Yasser Al Haji’s Syria

Published on Embassy Magazine, April 3rd, 2013
[http://www.embassynews.ca/opinion/2013/04/02/inside-syria%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98arab-nightmare%E2%80%99/43560]

The recent resignation of Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the main opposition group in Syria, is a sign of the protracted nature of the bloody conflict in that country.

The United Nations estimates that around 70,000 people have died in the uprising since its inception in March 2011. Syrian journalist and activist Yasser Al Haji says that things are much worse in the country than most Westerners realize, and that the UN estimate is conservative at best.

“The world powers, including Canada, are doing nothing,” Al Haji said in a lecture March 20 organized by Carleton University’s Centre for Media and Transitional Societies. “Most Syrians don’t want foreign intervention, but just give us some weapons and we’ll defend ourselves.”

Al Haji worked for state news media until the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began.

He slammed the foreign media’s portrayal of the Syrian revolution as a “civil war.”

“The damage done by the Free Syrian Army is limited,” he said. “When did AK-47s ever destroy the infrastructure of whole towns?”

Al Haji said that he was one of many Syrians who didn’t want to see a peaceful movement “escalate into a military uprising,” but he stressed that ordinary Syrians were “forced to take up arms.” Indeed, it’s highly difficult to argue with Al Haji on the point that a non-militant revolution has any serious traction in Syria when faced with the merciless brutality of the Assad regime.

“People holding cameras or phones in marches can get their hand shot off,” he said. “The snipers aim for that.”

Al Haji, who is also an organizer with the Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria opposition network, noted that reports of sectarian violence and Islamist extremism in Syria have also been “highly exaggerated.” He said that the fear of persecution against Christians in a post-Assad Syria is ridiculous, and that almost no Christians have died at the hands of the opposition so far.

“All the extremist groups in Syria right now are not more than a few hundred,” he said. By contrast, Assad’s Syrian Arab Army has used cluster bombs. The UN will investigate whether chemical weapons have been used in the conflict.

‘Too much blood’

Anas Marwah, a Carleton student, was in the audience at the talk. He visited Syria last December. A Syrian himself (his father is an executive member of a Syrian opposition group), Marwah echoed Al Haji’s depictions of the conflict.

“I saw a man on a motorcycle get his head blown off by a bomb even though he was far away from where the bomb landed,” Marwah said. He noted that the usage of cluster bombs and other types of explosives is evidence that the regime’s killing of its own people is anything but targeted.

Al Haji’s presentation also included a slideshow with photos of the devastation in Syria. The term “Arab Spring” seem an ill-fitting description when juxtaposed with the mass carnage depicted by the presentation. In fact, one can argue that there is no “Arab Spring” in Syria, but rather a kind of “Arab Nightmare.” Families of several dozen have been wiped out by a single air strike.

Al Haji said that he’s worked with around 200 foreign reporters in the past two years or so, and that it’s impossible for any of them to stay for a long time in Syria. The reports end up painting a picture that’s often incomplete. In other words, it’s hard for anyone to really understand the type of suffering inflicted upon the Syrian people.

“There’s too much blood,” said Al Haji, who’s skeptical that the conflict will be resolved diplomatically. He said that the least Syria’s supporters can do is send more weapons to the opposition. “We need more anti-aircraft weapons to protect ourselves from the air power of the regime.”

When asked whether the weapons will fall into the wrong hands and flow across borders (much like what happened in Libya), Al Haji answered that there are ways that intelligence agencies can make sure that military aid is delivered in a controlled fashion.

Some pictures in Al Haji’s slideshow were of bombed-out buildings on both sides of streets that stretched block after block. They looked like stills out of a science fiction film set in post-apocalyptic times. For Syrians still stuck in the centre of this destruction, the end of the world may seem more than an abstraction.

On Robert Fisk

Published on: Embassy Magazine, January 24th, 2013
[http://www.embassynews.ca/opinion/2013/01/24/foreign-correspondent-fisk-talks-harpers-foreign-policy-and-the-arab-awakening/43154]

Veteran British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk criticized the Harper government’s policy on the Middle East at a public lecture Jan. 22 in Ottawa.

“I regard Mr. Harper as your personal problem, not mine,” said Fisk, who spoke to a packed auditorium of about 500 people at Carleton University. He was in Ottawa as part of a Canadian lecture tour hosted by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.

Having spent more than 30 years covering the Middle East for The Times and The Independent newspapers of Britain, Fisk’s knowledge of the region commands respect. Although many across the political spectrum may take issue with some of his political views, few doubt the breadth of Fisk’s experience.

This, of course, makes his harsh words toward the Harper government even more powerful. Aside from characterizing the current government’s approach to foreign policy as something “straight out of the Bible,” Fisk also pointed out that the Canadian government lacks imagination and vision when it comes to the Middle East.

“You will find that Western nations in general, their leadership, continue to follow Washington,” he said, “and as long as Washington does whatever Israel wants, which it largely does, there isn’t going to be any change.”

Fisk was of course alluding to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, a problem that continues to plague the region, driving many of the afflicted toward anger and violence. To Fisk, this is the tragic, but prevalent nature of the relationship between the Western world and what it knows as the Middle East.

“The problem is that most of the dictatorships over the years in the region have been supported by us democrats,” he said. Because of this, when Western politicians like George Bush or even Barack Obama speak of “freedom” and “liberation,” the Arabs of Iraq and Palestine, among other places, have a very different perception of those terms than the rest of us.

Their vision of the “West” is an entity that delivers its form of “democracy,” no matter how principled and cogent in theory, through bullets and bombs. For Fisk, it is a bloody way to illustrate what is to him, and many others, an elemental truism: any form of democratic governance in the Arab world must arise indigenously.

The Arab Awakening

So among a largely tragic and self-admittedly “pessimistic” interpretation of events in the Middle East, Fisk views the Arab Awakening (his preferred term) as a “positive development.”

“The term Arab Awakening was the title of George Antonius’ great 1938 book,” Fisk said.

He pointed out that the book was written at a time when Palestine was crumbling out of Arab hands, largely thanks to British policy, or, as Fisk would have it, “British deception.” Britain’s inability to deliver on the promise of Arab sovereignty in return for Arab opposition to the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century reminds one that current trends in the Middle East are not without historical precedence.

Fisk noted that the Arab Awakening has less to do with technology and social media than anger and education.

“When I went to Egypt in the past three or four years, as I often have done over the past 36 years, I find a population that knows more about the outside world,” he said. “Not just through Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, but because they’ve travelled.”

Fisk also said that the conditions of higher education in places like Egypt, even under dictatorship, improved drastically. This, combined with a better sense of the outside world, he noted, created an inevitable cosmopolitanism that made it easier for those in the Arab world to have a collective vision. In other words, they began to realize that things did not have to be the way they were.

Though current developments in Egypt, Syria, and other post-revolt nations have not been encouraging, the relatively cynical Fisk said that Arabs still see the Arab Awakening as a generally happy signal. He’s not the only one with this mindset. But for someone who has witnessed large-scale carnage, from the Lebanese civil war to present-day Syria, hope for a brighter future is not easy to come by.

“I lost my crystal ball a long time ago,” he lamented.

Fisk’s criticisms of the Syrian opposition have drawn anger from those who would otherwise agree with him on most other things. He has been quick to stress the “jihadi” elements in the Syrian opposition, along with its chronic corruption and use of violence, while also pointing out that Bashar al-Assad may not fall as inevitably as most would expect. His writings on the matter have elicited accusations that he has fallen for the “conspiracy theories” promoted by pro-Assad circles: a charge that Fisk flatly denies.

Having been in Hama during Hafez al-Assad’s great bloodletting in February 1982, no one can deny that Fisk knows what the tyrannical dynasty of Syria is capable of. But in typical Fisk fashion, he reminded the audience that while Western powers support the at least partially “jihadi” opposition in Syria, France is leading an offensive against similar groups in Mali.

If nothing else, one can draw from Fisk’s vast experience and knowledge the tiring (but worthwhile) reminder that foreign policy has always had more to do with circumstance and convenience than with conviction.

Justin Trudeau, Palestine and the politics of right-wing smear campaigns

Published on: Rabble.ca, January 7th, 2012
[http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/justin-trudeau-islamophobia-and-politics-right-wing-smear-campaigns]

Much was made last month about Justin Trudeau’s keynote appearance at one of North America’s largest Muslim conferences. The conference has been accused mostly by sectors of the Canadian right-wing of being an “Islamist” venture.

The Toronto-based Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) conference ended up accepting the withdrawal of one of its major sponsors, the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy Canada (IRFAN Canada), because the Canadian Revenue Agency concluded last April that the Mississauga-based organization funded “Hamas-linked” groups. IRFAN then had its charitable status stripped. The CRA’s allegations and conclusions are being challenged in court.

Of course, this is not the first time a bureaucracy under the Harper regime has sought to cripple an organization concerned with Palestinian human rights. The Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) and the ecumenical group KAIROS have all had parts of their operations hollowed out because of a willingness to highlight Palestinian suffering.

It’s all part of the Harper administration’s larger strategic plan to bring Canadian policy, both foreign and domestic, in sync with its Messianic and insular worldview, especially when it comes to the Middle East. But Muslims and Palestinians are not the only ones affected by this sprawling political arrangement.

Over 400 kilometres northeast of Toronto, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is in the fourth week of her defiant hunger strike. She’s protesting the Harper administration’s approach to ‘dealing with’ the worsening conditions on her reserve, and the concerted attack by the government on First Nations sovereignty, as embodied in official legislation (especially the omnibus Bill C-45).

Chief Spence’s protest can certainly be seen as a flashpoint within the broader Idle No More movement, perhaps one of the most promising and exciting national grassroots initiatives in the past ten years.

Indeed, the contemptuous attitude that the Harper administration displays toward the disenfranchised and underprivileged sectors of Canadian society has elicited much grassroots response from Canadian civil society. Idle No More can be seen as a major component of a series of grassroots reactions to the reactionary orientation of the Harper regime (from its handling of the G8/G20 protests to its slashing of refugee medical care).

One of the ways the government has struck back is by withdrawing federal money from NGOs that they don’t see eye-to-eye with. Groups that don’t receive large amounts of federal funding, like IRFAN Canada, are then put through the great smear machine of the Canadian right-wing, an informal but still somewhat coherent group of personalities.

Allegations that IRFAN Canada funded organizations under the control of Hamas are tenuous at best, especially when one looks closely at the Agency’s own documentation on the matter. The Harper government, of course, has trouble tagging what Israel does to the Gaza Strip with the same “terrorist” moniker they so enthusiastically give to Hamas.

Furthermore, the CRA’s actual proof for linking IRFAN Canada with Hamas is a case of very tenuous guilt-by-association. Of the 15 groups the humanitarian organization has given money to, each was designated as “terrorist” because (1) Israel finds it to be “unlawful,” (2) because it has personnel involved with Hamas as legislators, (3) because it’s a Hamas-governed bureaucracy, (4) because it publically “supports families of martyrs, resisters, and detainees” in the Territories, or (5) because it posted pro-Hamas videos online.

That’s the crux of the Agency’s beef with IRFAN Canada. Reasonable people can arrive at their own conclusions of whether these are good enough reasons to hollow out an organization that sponsors orphans in the embattled Gaza Strip, which has been under anillegal Israeli blockade since 2007.

Commentators like Tarek Fatah of Sun Media and others, viewed with a substantial dose of skepticism (if not downright contempt) by the larger Muslim community, have been largely successful in determining the borders of public debate when it come to issues concerning Muslim and Palestinian Canadians.

Almost the exact same script was followed when Citizenship and Immigration Canada, led by Jason Kenney, defunded CAF. Kenney’s main charge was CAF’s “anti-Semitism,” apparently a result of its willingness to point out the same Israeli crimes documented by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others. KAIROS was no different, and involved former Minister of International Co-operations Bev Oda’s decision to “veto“ the collective opinion of her entire bureaucracy to fund the ecumenical group.

One can say what one wants about the intellectual integrity of the anti-Muslim right-wing, but the fact that they have a substantial amount financial and infrastructural support for their “work” (shoddy as it may be) is unquestionable. Post-9/11, their agenda and ideological convictions have meshed well with the Harper worldview. Many Canadians have felt their venom, including the Muslim and Indigenous populations, whose public images are currently shaped in many ways by the myths and stereotypes perpetuated by the right.

At times, it’s better to ignore the smear tactics in order to move on. However, it’s important to recognize the extent of the disruption caused by the Canadian right. Time and again, they’ve shown their ability to smear serious organizations doing good work.

Given this reality, Canadian Palestinians and Muslims could use their own Idle No More moment.

The Harper Worldview: Destroying Canadian civil society

Canada’s newly minted foreign aid pact with Israel underscores the Harper administration’s hypocritical approach to the outside world, especially when it comes to helping those in need.

Canadian International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino’s recent bilateral agreement with the Israeli head of international development brings to mind the Conservative government’s systematic destruction of civil society groups concerned with providing aid to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Israel and Canada have agreed to “not sit idle and see people in the developing world suffer” at a time when the Harper administration has hollowed out domestic organizations that work hard to raise awareness about the ongoing human rights disaster that is Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. 

These organizations range from the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), which provided settlement services for immigrants, to the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN)-Canada, a group that sent dialysis machines to the Gaza Strip, to the KAIROS Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, one of Canada’s largest progressive church-based NGOs.

All these organizations are not-for-profit, and, along with other grassroots groups, informally represent an unofficial segment of Canadian civil society that make the plight of the Palestinian people a serious priority in their work. The Harper administration, even before winning a majority government in 2011, has done its best to undermine these efforts.

It is often said that the current Conservative Party, widely seen as Canada’s most right-wing administration ever, generally initiates its policies with the aim of taking “big government” out of Canadian life. What also needs to be noted for the record is that this ideological commitment has resulted in the methodical gutting of major segments of Canadian civil society, especially when it comes to minorities and immigrants.  

This severance of the regime with organized grassroots community groups, just one aspect of the administration’s anti-democratic attitude toward governance, is represented well by the demonization of the Canadian Muslim and Palestinian community by the Tories.

Smearing IRFAN and Muslim Canadians

The “case” that illustrates the administration’s committed effort to destroy Palestinian Canadian civil society is its shameful smear campaign against IRFAN Canada. 

The Fund, based in Mississauga, Ontario, is widely regarded in Canadian Arab circles as a major organization in the community, sponsoring some of the biggest events put on by Muslim Canadians. It became a federally registered non-profit organization in 1998 but lost its charitable status in April 2011.

A report from the Toronto Star, the Canadian Revenue Agency concluded through audits that because the Fund gave money to 15 organizations with supposed “direct ties” to Hamas, it is doing “deceptive fundraising” for Hamas, which is a designated terrorist group in Canada.

However, the Agency does not prove that IRFAN knowingly dealt with Hamas. Nor does it seem to care about the fact that having won the 2006 Palestinian Legislative elections, Hamas is in direct control of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is one of the groups IRFAN donated to (the organization has also sent dialysis machines into the area, in addition to supporting orphans).

The Agency simply says in a summary on its website that “Our findings indicate that IRFAN-Canada provided over $14.6 million in resources to operating partners that were run by officials of Hamas, openly supported and provided funding to Hamas, or have been listed by various jurisdictions because of their support for Hamas or other terrorist entities.”

The trouble that arises from such reasoning is that organizations in the Gaza Strip, which has been placed under a brutal and illegal Israeli blockade since 2007, are bound to be operating under the auspices of Hamas, the governing body of the area.

But if this tacit relationship is designated as a link to terrorism, then how is anyone able to donate directly to organizations in Gaza, an area that the Red Cross and the World Health Organization have designated as one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet?

Furthermore, this effective demonization of IRFAN as a terrorist-loving entity has been used to slander and smear any organization or initiative that IRFAN is associated with. For example, the Fund sponsored the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) conference, one of the biggest annual Muslim conventions in North America.

Former MTV Host Kristiane Backer, the Secretary General of the World Conference for Religions of Peace William Fray Vendley, and President of PEN International John Ralston Saul have all spoken at the conference.

The 2012 conference took place last month in Toronto, and featured, among others, Canadian Member of Parliament Justin Trudeau, who many believe is the favourite to win the leadership race of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Previously obscure anti-Muslim activists have seized the opportunity and crawled out of the woodworks to use the Canadian Revenue Agency’s verdict on IRFAN to label RIS as an “Islamist” initiative, thus also smearing the political profile of Trudeau himself. To his credit, Trudeau remained steadfast in his participation.

The matter, astonishingly, has become a matter of serious national debate in Canada. On December 15^th, 2012, IRFAN withdrew itself as a sponsor. This chain of events is of such a disgraceful nature that it can only be seen in light of the Harper administration’s paranoid governing methods.

CAF and the Charge of Anti-Semitism

CAF’s advocacy work centres on human rights issues in the Middle East, especially in the Territories. The Federation’s former President Khaled Mouammar has referred to Israel as an apartheid regime, and publicly supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. 

Long regarded as a pillar of the Canadian Arab community, CAF provided popular job search workshops and ESL classes for recent immigrants. These programs were federally funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which as been under the leadership of Minister Jason Kenney since early 2009.

Kenney has made it widely known that, like other high-ranking officials in the Conservative Party, he is an unequivocal supporter of Israel. And like many such “supporters,” Kenney confidently equates, in his own truncated way, anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In a speech he delivered in February 2009 at an anti-Semitism conference in London, Kenney called out CAF for, as the CBC reported, “hatred against Jews.”

Furthermore, he explained that although such “hateful” rhetoric may be protected by Canada’s free speech laws, organizations taking such stances “should not expect to receive resources from the state, support from taxpayers or any other form of official respect from the government or the organs of our state.”

Having now familiarized himself with CAF’s political stance, Kenney stopped the flow of $447,000 in funding to CAF in March 2009, depriving the organization of its settlement services. The Federation has since sued the Minster, and the matter is still ongoing.

What Kenney’s decision effectively showed is that under his auspices, organizations will only receive funding if they agree politically with him and his party.

This absurd notion, as explicated by the Montreal-based NGO Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), has already been thoroughly discredited by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1959 Roncarelli v. Duplessis case, where Roncarelli had his liquor license taken away by the provincial government because he was a Jehovah’s Witness.

Kenney’s actions can be seen under this light. His decision to defund CAF was simply a way to silence an organization that disagreed with him politically and dared point out the crimes of the Israeli occupation. In doing so, he severely damaged a vital organ of Canadian Arab civil society. 

The Oda-KAIROS Scandal 

A joint enterprise by several mainstream Canadian Christian groups, including the Anglican Church, the United Church, and the Presbyterian Church, KAIROS has long been regarded as one of Canada’s most respected development organizations.

According to its 2008 Annual Report, KAIROS depended on federal funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for roughly 40% of its total funding. Whether or not CIDA is to fund such initiatives is ultimately decided by the Minister of International Co-operation, who was Bev Oda at the time. KAIROS had such a good standing that it boasted an impressive 35-year working relationship with CIDA.

In Mar 2009, KAIROS applied for a routine $7 million in funding over the next four years. For four months, the request made its way through CIDA, and acquired approval. The request then ended up on Oda’s desk for her final nod, but sat there for another five months. On Nov 30^th, KAIROS finally got a call from CIDA saying that the funding request had been denied. Other than being told that its request did not align with CIDA’s priorities, no further explanation was given to KAIROS. 

That December, Minister Jason Kenney shed some light on the matter in another speech he gave at the Global Forum to Counter Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem by saying that “We [the Canadian government] have defunded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott.  And we’re receiving a lot of criticism for these decisions.”

Kenney was referring to the BDS movement that, in fact, the board of KAIROS has not endorsed.

Not only is this a case of Kenney spuriously conflating BDS (and criticism of Israel) with anti-Semitism, but it’s also a case of complete misinformation. Picking up on his glaring error, Kenney has tried to backtrack from his statements. 

In a letter to the Toronto Star that same month, Kenney tried to modify his claims by saying that “I did not accuse KAIROS of being anti-Semitic. What I said was that KAIROS has taken a leadership role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (against Israel).”

“While I disagree with the nature of KAIROS’s militant stance toward the Jewish homeland, that is not the reason their request for taxpayer funding was denied,” Kenney wrote, still sticking to his claim that KAIROS endorsed BDS.

As The Globe and Mail’s Adam Radwanski wrote in March 2010, “It [Kenney’s letter] was a classic case of the minister trying to have it both ways – ostensibly taking a stand on something, even taking credit for it, and then backing away when he was called on it.”

Of course, even if its board did endorse BDS against Israel and subsequently lost funding because of it, this would just be another CAF-like case where the government stresses political conformity where it has no business doing so.

However, the Conservative government, specifically Kenney, doesn’t seem to take the matter of factual accuracy seriously in this case in its blind support for the state of Israel.

But the embarrassment doesn’t stop here for the Tories. About a year later, a graduate student studying journalism at Carleton University named Kim Mackrael found out through investigative work that Minister Bev Oda deliberately denied KAIROS funding based on political reasons, against the recommendation of 20 CIDA experts.

In fact, a memo, obtained by Mackrael via the Access to Information Act, recommending funding for KAIROS arrived on Oda’s desk on September 2009. Instead of listening to her own experts, Oda used a pen to insert the word “NOT” into the recommending statement in order for the memo to appear in the negative.

When The Globe and Mail published Mackrael’s article on the matter in 2010, the incident turned into one of the year’s biggest political scandals, and Oda was asked to resign by opposition Parliamentarians. She did so in July amidst several other controversies.

This incident illustrates quite clearly that there exists among the Canadian Tories a most impressive ideological consistency when it comes to Israel. In order to keep a united front on the matter, the Harper administration is willing to sacrifice/slander Canadian civil society, even if it means going against the bulk of bureaucratic opinion and decades of Canadian tradition.

The Harper Worldview

Much has been made about Canada’s dramatic shift in foreign policy in the past six or so. Indeed, numerous retired Canadian career diplomats like Steve Hibbard and Daryl Copeland have pointed out some of the holes in Harper’s overall diplomatic strategy.

The administration’s support for Israel, as reflected in its foreign and diplomatic policy, is rooted in (personal and ideological commitments notwithstanding) the aim to consolidate a Conservative party base constituted substantially by voters who view the Middle East through a Biblical lens. That is to say, Israel is always the “good guy.” It is not a stretch to say that top Tory officials close to Prime Minister Harper also share this Manichean framework of interpretation.  

Unfortunately for Canadians who care about democratic input and the relationship between government and civil society, the “Harper worldview” has resulted in the gutting and demonization of so many institutions within the Palestinian and Muslim as to make such a relationship almost impossible.

CAF, KAIROS and IRFAN are by no means the only groups to have suffered. The extensive effects of this approach to governance have affected numerous groups, many who depend on the state for most of their funding (and thus securing a line of communication with the administration as to what policy ought to look like).

As if this wasn’t enough, the Globe and Mail’s Campbell Clark reported in February 2010 that Keith Fountain, policy director for former Minister Bev Oda warned a top official of an aid group to “Be careful about your advocacy.” Also, when Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced their $53 million worth of cuts to immigration services in 2011, affected groups were told through a mass email that discussion of the issue was “prohibited” (the gag order has since been rescinded).

This combination of austerity and bullying of racialized groups, especially of Palestinian and Muslim communities in Canada, by the Harper administration is systemic and targeted. The conventional television media in Canada portrays other political parties as the major casualties of the Conservative majority.

It’s about time that public discourse is widened to the point where Canadians realize that the primary casualty of this horrid governance style is not other politicians, but the very role of civil society in the democratic process itself. 

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti: Canada’s unconditional support for Israeli policy is ‘astonishing’

Published on: Rabble.ca, December 11th, 2012
[http://rabble.ca/news/2012/12/dr-mustafa-bargouthi-canadas-support-israeli-policies-astonishing]

In a visit to Canada last weekend, Palestinian legislator and activist Dr. Mustafa Barghouti expressed his pessimism at the prospects of a future Palestinian state.

“My heart wishes for a two-state solution, but my mind tells me otherwise,” says Barghouti, who finished a three-day Canadian speaking tour organized by the Montreal-based NGO Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME).

Barghouti landed in Canada right after Israel announced that it intends to construct 3000 more settlements on the vital area of “E1,” which connects the West Bank to East Jerusalem, the theoretical capital of a future Palestinian state.

This announcement was made hours after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to give Palestine “non-state observer status.”  Canada, the United States and Israel were among only nine countries to vote “No.”

Barghouti admits that Canada’s shift on foreign policy in the past six to seven years, characterized most vividly by its altered voting pattern in the UN, has left him and many of his colleagues “astonished.” Without a doubt, the Harper administration has confidently interpreted the occupation as a conflict where Israel fights courageously for its own survival against unruly and intransigent Arabs.

This flushing away of an international reputation has prompted criticism from retired career diplomats like Steve Hibbard, former head of Canada’s Representative Office in Ramallah. Hibbard says that Canada’s “extreme” foreign policy lost it a seat on the Security Council two years ago. He refers to those who carry out these policies as “coming out of a Reform Party mentality with no appreciation for the region and its people.”

Nonetheless, at the end of the day, it is still the United States that provides Israel with $3 billion in aid. It also allies with Israel on the diplomatic stage, and coughs up rhetorical “condemnations” when Israel expands in the West Bank. Ultimately, this American rejectionsim has a lot more to do with the UN bid than whatever Canada has to say about the matter.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas decided to bring the issue of statehood to the General Assembly after an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Security Council to recognize Palestine as a member state.

Critics note that this diplomatic “victory” for Palestine is highly symbolic, will have no real effect to the situation on the ground, and may help fortify the position of the Palestinian Authority, an entity seen by many as becoming increasingly irrelevant. In fact, the Authority’s mandate as the governing entity in the Occupied Territories expired in 2000. Technically, they had no real popular mandate to even ask for observer status at the UN.

Many see Abbas’ efforts as first and foremost an attempt to salvage his own reputation, which took a hit when he told Israeli television that he wasn’t interested in his “right of return” to the Palestinian village he was evicted from in 1948. This elicited anger among Palestinians around the world and undoubtedly prompted, at least in part, Abbas to go to the UN.

“I disagree that this victory is just another ‘cheap gesture,’” Barghouti says. “The United Nations statehood bid and the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority are two different issues.” Barghouti criticizes the Authority for their overly conciliatory posture toward the occupation, especially for its administration on behalf of Israel of a “security apparatus” that oppresses its own people.

However, Barghouti insists that one must understand “the mentality of an oppressed people who are looking for any sort of victory whatsoever.” He adds that with non-state observer status, the Palestinians are allowed to participate in General Assembly debates and stand a better chance of gaining access to UN agencies and the International Criminal Court.

He agrees, however, that facts on the ground remain bleak. Settlements and the Israeli “occupation matrix” of military checkpoints, roadblocks and the “Apartheid Wall” have long made a two-state solution improbable. The announcement of plans to build on E1 is just the latest chapter in a very old story.

“There is no two-state solution if this happens,” Barghouti says. Building on E1 will effectively bisect the West Bank by joining East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, one of the largest Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Several Israeli administrations have tried over the past 20 years to do this. They have been unsuccessful so far due to interference from the United States. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama does not seem to want to take concrete steps to stop Israel this time.

Hopes that Obama would be more assertive toward the right-wing Netanyahu administration in his second term have proven to be sheer fantasy. The president flatly refused to criticize Israel in its latest invasion of the Gaza Strip, which resulted in at least 140 Palestinians dead and hundreds more wounded.

This leads many analysts and activists to conclude that the conflict can no longer be resolved by trying to obtain a separate Palestinian state, but rather through a “one-state solution” where Palestinians are given equal rights in both Israel and the Territories. Along with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, this alternative has gained tremendous popularity in the last decade or so. Barghouti publicly urged Canadians to impose BDS on Israel, and acknowledged that the one-state scenario may not be as fanciful as some may suggest.

Either way, it is incumbent upon those who want to see a just peace in the region to pressure both Israel and its faithful benefactor to end the brutal occupation. If the U.S. withdraws its illegal economic support for Israel, it is not insane to suggest that the Palestinian people will have more leverage to obtain what has long been rightfully theirs.

Obama and the Nature of Democracy

Preface

Nelson Mandela makes the candid admission in his popular autobiography Long Walk to Freedom that, post-Robben Island, he preferred dealing with the straightforward racism of P.W. Botha than the two-faced diplomacy of F.W. de Klerk, whose forked tongue caused the first black South African president many-a-headache.

Botha was 11 years the head of the rightwing National Party, rejected the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and refused to testify. De Klerk ended up sharing the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela.

The arc of history is littered with figures whose popular reputation shields a hidden past of sins.

Many of them, like de Klerk, are generally viewed today as champions of “liberal” values and cool, centrist “objectivity”: Woodrow Wilson (who supported a new world order of peaceful nations states!), Winston Churchill (who led the free world against Hitler! And Won!), John F. Kennedy (who faced down Khrushchev and Castro, and slept with Marilyn Monroe!), Bill Clinton (who delivered a rare surplus, and slept with…many people!!), etc.

A few decades from now, Barack Obama will be added to that list. In fact, there’s really no reason why we can’t throw him on top of the heap right this moment.

Obamabot Deception V. 2012

People more or less acknowledge that Obama couldn’t deliver much of what he “promised,” which, for those of us with a working memory, wasn’t very much.

Obama will not stop dealing in the dark with those who hold real power: corporation and Wallstreet. For starters, his “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans will see Medicare, Medicaid, and social security cut in exchange for modest tax hikes on the rich. Did America vote for this? Probably not. Does Obama care? No.

But my real point is this:

Those who supported him pre-2009 were told time and time again by acutely critical observers that Obama’s deeds as President won’t really match his rhetoric. The warnings were passed off as pessimistic and judgmental. Today, those same supporters, without shame, turn to the cameras and tell the rest of us almost exactly what we told them from the very beginning: that (1) Obama’s rhetoric is hollow, that (2) real politics is about pushing Obama to do the right thing, and that (3) despite what kind of person Obama is, he will experience serious structural constraints as President.

Now shameless Obamabots want to play it cool by stressing point (3) in order to say, “Hey, Obama’s only human, don’t be so harsh, he’s just another politician and we need to push him.” It’s the most shameless about-face in American political history.

Obama’s minions use this technique to shield him from further criticism. Now that Obama has won, the one thing he’s going to need from skeptics and supporters alike is pressure. He needs it because (1) mass criticism in institutionalized form will push him to do the right thing, and (2) the best way to guarantee your irrelevance is to back a politician unconditionally: your concerns will not be taken seriously by that candidate since you’re going to vote for him/her anyway.

One interesting-if-trivial case in point too good to not point out is the actor Olivia Wilde.

There’s really nothing in the world more reprehensible than a celebrity being passed off as some sort of figure who selflessly juggles his/her busy schedule to care for the world. All the while, those who do the real work: those who organize the rallies, who put up the posters, sends out the mail, and campaigns out in the cold, remain faceless. Their names will never be recorded in history books.

Obama thanked Wilde personally on the phone in 2007 for travelling Iowa in support of his first presidential campaign.  She gushed in an interview saying how she was “squealing” for 15 seconds out of sheer star-struck excitement, while thinking she had hung up.

Then, a few months ago, on The Hour, Wilde, with a straight face, explained that although she’s disappointed, Obama is still a smart guy, so instead of criticizing him, everyone should just focus on changing the political circumstances instead. This conveniently asserts the obvious while shielding Obama and his blindest supporters from accountability. Celebrity culture, as vapid as it is, can be an accurate reflection of the decayed nature of our public conciousness.

Those who were smart enough not to be emotionally and intellectually manipulated by Obamamania have every right to recall the profoundly stupid political discourse pedaled by the ‘bots leading up to 2009. It’s to remind everyone that staying critical and asserting pressure are virtues when it comes to making change. The opposite: handing a politician what he or she wants, unconditionally, is nothing but a variant of whoring.

Islamists vs. Liberals: a simplistic portrayal of the future

Published on: Embassy Magazine, September 26th, 2012 (with slight revisions)
[http://www.embassymag.ca/opinion/2012/09/25/islamists-vs-liberals-a-simplistic-portrayal-of-the-arab-spring/42520]

To Canadian foreign correspondent Hadeel Al-Shalchi, coverage of the Arab Spring by Western media tends to gloss over certain complexities.

“The term ‘Arab Spring’ itself is sort of a slogan,” said Al-Shalchi, a Reuters journalist based in Tripoli, Libya. She spoke to an audience of about 100 people at Carleton University last Wednesday in a lecture organized by the Centre for Media and Transitional Societies.

“The Arab Spring is comprised of a number of different conflicts, each with its own regional dynamic and implications,” she said. For example, the major framework of analysis and speculation that many analysts use when talking about these conflicts, be it in Egypt or in Syria, tend to boil down to the “Islamists versus Liberals” paradigm.

To Al-Shalchi, this type of reductive phrasing saves time and space, but is a weak tool for understanding the real situations in those Arab countries experiencing social and political turmoil. Indeed, she is right.

The ascent of Muslim political parties in Egypt and Tunisia, and the involvement of extremist militias in the Libyan and Syrian uprisings have experts worrying about the future of the Arab Spring.

Fear that powerful parties like the Muslim Brotherhood will impose theocratic rule and eclipse the aspirations of a liberal democracy are probably not wholly uncalled for. The problem, however, is not this and other similar concerns, but rather in the way such concerns are expressed in many major media outlets.

In other words, what does one really mean when one invokes the “Islamists versus Liberals” framework of analysis? The trouble with these terms is that they mean different things to different people.

Canadian political theorists like Charles Taylor and Nader Hashemi have pointed out this problem of definition time and time again. Hashemi says that the term “secularism” has had very different manifestations in Turkey, for example, than in France. Both societies have had their own experiences with political religiosity, and both have come up with unique ways of neutralization.

Nor are Middle Eastern societies neatly divided into liberals and Islamists, each with its own set of predictable sociopolitical behaviors. Al-Shalchi spent a substantial amount of time on the ground in post-Mubarak Egypt, and noted that many so-called liberals ended up voting for Mohammed Morsi, the “Islamist” candidate.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is the only political entity in Egypt with a coherent vision for the future,” Al-Shalchi said. “Those who are more left-leaning and liberal-minded did not consolidate themselves after the fall of Mubarak, and fell out of the race in many ways.”

She then noted that she was disappointed as a Canadian that the Harper administration has not engaged effectively with the Arab Spring, and has made a number of “questionable” policy decisions. Unfortunately, she did not elaborate on what these decisions were when asked to do so.

Nonetheless, one can delineate along general lines why there may be hesitancy on the part of the Canadian government when dealing with Muslim majority countries. Prime Minister Harper has publically expressed his concerns with international “Islamicism,” and the purported threats it poses to Canadians.

The success of Islamist political parties (the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is also the main opposition group in Syria, anchoring the Syrian National Council) across the Middle East in the past year-and-a-half probably don’t serve to quell Harper’s concerns.

Whatever the merits of such an assumption, it should be noted that the Arab Spring, a push toward general democracy and civil engagement, is a good thing for those frightened of violent groups in religious garb.

Vali Nasr, the dean of the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has pointed out that the best way to treat religious parties who are upset with the status quo is to channel their momentum into the official political process.

For decades, organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood have been banned in their respective countries by dictators. Chances for armed political resistance only increases under such circumstances. But when incorporated into the electoral system of democratic representation, “Islamist” platforms and agendas are exposed to the public for scrutiny. A dialogue between the elected and those who do the electing can actually occur.

Naturally, when put under the pressures of social democracy, organizations such as the Brotherhood has to take into account those with differing views and beliefs, who also make up a substantial portion of the population. All this undermines the simplistic paradigm of a strict “Islamists versus Liberals” dichotomy, which boxes complex peoples into categories, and, as Al-Shachi pointed out, don’t correspond very much with reality.

Malawi: Reflections III

I. Fever

ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

- Robert Frost, from “Into My Own”

“The Russians adore their past, hate the present, and fear the future. How sad it would be if we forgot that the future we fear turns slowly into the present that we detest, and finally into the past that we so adore.”

                                              – Anton Chekhov

When the naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace was forced to stall his exploration of Malaysia in 1858 due to a malaria-induced fever, strange matters clouded his mind.

Here’s how The Guardian’s Rob Mckie describes it:

“Thoughts of money or women might have filled lesser heads. Alfred Russel Wallace was made of different stuff, however. He began thinking about disease and famine; about how they kept human populations in check; and about recent discoveries indicating that the earth’s age was vast. How might these waves of death, repeated over aeons, influence the make-up of different species, he wondered?” [Rob Mckie, “How Darwin Won the Evolution Race”, The Guardian, June 22^nd, 2008]

When the fever subsided, Wallace realized that the residual images his illness left behind represented the inspiration he needed to answer his own queries. The theoretical broad strokes of natural evolution began to germinate within him, independently of Charles Darwin, and the two men eventually presented their ideas in a joint manner to the Linnaean Society.

(The story is much more complicated than this, as Darwin did not receive with delight Wallace’s separate arrival on an idea he himself had been afraid to publish for some time. See Mckie’s full article.)

Fast forward 154 years, and I lay in a bed at Forrester Inn in Lilongwe, Malawi, also “felled” by a fever. It’s not malaria; I ate something I shouldn’t have, and incurred a bacterial infection in my stomach. I failed to keep anything down (I made a big mess in the bathroom sink after consuming too much guava juice), lost a tremendous amount of body fluid, and had a blood pressure of 80/46. The doctor at the clinic wanted to put me on an IV, but I refused, and took home some drugs instead (“But you’ll faint!! The sun’s too hot out there!!”).

Backtrack just half a day or so, and I was thoroughly immersed in the Lilongwe “social scene”. I hate that term: scene, as if life is one big movie in the head and we’re all supposed to walk across the stage some day for our fifteen minutes of fame. But Malawi is a disarming place. Perhaps it has to do with my epidemically novel looks (though less novel as the years progress), but the people, I’m convinced, are the friendliest in the world. Even the guy trying to rip you off, or cuss you out seems unusually agreeable. In other words, this country can turn you into something of an extrovert, something I never am.

I was eating out everyday and night with people I barely knew, I was staying out late despite what the tour book told me (not) to do, I was eagerly talking to every individual of the opposite sex that I encountered (like I said, everyone seemed very friendly), and soon enough, the days started to slowly blend into the nights. I was in an almost drunken daze, a zombie-like state (since I got very little sleep), and my life in Canada receded far into the background. I didn’t give a damn that my time was limited—in the moment, things seemed to last forever.

That’s the dynamic I was living.

When the physical body leaves its material surroundings to inhabit a completely different set of social circumstances, the eventual result is one of a “double life”. Life in the newly adopted setting becomes more and more separate from the “old” life. It grows denser and more diverse as the days pass. While the older set of realities (to be “returned” into) is probably more “dominant” existentially than the latter set, the self is nonetheless so immersed in (and preoccupied with) its immediate surroundings that perspective becomes absolutely unaffordable. This is probably what causes “reverse culture shock”, another outrageous term that is—although accurate in what it tries to describe—an unnecessarily obtuse way of interpreting one’s experiences.

When one is forced to leave a place so alien compared to one’s “home”, and then prompted to return after a prolonged period of absence, a desperate need for perspective becomes acutely evident. This need manifests itself in a psychological process that, at times, probably constitutes as “shock”.

This description is all by way of saying that just a couple of days ago, I was totally separated from the memories of my “other,” “normal” life. I was swimming in waters that felt so fresh that a completely new set of realities seemed to automatically construct itself around me. Everything from the athan being called out of the mosques, to the cheap local food that eventually made me sick, to the open sky that transforms into a celestial work of art at night, eventually connected with one another, and ultimately became what felt like a giant web of new metaphysical realities. I simply couldn’t be bothered to think of Canada.

Then, out of nowhere, I caught a bacterial infection. The ensuing bout of physical illness blew away all these new realities like the wind does away with cobwebs.

Whatever images Alfred Russel Wallace saw in his malarial dreams, I will wager anything that my feverish visions can top them all. Forget evolution. I saw the supernatural! I recall when I caught the flu once right before a high school calculus exam, and I dreamt that a life-sized integral sign began chasing me like a giant snake, eventually wrapping itself around me and choking me until I awoke. This was nothing compared to what I saw in my sleep just a few days ago.

Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz fell asleep once in his study after an unfruitful attempt at piecing together the organic structure of the chemical compound benzene. He too began to dream, and the contents of his subconscious spoke to him: he saw a snake, and it was eating its own tail. Similar to Wallace, this contributed to Stradonitz’s eureka moment. He realized that the structure of benzene was circular, a fact that he, at least in part, arrived at through the symbolic language of the human subconscious.

Anyway, I wonder what my dreams told me. Actually, I have no idea, but I can articulate how they left me to feel. I certainly didn’t come across any scientific discoveries, and I rarely remember any of my dreams, but this fevered session with my own subconscious gave me visions of everything from dark figures flying around in my bedroom, to giant lizards on the floor, to brilliantly-coloured clouds hovering over my head—all in the span of a few hours. At one point, I even felt a hand come across my throat, while another hand pressed down on my stomach—as if holding me down. I awoke grabbing at the air, drenched in sweat, and hyperventilating.

But when I did finally awake, I had a giant migraine in my head. It was like awaking from death, from the grave. But not only did I feel totally weak (although the fever was completely gone), and completely wasted physically, I also felt strangely sober. I’m not usually a drinking man, so I don’t mean sobering up from a drunken binge. However, I felt strangely awake, as if my sleep wasn’t simply constituted by the past few hours, but the entire three weeks, at the beginning of which my stay in Malawi actually began.

It probably had to do ultimately with the physiological effects of my illness, but it was also something more than just the physical. The night of extreme fever shattered the world that seemed to arise from my newly found surroundings, which began to engulf me. Before the fever, like I said, I lost all perspective of time and place. The city I stayed in, and the people around me became everything. I was very present, almost too present.

Chris Hedges writes in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning about how being in warzones literally made life more meaningful, though with ultimately disastrous results. He talks about how in extreme circumstances, when one’s adrenaline is being pumped with force, colours simply become brighter to the eye. It’s a powerful experience—but also a narcotic. Certain types of experiences, when filled with apparent “meaning”, become our drug. We don’t want to leave it. I’m not saying that my experiences so far in Malawi have become unhealthily addictive, but I was definitely on track to experience some serious emotional loss when I landed back in Toronto. Life had become good here—too good! It took a night of intense sickness to shake me out of it—that dream-like state. Whether that’s a good thing or not is debatable, of course, but it happened to me.

Now, a few days later, when I’m healthy again, I’m more hesitant when I go out. I wait a little longer before shaking someone’s hand, walk a little faster in the dark, look a little more often over my shoulder, and feel a little more compelled to go home early. I just feel a lot more sober, and think a lot more before I do something. I definitely think about what I eat now. No, my dream did not hand me any novel discoveries, like Wallace or Stradonitz experienced, but it did leave behind the residue of perspective. I feel compelled, like I usually do, to deliberate more before making a decision, to take a step back and observe my experiences in order to interpret them accurately. I stopped ignoring my emails from Canada, and finally wrote home, for only the second time in a month. I asked myself what my absence meant to others in my life, instead of not giving a rat’s.

It is a matter of slow, and painfully accrued realization that when separate lives are led on separate lands, one “life” is bound to recede deep into the past, its pieces and images recalled only by memory, and then deposited back again into the recesses of our minds. The life that remains may not always be the one most coveted by our innermost desires, but it constitutes our reality anyway.

But we eventually realize that we only live one life regardless of where we are—not two, not three. The times in our lives that we cannot forget nonetheless become the stuff of a distant and dispassionate past. The wish to relive these moments is eventually transformed by time into a dark anticipation felt one when stands before a giant chasm, where the other side can only be reached via a point of no return.

Malawi: Reflections II

The second installment of some thoughts on my stay in Malawi.

May 16th, 2012 – May 29th, 2012

I. Golgotha

     The term is the Greek transcription of an old Aramaic name for the site right outside of Jerusalem where Christ was crucified. It just so happens that Lilongwe’s Area 23 has a section with the same name—Golgotha. The living conditions are harsh, like the rest of the area.

There are no paved roads. Roofs are lined with bricks to prevent them from being blown away by the wind. Beggars dot the roadside. Many of them are without arms and legs. Especially at night, the area, along with many other sections of Lilongwe outside of Old Town and City Centre, can be a harrowing place. I was introduced to Golgotha in what seemed like the most unusual of ways.

     Joined by two of my closest companions since arriving in the city—Sam Chibaya and Fatsani Gunya—I was riding in Sam’s car in Area 23, where both of them lived. They’re also both journalists for The Nation newspaper, and knew the city well. After about thirty minutes of just driving around, we came upon a dusty corner near the area’s market.

     Sam suddenly stepped hard on the brakes and we came to a stop. Something about the air and the atmosphere of this specific spot made me uneasy.

“This place is special,” said Sam, who turned the radio down several notches. Fatsani, who was sitting in the back, poked his head between the front seats and faced me.

“We are in Golgotha,” Fatsani said, “still in Area 23.”

“Okay, what does that mean?” I took out my notebook and asked for the spelling of the place.

“Golgotha, G-O-L-G-O-T-H-A,” Sam replied, “It’s named after the place where Christ was crucified.”

For a country with 80% of its population identifying as Christians, a name like Golgotha is certainly apt. But why here? Why associate this dusty little corner where no one came with the place where Christ met his demise?

The name had a sort of tragic somberness to it—Golgotha—and it matched the area’s somewhat lonesome tone. Like other parts of Lilongwe located away from its centres, the place was virtually devoid of non-blacks. I was the only “mzungu” around, despite my own “colouredness,” and the locals noticed. They also let me know that they noticed, so there was already a forbidding feeling that saturated the place.

Then, Sam gave me an unexpected explanation: “The place here is where they used to, years ago, take thieves.”

“Okay…and?”

“They used to take thieves here and use a knife to cut open the criminal’s necks,” was Sam’s reply.

I felt a coldness go through my body.

“Some people took things into their own hands, and did that to thieves,” Sam continued, “They would not kill them though.”

“How can you not kill someone by doing that?”

“They would be careful not to cut open the trachea,” Fatsani said, “They would just let the blood flow out and when the wound healed, there would be a scar on their necks.”

“It’s for other people to know that they’re thieves,” Sam added while restarting the car.

Evidently, when no official bodies enforce the law, people enforce their own law. They doled out their own justice, their own punishment. In this case, it was a violent version of the scarlet letter—a form of physical pain combined with public shaming, which, though obsolete, gave Golgotha a piece of history that went well with the its present tragedies. Jesus would no doubt have understood.

We did a U-turn on the dusty road and drove away.

II. Desire

     If deprived of everyday comforts and ornaments, individuals become forced to confront the nature of their desires. Without the internet, television, and high-speed entertainment to fill the void within us, we then come face-to-face with the void itself, pushed to ponder the nature of our “state of want”. It’s not unusual in Malawi to find oneself without daily comforts: the hot water, the high-speed internet, the movies, the relatively organized public transportation, etc.

And so what does it mean to go without such things? Rumi in his famous Mathnawi alludes to the force of desire as a yearning of the individual to get back to his or her celestial source, like the sound of the reed flute mourning its separation from the instrument that sired it. According to this inherently religious perspective, the powerful forces of desire become perverted in such a pursuit by the seductive ornaments of the material world. Some begin to desire power, some wealth, some fame, while others want physical gratification. We’ve all experienced these states.

Sit in an empty room without any stimuli, and the modern (or post-modern if you like) individual becomes fidgety. The mind begins to wonder chaotically. Lying on a bed in an empty bedroom in Malawi and finding oneself without enough “air time” to buy “internet bundles”, and you get roughly the same thing. The physiological and psychological effects of modern material culture become evident, and one looks frantically around for some sort of stimulation.

A Palestinian friend who used to work as Yasser Arafat’s bodyguard once said to me that he never thought about taking up smoking until he ended up in an Israeli prison. Deprived of his family, friends, and comforts, the harshness and boredom of jail time killed him. When he was let out on a prisoner exchange deal after Oslo, he found himself unable to quit smoking. He couldn’t take in the world around him properly without at least a few cigarettes a day. He needed the tobacco in order to function at a very basic level.

This isn’t a warning on the dangers of smoking so much as a way of understanding what effects the forces of material culture have on human nature. And since we become fully alive and present by being able to absorb the fullness of the world around us, then what does it mean to be numbed and desensitized by the treasures of the “developed world”? Malawi is a place plagued by what people living the good life know as “abject poverty”. Indeed, a ride through the slum-like areas of Lilongwe more than demonstrates what that means. There are no creature comforts in the form of ice-cream, Macbook Pros, Forever 21s, or even a clean bathroom.

One look and the foreigner is bound to think that Malawians are not living “the life”, let alone “the life to the fullest”. That type of thing requires money. After all, isn’t it true that one hasn’t lived until one has tried chocolate ice cream, or at least seen Titanic? “International development,” that vague and ubiquitous spectre always pervading the African air, then becomes the means of providing “the life” for the poor. Indeed, some Malawians I’ve come across have asked me personally to arrange trips for them to the Western world so they can “see what it’s like there.”

They want to see what it’s like to go to the Apple store, to shop at Eaton’s Centre, to watch a movie in Imax 3-D, or to walk through the city streets in the same way those liberated and fully alive beings of the first world do. Globalization couldn’t come fast enough. Their desires and yearnings become identical to those who travel to their country, who find themselves longing for their familiar first world pleasures.

So where does this lead us? Is it true after all that the poverty-stricken kid in Area 47 of Lilongwe, who’s never seen a movie theatre before, is actually more alive and human than the 19-year-old teenager who’s having her super birthday bash at some downtown club? Or is it necessary to own a wealth of possessions in order to fully experience life? After three weeks in a country markedly poorer than Canada, the former suggestion has never seemed more true to me.

Hamza Yusuf, the contemporary Muslim American scholar, spent seven years living in the unforgiving deserts of Mauritania. He studied in the “moving universities” operated by the desert Bedouin Muslims famous for their ability to memorize entire texts. Yusuf lived the way they lived, almost died of malaria, and learned what it meant to be poor—really, really poor. Looking back, he concluded that those seven years were perhaps the freest and most productive years of his life. He said he obtained his “real” education there.

When he first met Murabit al-Hajj, a pre-eminent Mauritanian scholar who would become one of his main teachers, Yusuf recalled surprisingly that he had “foreseen” the meeting in a dream. When the men came face-to-face, al-Hajj asked, to Yusuf’s complete surprise: “Was it like the dream?” Yusuf immediately broke down in tears. He said the aura of Murabit al-Hajj was that of a man who had emptied himself of himself; it belonged to a man at war with his nafs, the “irascible self”—that source of all earthly desires. Al-Hajj didn’t live in anything remotely close to luxury.

Years later, Yusuf was with another of his teachers, also from Mauritania—the pre-eminent Muslim jurist and scholar Abdullah bin-Bayyah. Unfamiliar with the concept of “homelessness,” bin-Bayyah asked Yusuf while both were in a first world country why there were so many people living in the streets. Yusuf explained the situation to his teacher.

Stunned, bin-Bayyah said, “But there’s so much here.”

Indeed, there is so much—in fact, so much that there’s nothing at all.

III. Geworfenheit

     Martin Heidegger coined the term, which literally translates into “thrownness”. We are “thrown” into the circumstances of our lives before we can utilize our agency. The initial forces that shape the fundamental existential blocs of our lives are not ones we choose. For example, humans do not get to choose who their parents are.

Sky (not his real name), the “office attendant” in a building near where I work, did not choose his mother or father. He’s my age, and the eldest of eight children. He was born in Malawi, and has never left the country. All in all, his life situation would be characterized by many in the English speaking world has “utterly hopeless”.

Sky’s father has two other wives, and fails to take care of his children (“He’s a womanizer, and has many children who he does no know.”). He hasn’t seen Sky in three years, leaving Sky—who hasn’t the time or money to pursue his education (education is not free in Malawi)—as the primary breadwinner in a house of nine people, seven of which are younger than him and look up to him.

“I even like it this way,” said Sky, who’s not the least bit discouraged. “It makes me a man.”

And so, the circumstances of Sky’s life is characterized by what most in the Western world would categorize as intense labour. He walks two-and-a-half hours both ways to and from work, five days a week. The title “office attendant” is a euphemism for “man slave”, as one of his tasks—aside from mopping the floor and trimming the garden—is to ask, twice a day, how everyone in the office would like their tea or coffee. Then, he gets to enjoy people telling him to go to the store/restaurant to fetch their favourite meals and drinks.

All this for a whopping $37 USD a month (Malawians get paid at the end of each month). The local currency was just devalued from approximately MWK168 to about MWK266 on the dollar, causing inflated commodity prices.

It’s important here to note that this doesn’t mean those who work in the office disrespect Sky, quite the contrary. Although everyone jokes around with him and likes him, they also accept the helplessness of his situation as a necessary part of the office structure. In other words, it’s just life.

Only later, through a friend, did I realize that the “office attendant” phenomenon is especially acute in the levels of government, where commoners are employed to act as servants to their employers for peanuts every month.

Just recently, an office trip took place where half of the people working “with” Sky had to go to a nearby city. Like many Malawian work functions, everybody going to the trip got an allowance for the trip—about 3000 kwacha (not too meagre a sum for the average Malawian). Just to make it fair, it was decided that everyone who stayed behind in the office got the same amount as well (an interesting manifestation of Malawian egalitarianism).

Of course, that is, everyone except for Sky, who made the least out of everyone and did the most menial tasks. It’s a stark symptom of the economic rigidity of a developing country like Malawi, where, to be born poor is a curse. But it’s an old story.

IV. Paradise

     The night sky in Malawi is a brilliant collection of mesmerizing celestial constellations. Clusters of bright dots are scattered seemingly at random on a backdrop of cosmological darkness. But taken in as a whole, every star seems to have been fixed in place—no more, no less—exhibiting in its formations a pulsing rhythm whose secrets are known to nature exclusively.

And if so, then what are the secrets that nature has hidden beneath the painfully satisfying beauty of Lake Malawi? Accessed from the town of Salima (about an hour and a half drive from Lilongwe), one is confronted with the marble-blue waters and pale beaches that unite in a perfect coastal arrangement. High-end hotels have turned many sections of this 540km coastal strip into resorts inaccessible to the average Malawian. The beauty is unaltered, however, and even the businessmen know that Lake Malawi makes money fastest when it’s allowed to be itself.

One could take a thousand photographs and videos of the lake and still fail to convey its natural reality. Some things are not meant to be taken in through the screen or any two dimensional plane. Lake Malawi, southern Africa’s largest lake, is indistinguishable from an ocean when viewed in “real life” by the naked eye. Its pale blueness eventually meets the edge of the sky as both stretches out into utter oblivion—the edge of doom it seems. There’s really not much else to be said.

One has to see it to believe it.

Malawi: Reflections

An initial series of reflections on my stay in Malawi. 

Arrival: May 6^th, 2012 in Lilongwe, Malawi

I. Foreign

The first thing one notices is the brightness. It reflects off of the surfaces of every object. It gives everything an edge. The trees, the landscape, and the people; everything seems to exhibit an unabashed glow to the sleepy-eyed traveler.

The brightness makes everything more alive. It emphasizes like a highlighter those stark differences between the traveler pedantic land of departure, and this new, foreign landscape.

Then, one is struck by the gaze.

It seems to grow out of every glistening, black face under the bright sun. It seems to probe one’s entire body. “I’m sizing you up because you shouldn’t be figuring into my day,” it seems to say. This gaze unnerves as much as the brightness un-arms.

Lilongwe, Malawi is therefore a place which, upon first approximation, makes one feel naked and at mercy of one’s surroundings. The heavy, enveloping atmosphere is dominated by an indigenous “slowness”. Slow, that is, compared to the schedule-oriented ways of a Western country like Canada. The pace seems just right for the locals, who could care less about what a foreigner wants to achieve in their country.

“Time does not ride on the wings of pursuit,” is what Muhammad Asad, the 20^th century Muslim intellectual, would have said about this place. The phrase rang in my head while I waited, and waited at the airport.

“So what if you’ve waited thirty minutes for a ride,” the country seems to say back to me, “this is Malawi, and everyone’s been waiting longer than you have.”

One quickly learns to appreciate this. It forces patience into the character of a foreigner—at least temporarily. There’s no choice but to wait: to wait for one’s ride to arrive, to wait for the driver to change his flat tire, and to wait—with increasing impatience—for the ride to the hotel to end.

And what an unbearable ride it was. The taxi driver bought the dilapidated Toyota Camry off of someone. Its seats were bursting open at the seams, and the foamy innards were on display. The inside of the car smelled of gasoline, as if the vehicle was leaking.

(The driver’s seat is on the right side of the car since all vehicles drove on the left side of the street.)

All of this is wrapped up in the pervasive Malawian heat.

Every person the taxi passed by on the empty roads near the airport displayed the same unnerving gaze. To a fresh traveler still reeling from two days of flying, this look represented an annoyance, as if to say, “Oh God, not another one.”

But another had arrived. Another foreigner—another non-black, non-African, supposed do-gooder has landed. He went through local airport customs without having his bags checked, and along with the new Scottish friend that he met on the plane, bypassed a string of Africans waiting patiently to get into the country—all of us guests under the African sun.

II. Ghettos

     The next thing I knew, there’s a knock on my hotel door. I had passed out, and it was already morning. 8:12am local time. I opened my eyes, and the white mosquito net hung above my head like some apparition. My luggage lay on the hotel floor. I got up, opened the door, and came face-to-face with the receptionist.

“Steven?”

“Yes.”

“Someone for you in the front.”

I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and got dressed at lightning speed.

The “someone” was Pauline from Farm Radio Malawi, the host organization where I’m interning for two months. When I saw Pauline, I didn’t suspect that she was the one picking me up. She was casually on the phone and made no gesture to indicate that she was waiting for me. It was that everyday, worry-about-it-later attitude on display.

She took her time with the call while I sort of just stood around for a few minutes. She then shook my hand and took me to her car.

We drove mostly in silence, and I was to discover that my new co-workers weren’t a loud and chatty bunch. This wasn’t out of some intrinsic dullness, but is rather part-and-parcel of that same laidback attitude underpinning the city. Everyone seemed to have a certain ease with one another, and would rather get things done a little later than pull each other’s hair out.

Farm Radio Malawi concerns itself with the small time farmers who make up most of the country’s population. Agriculture accounts for the majority of Malawi’s economy, exports, and employment. Most people farm their own food to survive. Farm Radio works with local radio stations to communicate the latest agricultural research and news to farmers, who generally don’t read newspapers, and are too poor to on televisions. It’s a noble mandate, but the wheels of change turn slowly.

The local office has about ten staff members and is located in City Centre, a rather dull consortium of office spaces and stores in the middle of town.

As Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe is a weird place. It’s divided into separate geographical “areas”, a system adopted by South African civil planners who worked on the city. Some sections are poorer than others. The areas are numbered in no particular order, and the city is basically a collection of “villages”. The affluent areas like Area 14 (where I currently live) are full of residents who own dogs to scare away unruly locals, while poorer sections like Area 23 have homes that can go without a roof on a windy day.

The latter style of living dominates the city, and much of Malawi. It’s precisely this prevalence of poverty that makes a place like City Centre so seemingly out of touch. Who’s going to use the five star hotel that’s being built by the Chinese? Who’s going to visit the newly constructed parliament buildings (also built by the Chinese)? Farmers?

The Chinese didn’t build these larger-than-life structures for the average Malawian. The giant hotel is to be used for the African Union conference (where the corrupt dictators and politicians come to play) coming up this July. It’s to show how Malawi is ready—oh, SO ready—to join the rest of the “globalized” world—if it’s just given half a chance to show its economic potential.

It doesn’t take long for a visitor to realize what the centres of power in Malawi (that is, the government, and the offices of international lenders like the World Bank) plan for the country’s future. Malawi is dependent on money from institutions like the International Monetary Fund, as well as relief agencies that branch off of other countries—like the UK’s Department for International Development. The money that come in through these organizations do not come without strings attached.

After years of receiving donations (Malawi gained its independence in 1964), the country still lacks basic infrastructure. The amount of sickly beggars and street children is indicative of the lack of hospitals and schools in Lilongwe. Some blame local political corruption, while others blame international negligence. Still, others say it’s a mixture of both.

Whatever the reasons, despite the foreign donations and the government’s bland optimism, Area 23 is just a ten-minute taxi ride away from City Centre’s luxurious Golden Peacock Hotel.

III. Forward

     Unlike its neighbor Mozambique, which proudly features the handy Kalashnikov rifle in its national flag, Malawi’s history has been relatively peaceful. And if the imprint of human refuse, violence, and war marks a country’s coming of age, then one would hope for Malawi to stay forever young. There’s a quiet pristine-ness about the place—the way its distant trees weave a grey-orange twilight every night to make the landscape look endless.

Sure, there’s a big, ugly, hotel here and there, but if one looks a little higher and a little further, blue skies and rugged terrain still envelope “civilization”. You can’t get this sort of supra-expansive—almost emotional—feeling of the infinite in bigger cities. There’s a sense that construction workers haven’t plowed over Malawi yet.

It’s this observation of Malawi’s untouched qualities that makes one’s anticipation of the future so acute.

When I moved out of the Garden lodge Hotel and into a house in Area 14, I found myself the tenant of Francesco, a tanned and wiry white Malawian (“Born and bred,” he would tell you). He met his wife Carmen, a Canadian, when she moved to Malawi eight years ago to work for an NGO. They have two young children, one of whom is adopted.

Francesco, who owns a construction company, enunciated for me the first fatalistic vision of his native country I would hear.

“You can only help the people here move forward into the future,” he said when I told him that I was adjusting to the country’s slow pace, “I mean, a car comes whizzing by on the streets and the people here don’t even bother to move—that’s Malawi for you.”

He’s frustrated by the slow pace of work and life the locals he employed were accustomed to. Still, he’s glad that the locals would rather work for a fellow Malawian than the Chinese, whose apparently different outlook on work threatens key aspects of the “Malawian way”.

“But nothing’s gonna change,” Francesco continued, “I see people riled up sometimes [political instability and riots shook the country just months before] and angry or frustrated at the way things are, but so what? What happens? Nothing.”

Moving the country forward, a wonderfully vague phrase, means for people like Francesco turning Lilongwe into Nairobi (“What do we have here in Lilongwe? Two ten-story buildings?”). This means more work for his crew, and more money. Devaluation of the kwacha has made prices go up by roughly 300% in the past eight years (the kwacha floats as a currency integrated into the international economic systems), and Francesco’s buying power is dwindling.

If he’s right, and the inevitable forces of capital have their way with the “Warm Heart of Africa,” then Malawi will probably look very different five years from now. Of course, the process is already beginning. One has to squint and look beyond the roads and concrete buildings for a glimpse of natural beauty in Lilongwe. It’s not the other way around.

IV. “White Man”

     I met Sam Chibaya at a meeting concerning Malawi’s potential for agriculture. He’s a full time journalist for The Nation, one of two Malawian dailies (The Daily Times being the other). He knows the city better than most, and lives in Area 23.

We decided to drive around the city during the weekend. I left my notebook and camera in my boss’s car, but Sam’s explanations of the city sufficed. We came to Area 23, to his home. Sam is in his early thirties and is married with two daughters.

“I don’t like this place,” he said of his newly occupied home, “I’m thinking about moving out.” He explained off-hand how he didn’t like parking the car too close to the front yard for fear of having his stereo or car battery stolen. It was hard to see how parking it outside the neighbourhood gate was any better.

We watched DVDs of Malawian music videos in his living room (“Lucius Banda! He’s one of Africa’s biggest artists and producers!”), a bizarre experience that probably can’t be replicated elsewhere. One gets the feeling that these videos are more entertaining when accompanied with recreational drugs. I was ready to leave.

“So, should we take the car or walk?” Sam asked. I wanted to see Area 23 in detail, but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to, say, die, so I opted to be driven.

We drove somewhat aimlessly and chatted. Finally, I asked Sam a serious question.

“Sam, so what do you think about these other countries doing all this work in Malawi?”

“Yes, my friend, it’s happening, isn’t it?” a typically Malawian non-answer answer. But he continued: “But it will help Malawi develop.”

What does that mean though?

“Malawi will attract more foreign investment, and more business, it’ll get bigger,” he answered.

But will that help the average Malawian?

“No, of course not, look around you. The white man will never allow us to be self-dependent. The Congo is one of the richest places on earth in terms of natural resources, but looks at it now.”

Suffice it to say I hadn’t expected this blunt assertion.

“The IMF, World Bank, they’re all here to offer their ‘help’, but there are conditions,” Sam said. “These people don’t like to negotiate, and we have to build things that the average person here can’t even use or access.”

We passed by rows of houses lined with bricks on their rooftops. Women walked along the side of the road with naked babies hoisted onto their backs, kept close to their bodies by cheap-looking pieces of cloth. The market consisted of men sitting on the streets selling electric cables, tomatoes, and fake leather belts.

We arrived at a soccer field, if one could call it that. A snotty-nosed kid in tattered clothes looked my way. He pointed directly at my face. I waved.

He waved back, smiled, and yelled “mzungu!!” to the collective delight of his friends.

“What does that mean, Sam—mzungu?”

“It means white man.”