at some mosques in Silicon Valley and Toronto that I could mention?

Obama passes the real test--or does he?

Ever since his inaugration, I have been saying that the real test on human rights for the Obama administration will not be what he does in Guantanamo Bay--which he had committed to close down as a campaign promise. The real test will be what he and the administration do in Bagram, which is much bigger, and from the Pakistani point of view, much closer to home.

I have been meaning to write something about this. And my point really isn't to just take a "Marg bar Amrika" point of view; to imply that America is always evil or that no American President can do any good. I really do feel that Obama has a chance to change the actual policies and procedures of the American presence around the world in all its forms, and to set a new tone.

But, as I have said repeatedly since before the last presidential elections (in the US), what Pakistanis remember from the 2008 presidential election cycle is Obama making his foreign policy chops by saying, in effect, that "we will bomb Pakistan, and its sovereignty be darned". And in the last month or two, the influx, or rumoured influx, of a thousand or two each of marines and mercenaries (oh, okay, Xe/Blackwater "consultants") in Pakistan, that image has been reinforced many fold. (See this story in the News Observer.) And in the mean time, the other story being followed and, very frankly, used to whip up anti-American fury in Pakistan is that of Dr. Afia Ahmed, "Prisoner Number 650". (Just google her name for a taste--or search Bloggers.pk, the main Pakistani blog aggregator.)

And just a night or two ago, I heard the Obama Administration's General Counsel of the Department of Defense tell the American Bar Association (on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, no less) that Bagram was completely different from Guantanamo, and that what was happening there was okay, and so on. (The event is on CSPAN.)

But, suddenly, now I see the following story, which actually reverses, or substantially changes what the General Counsel said. Is Obama actually doing better than even his own team expected--and keeps thinking it should be doing? Or am I missing something? I would love to hear from our legal friends--and anyone else who has a real thought on this:

U.S. Gives New Rights To Afghan Prisoners

Challenging Detention to Be Allowed

These detainees were released from Bagram in June 2006. About 600 people remain in the prison. (By Musadeq Sadeq -- Associated Press)

By Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.

The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

(Full Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/12/AR2009091202798.html)

Mujahideen, Jihadis, and Other Afghans

In discussions on Afghanistan, it is distressing to see even serious academics with a background in Pakistan conflate all of the resistance in Afghanstan to the Soviets under the "Jihadi" label. Ahmed Shah Masood, for example, was very much one of the Afghan Mujahideen, but was no "Jihadi"...most of the warlords in that war were nowhere near the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or Pakistani Jihadis in ideology. Of course, the US and Pakistani governments had a weakness for Jihadis like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and later found they could best do business with the Taliban, but that's another story.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Afghanistan - Islamism - Mujahideen