Reflections
On Karachi
World Social Forum
By Ingmar Lee
28 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
I
tried very hard to get to Pakistan by train, but there was zero information
available from Indian Railways about the Thar Express which started
running between Jodhpur and Karachi in February after having been shut
down since partition in '47. The only other alternative was to take
the train up to Amritsar, then cross the border at Wagah, a short bus
hop to Lahore, and then a 16 hour bus ride to Karachi. So after two
days of wrangling visas and plane tickets in New Delhi, I flew into
the beautifully austere Jinnah Airport at Karachi, population 15 million.
Upon exiting the airport, one's first view of Pakistan is of a flashy
McDonald's joint, which the new airport surrounds like a crescent moon.
I arrived just in time for the start of the plenary of the Karachi World
Social Forum, which started, luckily for me, several hours behind schedule.
There was a raucous red flag-waving, demonstration crashing the front
gates to get in and the banner-festooned sports stadium was already
packed with a boisterous crowd of about 10,000 people. I found myself
a spot on the carpetted floor in front of the stage just in time for
the introduction of the evenings keynote speakers, Tariq Ali, and the
Palestinian activist Jamal Jumah. I haven't had a chance yet to identify
the other speakers from Brazil, Cuba, South Africa and India. As the
speakers were introduced, hundreds of terrified doves were shaken out
of large sacks behind the stage, many of which careered straight into
the crowd.
Before the speaking began, the first of three powerful Qawwali bands
came out on stage to warm up the crowd. Qawwali is sacred music which
was made famous around the world by the late Pakistani singer Nusrat
Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat isbeloved and revered in Pakistan. Qawwali's
spiritual power is such that it is also greatly respected and appreciated
by Hindu's and is amongst the best aspects of the irrevocably intertwined
Muslim/Hindu culture which binds the subcontinent's history. Given the
large Hindu contingent which had come from India, this was a great choice
of entertainment and the bands really got things going. People, men,
and women, immediately got up in the crowd and danced. People even climbed
right onto the stage and danced joyously, clearly intoxicated only by
the music.
The speeches were all intensely fiery, -given with a podium-pounding
anger which is rarely witnessed in the west, and although the translating
was excellent, the details of the speeches were clear enough whether
in Urdu, Portuguese, Hindi or Spanish. George W. Bush is the biggest
terrorist scumbag ever to defile the planet. The crowd was completely
energized and engaged, shouting out comments, with waves of call/response
chants rolling around the stadium. It was very nicely staged, the whole
evening, -nobody droned on too tediously as can happen, and the speakers
were interspersed with the Qawalli bands and a frenzied troupe of kerosene-guzzling
fire-blowers. The evening ended at midnight with a finale of fireworks
launched dangerously right on the roof over the stage.
I had arrived straight from the airport and hadn't made any hotel arrangements,
so it was pretty wild trying to grab a rickshaw as the crowd streamed
out of the event, but eventually I got one to take me down to the train
station where I figured I'd have the best chance of finding a hotel
within my $5-a-night budget. Sure enough, I found a room at the Al-Faisal
hotel, complete with squatter-toilet and hot running water, and as expected,
perfectly comfortable. Karachi gets very few foreign tourists, thanks
no doubt to the dreadful Travellers Alerts which are posted by western
embassies warning of bombings, drive-by shootings, kidnappings and beheadings
etc., (like it's safer walking around any American city) so although
people are a bit surprised to have me walk into their kebab, nan and
tchai joint, as soon as I sit down, all the men go back to their dinner.
It's all men at midnight, and the restaurant is busy all night.
This morning I took a rickshaw out to the venue to get registered. I
registered a month ago on-line, but it looked like it was touch and
go as to whether the Forum would proceed, as it had already been held
up by the devastating earthquake that hit the Kashmir region of Pakistan
a few months ago. I'm registered as a delegate and will be conducting
a workshop on the seemingly insurmountable obstacles which are encountered
in the effort to protect the Earth's final forests. Although environmental
issues have a low profile at this Forum, which is understandable, given
Pakistan's location near the epicentre of the impending geopolitical
catastrophe being wreaked by America's current and threatened invasions.
Nevertheless, there's a good deal of interest and there were two demonstrations
today over plans to damn the Indus, led by a large and loud group of
angry women from Sindh. A large aspect of the obstacles I'm talking
about involve what has already been identified as a problem within the
procedures and direction of the World Social Forum itself, -it's turning
into an Big NGO-dominated event which is overshadowing its grass-roots
roots. Just as the environmental movement is being disempowered by collaborationist
ENGO's which are choosing to negotiate compromises with government and
industry, similarly, the WSF is apparently swinging towards entrenchments
which transform flexible, energized grass-roots action-oriented effort
to entrenched, professional, celebrity NGO pyramidical power structures.
Here's how Arundhati Roy, who turned down an invitation to the event,
put it in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! recently:
Amy Goodman: Finally, Arundhati Roy, you are headed
to Pakistan, not to follow President Bush, but for the World Social
Forum that will be taking place later this month. Can you talk about
what you'll be saying there and the significance of this forum on the
heels of this visit?
Arundhati Roy: Well, actually, I'm not headed there,
because -- I know that my name was announced, but that was done without
anybody asking me. And, you know, I'm really thinking about all these
things too much to be able to go and speak at the World Social Forum
now, because I'm very worried about, you know, all of us who are involved
in these things, spend too much of our energy sort of feeling good about
the World Social Forum, which has now become very NGO-ized and, you
know, a lot of – it's just become too comfortable a stage. And
I think it's played a very important role up to now, but now I think
we've got to move on from there, and I've already said this at a previous
World Social Forum job, and I really don't want to, you know, carry
on doing something when the time is over for it, you know? I think we
have to come up with new strategies.
I attended a workshop this morning on "The State of Federal Democracy
in Pakistan: The Reality and the Rhetoric." One of the three speakers
was the Canadian Professor Bruce Toombs, who has, apparently acquired
some sort of academic posting here. He described the Canadian "Federal
Democratic System" (what the hell is a "federal democracy??")
in great detail, going over the evolution of the Canadian parliamentary
process, which he said has always been a 'work in progress' and never
initially envisioned in its present form. He made referrences to the
FLQ "terrorists" which have been reintegrated into Canadian
society and described the French/English issue as Canada's main source
of tension. I was utterly shocked that he worked through his entire
presentation without a single mention of the fact that what is called
Canada had been peopled for tens of thousands of years prior to the
white arrival, and that the Colonialist adventure which had resulted
in Canadian democracy has been as genocidal for First Nations as has
the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which is the focus of so much angst
at the Forum. So my first real work at the WSF was to stand up immediately
the guy was finished and remind Mr. Toombs of the context in which he
was speaking.
Yeah, it was only the first day, but I did get the sense that there
are a lot of people there, who unlike me, have some kind of hope that
we can turn the world around from the very brink of disaster through
the existing political processes, like in the event that the left should
prevail against the right, that Peace and Justice will prevail again.
I don't believe it, and I hope that Arundhati isn't exactly right, ~that
the WSF has stopped being a cutting edge vehicle for finding new ways
to organize people to action.
I do think she's a bit unfair, because really, this is a very impressive
event for Pakistan, it speaks to Pakistan's social maturity and I commend
the people who put it together.
So, I'll head back to the Al Faisal Hotel now.