Let’s start with this song by the Pakistani rock group co-VEN, “Ready to Die”:
co-VEN was featured in a recent New York Times multimedia video by Adam Ellick (not embeddable) which can be seen here.
Other musicians mentioned in the Times story include Ali Azmat and the band Noori (identified in the video as the Noori Brothers). To me, Ali Azmat comes across as a blithering idiot in the Times video, but I found the comments from co-VEN more compelling — at least coherent. (For the most part, I agreed with the Pakistani journalists in the Times’ video, not the musicians.)
What was interesting to me was the fact that Ellick, in the Times video, seemed to be putting co-VEN forward as an example of a band that criticizes the west but not the Taliban.
I haven’t heard much of co-VEN’s other music (none of the songs on YouTube seem political) or looked closely at their public statements, but the lyrics to the song above are present in the YouTube video, and they seem more ambiguous than Adam Ellick suggests. While “Ready to Die” does put forward the idea that there is a pattern — and a long history of failure — to western policy in the Muslim world, I don’t necessarily think the song reflects Pakistanis in denial. You can be opposed to the “game of chess” co-VEN is talking about while also being opposed to what the extremists have been doing in Pakistan in recent months. I’m not sure co-VEN is actually willing to go there, but it seems like a stretch to put an interesting indie/metal band next to the more banal pop music of Ali Azmat and Noori, as if they’re all the same.
Oh, and one more thing: it’s a shame that this irreverent and upbeat song, Laga Re by Shehzad Roy, was apparently banned on Pakistani TV. (I wonder whether it might have circulated anyway through the internet etc.)
Pakistan has sponsored the creation of the Taliban with the blessing of the previous two Clinton administrations.
This is no secret.
I like some Pakistanis who questioned Hillary Clinton in Lahore does agree that the US is not committed to nation-building in Afghanistan.
However, since General Zia ul-Huqq’s coup and military takeover of Pakistan, the “Islamicization” of Pakistan and a push to move away from its secular roots under the vision of Jinnah has been an issue.
Pakistan has sponsored militant groups not only in Afghanistan, but in India and Iran.
Tehran and Islamabad have at best a chilly relationship. Iran’s relationship with New Delhi is much more warm.
Junoon, a progressive Muslim Pakistani rock band, has spoken out repeatedly against the Taliban.
I am an Afghan American Muslim, who is bit influenced by Pushtun/Afghan nationalism which rejects the Durand Line that divides Afghanistan and Pakistan as a colonial marker imposed on Pushtuns by the British Raj.
Afghanistan rejected to Pakistan’s admission into the UN and almost went to war with Pakistan over the disputed tribal regions.
Even the Taliban upheld the Afghan claim to lands we deemed “occupied.”
Nationalism, tribalism, and communalism are hallmarks of South Asia. Even intra-Muslim animosity is not rare. I have been accused of being a Hindutva member under the guise of “Muslim clothing,” but in all seriousness, Pakistan has an issue with extremism.
Pakistan spends about 2% of its GDP on education, while India spends a greater share.
In the tribal Pushtun region, there are few schools available to boys and for girls, the situation is more dire. It has never been a priority of the Punjabi elite to ensure universal education to all children in Pakistan, regardless of their class and ethnic standing in that society.
Route memorization of the Qur’an in classical Arabic for boys who speak Pashto is not going to change the situation in the tribal regions.
Pakistanis need to reflect on what their country has become, the epicenter of the “war on terror.” Many of Afghanistan’s problems have roots in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, where Pakistani leaders have repeatedly interfered in Afghan affairs. “Jihadi” gospel popular among a small subset of Muslims, even in India, is a problem. The moderate majority must be as equally vocal in their convictions as the extremists.
Give him a break. Azmat Ali could not have said anything to criticize Taliban – if he ever did Taliban will shove his guitar so far up his a%$e that only headstock and tuning pins will show.
Azmat miyan is selling exactly what the “young” and “educated” and “intelligent” janta of Pakistan wants – who the fark is Adam Ellick to go there and exhort him to say crap about people who have no compunction in bombing innocent girls to smithereens. In general desi bands suck – these guys are no exception. Like all sucky musicians these guys want to make a decent living selling their stuff – unlike all sucky musicians these guys want to be taken seriously. So what !?! These guys are not idiots – these guys are good business people, they are simply enjoying the ride as long as it lasts. Noorie may say that Taliban is “least important problem” that his country faces, he however completely understands that once Taliban knocks on his door “Noorie” will be history.
The best Desi rocker of all time is the Parsee Freddie Mercury from Zanzibar.
re: afghanistan, someone should do some digging on the differences between hazara vs. pashtun, especially in educating their daughters. the anecdotal reports seem striking. e.g., the majority of girls going to public school in majority pashtun districts being hazara.
Hazara and Pushtuns are Afghans.
I consider myself Afghan, my family speaks Farsi/Dari, that is their home language, not Pashto.
Hazara are Shia. My family is Shia, but we are not Hazara.
Education of women is a priority in the Muslim world which cannot be ignored. A literate woman is less likely to have a son join the Taliban.
The Hazara benefit from funding derived from Pakistani and Gujarati Ismailis, who work through their charity organization runned by the Agha Khan. Some call them the Muslim “Jews” of South Asia.
Amardeep, I had to click on that Times video just to see what could possibly cause the genteel professor to call someone a blithering idiot. Good call. 😉 That q&a about the girls’ schools was painful to watch. I also agree with you that co-VEN seems slightly mischaracterized after hearing the whole song, and they make a good point about how its not their responsibility to sing what they don’t want to sing. I don’t know how much pop-culture in Pakistan puts them musicians on a pedestal (in which case they have more responsibility, as per the music critics blistering and thought-provoking critiques) or parties to them and then forgets them, much like my relationship to American pop and, to a large extent, even indie rock. There aren’t a lot of truly thought provoking protest anthems that I can think of in the last few years here. No big surprise that Pakistani theater and writing is making the hard calls—they’re generally more insightful genres that have particularly strong records in the region. I do bet self-preservation has a big part of it–it only takes one bombed concert to put a severe dent in ticket sales, no?
Whatever happened to Junoon and Salman Ahamd, who made a documentary where he asked Mullah’s to explain their ban on music? Oh sad, looks like he was just in the Bay Area and I missed it. . ..looks like he is still a UN Ambassador and just had a concert in Indian Kashmir this summer too.
The Laga Reh video wasn’t banned – in fact the album was supported by one of the country’s largest media organizations. If it didn’t air on every channel it was probably because of a degree of hesitation by those in charge of programming.
They are not going to provide quality education in Pakistan to the masses while they feel the masses would be more useful to them as flesh droids in their proxy wars with their neighbors.
True that. Lately we seem to be training people who later use their skills against us. The global chess game against Communism trumped everything else.
From Times Online: “The Pakistani Army ran training camps for a Muslim extremist group, at least until recently, with the acceptance of the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to France’s foremost anti-terrorist expert.
Jean-Louis Bruguière, who retired in 2007 after 15 years as chief investigating judge for counter-terrorism, reached this conclusion after interrogating a French militant who had been trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested in Australia in 2003.
In a book in his counter-terrorism years, Mr Bruguière says that Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was set up to fight India over disputed Kashmir territory, had become part of the international Islamic network of al-Qaeda.
Willy Brigitte, the suspect, told Mr Bruguière, that the Pakistani military were running the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp where he spent 2½ months in 2001-02. Along with two Britons and two Americans, Brigitte was driven in a 4×4 through army roadblocks to the high-altitude camp where more than 2,000 men were being trained by Pakistani regular army officers, he said.
“The links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani Army are more than close. Brigitte observed this twice,†Mr Bruguière said. “When the camp was resupplied, all the materiel was dropped off by Pakistani army helicopters. And there were regular inspections by the Pakistani Army and the CIA.†http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6916408.ece
These guys really know how to take the fun out of life. I hope for a better future for the Afghans and others currently under their control:
Some of the restrictions imposed by Taliban on women in Afghanistan http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm
I don’t know why, but this restriction really bothered me even more than the other very objectionable restrictions: 12- Ban on women laughing loudly. (No stranger should hear a woman’s voice). Not even laughter can be heard? It is so basic a human response. What they want is for women to exist only as silent blue covered ghosts. Their current version of their religion has got to go. Afghanistan was not like this not too long ago.
The Indian Muslim commonwealth is a failure.
Former East Pakistan (Bangladesh) broke away with the aid of India.
I feel partition was a bad idea, dividing Bharat (India) on the basis of religious nationalism.
In 1947, Lahore was only 60% Muslim, not that percentage is 97%. Lahore was the “jewel” of the Punjab, the western capitol of the Mughal court and seat of the Sikh empire.
Historically, Muslims have thrived when they embraced pluralism and shunned chauvinism.
You’re right, Afghanistan is a very different country. Do I think Pakistan will be ruled by the Taliban? No.
But Pakistan is confronting karmic retribution, the terrorism it has sponsored in Iran, India, and Afghanistan well, to borrow from Malcolm X, “the chickens have come home to roost.”
Pakistan’s “unnatural obsession with India” as coined by President Obama was on the mark.
Even when Hillary Clinton stated that she finds it hard to believe that no one in Pakistan is aware of al Qaeda’s whereabouts, was also on the mark.
Anti-Muslim sectarian and communal violence as witnessed in places like Gujarat is an issue, but if I had choice where I wanted to live, I would choose the Hindu-majority republic of India over the Indian Muslim commonwealth.
I agree with you.
Pakistan’s was too focused on India from the get go. Land of the Pure – separate from India and unequal in that it is supposed to be superior.
The Clintons would probably know how unbelievable it is that no one in Pakistan knows where those guys are (except each successive PM seems to be certain that BL is dead – too bad he keeps making those videos showing he is alive). There is a history behind that statement.
In the book “Taliban” by Ahmed Rashid goes into these complex relationships:
“Pakistan faced a problem when Washington urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to help arrest Bin Laden. The ISI’s close contacts with Bin Laden and the fact that he was helping fund and train Kashmiri militants who were using Khost camps, created a dilemma for Sharif when he visited Washington in December 1998. Sharif side stepped the issue but other Pakistani officials were more brazen, reminding their American counterparts how they had both helped midwife Bin Laden in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. Bin Laden himself pointed to continued support from some elements in the Pakistani intelligence services in an interview…Support for Bin Laden by elements within the Pakistani establishment was another contradiction in Pakistan’s Afghan policy…The US was Pakistan’s closest ally with deep links to the military and the ISI. But both the Taliban and Bin Laden provided sanctuary and training facilities for Kashmiri militants who were backed by Pakistan, and Islamabad had little interest in drying up that support. Even though the Americans repeatedly tried to persuade the ISI to co-operate in delivering Bin Laden, the ISI declined, although it did help the US arrest several of Bin Laden’s supporters. Without Pakistan’s support the USA could not hope to launch a snatch by US commandos or more accurate bombing strikes because it needed Pakistani territory to launch such raids. At the same time the USA dared not expose Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, because it still hoped for ISI co-operation in catching Bin Laden.”p137-138
“US tensions increased substantially after Bin Laden’s attacks against the US embassies in Africa in August 1998. The fact that the ISI had helped introduce Bin Laden to the Taliban in 1996 and had maintained contacts with him, but now declined to help the Americans catch him, created major difficulties in the relationship. The American tone became much harsher. “There appears to be a pervasive and dangerous interplay between the politics of Pakistan and the turmoil inside Afghanistan. With the emergence of the Taliban there is growing reason to fear that militant extremism, obscurantism and sectarianism will infect surrounding countries. Non of those countries has more to lose than Pakistan if “Talibanization” were to spread further,” said US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in January 1999″ p181
And speaking of Pakistan’s chickens coming home to roost:
“Washington’s change of heart over the Taliban in late 1997 also arose because of the deteriorating political and economic crisis in Pakistan. US officials began to voice fears that the drugs, terrorism and Islamic fundamentalist threat which the Taliban posed could overwhelm its old and now decidedly fragile ally Pakistan. The USA warned Pakistan of the increasing dangers it faced, but became frustrated with the ISI’s refusal to pressurize the Taliban to be more flexible on the political and gender fronts….Pakistan could not have a Taliban victory, access to Central Asia, friendship with Iran, and an end to Bin Laden style terrorism, all at the same time. It was self defeating, deluded and contradictory policy that Pakistan refused even to acknowledge.” p180
Pakistan and India are cultural cousins, like a dysfunctional couple who have not learned to cope with one another.
It would be like dividing Lebanon between a Muslim and Christian commonwealth. Lebanese Muslims know their nation is not the same without the presence of Christians.
Partition is a legacy of the British colonial experiment on the subcontinent.
As an Afghan, I am critical of Pakistan for obvious reasons. No Afghan can deny the legacy of Pakistani interference in our “watan” (homeland), we Afghans are also to blame for the tribal prejudices that divide us, etc. We are the victims of the Cold War, and I’m glad as an American politicians in DC are realizing that India and the US have more in common than Pakistan.
India has its share of problems, but India is not threatened with the possibility of implosion. Pakistanis must awake from their slumber, and face their problems head on.
The problem with Pakistan is that there no sound or unifying idea behind its creation. Even if the country intended to be a strictly theocratic state and a leader popular and strong enough to impose that ideal, Pakistan would have been better off than it is now. Jinnah had no realistic vision, he was a dying man who just wanted to go out in style. You create a nation on the basis of religious division and then want it to be secular? That’s insanity, and so since inception, crooks have filled the void of a unifying raison d’etre.
The country’s only hope is to implode and have something better re-built from its ashes. Don’t count on the masses of Pakistanis waking up out of their slumber otherwise.
One could hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Sadly I think right now the worst is more likely if young educated fans really believe the West and not the Taliban is Pakistan’s problem. From the NYT’s link posted at top: “Tuning Out the Taliban Pakistani pop musicians are propelling anti-American messages. The lyrics reflect widespread views among their young educated fans who say Pakistan’s problem is the West, not the Taliban.”
It has been at least twelve years since the Clinton administration started warning Pakistan about the Taliban and the problems they’ll end up with, according to Rashid’s book. Who in Pakistan is listening to that old warning even today despite the situation for everyone being a whole lot worse than it was in the 1990s? It is easier to blame everyone else than to look one’s self in the mirror and acknowledge the actions they took that got them where they are now. That takes effort and an overhaul of a lot of entrenched institutions and modalities of thinking. It is up to the Pakistani people from all walks of life to improve their situation before their country implodes. Though they may blame the West, I think Pakistan would have imploded already if it were not for the billions from the US. If all money stopped flowing into Pakistan from the West today, it probably would not be long before Pakistan does implode. Despite some Pakistani’s paranoid thinking a lot of countries do not want that level of chaos in the region that their implosion would result in. That would be a bad, very bad situation. A stable Pakistan not involved in any way with any terrorists for any cause is much better for the region.
Funny you should say that. 58 years earlier this is the “Text of Memorandum submitted by 14 Muslim leaders of India to Dr. Frank P. Graham, United Nations Representative 14 August, 1951”
“This merely illustrates what we have said above, that the concept of Pakistan was vague, obscure, and never clearly defined, nor its likely consequences foreseen by the Muslim League, even when some of these should have been obvious.” http://www.kashmir-information.com/LegalDocs/MuslimLeaders.html
The more things change the more they stay the same.
pseudo intellectual overload. why don’t all of you take a break from internet and read some history books
wait how did a post on political music in Pakistan turn into a discussion of terrorism, partition, all of that?
God, what an insipid piece of journalism.
I’ve had these conversations. I can imagine the backstory, the context, the rest of the interview. Too bad Adam Ellick only grabs the sound bites that back up his thesis. I agree entirely with the journalists (particularly Nadeem Peracha) and, to some extent, the musicians. Just wish we could hear more than the sound bites. Ali Azmat sounds like a fool, but he’s a musician, not a political theorist. He knows what everyone else does, what they get from the Pakistani media, and he sings out his feelings on that.
This journo is critiquing Pakistani rockers for getting political, just not in a way that makes America look good and the Taliban look bad. He misses the whole point – this is happening in context and he’s missing the context. He’s just annoyed that political protest songs aren’t being done the same way Americans would do it.
… or are they? Ellick says at one point, “Those who sing about terrorism are taking an indirect approach” – well… isn’t that what you DO when you sing? Did any of the classic folk songs of the 60s say “Vietnam?” No, they were poetic… indirect. And how can they call out the Taliban in mass market pop? If an American rapper puts out a song that went “Where were you when Bush knocked down the towers,” he’s blacklisted. It’s not gonna happen, people. You don’t openly critique the political powers that be by name in your songs if you want to keep writing songs.
No, I think there’s just a bit of bristling at the anti-American thing and the typical self-righteous deflecting of that uncomfortableness to another topic. Ellick is basically saying “How can you criticize America when you have the Taliban in your own country? Why aren’t you addressing that?” An argument similar to “Why should India have a space program when so many live in poverty?”
I have so much more I could say about this, but I’ve rambled long enough. Any thoughts?
Sameer and I are also of Muslim cultural backgrounds, but my family are Pushtun nationalists who look to the creation of Bangladesh as an inspiration.
Some in family, though horrified by the Taliban, secretly take pride in the havoc that these men are doing to the psyche of Pakistan.
Pakistan was born from partition and terrorism is addressed in the NYT article and accompanying video.
Pakistanis are constantly in denial and they blame India for everything.
The sorry state of affairs of the Muslim world cannot be blamed on India, Indian Muslims have been integral to India’s secular success.
Well, given what I’ve heard from Ali Azmat in the past, he has been a blithering idiot for quite sometime. I adore him as a performer, however I don’t take him as an authority on anything serious. As for Noori (They are actual brothers, hence the “Noori Brothers”), I agree somewhat that Talibanization is only part of the problem. There are issues like social justice that have to addressed to deal with the issue of extremism from the grass root level. However, I disagree with Ali Noor’s assertion that there are a “really small” part of the problem.
I would like to mention that the report conveniently missed out efforts by Abrar Ul Haq. He is, by far, the biggest act in the country who might have far more influence than anyone else. He has come out with a song which in no way ambiguous about what it is trying to achieve, with lines like “Jannar Saar Ke Jannat Kaadee, Bachay Maar Ke Jannat Kaadee” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hqUZpFwn54
However, unfortunately, its true that as a nation, we are in denial and it shows in some of the mainstream acts coming out of the country.
As for the Shehzad Roy video, I was in Pakistan when it came out. I remembered huge airplay for the video for atleast a month or so. I have no recollection of it being banned. Perhaps it was banned after a month or so, and if it was banned that didn’t make the news. As for the other Shehzad Roy video with the drone attack, it was from the same album as Laga Reh (it is actually the title song of the album Qismat Apnay Haath Main of which Lage Reh was the first single), and was released a couple of months after this song. It wouldn’t be surprising if he planned that video around the time he made this video, and not after his video was banned. I might be wrong, ofcourse.