The Dream of a Crime-Free Society

He seemed agonized. I asked him what was wrong. He had called hisfolks in Karachi and learnt about a robbery next door to where theylive. I was relieved that it had happened next door and not at hisfolks' place. He didn't share my equanimity. He told me the robberyhad greatly disturbed his folks. His brother was especially anguished. In the middle of the day when his recently-marriedbrother's wife was leaving for college, she saw five men coming out ofthe neighbors'house. A few of them had in their hands what in Pakistan are called "TT"s (one of a variety of handguns known by the abbreviation for"Tula Tokarev"). She immediately drove away.

Later, his folks learnt the details of what had happened. It started when the neighbors' driver was outside working on their car. A whiteToyota stopped in front of their house and five men jumped out of thecar. One of them put a gun to the driver's head and asked him to leadthem into the house. The robbers went in with the driver, held upeverybody present in the house and demanded that all jewelry and cashbe given to them right away. The owners complied and the robbers left.

Why was this robbery so worrisome to his brother, I asked him. Well,first of all because of the demeanor of the robbers, including thefact that two of them spoke Punjabi whereas the other three spokeKarachi Urdu--something that suggested that they were policemen.Obviously, you can now exclude the Police from solving this case.Secondly, the fact that the neighbors had drawn Rs. 50,000 from thebank that morning and had taken the jewelry out of their safe deposit the street --had been watching the neighborhood. [I wonder why in the face of prevailing lawlessness Karachiyays keep dealing in big wads of cash.] So, whoever had been observing the neighborhood to look for patterns and opportunities will have also noticed that his brother's beautiful young wife leaves for college at 12 Noon everyday. Shouldn't his brother worry that the same people can now pull a carjacking and take his wife along? I tried to comfort him with the argument that a kidnapping is a much more involved enterprise than robbery. He didn't buy that. Criminals in Karachi act with impunity; the fact that they are almost never apprehended has emboldened them further, he told me. They would rob, kidnap, kill, and everything in\between, depending on their disposition that day, he thought.

I tried to be philosophical about the situation arguing with him that the Karachi chaos has no pattern to it and hence no predictions can be made--better to take your mind off it so that it won't take a toll on\your sanity. It is like worrying that a meteor will hit you on the head when you are outdoors--knowing that out of the thousands of meteors that continuously collide with Earth's atmosphere, a few make it to Earth's surface intact. (My emphasis in that analogy being on the unpredictability rather than the frequency of the phenomenon.) I told him that most developing countries are going through similar law and order situations, and that things are even worse for people in Iraq and Afghanistan. That in a country where assassination attempts on high-ranking officials are common, what better treatment should ordinary citizens expect? These arguments didn't comfort him at all. He told me that a few months back his brother had tried to gather neighbors and initiate measures that would increase the security and the hygienic conditions of the locality; very few responded positively: their non-cooperation suggesting either a mistrust on any formal organization, or the neighbors' belief that their nawafils and ayat-ul-kursis alone can halt all evils at their doors.

He told me that such incidents affecting his folks happen with great frequency. Every few months they are terrorized; reminded that they are living in a failing society. Every time they begin to relax and start forgetting the last incident they are hit by a new misfortune--their only apparent remedy being to buy more Lexotanils from the neighborhood pharmacy.

He asked me if he should advise his folks to move somewhere decent within Karachi? I asked him which neighborhood of Karachi he considered decent (which I took to mean safer).
"Defense?"
"Are robbers keeping out of Defense?"
He wasn't sure.
Should he suggest that they move to Islamabad, he asked me. What's so special about Islamabad, I asked. There was a time when Islamabad was a few miles outside of Pakistan, but not any more. The capital is now as filthy and unsafe as any other place in Pakistan. There is no "decent" place to live in Pakistan, period. Are his folks interested in applying for Canadian immigration, I asked. Probably not, they had lived there all their lives. Well, then there is not much choice, I rested my case. Recognize that it has been two generations since anyone did any serious comprehensive work to improve that system.

We drifted to related topics. We wondered if taxpaying citizens of Pakistan should sue the government for the decrepit law and order situation. We talked about the joblessness, the lack of opportunities, and the absence of hope in our motherland. We recognized that crime has two distinct facets: extempore and premeditated. In tightly controlled traditional societies where everybody knows everybody else, most of the crime must be extempore--when somebody just loses it. We guessed that in large urban centers such as Karachi 99% of all crime is premeditated--the impetus for this type of crime being the ability to hide, to get away with the crime.

We recognized that crime has a much higher cost than the apparent value of things stolen or the physical and psychological injuries sustained. The whole uncertainty, the constant fear of the prospect of crime affects the psyche of every member of the society. There is no need for this. We have the technology to eradicate premeditated crime.

We dreamt of a society where all public places are made free of crime. The public places are constantly watched--not by people but by a multitude of surveillance cameras. These cameras cover every portion of the space. We dreamt of a society where all vehicles have barcodes and roadside barcode-readers constantly register the movement of these cars. The cameras and the barcode recorders are continuously archiving this data without any human scrutiny of that information. These recordings will only be used when a crime actually takes place. After the incident of a crime we play back the cameras and interpret the barcode-reader archive to see what really happened. There is no getting away with crime in that society. Imagine what a relief every member of the community would feel when they don't have to worry about being robbed, assaulted, or violated in any form.

Yes, such an elaborate system of surveillance is very expensive, but look at the cost crime and its fear extract. See what human potential we are suppressing by allowing the possibility of crime. The fulfillment of living in a crime-free society is far more valuable than the cost of the system that would buy it--it is as if the security of your home has grown, and spread outdoors and all around you. Imagine the money such a society will be saving in policing the streets, and the time the much smaller police force would have to spend to solve any crime--all that is needed to be done is to play back the cameras!

Yes, we are dealing with the very sensitive issue of privacy. The privacy issue needs to be addressed on both the personal and the societal levels. On the personal level it would be this knowledge that you are being constantly watched. Why should anyone know who you meet and how you interact with them? Well, imagine the public place surveillance system to be your new social contract with the society: just as you have to obey society's norms outside your home, in the crime-free society you would have this one more inconvenience of having your movement constantly monitored in public places.

On a larger scale the fear would be that someone or a group of people could misuse that system; that the public place surveillance system might be used to target specific people and to spy on their activities; that it would be the Soviet Union all over again. Well, not quite. We have evolved beyond that. In a democratic society people collectively choose a few representatives to make decisions on their behalf. Similarly, the democratic system will rotate the few who will be made responsible to monitor the public surveillance system.

In short, our ideal crime free society is not willing to set the criminals free under the notion of privacy in public places. Citizens are welcome to enjoy all the privacy in the comfort of their homes, but when they go out they will be watched.

Postscript:
My dear friend Sabahat Ashraf, on reviewing this article, noted:
"So you think that we have evolved to a point where our elected and democratic leaders--like John Ashcroft, for example--can be trusted with this?"
[Of course my friend knows that Attorney Generals are never democratically elected.]

Arguing that we should not have a comprehensive public surveillance system because it might be abused is like saying that we should not employ democracy because the Nazis in Germany came to power through democratic means.

Long time ago when humans practiced cannibalism, one of our greatest fears was that a fellow human being would eat us. Having abandoned cannibalism long time ago, we no longer carry that fear. Similarly, eradicating crime, the fear of being violated too, one day, will become a quondam memory.

Separate Destinies?

Cemendtaur

Pakistani bureaucracy has the elemental capability to shock you at regular intervals. Monday, February 16's Daily Dawn reported the Pakistan Election Commission’s reversion of their decision on separate electorates for Muslim and Non-Muslim citizens. With that fatuous announcement, the clock was turned back two years--the courageous resolution of joint electorate districts i.e., to see all citizens through the same democratic lens, was only made in 2002.

This disappointing news conjured up a vivid image in my mind. It is that of a car stuck in mud. The wheels are spinning very fast, but the car is not going anywhere. Then helpful people come to the rescue. They push the car with all their strength and manage to get it almost out of the slippery groove. And just when they think the revving engine can pull the car out, they let go their force and the wheels slide back into the mud. This is exactly how I feel about Pakistan, spinning its wheels in the bane of hollow religiosity. It took years, if not decades, of hard work on the part of the well-wishers of the country to convince the Pakistani administration that separate electorates are not a hot idea, and just when they thought the battle was won, the country slid back into the past.

Why is everybody except for the religious parties in favor of joint electorates? Because people living in a precinct—-no matter what their religious affiliation is—-share the same problems together. If there is no water, they all suffer together. If the power supply is in shambles, they all hurt. If their schools are in bad shape, they all feel the same pain. With their destinies conjoined, they want to influence the elected leadership together, on issues affecting all the voters of the locality. The system of separate electoral
districts will force the Christians of Multan and the Hindus of Jacobabad to vote for a person who may not even know the geography of either Multan or Jacobabad, let alone have an understanding of the local issues.

A sham argument that having separate electoral districts is in the benefit of the non-Muslims is presented by the religious parties, the force-majeur behind the farce. Real nonsense! Don’t you think that whoever is benefiting from this proposal should be enthusiastic about it? I don't see Christian, Hindu, Qadiani, and other religious minorities showering the Election Commission with confetti on this announcement. I can hear them boo.

Let's not fool ourselves. The only purpose of having separate electoral districts for religious minorities is to miff them; to highlight their existence; to antagonize them; and to convince them that the country they were born in, and feel an innate love for, wants to disown them. To minorities, it is an invitation to hatred: hate Pakistan because Pakistan hates you.

A cursory look at Pakistan's tumultuous history indicates that our country’s present courtship with the USA won't last too long. And when the going gets tough, you want the nation to be united behind the country’s leadership and not have livid citizens looking for opportunities to get even with you on past scores.

Save Pakistan, press the Government for joint electoral districts!

Friends of South Asia resolution passed on May 31, 2003, regarding persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan

We, at FOSA, as humble students of the contemporary politics of the world observe the following:

 

• That, Today’s sovereign states exercise great power over their people and that a state can, on its volition, use this power to make life miserable for individuals and groups existing in that society.

 

• That, Humans, being social animals, live in groups.  That as members of any group—be that group religious, linguistic, ethnic, or of any other defining nature—grow, subgroups among them start forming.

 

• That, Groups or subgroups of people have the fundamental right to define and call themselves in any way they wish to be defined and called.

 

• That, Decisions made by the state formulate trends that start prevailing in the society, and many a times in shapes and forms not conceived by the state.

 

• That, When a state starts interfering in the definition of groups of its people, no matter how well-meaning that interference is, it paves way for discrimination against some groups thus affected.

 

• That, A state prospers when all its citizens enjoy the basic human rights, and when there is minimum interference, by the state, in the private affairs of its people.

 

• That, In the year Nineteen Hundred Seventy Four the state of Pakistan interfered in the private matters of its citizenry by declaring one group of people, the Ahmadiyya—whose members called themselves Muslims--to be non-Muslim.

 

• That, The above-mentioned act of the state of Pakistan, because it highlighted the existence and beliefs of Ahmadis, is, in spirit, akin to Nazi Germany’s compulsion on Jews to wear David Star, or, in the first decade of the last century, the Southern states of the US’s arrangement to have separate public facilities for the Blacks, or, the Taliban government of Afghanistan’s decree for non-Muslims to identify themselves by wearing yellow ribbons.

 

• That, Just as the aforementioned acts of the Nazi Germany, the Southern states of the US, and the Taliban government, although ostensibly proclaimed to benefit the targeted community, were indeed morally decrepit, the year Nineteen Hundred Seventy Four proclamation of the state of Pakistan, about the Ahmadis, is also fundamentally flawed.

 

• That, The aforementioned act of expelling a group from the folds of a religion even by a state that associates itself with that religion appears mala fide because in that instance the state of Pakistan maliciously singled out one group and didn’t make exclusion or inclusion decisions of this nature about the multitude of others sects and groups that exist within that religion.

 

• That, The declaration of Ahamadis as non-Muslims by the state of Pakistan has resulted in institutionalized and pubic discrimination against them and, as recounted today and reported by various human rights organizations, has caused them great suffering.

 

 

The observation of the above makes it incumbent upon FOSA and other human rights organizations to press on the state of Pakistan to:

 

• Make a policy decision not to interfere in the matters related to the beliefs of its people, and to acknowledge its grave mistake in such an act of interference in the year Nineteen Hundred Seventy Four by repealing the law that describes Ahmadis as non-Muslims, and to leave such matters to the decision of the religious leaders.

 

• Apologize to the members of the Ahmaddiyya community at large for the hardship caused by the State of Pakistan’s irresponsible act in the year Nineteen Hundred Seventy Four.

 

 

Gather Together in Kishwar Naheed’s name

Cemendtaur

In arguments Kishwar Naheed loves tearing apart her opponents—and if her opponent happens to be a man she takes special pleasure in knocking him down and triumphantly chafing her foot on his chest. When this most famous feminist from Pakistan talked to a mostly male crowd on Friday, March 21, she spoke with persuasion and made sure everybody knew who was the boss in that room. Meeting with Kishwar Naheed was arranged by Dr. Khawaja Ashraf, editor of the online Pakistan Weekly dot com. The program was attended by prominent Bay Area Pakistani writers and poets.

Prodigious Kishwar Naheed has earned a name writing excellent poetry and working for the feminine cause. She is Pakistan’s perennial delegate to the women conferences all over the world. Lab-i goya, Naheed's first poetry book, published in 1968, won the prestigious Adamjee Prize of Literature. Since then her pen never stopped writing about the social and sexual exploitation of women in the Subcontinent.

Talking to the group in Pinole, near Berkeley, Kishwar Naheed explained how she was born the year of the Pakistan declaration; the partition related carnage robbed the innocence off her childhood; her youth was marred by violence associated with the separation of the East Pakistan; and since then she has seen nothing but mayhem.

The group talked about the various aspects of the Pakistani politics and society. Some of the themes of the conversation (positions maintained by
individuals) are presented below.

Re: Pak Army’s interference in Pakistani politics

1. Generals must be pushed back. The sooner it is done the better.

2. We need to sign peace accords with our neighbors and get rid of the army (the damage done to
the country by the Pak Army greatly outweighs any good done by that institution). Pakistanis
living in Pakistan are too weak to fight their exploiters; help of overseas Pakistanis is needed in
getting the army off Pakistanis’ backs.

3. People related with the Forces constitute a significant portion of the populace. They too are the
part of the Pakistani society. We are not against them, but we just want to cut them to their size.

Re: Hope in the society

1. With each change in the government the people of Pakistan set their hopes high, and they were
let down in each case. People have lost all hope and they don’t believe any positive change is
possible in the society (this in turn makes us destined for perpetual failure).

2. People running the NGOs and young people returning to Pakistan are very promising. They
know that they have to live there and they are determined to make it a better place.

Re: Growing Fundamentalism

Two of the four Pakistani provinces are being run by people who believe co-education is what is keeping Pakistan behind. Their idea of Islam is to make life tough for women and deny any opportunities to them.

The evening ended with a light discussion on the Cricket World Cup. Except for a couple of nationalist Pakistanis whose test of loyalty to Pakistan is in putting India down, most were cheering the Indian team in the Final against Australia. With their favorite team out of the competition the Pakistanis wanted to see the team from their part of the world win the cup. One man was heard saying to the nationalists: “Go, look at yourself in the mirror. Cheer Australia if you look like Ricky Ponting. I know that I look like Ganguly so I’ll be supporting India.”