The
Karachi Social Forum And
Its International Significance
By Rousset Pierre
29 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Europe solidaire sans frontières (ESSF) participated in the
World Social Forum in Karachi. The report which follows is not descriptive
(number of seminars and so on.), but seeks to share some elements of
analysis on this new experience and its significance - taking account
of the fact that this was the author's first visit to Pakistan. The
report is, then, "foreign" and does not claim to be based
on a real knowledge of the country. It is on the other hand informed
by the comparative experience of the preceding forums in Porto Alegre,
Europe and India. A more detailed report will be drawn up later.
After Bamako (Mali) and Caracas
(Venezuela) last January, Karachi constituted the third wing of the
World Social Forum, in its "polycentric" version of 2006.
Meeting from March 24-29 in the main industrial centre and port of Pakistan,
it proved to be a success both in terms of numbers and of politics.
The attendance - more than 30,000 - was twice as big as predicted and
the forum represented an event with many new aspects for this country.
There were certainly a good
number of organisational problems, from the spectacular absence of any
dustbins on the meeting site (a sports complex) to the cancellation
of seminars or unforeseen changes in the programme - which the Pakistani
press has dwelt on. But the organizers had not had an easy task.
The destructive earthquake
of October 2005, in the north of the country in Kashmir, forced the
delay of the forum, initially planned for the end of January. For several
months financial resources and activist energies were devoted to aiding
a population which had been very hard hit and was threatened by the
rigours of the Himalayan winter. Moreover, the social and citizen-based
dynamic which had contributed to the success of previous forums was
not self-evidently present in Pakistan.
Pakistan, land of
expansion of forums
In its original homeland
(a part of Latin America and of southern Europe) the launch of the WSF
benefited from a new context (the emergence of resistance to capitalist
globalisation), but also from the renewal of unitary traditions during
the 1990s, already involving a notable diversity of social actors. The
forums have enlarged and strengthened these unitary traditions, but
they have profited from a dynamic of convergence which was already underway.
In other countries, in the
lands of expansion, it is rather the existence of the world process
which serves as reference. It is this which allows the initiation of
the dynamic of convergence specific to the social forums, which constitutes
their "trademark". It is always difficult to seek to understand
the characteristics of a country that one knows very little of, but,
at the risk of caricaturing a necessarily complex reality, it seems
to me that such has been the case in Pakistan.
The experience of the Karachi
WSF is all the more interesting to analyse inasmuch as it took place
in a very diversified country (as much in social structure as in regional
and national identities); under a military regime; placed on the Afghan
front line of Washington's "war on terror"; subject to the
growing pressure of religious fundamentalist currents, called here "sectarian
movements" and capable of murderous violence [1]; in a region dominated
since the partition of 1947 by Indo-Pakistani antagonism, which has
now become a nuclear stand off. [2] It is also the first time that a
forum of this breadth has met in one of the biggest Muslim countries
in the world.
The success of the Karachi
WSF was not then in any way banal. It should be analysed in its specificities.
It is obviously the job of the Pakistanis (and those who know Pakistan
well) to do it. But the perception, without pretension, of an old habitué
of forums can nonetheless be also useful, at least to raise certain
specificities which are the most apparent to a "foreign" onlooker.
I would like first to sum up briefly on what, in my eyes, has given
the event its significance.
Declension of a success
First element of success,
and a major one, the WSF in Karachi opened a democratic and secular
space between the pressure of the military regime and that of the fundamentalist,
conservative currents. The site of the forum was alive. It was a permanent
theatre of demand-based demonstrations.
Musical groups and poets
gave an emotional power to the political speeches. In the seminars,
some women wearing shawls or veils removed them - in Pakistan, there
are many who wear no headgear. Women were numerous and mixed company
was the rule in the spaces and the tribunes of the forum. The atmosphere
was joyous, the speech and behaviour liberating.
Second element of success,
diverse popular movements effectively appropriate the democratic and
secular space opened by the forum: small fishers from the Karachi region;
peasants from the province of Punjab; trades unionists in struggle against
privatisation; nationalists from Sind (where Karachi is located), Baluchistan
(in the west) or Kashmir (in the north); and a myriad of women's organisations.
As at the WSF in Mumbai, in January 2004, the movements were participants
as such in the forum, impelling the space, more than is often the case
in Europe or in Latin America. The WSF in Karachi thoroughly merited
the name of social forum. It expressed the radicalism of democratic
and social demands.
Third element of success,
the demand of solidarity was also forcefully affirmed on the most burning
questions. Since the partition of 1947, Pakistan and India have lived
in a situation of open war or armed truce. Despite administrative difficulties,
an Indian delegation was able to get to Karachi, as a Pakistani delegation
had attended the WSF in Mumbai (Bombay), two years ago. The situation
in Kashmir was the theme of seminars and an important plenary where
the combatant movements from the two sides of the "line of control"
met for the first time thus in public. [3] Even if dialogue has not
really been installed between them (that's an understatement), the event
was striking.
Fourth element of success,
the presence of youth and the return of politics. Hundreds of youth,
particularly from Karachi, participated in the forum as volunteers.
For many among them, it was their first political experience - sometimes
a little disconcerting, it seems, because of the changes of programme.
More generally, the forum allowed a reaffirmation of the authenticity
of the political terrain in the face of the military regime which sterilises
it in the name of the imperatives of national security and faced with
the fundamentalist movements which sterilise it in the name of religious
imperatives. The forum has reopened the debate on the place of politics
and it is not the least of its results.
Muslim identity is not necessarily
above all religious. It can be nationalist and cultural as seems for
example to have traditionally been the case for the (regional) national
movement in Sind. But the Pakistani state is constituted with a confessional
reference base. A policy of official Islamisation was subsequently pursued,
in particular by the military dictatorship of general Zia which made
Islam a state ideology. But Islam being very diverse in Pakistan, that
has exacerbated the "sectarian" conflicts between Muslims.
The experience of the Karachi WSF allows us to perceive, in such a context,
the centrality of the secular demand, a necessary condition for the
realisation of the social unity of the exploited and the oppressed divided
by the religious reference.
Fifth element of success,
the forum constituted a new stage of a regional process, in South Asia,
begun in India during the forums of Hyderabad (2003) and Mumbai (2004).
It also initiated a unitary dynamic in Pakistan itself, which should
continue: discussion was immediately opened, after the experience of
Karachi, on the regular organisation of a Pakistani social forum. To
be followed up and confirmed, then.
Some problems
The tensions, contradictions
and setbacks should also be analysed. I will content myself with raising
five here - mentioning first the organisational problems (like the deficient
information on programming) which probably made life difficult for the
individual "unorganised" participants.
1. The MQM. The relationship
to the governmental institutions in the towns or the countries where
the forums are held has nearly always caused problems. In Karachi, the
tensions crystallized on the attitude to be taken to the MQM, the "Mohajir"
movement [4] which dominates the municipality and which many formations
of the Pakistani left judge "ethnicist". It was not integrated
in the programme of the forum.
2. Integration. A certain
number of movements which should logically have participated in the
forum did not do so. This was notably the case with the feminist organisations
of Lahore. The process of integration in the dynamic of the forums of
all the components concerned is not then finished. This problem goes
back probably as much to questions of functioning (opening of structures)
and orientation as of "visibility".
3. Visibility. the contrast
was striking between the composition of the platform during the forum's
opening ceremony (where there were no social movements) and the place
occupied by the movements in the space of the forum itself or in number
of seminars. This contrast is still more accentuated in the area of
"international visibility" of the Pakistani forum (at least
before its holding), which was very reduced. This problem of representation
and visibility, of the gap between the composition of the central platforms
and the movements which ensure the social character of the forums, is
obviously not specific to the case of Pakistan.
4 On the left. This polemic
on the nature of the social forums divided the Pakistani left. Some
political movements supported the process from the beginning. This is
particularly the case of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) whose activists
were perfectly at home in the forum. The Awami Tehreek (from Sind) was
very present. A little before the forum, a front was set up between
six left organisations [5]. That probably facilitated a broader participation
of left forces in the forum.
5. Internationally 58 countries
were "represented" at the forum in Karachi. But, outside of
South Asia, the national delegations were generally small. These were
generally made up of people already concerned by Pakistan or the region
(with exceptions, concerning in particular the Latin Americans). The
French delegation was probably the most numerous "outside Asia".
From the CRID to ESSF via the Frères des Hommes, the French were
in the main already "into" Asia - although the presence of
unions like the CGT and the Italian CGIL should be mentioned.
>From this point, the
forum in Karachi was an essentially Pakistani forum with a significant
regional dynamic but a weak global participation. It was supposed to
be a wing of the World Social Forum. But it was not "taken up"
by the components and the international bodies of the WSF in the same
way as the forums of Bamako and Caracas. Very significantly, on the
very eve of the forum in Karachi, the International Council of the WSF
met... in Nairobi. It was certainly good to prolong without delay the
African dynamic of Bamako to prepare the WSF 2007 in Kenya, but it would
have been preferable to hold the March IC in Karachi and the following,
planned in October, in Nairobi. The consequences, in Pakistan, of the
lack of international support made themselves felt, including on the
financial plane, and the Pakistanis clearly posed the organisational
problems at a meeting during the forum, with the members of the IC of
the WSF present.
Given the difficulties and
the stakes (national and regional) of the Pakistani forum, the WSF in
Karachi particularly merited being supported internationally. It was
also a unique occasion to learn about a pioneer experience. But Asia
remains the poor relation of solidarity in Europe and Latin America.
Despite the role played since Mumbai by the Indians, the international
bodies of the WSF reproduced instead of correcting this very unequal
perception of the world.
Provisional conclusions
This only amounts to a partial,
indeed fragmentary, balance sheet. All critical commentaries would be
welcome. But by way of a provisional conclusion, I will stress the following
points:
1. The functionality of the
forums. With the emigration of the WSF outside of its Latino-European
countries of origin - after Mumbaï (2004), Bamako and Karachi (2005)
- the utility of the forums (of this type of forum) has now been tested
positively in very varied contexts. Nothing is universal or eternal,
but the adaptability of this form of action (and of the process which
supports it) has proved remarkable. It has been tested on the international
level in countries where the social movements are strong or weak, in
favourable and unfavourable political situations, in highly defensive
or counter-offensive conjunctures.
Of course, each forum has
its own characteristics and functions. But the form "forum/process",
"meeting space/place of impulsion of actions" clearly responds
to needs linked to the period and not only to a specific political geography.
We already knew it, but this is a confirmation of it. The forums allow
the rallying of resistance (in its diversity) in a time of globalisation,
when the crisis of the socialist reference has not been overcome and
the modes of centralisation of the past period (around the workers'
movement or armed struggles) do not work as before.
2. The significance of the
Pakistani experience. The Karachi forum illustrates this first point
of conclusion. The political situation in the country is not good. There
are key struggles, sometimes victorious, but the trade union and social
movement remains fragmented and globally weak. The country is extremely
divided. Social structures are often very different according to province,
or even inside the same province like the Punjab. The whole history
of the Pakistani state since its formation in 1947 is traversed by conflicts
between the elites of "ethnic" groups and provinces for the
control of the administration and the army (which are dominated by the
Punjabis, but also the Mohajirs). Regional or national conflicts are
numerous (Baluchis, Pashtoons, Kashmiris, Sindhis and so on) and can
lead to internal wars. Statistics show 97% of Pakistan's population
are Muslims, with all the ambiguity linked to the use of categories
of religious (or cultural?) appearance against a co
mplex social reality (don't doubt it, there are Pakistani atheists).
But we have seen the multiplicity (Sunni, Shiite, Ahmadiyya, Sufis and
so on) and the violence that this "unanimous" percentage hides.
Despite all this, the forum
in Karachi was a dynamic place of popular convergence. It is this which
gives us something to reflect on, and which ensures that this experience
its national and international significance.
3. Internal contradictions.
A recurrent polemic on the role of the NGOs in the process of the WSF
re-emerged in Karachi. The "left" critique of the forums is
often formulated in too abstract, too "external" a fashion.
The success of the forums has nothing obvious about it, it expresses
something new. To be pertinent, the critique should then begin by understanding
this and recognising this; it should be formulated in, let us say, a
more "internal" fashion.
The evolution of the world
of NGOs poses a problem? Effectively. Some, in the name of global civil
society, weaken the local or national activist fabrics. In the name
of a citizen-based discourse, they stifle social radicalism. In the
name of democracy, they monopolise visibility to the detriment of otherwise
more representative organisations. But the world of the NGOs is not
homogeneous; and it is not alone in creating a problem. The same is
true of the trade union bureaucracies, intolerant "rank and file"
movements, authoritarian political leaderships, of naïfs and cynics
and (oh how many!) egotistical personalities and manipulative individuals.
In short, it is not enough to denounce the NGOs (many of whom have their
place in the forums) to ensure the popular dynamic of the process.
The poor are, in society,
invisible. On the contrary, the forums should ensure the visibility
of the most exploited and oppressed. Since the very beginning in Porto
Alegre this has not been self-evident. The gap can be large, inside
the forum, between the "street" and the platforms. Since 2001,
some progress has been accomplished, but the process is not one-way
- there are also regressions.
Just as the experience of
the forums merits being defended against a "left" critique
which is too "external", it is necessary to take seriously
the contradiction at work among the people of the forums. We should
neither hope nor wish for a process without contradictions. But for
a new forum to merit the name "social", the most audible voice
should be that of the most exploited and oppressed, their movements
should be at the heart of the process.
4. Globalisation of resistance.
The process of internationalisation of forums began from 2002 with the
European Social Forum in Florence. It experienced a qualitative leap
with Hyderabad (India) and Mumbai in 2003-2004. It is today again the
case with Bamako and Karachi (Caracas occupies a specific place in the
deepening of political themes). That will again be true in 2007 with
Nairobi.
All the regions are not yet
integrated in the same way in the process (weakness in Northern and
Eastern Europe), nor represented in the same way in the international
bodies (under-representation of Asia and Africa). But it is very rare
to see a movement spread so rapidly in the world (in more than 40 years
of militant activity, it is only the second time that I have seen it).
A remark which goes, more generally, for the whole of the global justice
and anti-war movement.
The forum in Karachi was
made possible by this world expansion of the process; in return it gives
it dynamism in a country and a zone of strategic conflicts. A sole regret:
that too few organisations in Europe and Latin America took this opportunity
to acquaint themselves with the stakes in South Asia.
NOTES
[1] The non-Muslim minorities
can be victims of discrimination in Pakistan. But the sectarian violence
of the fundamentalist movements is above all exerted between Muslim
currents, Shiites, Sunni and so on.
[2] The territories with
Muslim majorities which today constitute Pakistan (to the west of the
sub-continent) and Bangladesh (to the east) were only separated from
India at the time of "partition" during decolonisation in
1947.
[3] Kashmir, in the North,
near the Himalayas, is divided in two by the "Line of Control"
which separates the armies of Indian occupation on the one hand and
the Pakistanis on the other.
[4] The Mohajirs are the
immigrants who came during the partition of 1947 from the Indian states
with a Hindu majority: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and so on. They
moved in great number to the province southeast of Sind and its capital,
Karachi.
[5] The six organisations
have set up the Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (AJT) (Peoples Democratic Movement).
They are the National Workers Party (NWP), the Labour Party Pakistan
(LPP), the Awami Tehreek (AT), the Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP),
the Pakistan Mazdoor Mehaz (PMM) and the Meraj Mohammed Khan group (MMKG).
ROUSSET Pierre
* From International Viewpoint Online magazine : IV377 - April 2006.
* Pierre Rousset is a member
of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontiers (ESSF). He has been involved for
many years in Asian solidarity movements