Overcoming Learned Helplessness and Apathy

Trained surrenders - not learned

WAT, Nov 10: Militants took a major, a captain and five soldiers hostage in Kabbal tehsil on Saturday.

A militant commander, Akbar Hussain, who is in charge of the tehsil, said the soldiers were traveling in an army vehicle when they were intercepted at a checkpoint near Kabbal and taken hostage. He said a major, a captain, two lance naiks and three sepoys had been taken hostage.

He said that a secret file and a map marking militants’ positions had been seized from the soldiers and they had been taken to Imam Dheri, the headquarters of Maulana Fazalullah’s movement.

It is a good take and intelligently argued case. There is literature which tries to justify the opposite opinion by actually making the case for US support for autocratic regimes. Farid Zakira’s “Future of Freedom” is the first book which comes to my mind. The central argument is that if democracy is allowed on western pattern it would lead to reign of militant forces through popular forces.
There is apprently some merit in Mr Zakria’s case but if we scrututinize the situation closely, the rise of populist conservatism, i.e. which comes through vote, is it itself a possible outcome (I am stressing the word possible because I believe that complex phenomneon like extremism are an outcome of many interelated and self reinforcing factors) of US support to autocratic and oppressive regimes and its own international policies…
Moreover, the authors of this article are requesting the political parties to actually mobilize common man to rise.. Well there is a debate right on whether all of this is a common man’s problem at all. Mr NFP has raised the stakes by openly mocking those who are talking of things like independent judiciary as drawing room intellectuals suffering from middle class morality and divorced from the reality and hardships which the “un washed” masses face. For the masses the issues are different.
I will say some things here:

1. Independent Judiciary though not of immediate concern to masses or at least percieved as such is nevertheless an extremely important organ for the preservation of the right of recourse to law whenever fundamental rights are usurped. Judical recourse is contigent as it comes into play when actually our rights are violated. Consider a black law such as Hudood ordinance. It potentially affected all women, but its actuall brunt was on those who were actually raped. It was not therefore percieved by large majority of lower class women and their families to be of relevance. In the first place they were not even aware of its existence. It was then neccessarry for the civil society and educated women to actually muster popular support for its repealment by first creating awareness and then going for some kind of political persuation. The point is that certain things whether percieved by a large majority as important or not are nevertheless important and Judicial independence is important following the same argument
2. Secondly, lack of apprent “public protest” should not be used as endorsement for purging judiciary. Particulalrly, when you have actually imposed an emergency and are breaking the lawyers and journalists heads to prevent any kind of collective political protest. The reality is that in a country like Pakistan, at least in recent times, collective political action can be easily subdued through force and by simply house arresting the leaders which are the focal point for launching such agitation. A strange argument was made by citing the presence of millions turning out to support BB on 18th October 2007, as evidence that Judicial independence, NRO etc are not at all worth calling as an issue. Let me assure you that if state wanted, it would have been able to prevent even one tenth of those people from being in Karachi on that fateful day. So these banal comparisons of people turning out to greet BB and not turning out to protest emergency should be avoided as due to emergency and violent tactics used by police, the comparison of the later with the former is not a fair comparison in the first place.
3. I also think that we should grow out of this BB,NS and Musharraf comparisons. I keep on hearing that if not Musharraf who is the alternative. The central argument should have been whether Musharraf’s dictatorship is worth sacrifying your institutions who only recently have started to show some signs of becoming independent. Remember Mr Musharraf, even if he is “necessary” has few years of his “natural” health left. He will be gone but the legacy would be of an extremely weak judiciary which would subsequently be abused by not so “benevolent” dictator or even elected executive.

Extremism will keep happily marching on, with or without militarism, as long as this endless game of beating around the bush by liberals, like the authors of this article, continues.

They are clueless.

Re: # 2 Lums graduates are asking hundreds of thousand of rupees/ year and employer are happy to have them. Even western compinies consider them as assets. As IIT grads are valued in engg, LUMS grads are equivalent to IIT grad in Engg. Many of teachers at LUMS are foreign trained and worked and just they like to live in pakistan otherwise they will be accepting big jobs from western companies. Aramco recruits many grads from here

[‘main illness of Pakistan is not Islamism, but militarism’]

Does it matter who came first – the chicken or the egg? The country is the one which ends up becoming omelet. It is not the US support which brings up dictators in Pakistan – the Mushy was very much a fact of life prior to 9/11. The greed of Pakistani politicos and its khakis is not a fault of the US. It is very domestic, it is very endemic and it merely the present day extension of the greed for power of Mahomed Ali Jinnah. The problem with Pakistan is not leaned helplessness – it is the helplessness to learn from repeated mistakes – by the “learned”!

Useless LUMS, is this the best you can do? What a waste of time? The only politician that has made a wrong turn is Alt-F and his MQM. The rest of the country is united behind the grass roots movement to get this regime out, including NS. These recent events are just political theater that you are seeing between PPP and PML-NS, namely, pehle aap, pehle aap.

["The main illness of Pakistan is not Islamism, but militarism "]

Actually, it is both. All you can argue about is: which is dominant?

Remove militarism and Pakistan will out-Afghan the Afghans.

LUMS folks,

am I mistaken or are you guys trying to gain social relevance?

.... i take that back, there are actually three authors! ..... masadi seems to be at work here : "blame must also be shared by the US administration and its Western allies"

....... i guess the US elite has been sleeping with the mothers of our politicians, generals and academics to produce the idiots we see all around us .........

.......... it took two people to write this ?... i am beginning to have serious doubts about lums !

"The shackles of “learned helplessness” can only be broken if all the political parties and intelligentsia join hands to restore rule of democracy and the independence of judiciary."

Are you guys for real?

Hello Duh!