War of Words : Swat Military Campaign

Words are powerful. By assigning labels to certain events or agents, government can manipulate their imagery and rally support from the masses. In times of war, governments create lexicon of new words to justify the war and to make it more palatable. Devising new phrases is an important part of the government military campaign.

Lets take the example of US campaigns. Civilian deaths of elderly, women and children are called "collateral damage". Torture is called "intensive interrogation techniques". Laser guided bombs or computer controlled bombs are called "smart bombs" to eliminate the aspect of human error in collateral damage. This is done not only to obtain support of masses but if used frequently, even journalists start believing them and file their reports using the same terms. With no apparent connection between them, Iran, Iraq and North Korea were lumped together as "axis of evil" to use justification for attacking one to justify attacking the other if it ever comes to that.

Occasionally, some journalists realize the game that is being played, invoke Orwell and call the use of such words in military briefings as propaganda and government reports as 'newspeak'. But these are far and few, and their existence forces the government to further add to the lexicon to stay a step ahead of them.

However, in our case, the columnists and journalists are already siding with the government. As such, the government has not felt the need to create new phrases or is using phrases which show lack of creativity on part of government as well as media.

Existential Crisis

If a competition is held for the stupidest phrase in the current military campaign, this term would take the prize. Though the neocons have been trying to convince us unsuccessfully for a long time that we are a "failed state", the adoption of this term has confirmed that we have started believing it ourselves.

It gives an illusion that Pakistan is on the verge of Balkanization or breakup. Its a fact that soviet weapons were smuggled world after breakup of Soviet Union as control on the weapons ceased to exist.

By calling it an existential crisis, what we imply is that if this crisis prolongs or stretches our security resources thin, there is a possibility that we lose control over nuclear weapons. Hence, we ourselves are providing US, India and other concerned countries all the more reason to be fearful about our nukes falling into wrong hands.

Call it an insurgency, a civil war, but calling it existential crisis is like saying ourselves we are almost a "failed state".

World's war

We had a very hard time convincing our masses that "ye hamari jang hai" and we are not fighting America's War. But our President sings a different tune by saying that we are fighting for the world or its a world's war. If that is not enough, our Oxford educated Foreign Minister says something to the tune of "we are fighting for the world. Give us money otherwise this would spread to India and Gulf."

If the masses interpret those words correctly, they tell them two things:

1. It is the world's war being fought in our backyard
2. India and Gulf have a right to interfere otherwise it would spread to them

I know that we do it for fund raising but there are ways to go about it. Since Musharraf, we have gotten addicted to holding the gun to our head and now even point it at our neigbours and so called friends when asking for money or aid.

IDPs

If the government had done anything right, this was it. Rather than calling them refugees, calling them IDPs was stroke of brilliance. Calling them refugees would have been devastating to their already miserable lives and low morale. Moreover, calling someone a refugee means they are a tax on our resources and we don't want to give our Swati brothers this feeling. But then we go and impose IDP tax on salaried classes in the current budget. With our salaried class paying the largest proportion of tax paid by any class, we have ensured that IDPs are considered as burden on the income when the tax time comes.

A friend of mine told me that IDP Tax actually stands for Internationally Displaced President Tax to finance his frequent and long international travels.

Taliban

For almost two decades, the governments have cultivated an image that Talibans are on our side. Obviously, the image is not going to change overnight. By classifying them as Afghan Talibans, Pakistani Talibans, Pakhtun Talibans, Punjabi Talibans, Good Talibans and Bad Talibans, the government as well as military has created further confusion. It makes it hard for the masses to understand in short time the war on Talibans when the government itself is not sure which Taliban it is fighting.

If we want to continue supporting some Talibans or continue this differentiation (which apparently we do) we should come up with a different name for Talibans we are fighting and stick to it and not call them Talibans. We could always say "Terrorists of Baitullah Mehsud have attacked". Or alternatively, give up this differentiation between good and bad and demonize all Talibans.

What are Kashmiri freedom fighters to us are terrorists in India. I don't think India uses the term freedom fighter and terrorist in the same sentence or differentiates between good terrorists and bad terrorists.

Shelling

By indiscriminate shelling, we have caused mass exodus of Swatis bombing a lot of them to death by way of collateral damage. A way to reduce the impact is to call these shellings/bombings as "surgical strikes" or "laser guided attacks" or something else which gives an impression that the attack is not indiscriminate. Though the ground effect would be the same_large number of innocent swatis being killed and houses being levelled_but at least from the report it would appear that Army is trying hard to avoid collateral damage.


With media on the government side and free spending ISPR (Orwellian Ministry of Truth), one would have assumed that they would work hard when conducting press conferences or issuing media releases. I am sure there are other words/phrases where the government can improve the message it is conveying.