Safrang

Safrang does WordPress (click here)

2006-10-26T22:17:00.000-05:00

... so joint blogging was not as easy as I had thought.
More likely, I was not in a state to blog, period, leave alone collaborative blogging -an enterprise that needs some real committment.

Now I have decided to give WordPress a try.
I hope to see many of this blog's regular visitors there:

safrang.wordpress.com
News - Opinion - Cynicism - Prayers : Dished Out Daily

thanks
~Hamesha

\Slanted Eyes/

2006-07-31T16:26:00.000-05:00

Dear readers,

Thank you for the visits, comments, ideas, and critiques. You have been most kind to Safrang over the months, and provided me with whatever motivation was needed beyond the pure joy of procrastinating to write here.

The good news is, I intend to keep Safrang alive, albeit in an incarnated form. The even better news is, hereafter I have decided to collablog (collaborative blogging -I just coined the term) with another prolific blogger (Ali) of Slanted Eyes. The bad news? Well, I don't believe in that stuff.
Visit us here:

http://danibraga.info/se/

Treat \Slanted Eyes/ as the *NEW & IMPROVED* Safrang. Double the wit, double the insight, one-tenth the clutter.
I look forward to your visits/comments there.
Thank you and Godspeed!

-Hamesha,

The Unintended Consequence of Headscarves?

2006-06-19T23:51:00.000-05:00

A girl with cherry earing
Originally uploaded by Farhang .

Here is something that the holier-than-thou types will be unnerved by: I find that wearing the headscarf makes women look more attractive.

What is more, I suspect that I am not alone in thinking this. In fact, I have checked with a few friends (mostly because I was getting worried if it was the right thing to think) and found out that they share my aesthetics. No, it is not only my demons. This is one of those things that everybody knows and nobody wants to talk about, because... well, because we are talking about Muslim women's headdress and not the swimsuits featured in FHM's latest!

But it's true. And THAT gives a whole different meaning to the phrase "unintended consequence." Of course the intended consequence of legislating hijab and making the headscarf mandatory is that it makes women modest and keeps the men's demons in check. This thinking has driven the age old effort in the Muslim world to keep women shrouded in public. To be fair, it has succeeded in some places. The all-black ninja thing that Saudi women wear makes them look scary, and the Taliban's definition of hijab aimed not only at women's modesty, but at their total invisibility. Coupled with the generally suffocating social and cultural atmospheres that marked Taliban-era Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia for since I remember, and the violence that they made into a big part of public life, everything would be kept in check, including the people's very souls.

But I suspect that my fashionable Muslim sisters -especially here in America- have subverted the headscarf into a haute accessory. And power to them! I was recently lunching with a few Middle Eastern friends (men) in a popular hangout location in D.C. and it was the opening weekend of some big movie. The place was bustling with young people from all backgrounds, but the Muslim women stood out -at least for the few of us on the table- in their sophisticated taste as indicated by ethnic jewelry and other accessories, and yes, the headscarves that subtly bore their national origins.

I am convinced that many people wear the headscarf not so much out of conservative religious zeal or parental compulsion as much as out of free choice, a sense of belonging, and the sheer trendiness of headscarves as an accessory. If they were that conservative or under pressure from their parents, many would not be accompanied by dates (trust me, they could not have been siblings) or dressed in otherwise "immodest" clothing such as tight and/or ripped jeans, short-legged capri pants, or that latest craze among girls: short-legged, curve-exaggerating, loose pants that look more like a skirt than pants, but upon closer inspection are really pants...

Naturally, talk of the headscarf dominated our conversation, and though we are all against legislating for (or for that matter against, as the Europeans seem to be so excited about) headscarves, we all agreed that it made women look attractive ("sexy" is how one friend put it) -in some mysterious way that God himself only knows.

Now you tell me if this is all a figment of a handful of homesick, nostalgic, single Muslim men's perverse imaginations, or that there is some truth to this?

When The Going Gets Tough

2006-06-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

Notwithstanding his rising unpopularity inside Afghanistan these days, our Chapan-clad and Qaraqul-donning president has always had a way with international audiences, reporters, and dignitaries. From journalists and media-types to fashion designers and heads of state, people have always been wooed by President Hamid Karzai's charisma, confidence, unfailing optimism, and a flair for always giving the good news -regardless.

I found this out for myself a couple of years ago when I was at a a gathering in D.C. where Mr. Karzai spoke about Afghanistan. I could sense myself identifying with the full-house audience who palpably adored him. Given that his talk about the situation in Afghanistan was not entirely congruent with reality at the time, for about half an hour he made Afghanistan seem a cool and attractive place, the US a compassionate hegemon, and the world a beautiful place. There was so much love in the air that evening I could have kissed the visiting fellow from Tokyo University who sat right next to me. On his cheek.

The cynic in me says that he was being diplomatically disingenuous that night, but I would like also to think that he is an idealist who believes in his vision of a bright future for Afghanistan so deeply that it often gets in the way of him telling the harsh but necessary truth. Even when I got exasperated with the reporters giving him too much of an easy time and asked a somewhat distasteful question myself (containing a suggestion about a "special cabinet within the cabinet," at the time a worrisome trend in Afghanistan's politics) it neither dampened his spirit nor scathed his optimistic style. (To read his response, refer to page 8 of the transcript for that event here.)

I decided to let go and allow myself to bask in the optimism that he radiated that evening. And so did the standing audience who also forgave him the half an hour late arrival. Given all the bad news, he came across unmistakably reassuring and confident about a brighter future. He probably exasperated a number of realists, Democratic policy-makers, and a few Afghans, but they were in the minority and they dared not be party-poopers.

At one point the person introducing him turned to the audience and said: "I hope you realize you're looking at the equivalent of George Washington, the kind of man that has to build a new country..." The analogy was clearly inapt and historically incorrect. But it did not matter. We were in the presence of greatness, and he was glowing -literally, after he took off his Qaraqul hat. At one point I even got the feeling that I was in a huge rock concert and the president was a living legend, a rock superstar -and it occured to me how it must feel to moshpit and crowd-surf with the business-attired audience who were galvanized and spell-bound by the performance.

Lately, the going has gotten tough for the president. In fact, since the beginning of the new year in Afghanistan, there has been an rising tide of bad news out of the country that has cast a shadow on the government's achievements and has even opened its performance over the past five years to doubt and cynicism. Last week, Newsweek International reported: "Urbane, dapper Hamid Karzai has always come off well in the international spotlight. But the Afghan president looked decidedly uncomfortable last week as he addressed his own nation following a riot in Kabul..."

So what is a person like Mr. Karzai to do when surrounded with more and more bad news? With the bitter pungency of failure poisoning the air around? And coming face to face with that old enemy of all idealists everywhere: reality?

Two words: Leave Town.
Change of atmosphere does wonders for clearing up a troubled mind.

Take the example of friend and comrade in the war on terror, President Bush: when the small-mindedness and political bickering of Washington becomes too much to bear for him, President Bush retires to the peace and quiet of good old Crawford, Texas. A peaceful and unconfusing southern town where things are what they seem, and a person can relax and not worry about a thing in the world. Cherishing southern wholesomeness and hospitality.

Alas!
South and hometown are two places Mr. Karzai cannot possibly associate with wholesomeness and hospitality. His own southern hometown of Kandahar is where Mr. Karzai would do best to steer clear of. Too much noise and explosion and stuff blowing up there.

So what does Mr. Karzai do?

Well, aware of his darling status in the international limelight, when times are low, Mr. Karzai emigrates. He leaves country. He opts for the hagira option. Exodus. With a sumptuous entourage of his aides and favorite cabinet ministers.
And that is exactly what Mr. Karzai did right after the Kabul riots. He went to China, and looked adorable in this photo-op:

Jogo Bonito: Believing in the Beautiful

2006-06-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

Slug, of the Sluggishly Sluggish Slug Blog, whom until recently I thought was somebody else and not my own wittier alter ego (silly me, how else could our backgrounds, views, and posting timelines agree so much?) has reminded me -and I am profoundly grateful for this reminder- that burying myself neck-deep in the sand of miseries that surrounds Afghanistan is not right. It is a good excuse for the sort of depressive mode that I can easily slip into and not get out of for months, and hence the perfect recipe for laziness - laziness of the kind that is often paraded as philosophical-intellectual concern. And there is far too many good things happening all around to be myopically concerned only with doom and gloom.
Take, for instance, the FIFA World Cup games underway in Germany!

Look at those colorful, smily faces! This must be the nicest World Cup logo I have ever seen, and all too much needed at a time like this. Kudos to the designers who could not have come up with a more untimely and irrelevant -and hence more artistic- design for the tournament logo (I have not seen a better definition of art than that provided by that indispensible prophet of our own darker sides, Nietzsche, who said that "art sanctifies lies," and that the profession of the artist, that is, professional lying, is a necessary one.)
OK, back to the World Cup: it's amazing how once every four years this event distorts all political, cultural, social, economic, religious, and civlizational alliances and antagonisms. It trumps conventional loyalties (well, with the exception of national ones) and organizes the world along completely different lines. Ronaldhino becomes a household name in Afghanistan, and Brazilian football wins fans from Kabul to Kuala lumpur. Iran gets to beat the US in the game that incorporates art and finesse, and does not rely on size (always a plus for the Americans) and annual military spending. Togo and the Ivory Coast vie for the same prize as Japan and Germany. And colors fly! It is a new-age bacchanalia of sorts, where emotional outburst -which has been frowned upon for roughly the past two millenia- is regarded as good and beautiful. My first fond memories of watching the World Cup are those of Coupe de Monde '98, which the roosters took home. I woke up at ungodly hours to watch the Korea-Japan games with family and friends, and I suspect I might have disturbed the neighbors on a few occasions over the past couple of weeks as well.
My favorite team?
The Canarinhos, the little canaries, the Os, in their yellows and blues, the Brazilians, the believers in the "Jogo Bonito", the beautiful game. Now I know that lately "I am sick of Brazil" is in vogue. And I admit that a sixth victory would be unfair to the rest of the world and to the Germans in particular. What I like about the Brazilians -aside from the obvious, that is, their superb technique, creativity, an ever-changing roster of young talents, sportsmanship, and their natural grace in stardom- is that they play the game with ideology. They have helped football transcend, from a sport of brawn and bruises to an art with finesse. The canarinhos encapsulate this aspect of the game. Their ideology in football, which has annoyed the heck out of many a European commentators, is that they "believe in the beautiful", and you just have to respect those who think of sports in those terms.
And they are immensely entertaining. Brazilians are confident enough on the field to not be afraid of taking risks, and as we all have come to learn, no game can be more boring than one in which the sides play it safe, do not take chances with the ball, afraid of giving it away. I am not generally favorably disposed to the superiors, and at times unwittingly support underdogs, but the Brazilians do not wear their supremacy on their sleeves. God forbid is any European country won the cup three times in a row: they would probably institute their own standards for the game and figure ways to extract political and economic juice out of their superiority in the game. I think the fact that so many people support the Brazilians around the world (I read somewhere recently that they are "everybody's second favorite team, after that of their own country) is because many of the players epitomize the rags to riches profile, as does the country, arguably.

And so my fellow believers in the beautiful, join me in celebrating the canarinhos over the next few weeks, and enjoy the games.

And yes, Slug is my online alter-ego and if I (writing, of course, under the pseudonym of Slug) tell you otherwise, don't believe it. It is a case of cyberzophrenia and I might just be denying it.

Some Reassuring News Out of Afghanistan?

2006-06-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

In my last post I referenced the Washington Post article that reports of an increasingly desperate Afghan government "mull"ing about arming tribal militia in the south of the country in order to combat the Taliban. It is needless to rehash here again that such policies would be tentamount to repeating a disastrous experiment that threw Afghanistan into chaos in the 1990s as an increasingly desperate (foreign-backed) government then also resorted to arming the tribal militia. To cite a more contemporary case in point, take the example of Iraq where militia forces attached to one or the other political party have engaged in human rights abuses and sectarian violence.

In light of all this, the recent news out of Afghanistan about the government sanctioning the formation of tribal militia had really pre-occupied my mind. In fact, when an occasion arose today to ask about this from a well-placed source in the Afghan government (whose identity I cannot disclose without giving away my own too) I nearly jumped out of my seat at the end of the presentation and asked what the deal was with the government arming the militia.

I was glad to hear the speaker's reassuring answer that all of this was the media's usual misrepresentation of events in Afghanistan and that the government was in no way planning to arm the tribal militia. What the government is considering instead is to seek the help of villagers in defending southern provinces from the Taliban, and form squads in various locales in the south that would work closely with the local police forces to defend against the Taliban.

Great. So that's what the big hoopla was all about?
I am just baffled by how the media can twist things around so much.

Kabul Riots A Wake-Up Call

2006-06-14T19:13:00.000-05:00

In springtime, Afghanistan comes to life: the snow melts, the green sprouts, the bugs wake up from their winter-long slumber, and the farmers get to work.

So do the Taliban.

And that is reason enough to dampen the spirit of Nawrouz, the celebration on the first day of spring with which the people of Afghanistan welcome their new year -because this has been one bloody spring for the people of Afghanistan. Since the beginning of the new year on Afghanistan’s solar calendar, there have been several suicide attacks, foreign and Afghan National Army troop deaths, kidnappings, beheadings, a bloody citywide riot in Kabul, and several large-scale operations mounted by the US and coalition forces -all with the attendant “collateral damage” that the public conscience has come to accept as normal in such events.

There have been many attempts to explain away the significance of last week’s riots in Kabul. The usual banter of the central government responding to anything undesirable has stood in this case too: that this is the work of that formless, nameless, mysterious, and amorphous entity that can only be referred to using the codeword “enemies of Afghanistan.” This constantly-evolving monster can apparently accommodate within its cavernous belly varying and even antagonistic forces: from the Taliban in the south to supporters of their arch-nemesis the Northern Alliance who were mostly behind the Kabul riots. But then we are speaking about Afghanistan, and here the same could be said of the government itself. (The new parliament being a case in point.)

To the US government and an American public used to seeing Afghanistan only in the same context as the much sorrier state of Iraq, the rioting and its flagrant anti-Americanism has been somewhat of a shock. This ought to strengthen the image of people of Afghanistan (and Muslims at large) in the American mind as an ungrateful and unpredictable bunch given to momentary frenzies of flag-burning and stone-throwing. I suspect, however, that there are also those out there who are realizing that not all the good news they have been fed about Afghanistan since 2002 has been true.

One of the people who has taken clear note of the rapidly deteriorating situation of Afghanistan is Susan Rice, Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and an expert on security matters. Dr. Rice, who was speaking recently at an event about Global Attitudes Toward US Foreign Policy, cited Afghanistan as a “serious” concern for US foreign policy. In answer to a question I posed to her about recent developments in Afghanistan, Dr. Rice described the situation there as “extremely fragile” and “arguably on a steeper downward trajectory …than Iraq.” (Read transcript of the event, comments appear on page 34.)

All of these developments have clearly alarmed the authorities in Afghanistan, and particularly in the aftermath of the riots, they have embarked on a new course of action. This includes a sweeping overhaul of the interior ministry and the country’s famously incompetent police force. Furthermore, the Defense Ministry recently announced plans to expand the size of the Afghan National Army from the initially planned 70,000 force to over 200,000. (It goes without saying that there is also an evident need to make both the police and the armed forces more ethnically inclusive.) Such changes reveal that despite its rhetoric about “enemies of Afghanistan” orchestrating the riots, the authorities are realizing that the riots were partly also a vote of low confidence in the government, and particularly in what many people perceive to be an ethnic imbalance and the domination of the governmental apparatus by Afghanistan’s historically dominant ethnic minority. Alleviating such fears and addressing these perceptions, therefore, ought to be among the government’s top policy and public relations priorities.

Shockingly enough, the latest announcement from the government does the opposite. The Washington Post reports that out of desperation with the deteriorating security situation, the government is considering the formation of an ethnic militia in the Pashtun-populated south of the country. If actualized, this decision will prove extremely divisive and will inflame members of Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups who have been systematically disarmed under the DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration) program over the past few years. While the DDR program is still ongoing in other parts of the country, legitimizing ethnic militia and sanctioning weapons possession in the south and east will further erode public support for a government that is fast losing the hearts and minds of the rest of the populace.

The Washington Post report correctly points out that similar tactics of arming ethnic militia in the north adopted by Afghanistan’s last central government eventually led to its downfall, as most of the northern militia turned against the government. The open-handed arms distribution to the militia (along with massive US-financed imports from China, Pakistan, and Egypt) also helped make AK47 a household item in the most remote of Afghanistan’s villages. Eventually the tribal militia and various other anti-Soviet forces soon organized along ethnic lines and turned on each other, so that by the time the Taliban rose as a force in the south promising a return to order, most people in Afghanistan welcomed them.

A glance at Afghanistan’s history since the colonial era reveals a surprising number of occasions where history seems to have repeated itself. But I have never been a fan of historicism, and still believe that we can be optimistic. I am hoping that this time around the new government of Mr. Karzai has learned the lesson that is still fresh in the mind of most people of Afghanistan. Arming tribal militia, distributing weapons, legitimizing weapons possession outside the country’s armed forces, and adopting policies that are widely perceived as motivated by the interests of one ethnic group as opposed to the milieu of Afghanistan’s peoples are proven mistakes that this government cannot afford to make at this point. Nor can the US government, as a major stakeholder in Afghanistan, let the government of Mr. Karzai make these mistakes.

While they are still publicly in denial about it, the new government has taken the riots as a wake-up call. But distributing weapons left and right is the wrong thing to do first thing in the morning while still rubbing your eyes.

Rails

2006-06-11T23:20:00.000-05:00

Rails
Originally uploaded by Hamesha's Afghanistan.

Riding the parallel lines
half awake,
ear to the monotonous clicks,
-intermittent, unfailing-
Every morning is a losing battle
against the gentle rocking motion that invites me back to sleep.

From the short-lived euphoria of a recent graduate

2006-05-21T00:54:00.000-05:00

Coming to think of it, those times of regularly updating Safrang may have had something to do with blogging being more exciting than doing schoolwork! No, I am not yet in the used-to-profusion-catchphrase 'Real world' to be too busy to post. Just that I am being generally lazy, living up the life of a recent college graduate, catching up on sleep, reading Number 9 Dream, voraciously consuming hollywood (most recently United 93 in theatre, Capote on DVD), listening to everything from Jagjit Singh to Jethro Tull, shooting (mostly photos of a beautiful lake by the house), being with friends and family, and going to one lavish Afghan wedding ceremony. All those promises made to myself while doing schoolwork and preparing for exams till late at night and somehow still managing to regularly post here that Safrang shall never go un-updated again?
Yeah.
Such inconsistency, such lack of loyalty.
But I am genuinely touched by your consistency, the kind visitor here. Thank you for the regular visits and the kind messages (which I hope to reply in another post.) It all encourages me to return and update. Somehow I feel like I owe it to however small a number of people who happen by here to let you know what befell me since last, and yes, to share how I internalize events and occurences in our common reality. For now I am still in that honeymoon stage, the short-lived euphoria of a recent college graduate.
Oh, and here is the evidence. (Yes, that is a pin of Afghanistan's flag, also appearing to my right in the picture above taken on campus -wanted to make sure everyone understood that I hail from the war-torn place, shall return to it, and wish that my small achievements will one day hopefully contribute to the prosperity of its people.)

In for a heartbreak

2006-05-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Temporary Autonomous Zones...

The Times reported that 80 members of a primitive Amazonian tribe named Nukak-Makú left their ancestral way of life to join the modern world.

No, they did not leave a jungle.
They just entered one.

"Welcome to the jungle!

It gets worse here everyday

Ya learn to live like an animal

In the jungle where we play

***

Welcome to the jungle

Watch it bring you to your shu n,n,n,n,n,n knees, knees

It's gonna bring you down!

Ha! "

-Guns n' Roses, Welcome to the Jungle

The Nakuk-Makú are reportedly unfamiliar with the concepts of money, property, government, and the future. One thinks that they should have weighed the decision to join civilization more critically. Maybe they sould have consulted with a more insightful diagnostician of our modern maladies, S. Freud and his Civilization and its Discontents. Or with Hakim Bey and his Temporary Autonomous Zone, just to get a sense of why there are ample and good reasons to be doing precisely the opposite. As a doctor who has been working with them put it, "The Nukak don't know what they've gotten themselves into."

An editorial in today's Times said:
"The Nukak have every right to make this decision for themselves. But it's hard to escape the feeling that their self-sustaining existence — which went almost entirely unnoticed by the rest of the world — was holding something open for us, something that has now been lost."

What a heartbreak.

Hamesha Replies

2006-05-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

Q,
Sorry for not replying your TAZ question earlier. I did not mean to leave your question unanswered; just that I am not sure about my answer. But I see that it has upset you, so I will try to describe how I feel about Hakim Bey.
Ever since reading some of his aphorisms and quotes and then a bio of Hakim Bey somewhere, I was intrigued by his ideas. I was especially intrigued by what I understood to be his insolence in subverting certain aspects of mystical Islam (I hope I have not misunderstood this point.) Many in the fundamentalist and even mainstream Islam regard Sufism a heresy and dervishes are persecuted with impunity and sanction (as recently as last month in Iran.) Hakim Bey's potent blend of mystical Islam, anarchism, and neopaganism makes for a consistent and total rejection of all that people take serious today and are uptight about and are willing to kill and die for, wether in the West or the Muslim world.
Though I do not have the guts for his brand of poetic terrorism (of course I don't, my most recent attempt at poetic expression of angst attracted reproach -not to say that it was niether poetic, nor expressive), within the sphere of my own privacy I find the concept of TAZ very liberating. Out in the society? No... horrors no! hell no!
Coming from a background of social censorship, parental intrusiveness, and overall widespread religious hypocrisy (ریاکاری) that plagues Muslim societies wherever I have lived (Afghanistan, Pakistan, even the US -actually more so here) you long for such liberation, and when you find them in Nietzsche, in Hafez, in Hakim Bey, you feel fulfilled. I find that in conceptualizing TAZ (and more generally in conceptualizing ontological anarchy) Hakim Bey borrows from and builds on Sufism, Hafez, Nietzsche, Nasir Khusrow, and on the the poet-Ayyar and Rend (عیاران و رندان) (sorry, no equivalent concept in English) of yesteryear's Khurasan, and it fills me with an unbearable nostalgia and and an intolerable sorrow. I guess I just see Hakim Bey as the last member of an endangered (or long-extinct) species of men who saw the world as a different domain than what it has become, and he recommends temporary autonomous zones as a remedy and a way to turn your small corner of it (in the real or virtual world) into what you want it to be. While poilitical anarchism of the sort that breeds political parties and quarterly newsletters and metro-handouts and punk t-shirts and satiates sophomoric rage repulses me (god forbid if this is precisely what I myself am guilty of), the Ayyar attitude of Hakim Bey is attractive to me in its maturity and sense of tragedy.
Maybe I have completely misunderstood Hakim Bey. Maybe how I see all of this has to do more with what I want to see rather than with what is out there. In which case, I beg of you to not disturb my illusion, I'd rather live with Hakim Bey the mythical figure of my own imagination then.

Slug,
Thanks mate for the infusion of masculine shame and pride and that Ghayrat غیرت افغانی that only we understand. It keeps me in check. If not for the homophobia and shame that regulates social interaction in Afghanistan (and really everywhere) some of us sentimental types may even come close to expressing ourselves. What horrors!
But I honestly admire your goal of outraging the Afghan sensibility. Your methods (mixing...) may be a bit extreme, but not to worry, as an English blogger you have little chance of reaching your real audiences. I know, I know, it still helps just to think it does. Yes, too many Aflogs are cliche but I recommend visiting some of the Farsi blogs on my blogroll. Hatif's is always a delight.

Shahrzad,
Thank you. You understood without judgement.
And the fact that you were the only female visitor who did makes me think that Slug may have a point after all!

Scream فریاد

2006-05-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

Scream فریاد
Originally uploaded by Hamesha's Afghanistan.

I feel suffocated.
This blog was to serve merely as an outlet, and I feel that it has graudatelly evolved into something less (or more) than merely an outlet.
This is NOT good.
I opened this under an alias, hoping to express whatever I want. Hoping to scream, if that is how I feel like. I tried to note it on the blog so that I do not forget and others do not expect otherwise: "occasional outlet for existential angst."
But I feel inhibited now.
What am I to do now?
Open another blog, under another alias?
Until gradually there too I lapse into a routine, a set of expectations, a set of inhibitions, and then I will have to open yet another blog under yet another alias.
Why do we feel the need to hide? Why alias? Is it just me? Only I am ashamed of laying bare my inner self at its most rotten?
My friends, globalvoices readers, muddville gazette readers: sorry to disappoint. Sorry to be distasteful. Sorry to insult your kind presence here.
I need to scream...
But what about?
I don't know. I cannot name it.
Or, what is more likely, after all of this, I am still not able to do it. I feel inhibited, suffocated.
That's it. I am opening another blog, reserved for nothing but pure existential angst, and I am not going to write its address here.
You may safely expect another Afghanistan/current affairs/etc. etc. -related post here by next week.
Or maybe not.
I am graduating soon, my exams are over, and this blog, which comes to life only spasmodically and only when I have tons of schoolwork to do, will dwindle and die. We will see.

Rambling Lolita in Tehran

2006-05-08T18:45:00.000-05:00

(a much denser version than Nabokov's)

In the first instance of personal correspondence at the level of heads of state between the two countries since 1979, on Monday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent a letter to the American President George Bush.
After being briefed on the contents (no, he did not read it) Dubya found it of little interest and has shrugged it off .

The letter, which is 18 pages long, is reportedly riddled with "history, philosophy, and religion".

My question is...

...what was Ahmadinejad thinking?

***

As for Ahmadinejad, he has outdone himself yet again in eccentricity and disdain for the conventions and pretenses that define diplomatic protocol.

I would like to think what lies ahead:

Mr. Ahmadinejad goes to Washington!

(and catches Bush by surprise in the Oval Office, whereupon he performs his favorite trick on him:)

***

Speaking of which...

Wouldn't the two leaders make perfect ...uhm...buddies? Think of it: the two rival each other in their love of simplicity, lack of concern for pomp and formalism, unpretentiousness, and straightforward, down-to-earth attitude.

My God! That's it! Imagine the possibilities! As the late John Lennon would sing:

Imagine all the leaders,

kissin' and makin' love...

You may say I'm a rantin'

and maybe you are right.

But let me say this first: we can be sure that finally a d'etente would be at hand on this whole nuclear issue.

Well, there is no guarantee that in that case the French will not declare a war, but everyone knows that they would surrender soon.

Ok, I will stop here.

Now.

This had to happen...

2006-05-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

For years now Indian-Americans have outdone themselves. From elementary school spelling bee contests to senior level government and corporate positions, and everything else in between, Indians have demonstrated that they have got the Touch of Madras.
Over-achievement has become the norm, and a damaging spirit of ethnic competitiveness -albeit unspoken and implicit- has been exerting undue pressures on the younger generation (some of whom fit well in the aptly named category ABCD: American-Born Confused Desi).
Had it gone unnoticed, the case of the second-generation Indian teenager-cum-novelist Kavyaa Viswanathan would have only raised the bar farther. Financial Express reported recently:

"Little Brown & Company, a respected 109-year-old publishing house offered Kaavya a $500,000 two-book deal with the first one to be out next spring titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got In. Considering that first-time writers get $10,000, Kaavya sure made a killing." (more)

But it did not go unnoticed, large sections of the paper were shown to have bene plagiarised, and Kavyaa Viswanathan got busted. Thankfully so, as a fellow Indian-American explains in an open letter to Kavyaa:

"Dear Kaavya Viswanathan, ...as one Indian-American to another, I say thank you. I have to confess to a sneaking sense of relief when Opal Mehta's life came crashing down around you. It's not schadenfreude. It's just this relief that finally we can fail, that we can screw up spectacularly and live to tell the tale.
Only we Indian-Americans know it's hard out there for an overachieving Indian-American. It was bad enough that we were the anointed model minority. Now we are expected to excel at everything we do. We are the first-class first minority. 'Doesn't anyone's kid ever come
second in anything anymore?'..." (more)

I only hope that this is not the end of everything for young Kavyaa. Great expectatios and tremendous pressure from all sides -parents, ethnic community, society- led her to take an extreme measure. She paid dearly for it and hopefully learned. Let's not go for any sort of overkill here. You hear me Harvard?!

The Failing State in a State of Denial

2006-05-06T04:08:00.000-05:00

(Published at Chowk)

THE RECENT RELEASE by two US think-tanks of the second annual Failed States Index seems to have stirred strong passions in the Pakistani intillegentsia and blogger community. Using 12 social, economic, and political indicators, the index lists Pakistan as one of the top 10 at-risk states, with a score higher than that of Afghanistan! Now that is serious cause for distress among Pakistanis, from the general down to the layman.
One of the country's leading papers, the Daily Times, responded on May 4th with a contradictory polemic that dismisses the rankings at the same time as it gives very good reasons for why Pakistan should have scored so high. The editorial, defiantly titled Failed State? What Failed State? starts in a dismissive tone:

"Needless to say, it is always insulting to hear that the state you are living in is doomed to 'failure'"
"Being placed next to some countries in Africa whose population would migrate to
Pakistan given a chance is not a pleasant experience."

While the bitterness is understandable in light of the injury to the Pakistani national pride that the ranking has caused, the condescending tone of this comment is particularly disturbing.

However, after this initial venting of indignation the editorial dives into explaining, rather convincingly, why Pakistan is a top failed state:

"Pakistan’s largest province Balochistan, forming over 40 percent of the state’s territory, is without a proper policing system... The next 'buffer area' that Pakistan has retained includes the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), an area of about 27,000 square miles with a population of over three million living in seven 'agencies' the size of one-third of the NWFP but without any law that could give them recourse to the Supreme Court of Pakistan or the parliament in Islamabad... Add to this the 850-kilometre long katcha area in Sindh, from Kashmore to the sea, where the dacoits live and which remains 'no go' for the police, and you have more than half of Pakistan without proper writ of the law."

The bitter truth that many Pakistanis cannot bear to stomach is that their country has fared ill under the current regime. Its 25 place jump in rankings from no. 34 last year to no. 9 this year is one of the sharpest in the overall index. A glance at some of the indicators, and Pakistan's performance on them, can help clarify this deterioration:

Demographic pressures (Pakistan's score 9.3/10): Troubles in N.Waziristan and Balochistan come to mind. The resurgence of Baloch nationalism and the taking up of arms by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is a significant development on this front.
Refugees and IDPs (Pakistan's score 9.3/10): The tragic October earthquake and the paltry response from the government and the international community can explain a paricularly poor performance on this indicator.
Group grievance (Pakistan's score 8.6/10): A combination of the above two factors explains a relatively high score on this indicator.
Human Flight (Pakistan's score 8.1/10): Once again the negative outcomes of the October quake and the displacement of millions contributed to a deterioration on this indicator.
Uneven Development (Pakistan's score 8.9/10): Socio-economic disparity has been a hallmark of Pakistan's society in recent decades and is bound to remain high in the foreseeable future.
Delegimization of the State (Pakistan's score 8.5/10): With presidential elections scheduled for next year, the opposition -if we are to use such a term in the context of Pakistani politics- has revamped its noise-making machine and has made calls for free and fair elections -calls that have been unequivocally backed by the US. Being in favor with Washington is usually a reliable ampere of overall legitimacy for Pakistani powerholders, and with the Bush administration's recent overtures to New Delhi on one hand, and nothing but straight talk to Islamabad on the other, things don't look good on this front.
Violation of Human Rights (Pakistan's score 8.5/10): The damage done by the Mukhtar Mai case (which is a shameful and tragic episode in its own right) and its bringing to light the status of women in Pakistan in general can be expected to have caused a spike in ratings on this indicator.
Security Apparatus (Pakistan's score 9.1/10): Measures whether the army functions as "a state within the state." Enough said.
Rise of Factionalised Elites (Pakistan's score 9.1/10): In particular the distancing of ISI from some of Musharraf government's policies in its Waziristan campaigns may have tipped the scales on this one.
External Intervention (Pakistan's score 9.2/10): While still rudimentary in comparison with the tsunami relief, international aid provision and relief efforts seem to have undercut the state's role as the responder of the first order and the last resort.
Other indicators that registered relatively lower scores in the 7-range included Economic Decline (Pakistan's score 7.0/10) and Public Services Deterioration (Pakistan's Score 7.5/10). Indeed Pakistani economy has done better under the current government than before, and the country still has a well-educated (although underpaid and corrupt) civil service.

All in all, the state of the Pakistani federation does not look good in 2006. In fact, it may be experiencing one of the bleakest periods of its short history, and the months and years ahead hold much in store for its powerholders and peoples. Such moments of realiation and crisis may represent the punctuated equilibrium that is a normal part of the socio-political evolution of any emerging nation, and Pakistan is a nation where many members of the generation that saw its creation are still living. The residual euphoria of that glory-filled episode which sustained Pakistan for the first few decades of its history -albeit feebly- may be bottoming out, and we are seeing the results. This may explain why so many Pakistanis are in shock and denial about their young nation's ranking among the world's most unstable, unviable, and risk-prone states.

There is reason to take heart, however. The Daily Times offers important advise in internalizing the disappointing showing of Pakistan in the Failed States Index:

"The 'failed state' list should not become an additional factor in
our general mood of pessimism, nor should we go into our familiar mode of denial
linking the list to a Jewish conspiracy and accusing America of actually wishing
the Muslims dead."

Good, as long as we are clear on that.

Afghanistan's New Parliament: Premonitions and Reality

2006-05-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

Remember those exciting days in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan?
Remember when people were concerned about the parliament's future make-up?
And about the infamous Single Non-Transferable Voting (SNTV) mechanism that prevented the emergence of viable political parties with real agenda, but that was insisted upon by the country's Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) ?
And about the independence of the JEMB itself?
And about the process of vetting of candidates with histories of human rights abuses and other crimes?
And remember the embarassment that followed after the voting was over, resulting in weeks of delay in announcing the outcomes, and the dismissal of tens of election workers on charges of fraud and ballot-stuffing?
And remember when people were concerned about the disproportionate strength of the executive vis-a-vis the legislative branch, as laid out in the constitution?
Or about the fact that the new parliament would be a largely symbolic, ceremonial, rubber-stamp, weakened, divided, disorganized assembly of ragtags, warlords, political appointees, and other assorted scoundrels and incompetents?

Well, you don't reckon those concerns probably meant...

1. That the new parliament would include in its make-up such criminal figures as those who oversaw the massacre of innocent civilians (as documented by the HRW), the indiscriminate shelling of the capital Kabul (as evidenced by one MP's illustrious last name!), and the barbaric destruction of the Buddhas, as well as other ex-commanders, Taliban figures, and warlords. (Profile of an Infamous Member) and (more on this disappointment)

2. That the parliament would be strong-armed and then completely sidelined in its advise and consent role in cabinet appointments.
When the parliament objected to the position of a "senior minister" on constitutional grounds, the executive just shrugged it off and appointed the minister regardless. It even said that the senior position was open to the prerogatives of the president and that the advise and consent role of the parliament's was irrelevant in this case! (more on this outrage)

3. That nobody would show up!
It seems that when I wrote a few days back about classes being cancelled on account of the ill-named National Education Day, it was not only the students who thought they had the day off. The speaker of the parliament forgot to tell the MPs that the parliament was in session, and so a mere 20 out of more than 350 MPs showed up to see the session cancelled and a crucial budgetary debate delayed. (more on this embarrassment)

It turns out those concerns were not so baseless after all. Some who just don't give up on squeezing good PR juice out of it have likened the new parliament to a "newborn baby". All indications seem to suggest to me that this one must be an awfuly grotesque newborn riddled with deformities.

And all of this, in its first few months...betcha ya ain't heard the last of this baby!

The Surayanarayana Saga: Curiouser by the Day

2006-05-03T21:06:00.000-05:00

The Surayanarayana Saga is finding newer twists. It is usually not a good sign when stories like this find a life of their own, and I am getting suspicious that there is more to it than we know. It was not good to begin with. It was tragic, shameful, and barbaric how this Indian telecom worker was held hostage and later beheaded on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar- Taliban remnants claimed responsibility.

What has ensued is a chaotic blame-game: everyone blaming everyone else -India blaming Pakistan, who is blaming both India and Afghanistan, who is blaming Mr. Surayanarayana for being neglectful and not heeding to cautions from the security personnel, who are being blamed for not providing neither security nor precautions.

Add to this the questionable practice of many international agencies in dispatching expats into the dangerzone assorted by skin-tone and country of citizenship -as suggested by expat aid worker and blogger Vasco-Pyjama (who, by the way, is in turn blamed for and has been getting negative reviews for suggesting something so distasteful.)

And to top it all off, the intrigues of a newly exposed marital triangle has engulfed the Suranarayana posterity as a woman and child have come forward to claim part of the compensation for Surayanarayana's death, thus prompting Mrs. Surayanarayana (the first) to down a bottle of some strong insecticide in a failed attempt to committ suicide.

With the case getting fast out of hand, I guess we all understand how a journalist compatriot of Mr. Surayanarayan felt when -presumably because of the national significance of this story- decided upon an emergency suspension of certain rules of English grammar and reported that "Suryanarayana’s death gets curiouser".

Sign the Petition about Freedom of Speech on the Israel Lobby

2006-05-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

I hope this does not overshadow the important question that I have raised in the previous post, but it is also important that I pass the word along on this one.

This is my third post on the subject of Mearsheimer & Walt's study on the power of the Israel lobby. I posted on the subject at first because I was taken by the authors' intellectual honesty and courage -given the subject, a rarity in the American ivory tower. Now, however, it is clear that an insidious attempt is underway aiming at character assasination and branding of the two scholars as antisemites.

The intention is clear: to teach a lesson to anyone in the future who would be naive enough to venture off the charted course.

The danger is clear too: that might very well happen, and the American academia will thread even more carefully -and one-sidedly- on this subject. And not only on this subject: this will be a slippery slope that will end only in the academia's total subjugation to pressure groups and lobbies. (In fact, the situation is already so desperate that Prof. Cole has complained of a general neglect of the petition by academic bloggers.) That state of affairs is something that nobody can afford regardless of what side of any question you are on.

Therefore, it is important that you take about half a minute of your time to sign Prof. Cole's petition:

"Freedom of Speech on the Israel Lobby"

For some of my fellow blogistanis, here is a summary of Mearsheimer & Walt's study in Farsi:

سياست خارجي آمريکا زير سايه لابي های اسرائيل

Hijood ?!

2006-05-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

I was recently censured for saying that this thing looked "rediculous." While I concede that I should have employed different phrasing such as: funny, silly, hilarious, or buffoonish, my position remains.

Tell me what you think.

Depending on your answers, I will do one or more of the following:
a) Pat my back and say I was right all along,
b) Concede that you have a point, but give you the reasons why I think it looks rediculous,
c) Close down this blog, change my location and I.P. address, be thankful that I wrote this blog under a pseudonym all along, and go into hiding.

No seriously, I would like to know what everybody thinks:

The Morbid Eros of Warfare

2006-04-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

The more optimistic would say that Afghanitan's civil war ended barely a few years ago. By other accounts, it is still raging on.
Yet only a short time after that bloody episode (assuming that we are in the optimistic camp), and while its ruins and rubble is still scattered around us, the fascination with war and violence knows no end. We love it so much we are already missing it! Observe, if you will, an Afghan pre-teen in full military attire -on the day designated as the national holiday for education (جشن معارف)!

I am reminded of the title of Chris Hedges's book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. Hedges writes:
"The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, and a reason for living."

I think that there is more than just meaning to it. It gives us pleasure and satisfaction. There is eros in the experience of warfare, in its collective ritual. Think of it as an orgy. There is a seduction and lure to the blood, gore, violence, and carnage of war. It gives men the reassureance they lack, the same reassurance that they gain after a sexual encounter.
Yes, I have it, it is down there, and it works.
It works just fine.
Like the instinct to reproduce, it is hardwired into our primate brains, our animal instincts. What else could explain the enduring fascination with an anachronism that should have been abandoned around the same time as fire was discovered? And sure as hell the laws of aerodynamics is not the only thing behind the phallic resemblance of all rockets, missiles, and other military projectiles. And oh yes, let's not forget the magnetism and charisma of the military uniform.

p.s.
Beg enlighten me, what does a national holiday for education intend to accomplish? Celebrate education by cancelling classes?

Back for a Quickie

2006-04-28T16:26:00.000-05:00

I called it "Taking Note of the Big Elephant."

The good Robert Fisk has called it "Breaking the Last Taboo."

Read Fisk's excellent article on Mearsheimer & Walt's study on the power of the Israel lobby in shaping the US foreign policy. For my kind Farsi readers, here is a BBC analysis of Fisk's article:

"ايالات متحده اسراييل"

Here is a passage from Fisk's essay:

"The two men (John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt) have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel." Read more...

***

And now that that's out of the way, yes, I am back for a quickie. In fact, I never did go away. Mea culpa. I admit it, I could not keep away from the blogosphere. Certain blogs have become an addiction: have GOT TO visit them at least once a day, even if in the middle of writing a 30-page long paper with 70 citations and 8 pages of charts and graphs.

Here are the ones I would hold most culpable of stealing me away from work at least once a day: Hatif, Kabulog, the Slug, Ethnically Incorrect, Home-in-Kabul, Nik-o-bad (I like how Y. Rasooli has borrowed Nietzche's "Beyond Good and Evil" - love that man and his crazy books), Ghazalenow (which has been awfully inactive lately- I thirst for Saiidi's ghazals), Dil-e-Naadan (source of helpful study prayers- my belief in them grow as the deadlines approach), the Destitute Rebel, Imaculate Info (Times have been good to his cause lately, power to the Nepali people!) , V.Pyjama (source of daily snapshots of life in Kabul- alongwith Kabulog, except that Pyjama -I think- is a Western expat and hence securely caged, and from what I read, unhappy about it), Rickshaw Diaries, Koonj, Iranian Truth, Mental Mayhem, and...

There, if you ever wondered what my favorites were- and I highly recommend them to you. I don't feel like inserting links for all of these, so you are on your own -and chances are, you frequent them too.

On the schoolwork front, I am disappointed to report: 1 down, 2 to go. I did my Finance paper on "Finance & Growth: Examining the Relationship between Financial Development and Economic Growth." Would be glad to send it off to all parties interested, just email me. The Afghanistan state building paper and the Afghanistan EconDev paper loom large on the horizon.

Lastly, Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! to everyone for leaving kind comments and words of encouragement. I was touched and motivated.

A couple more weeks and I shall be a graduate, an alumni, a B.A. in International Political Economy, an intern, a hound for grad schools, and I promise, a much more active blogger. Man! so many shiny new shoes to fill!

In the mean time, I hope to write as life happens and work allows.

B.R.B.

2006-04-18T11:41:00.000-05:00

O.K., it's about time I put a temporary moratorium on blogging - at least for the next couple of weeks. I will not be able to write here, visit blogs, respond to comments, or leave comments at the dozen or so of my favourite blogs (Farsi and English).
It will be hard, but I must do this.

The culprit?

You guessed it right: schoolwork. I have been working on three major projects for the better part of the last semester, and as the academic year -and my college career- is nearing to a close, I must devote undivided attention to these. The first one is my senior capstone project (in other words the fruit of my four years of labor here) and is situated within the thick of IR-theory and Comparative Politics. The latter two are related to Economic Development, my secondary emphasis.

1. A Year-Long Honors Research Thesis:
Titled: "State Formation, Governance, and Post-War Reconstruction in Afghanistan"

(This paper is a historical analysis of the [failed] state formation processes in Afghanistan beginning with the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan and all the way down to the Bonn Process. It's central argument is that there has never existed a functioning 'state' in the proper sense of the word throughout Afghanistan's history - thanks to the three culprits of: rentierism, primordialism, and patrimonialism. I can post the abstract here if anybody is interested.)

2. An Independent Study Exploring Economic Development:
Tentative Title: "Prospects for Economic Development in Post-Taliban Afghanistan"

3. A Term-Paper for the course "Financial Markets & Institutions":
Titled: "The Role of Financial Development in Economic Growth"

And so, as some of the more renegade-minded among us undergraduates would say, yet again schooling has proved to get in the way of my true and wholesome education! I bid you kind readers a temporary farewell, and hope that by the time I am back you will not have forgotten Safrang. I will miss our conversations and exchanges.

-Khuda Hafiz o Nasir!

Bono? Bill Clinton? Jeffrey Sachs? You?

2006-04-17T00:17:00.000-05:00

Beware! another award post!

The Center for Global Development (website) gives away a "Committment to Development" award annualy. Past winners of the award include the Cancellor of the Echequer (fancy name for the British head of the treasury) Gordon Brown for last year, and Oxfam's "Make Trade Fair" campaign for 2004. Nominations for 2006 are now open. It will take you just a few minutes to nominate your favorite development crusader/mujahid. To do so, click here.

My choice?
Not Sachs, not Easterly, not even Bono - in fact, none of the big-name celebrities.
I believe that at the end of the day, the award should pay tribute to the extra-ordinariness of ordinary people. From what I have read/heard/seen this year, nowhere has this been more possible in 2006 than through a neat new concept called Social Entrepreneurship. For this, I nominate the Ashoka Foundation, a leading organization for social entrepreneurship, and all of the "Ashoka Fellows" for the Committment to Development award in 2006. Ashoka Foundation, where "the most powerful force for change in the world is a new idea in the hands of a leading social entrepreneur." Ashoka Foundation, where "social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish, or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."

Who's your pick?

TAGS: [ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT]

How Serious are Wafa Sultan's Polemics?

2006-04-14T17:18:00.000-05:00

Wafa Sultan is the fiesty Syrian-American psychiatrist who has appeared on Al-Jazeera TV and debated Islamic scholars, most famously in late February (around the time of the caricatures controversy) when she gave a heated polemic on the clash of mentalities and eras, between "mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century."
Thomas Friedman, ever so keen to discover 'voices of reason' from within the the Arab world, characteristically caught on with this line and wrote an op-ed, Dubai and Dunces in the NY Times. So did the group MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute,) who excerpted the debate (mostly only Ms. Sultan's thundrous monologues) and put it on their website. I recommend that you watch it: it's short, subtitled, simplistic and uncomplicated, and answers every question you ever had about Islamic backwardness -and it's highly entertaining:

Here is a particularly interesting exchange:
Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
[...]
Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?
Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.
(full transcript)
Well, I have a feeling that most of these illustrous and enlightened ex-Muslims who have emerged from the darkest depths of this faith are engaging in precisely that kind of behavior which they fight most bitterly against. Maybe I am wrong, but I truly hope that unlike some of the most dogmatic and fundamentalist of clerics of Islam, these critics of Islam do not feel that they need not explain their claims, or substantiate their charges, and that they should be followed unquestioningly. The Individual right to freedom of expression and to engaging in open debate is a worthy value that these illustrous critics of Islam have found in the West and have put to good use, but openness is not the only condition for productive debate. Debate should also be informed debate, otherwise it becomes unsubstantiated and hate-filled polemic. It should also be civic debate, otherwise it becomes a barrage of insults.

From Salman Rushdie, to Ayan Hirsi Ali, to Manji Irshad, and now to Wafa Sultan, the message that most ordinary Muslims around the world hear is this: that Muslims are all ignorant, backward, oppressive, violent, women-abusing, suicide-bombing, jew-hating, religious (bordering on/equivalent to superstitious), fundamentalist bunch -and they are bound to remain so by virtue of their religion.While I do not agree with these charges, or with the counter-productive method in which they are advanced, or with the over-generalized and simplistic mindsets that they are evidence of, I can tolerate them. I think that most ordinary Muslims would tolerate them too. They would not agree with it, they would not like it, they would have their feelings hurt, they would feel misunderstood and misrepresented, but they would not try to take an initiative to kill the people who said these things.

The answer to these charges, however, do not come from the ordinary Muslims. In a behavior that often seems to vindicate those charges, clerics and mullahs issue death sentences, and/or extremists try to kill them. Left in the middle are the ordinary people who have their feelings doubly hurt -first by the insults hurled at them by the first group, then by the injury added as the other group tries to kill the first. They don't identify with either bunch, either with the flaming apostates and satirists of Islam, or with the most ardent and determined defenders of Islam. At least I don't identify with either of these groups, and I beg you to tell me if this is a peculiar position: that I ought to be a real man and take a solid and unwavering position in favor of either.

And the award for the boldest movie of 2005 goes to...

2006-04-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

THE YEAR 2005 has been a bold one for the movie industry. From exposing the criminal menage-a-trois between pharmaceutical corporations-aid agencies-Western governments in Africa; to providing an insight into the power of the oil lobby in Washington; to challenging the macho masculinity surrounding the image of the American Cowboy; to revealing the terror and trauma of Israeli vengeance; to opening up the world of the frustrated, humiliated, confused, and misguided Palestinian suicide bombers, to...

Perhaps the movie industry has finally caught up with the reality that surrounds life today. Or maybe movie-goers/watchers are becoming sophisticated and responding to narratives that inform and educate them rather than mere escapist entertainment that makes them feel good while insulting their intelligence. Or maybe the world is becoming such a shady place that everywhere you look there is something hidden to be exposed about the powerful doing awful things to the powerless. I am not sure what it is, but in an explicable way I don't feel as bad watching movies anymore. I don't even feel that I am being entertained only, rather, that I am witnessing things. All goes to make me feel less guilty about time spent away from schoolwork -all the better excuse for procrastination.

I just finished watching The Constant Gardener -yet another contender for the title of the boldest film of 2005. So far I am looking at a 5-way tie between the following titles, and I need help deciding. Maybe you kind readers of this blog can help in with picking the winner and the runner ups. Pitch in with your thoughts on who should we give away the honorific title of "SAFRANG'S BOLDEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR" to. Here are my preferences, in order:

1. The Constant Gardener
2. Paradise Now
3. Brokeback Mountain
4. Syriana
5. Munich

(You may not have watched all of these, in which case my advice to you is to rent them out over the next few weekends and watch them. Great and informative -and at times bloody depressing- entertainment!)