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Rafia Zakaria: The Tragedies of Other Places

Rafia Zakaria (Credit: twitter.com)

As a weekly columnist for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, I’ve become adept at writing about bombings. Pakistan suffered 652 of these last year; terrorist attacks took down everything from girls’ schools to apartment buildings and felled members of Parliament, singers, and school children—each person sentenced by coincidence to be at a given location in the moment it became a bomber’s target. Through my columns, I have offered up fumbled expressions of grief and comfort to Pakistani readers whose stores of empathy are bled daily without any promise of replenishment. I believe that these rituals of caring, made so repetitious in Pakistan by the sheer frequency of terror attacks, are crucial; in preventing the normalization of violence and senseless evil, they keep a society human.

The bombings in Boston on April 15, 2013 pose their own conundrum to those like me who are in the habit of writing about bloodier conflicts with more frequent conflagrations. There is an inherent cruelty in every terror attack—an undeniable reverberation of evil in the destruction of an ordinary moment and the forced marriage of that moment to sudden violence. Boston is no different, no more or less tragic than the bombings that have razed the marketplaces of Karachi, the school in Khost, the mosque in Karbala.

American tragedies somehow seem to occur in a more poignant version of reality… within minutes American victims are lifted from the nameless to the remembered.

And yet it seems so. Attacks in America are far more indelible in the world’s memory than attacks in any other country. There may be fewer victims and less blood, but American tragedies somehow seem to occur in a more poignant version of reality, in a way that evokes a more sympathetic response. Within minutes American victims are lifted from the nameless to the remembered; their individual tragedies and the ugly unfairness of their ends are presented in a way that cannot but cause the watching world to cry, to consider them intimates, and to stand in their bloody shoes. Death is always unexpected in America and death by a terrorist attack more so than in any other place.

It is this greater poignancy of attacks in America that begs the question of whether the world’s allocations of sympathy are determined not by the magnitude of a tragedy—the numbers dead and injured—but by the contrast between a society’s normal and the cruel aftermath of a terrorist event. It is in America that the difference between the two is the greatest; the American normal is one of a near-perfect security that is unimaginable in many places, especially in countries at war. The very popularity of the Boston Marathon could be considered an expression of just this. America is so secure and free from suffering that people have the luxury of indulging in deliberate suffering in the form of excruciating physical exertion; this suffering in turn produces well-earned exhilaration, a singular sense of physical achievement and mental fortitude. The act of running a marathon is supposed to be simple, individual—a victory of the will over the body, celebrated by all and untouched by the complicated questions of who in the world can choose to suffer and who only bears suffering.

The innocence of marathon runners and their expectations of a finish line, a well-earned victory, are markers of an America that still believes in an uncomplicated morality even while it is at war.

When terror hits the site of such faith in human fortitude, the impact is large. The innocence of marathon runners and their expectations of a finish line, a well-earned victory, are markers of an America that still believes in an uncomplicated morality even while it is at war. The runner runs, sweats, suffers, and deserves the prize; the messiness of the world has no place in that vacuum of earned achievement where victory is straightforward in a way that it can never be in actual life. The rest of the world is a more complicated place; its people are forced to digest more complicated truths whose vast gray areas rob every tragedy of the pathos available to Americans living and mourning in a universe of black and white.

 

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‘Actions not Words are Needed to Enable Women to Progress’

Tahira Abdullah (Credit: rawa.org)
What are the basic reasons for persistent poverty of Pakistani women?

Several factors contribute to exacerbate the feminisation of poverty in Pakistan. These include the increasing overall national poverty rates, of both women and men; rising inflation, food insecurity and unemployment. A female/male poverty ratio of 3:1, as acknowledged by successive military dictatorships and civilian elected governments over the past decade and a half, is shameful and totally unacceptable for a developing country like Pakistan.

Home-based, low-income, urban women workers suffer huge exploitation from middlemen, contractors and employers; but for rural agricultural women (the vast majority of women workers in Pakistan), the situation is even worse, as they do not get paid wages at all, due to being termed as ‘family helpers’ and thus sink lower into chronic poverty.

Men working in agriculture (known as mazaaras and haarees) are also exploited by the rich feudal landowners, by being either unpaid serfs/peasants/bonded labour through generations, or by being paid inadequately in kind, a fractional portion of the harvested food crop, but women peasants are not paid at all, and have no control over or access to their spouses’ wages.

Conversely, it is the women who are responsible for the food security of their immediate and extended family (husband, children, in-laws), as well as for the triple burden of work: (i) domestic household chores, (ii) economically productive agriculture, livestock, fisheries and forestry activities, (iii) reproductive functions of child-bearing and rearing. Women also suffer greater ill-health, anaemia, mal/under-nutrition, and reproductive health (RH) complications, without access to free public sector or affordable private sector RH services.

This not only increases the burden of poverty for women, but it also decreases women’s productive capacity, as well as increasing their poverty of opportunity (including lack of education, information, mobility, socio-cultural restrictive norms and other constraints). This concept was introduced by the eminent Pakistani economist Dr Mahbub ul Haq, who coined the terms Poverty of Opportunity Index (POPI), Human Development Index (HDI), Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Pakistan, regrettably, still does not fare well on any of these indices.

What practical measures do you suggest to eradicate the high incidence of poverty in women in the local context?

The lesson to be learnt from the failure of the mala fide, badly conceptualised and highly politicised Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) is that monthly charitable handouts do nothing to alleviate poverty — it was simply a meagre social protection measure to ensure votes in the next elections, and fostered dependency and beggary.

Long-term poverty eradication measures first require transfer of land to women for building women’s assets ownership in their own name, in order to increase women’s credit-worthiness and provide collateral for loans for women’s entrepreneurship.

The incoming governments (both federal and provincial) need to increase and encourage the private sector to also increase their investments in rural development, agriculture and agro-based industries, especially food crops (vs cash crops such as cotton).

Women’s and girls’ education and vocational skills training, in both rural and urban areas, needs huge investments, in order to increase women’s registration and eligibility for formal sector employment, trade union membership and labour benefits, particularly health, children’s education and social security.

It is most important that the government recognise the huge contribution women are making to the GDP, albeit invisible, unacknowledged and uncounted in national statistics, due to outmoded and unjust definitions of “labour force”, which exclude the entire agriculture sector and home-based workers from the formal, organised sector labour force.

Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is also a State Party to various UN Conventions, including several at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and, inter alia, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and thus must adhere to its binding international commitments, as well as to the fundamental rights enshrined in the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan.

It is vitally important that Pakistan ratify the ILO Convention 177 and R-198 to grant recognition and formal labour status to the millions of home-based workers (as distinct from domestic staff) in Pakistan.

It is also vitally important for the federal and provincial governments to recognise the huge numbers of de facto women-headed households, to register them and to grant them formal status, resulting in their eligibility for social security, membership of the Employees’ Old Age Benefits Institution, health insurance and other benefits available to working men registered as household heads.

Tahira Abdullah is a development worker, and peace and human rights activist

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My Last Meeting with Slain Parveen Rehman

Tribute to Parveen (Credit: blogs.tribune.com.pk)

“Did you find that religious extremism has grown in Pakistan on this trip?” asked Sheema Kirmani, sitting cross-legged in the front of the crowd, after I had finished presenting my book at a session of the Karachi Literary Festival.

“Oh yes,” I responded. “But its not just religious, but also ethnic extremism that’s taken hold of Karachi. I think that the more violence permeates society, it causes individuals to fall back on the groups that give them a sense of identity.”

Sitting in the audience was Parveen Rehman. She had promised to attend after I went to her sister, Aquila Ismail’s presentation of her book “Martyrs and Marigolds,” a couple of hours before my launch.

During Aquila’s presentation, the moderator mentioned her family was also present in the audience, I  turned to meet Parveen’s glance. She waved back to me enthusiastically, with that warm smile that I knew from back in the 80s, when I visited the Orangi Pilot Project to report for Dawn.

After her sister’s presentation, we went outside, where Parveen hugged me and we exchanged notes. “I thought you resembled Aquila,” I had said, as we parted… not knowing it was for the last time.

Barely a month later, March 13, Parveen was murdered at a roundabout in Orangi Town, Karachi. The administration has since claimed to have arrested her killer – a Tehrik-i-Taliban commander – whose party affiliates have ensconced themselves in this outskirt of Karachi, where Parveen worked for 25 years.

Unlike Malala – who rose to world fame – had the bullets missed Parveen, she might have become known to the world for her pioneering work for the voiceless poor.

There was no shortage of death threats for Parveen, who grew to become director of the OPP — begun by  late Dr Akhter Hameed Khan. Amongst her pioneering work was to take a stand against land grabbing mafias – patronized by city officials.

Under Parveen, OPP compiled a report on 1500 Sindhi villages where the inhabitants were forcibly evicted by the land mafia – – and their land divided into plots for commercial usage. Although she shunned the limelight, Parveen took a clear stand against forced eviction of indigenous Sindhi and Baloch from their native villages and worked to enable them to acquire tenant rights.

The land grabber mafia even had an eye on the prized land on which OPP was built. Only a year ago armed gun men had burst into its building with the aim of occupying it.

Parveen told an interviewer that in order to save the building they engaged a “thug,” who scared off the occupants by threatening retaliatory fire.

Despite death threats, Parveen characteristically dismissed them, saying, “At the most what will they do. Kill me?”

And kill her they did.

In losing Parveen, the world has lost a courageous woman who fought for justice under the most difficult circumstances. The next government needs to pause and reflect on the tentacles being wrapped by land grabbing mafias on prized land in urban settings — where they will not stop even if it means killing an innocent woman like Parveen.

 

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Parveen Rahman – Pakistan Loses a Courageous Woman Working for Upliftment of the Poor

Sketch of Parveen (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

KARACHI, March 15: A media-shy social worker who devoted her life to the development of the impoverished neighbourhoods across the country, was gunned down near her office in Orangi Town on Wednesday. She was 56.

Parveen Rehman was born in Dhaka in 1957. She did part of her schooling in the former East Pakistan and migrated to Karachi after the fall of Dhaka.

She received a bachelor’s of engineering in architecture from Karachi’s Dawood College of Engineering and Technology in 1981 and joined a private architect’s firm.

A few months later, she left the job and joined the Orangi Pilot Project initiated by Akhtar Hameed Khan to bring healthy changes to the lives of impoverished residents of Orangi.

“The late Akhtar persuaded her to join the OPP. We both joined the OPP in 1982 and since then we worked in close association,” said Anwer Rashid, co-director of the OPP-RTI (Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute).

Mr Rashid choked on words as he described his working relationship with Ms Rehman.

Noted town planner Arif Hasan, who is member of the OPP’s board, briefly visited Ms Rehman’s home and left early as he was deeply distressed like dozens of her friends and colleagues who had gathered at her house in Safari Boulevard in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

“She was a courageous and brave lady. She was a true pupil of Akhtar Hameed Khan who worked in an environment where most people will avoid to work,” said Mr Rashid.

Soon after the private TV networks flashed news of her death, a large number of people flocked to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where her body had been shifted.

Eyewitnesses said those who gathered in the hospital and outside her home, where she was living alone with her octogenarian mother, included dozens of residents of Orangi who were mourning her death.

“She was a great help for us. She was just like an elder sister to whom we would go whenever a problem struck us,” said a middle-aged man who identified himself as Azmat Ali.

Arif Pervez, development professional and a friend of hers, said Ms Rehman had been receiving death threats for a long time, apparently from the mafia involved in grabbing precious land on the fringes of the city.

“She had been receiving threats on her life for a long time. We had discussed this several times but every time I advised her to take care of herself, she smiled, waved her hand and said what will they do, I have to work a lot and that too in the middle of the people,” Mr Pervez said.

Ms Rehman was an ardent compiler of the record of precious lands, which were on the fringes of the city in shape of villages but were speedily vanishing into its vastness because of ever-increasing demand by thousands of families who were shifting to Karachi every year from across the country.

She said on record that around 1,500 goths (villages) had been merged into the city since 15 years. Land-grabbers subdivided them into plots and earned billions by their sale.

“She documented everything about the lands that have been grabbed. Another sin of her was to help those whose lands had been grabbed. Yet, she never hesitated to go to the area where her life was constantly under threat,” Mr Pervez said.

“Many people certainly have lost their elder sister,” he said.

Noman Ahmed of NED University said Ms Rehman’s great achievement was to get involved and empower communities in development work.

“She involved communities in development work and her cautious endeavour was to empower people and lessen their sense of deprivation. Her motto was way forward. She saw it as a defeat to terrorists by not changing her routine to help people,” Mr Ahmed said.

Besides her mother, Ms Rehman is survived by her two brothers and a sister, living abroad.

 

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Will Pakistan Survive the Dark Forces of Dogmatism?

Blasphemy accused burnt in Sita village, Sindh (Credit: Samaa tv)
Blasphemy accused burnt in Sita village, Sindh (Credit: Samaa tv)
Blasphemy accused burnt in Sita village, Sindh (Credit: Samaa tv)

What is unfolding in today’s Pakistan has marked resemblance to the dark ages of Europe. Renaissance that shaped today’s Europe was actually a triumph of pragmatism over dogmatism. Defiant souls like Martin Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and Bruno liberated European society from clutches of clergy by challenging the hegemony of Church that kept the society fettered for nearly 1,500 years. When Copernicus challenged the geo-centrism of Ptolemy with his heliocentric interpretation of universe, he actually challenged the self-proclaimed divine wisdom of Church. Likewise, when Bruno revealed the continuum of universe, Roman Inquisition charged him with blasphemy and he was burnt at stake. After a long battle rationale prevailed over the faith and modern Europe evolved from the ashes of dark ages.

Obscurantism dominating today’s Pakistan has brought it to the brink of dark ages where enlightenment is starving and logic is trampled by faith-led dictums of the sanctimonious minds. The pervasive rumble of extremism in Pakistan took its roots during the formative years of its ideological stillbirth. Quaid’s vision for the future state oscillated between a secular progressive republic and a homeland for Muslims. However, he amply demystified his thoughts during his first presidential address on 11th August 1947 when he overtly detached religion from the state business.

Long before this, in 1934, Allama Iqbal rescinded the concept of Pakistan attributed to him. In his rejoinder to Prof. Thompson, he unequivocally mentioned that he was not the protagonist of the scheme called Pakistan as he envisioned it only as a Muslim province within Indian Federation. Maulana Maududi too was ferociously against creation of Pakistan. However, he was later escorted by the army to the newly-established country where somersault of his Shariat lobby assumed custodianship of self-righteous ideology of Pakistan. It is widely believed that Liaqat Ali Khan pronounced Objective Resolution in 1949 that eventually deflected the country from Quaid’s envisioned destiny.

Myopic policies of the cold war era also coddled orthodoxy in the country. Spook of “Red Scare” kept spigot of US and UK coffers loose for ultra right elements. Ironically, liberal and secular elements were termed traitors and religious zealots became darling of the right block. The then USIS office was assigned the task to promote Islamic ideology to contain ripples of communism. It was probably not in the wildest imagination of the anti-left forcers that one day they will fall in the trench dug with their own spade.

The same streak of self-centered policies led US and West to cajole every successive dictatorial regime in Pakistan and isolate relatively progressive and liberal leadership in the country. Quintessential victim was ZA Bhutto who was detested for his democratic and liberal policies. Beleaguered Bhutto was left with no choice but to capitulate before the fury of fanatics. In a bid to appease them, he went extra miles to declare Qadianis as non-Muslim, prohibited alcohol and made Friday a public holiday. Constitution of 1973 first time required a public office holder to take oath of striving to preserve the Islamic Ideology that was the basis for the creation of Pakistan. However, all this gamut yielded no fruit to him and he was left high and dry by the champions of today’s free world.

The deadly dye was cast by Zia. He injected venom of extremism in every vein of the society. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan became a heaven-sent opportunity for his despotic expediency. He along with his coterie sealed the fate of this country and descended it into the deep mire of religiosity. These bonanza years of extremism institutionalised the lunacy of religious and sectarian bigotry, which eventually stung its proponents after a decade.

Making Pakistan a surrogate battlefield of Afghan war mutilated the social fabric of the country beyond recognition. Gen Zia even distorted Quaid’s motto of Unity, Faith and Discipline by replacing it with Iman, Taqva and Jihad-fi-sabeelillah. According to Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords”, Zia even allowed fundamentalists to preach at Pakistan Military Academy. Tablighi Jamaat representatives would deliver Friday Sermon at PMA in routine. The practice was forbidden later by Major General Asif Nawaz. Zia smacked orthodox brand of religion in various forms. From retrogressive legislation to public retribution, he exercised every technique to debilitate minds of citizens. Profusion of religious seminaries injected orthodoxy among the young generation as well, which eventually harboured Taliban in the years to follow.

According to a report of the Crisis Group, the country had only 137 madrasas in 1947. The number increased to 1,745 in 1979 and by 1988 it rose to 3,000. The momentum sustained after Zia’s death, and in 2003 official estimates put the number of madrasas at 10,430. Number of unregistered seminaries is any one’s guess.

During Afghan war, these seminaries were converted into nurseries of crusaders. Little wonder that madrasa later earned the status of jihadi training camps. This madrasa boom was obviously not without the financial and technical patronisation of foreign powers — both Islamic and secular. An article by Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, “The ABC of Jihad in Afghanistan” appeared in The Washington Post, 23 March, 2002, revealed that special text books were published in Dari and Pashtu to promote jihadi values and militant training. These books were designed by the Centre for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Over 13 million books were distributed at Afghan refugee camps and Pakistani madrasas. The jihad bequeathed this legacy to Pakistan.

Afghan war was over but the landmines of extremism remained strewn in Pakistan. Disengagement by US after the Soviet retreat was the shear mistake that America belatedly regretted.

The decades-long indoctrination of orthodoxy has now culminated into a society devoid of tolerance and abhorrence for other’s belief. The fault lines across religions and sects have now fragmented Pakistani society in all directions.

From a cowed war partner to option-less frontline fighter, Pakistani citizens have paid exorbitant price for shenanigans of obnoxious international interests, malevolent local dictators and anachronistic religiosity. The labyrinth of extremism has confounded every one. Political sagacity, social reforms and ameliorated economy can proffer solution to the conundrum. This in turn requires some breathing space for democracy in the country.

If international powers are sincerely committed to extricate this region from the millstone of extremism, democracy in Pakistan holds the key. After trying dictatorships for six decades, evolving democracy deserved a chance for couple of decades. Let people of this country decide their own destiny to make this country and region hospitable to humanity.

The writer is the chief executive of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation. nmemon@spopk.org)

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/Jan2013-weekly/nos-27-01-2013/pol1.htm#6

 

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Pakistan has highest growth rate of internet users in region

Pakistan’s growth rate of internet users is second highest in SAARC countries in accordance with its population, as it standing at 16.8 percent as compared with 28.3 percent of Maldives.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) publications quoted World Bank statistics by July 2012, Pakistan internet users showed double digit growth from past five years. The growth rate stood at 10 percent in 2007, which is now more than 16 percent.

The internet users growth rate in India is standing at 7.5 percent; 12.1 percent in Sri Lanka, 13.6 percent in Bhutan with respect to their populations, World Bank statistics said.

In Pakistan, the internet users’ growth rate is on the rise through the services of broadband internet and mobile phone services.

According to Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK), the estimated internet users have reached 25 million in the country thanks to broadband and mobile phone operators

The internet users having demand of high speed services are also increasing particularly through broadband operators exploiting various technologies such as Wimax, EvDO, FTTH.

As per industry estimate, there are more than five million broadband users in the country through connections of 2 million. The internet users mainly do connect with one IP or connections and consume internet services through sharing at home, office and educational institutions.

There are 50 internet services providers in which 10 are broadband companies exploring untapped market in big cities, making it available for people to use internet with only Rs 100.

Among 25 million internet users, more than 15 million of them avail internet services trough mobile phones thanks to cellular operators’ packages and awareness drive.

The mobile phone subscribers go online through different internet services including, EDGE, GPRS and Blackberry Internet Services (BIS).

Majority of the mobile phone subscribers use internet services for browsing, emails, Facebook and Twitter as cellular phone operators introduced different affordable packages to their subscribers. Moreover low cost handsets also facilitate a large number of people to connect online 24 hours.

The cellular phone companies have been working aggressively on the promotion of Internet services for last two years mainly for earning extra revenues besides voice calls and text messages. These companies introduced different bundle packages of Internet services in their youth brands to promote Internet services as an essential for young customers for education and entertainment purposes.

The trend of using Internet is increasing rapidly with the arrival of smartphones of different handset makers though low-cost handsets are available in the market having options of online connectivity. It was further given impetus through providing easy connectivity to users for using Facebook and Twitter.

Mobile phone companies and handset makers alike have provided easy connectivity of Facebook and Twitter Internet users that gave further impetus to Internet usage among the customers

Officials of the mobile phone companies said the Internet consumption of their subscribers varies due to different needs of individuals in their daily life. They said the customers having postpaid connection are large users of Internet services due to their business and professional demands. Besides youngsters usage of Internet is limited on mobile phone as they usually avail Internet services for social networking sites, informative webs and browsing.

The cellphone operators have created demand of Internet usage among customers through different tools like applications of education, infotainment and entertainment by their own portals.

The excessive branding and marketing campaigns of mobile phone companies are generating positive results on their business in fact creating awareness among the customers before the launch of high data service—3G technology.

The rising internet utility among the masses have increased the living standard of the people not only for communications and information purpose but for commercial means such as credit and money transactions by branchless and mobile banking.

The growth in internet users pave the way towards growth in different sector particularly the access of information and entertainment at affordable purpose but it should be controlled by the watchdog, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

In this regard, the government should install a Firewalls system to control the objectionable and indecent material on the internet as if many countries like China, UAE and KSA have done earlier.

In this way, the government can minimize the harmful impacts of internet on its users throughout the country and the online landscape will be exploited for constructive and meaningful purposes.

 

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Facebook removes Pakistani Taliban recruitment page

TTP Facebook Page (Credit: haveeru.com.mv)
TTP Facebook Page (Credit: haveeru.com.mv)
TTP Facebook Page (Credit: haveeru.com.mv)

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 12 : Facebook has taken down a page used by the Pakistani Taliban to recruit new fighters, a spokesman for the US-based social network site told AFP on Wednesday.

Earlier, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group said the Umar Media TTP page used Facebook as “a recruitment” tool.

This month, 270 users clicked a link to say they “like” the page. The account appeared to have been created in September and has just a handful of messages, written in English.

“At Facebook, we have rules that bar direct statements of hate, attacks on private individuals and groups, and the promotion of terrorism,” a Facebook statement said.

“We have a large team of professional investigators both in the US and abroad who enforce these rules. Where abusive content is posted and reported, Facebook removes it and disables accounts of those responsible.

“Whenever we become aware of possible violations of our terms, we will investigate these instances and take action if violations of our Statements of Rights and Responsibilities take place.”

In Pakistan, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP this month that the faction was “temporarily” using the page “to fulfill its requirements” before launching its own website.

The TTP mainly operates in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan, where it has links with the better-known Afghan Taliban, and during a five-year insurgency has carried out many attacks inside Pakistan.

Last month, the TTP claimed responsibility for planting a bomb under the car of a prominent Pakistani journalist and TV anchorman, Hamid Mir.

In October, members of the group shot and wounded 15-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in a failed bid to silence her campaign for girls’ education.

 

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UK Campaigners call for Nobel Prize for Malala Yousufzai

London demonstration for Malala (Credit: malala_huffingtonpost.co.uk)
London demonstration for Malala (Credit: malala_huffingtonpost.co.uk)
London demonstration for Malala (Credit: malala_huffingtonpost.co.uk)

LONDON, Nov 8: Tens of thousands of Britons called on the government on Friday to nominate Malala Yousufzai, a Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls’ education, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The 15-year-old is receiving specialist treatment in the English city of Birmingham after gunmen shot her on Oct 9 for standing up against the Taliban and openly advocating education for women.

The attack has drawn widespread international condemnation and Yousufzai has become a powerful symbol of resistance to the Taliban’s attempts to suppress women’s rights.

On Friday, a campaign led by a Pakistani-British woman urged Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior government officials to nominate Yousufzai for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Malala doesn’t just represent one young woman, she speaks out for all those who are denied an education purely on the basis of their gender,” campaign leader Shahida Choudhary said in a statement issued by global petition platform Change.org.

More than 30,000 people have signed the petition in Britain as part of a global push by women’s rights advocates to nominate her for the prize. Similar campaigns have sprung up in Canada, France and Spain.

Under the Nobel Committee’s rules, only prominent figures such as members of national assemblies and governments are able to make nominations.

Yousufzai was unconscious and fighting for her life when she was flown to Britain a month ago but the hospital in Birmingham where she is being treated says she is recovering well.

On Friday it released photographs of Yousufzai reading a book and clutching a white teddy bear, dark bruises covering her eyelids.

She appeared serious and focused on her reading, her hair covered with a bright pink-and-white scarf.

Her father and other family members have flown to Birmingham, which has a large Pakistani diaspora, to oversee her recovery. On Oct. 26 her father said his daughter would “rise again” to pursue her dreams after hospital treatment.

Her shooting was the culmination of years of campaigning that had pitted the young girl against one of Pakistan’s most ruthless Taliban commanders, Maulana Fazlullah.

Fazlullah and his men have taken over Yusufzai’s native Swat Valley and have blown up girls’ schools and publicly executed those they deem immoral. An army offensive in Swat has however forced many Taliban fighters to flee.

The call to nominate the girl comes on the eve of this Saturday’s “Global Day of Action” for Yousufzai, marking one month since her shooting.

In October, the Nobel Peace Prize went to the European Union for promoting peace and democracy.

 

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U.S. Media Elite Honor Female Pakistani Journalist for Her Courage

Zubeida Mustafa with Maria Shriver (Credit: Photogallery.indiatimes.com)
Zubeida Mustafa with Maria Shriver (Credit: Photogallery.indiatimes.com)
Zubeida Mustafa with Maria Shriver (Credit: Photogallery.indiatimes.com)

Zubeida Mustafa was the first woman to work in Pakistan’s mainstream media. That was more than 30 years ago. Today, because of Zubeida’s courage to use her voice, report on other women’s voices, and argue for hiring policies that would allow women to occupy all positions in the newsroom, life is different for women in Pakistan.

“I wanted to create space for women and I thought if there were more, it would give them strength,” says Zubeida.

Over her three-decade career, Zubeida worked through extreme political instability, media censorship, gender barriers and social upheaval as the assistant editor of Dawn, a widely-respected English-language daily newspaper in Pakistan.

In addition to becoming the first woman in Dawn’s newsroom, Zubeida became the first woman on the editorial board, where she fought to gain coverage in the paper for the burgeoning women’s movement. She advocated running stories with women’s voices in all sections instead of relegating them to a “women’s page.”

As Zubeida’s career evolved, the central theme of her work became the inequalities she witnessed in Pakistani society. She wrote on health, education and women’s empowerment. She was able to cover stories that men were not able to because they did not have the same access to women as Zubeida.

When she wrote an article on breast cancer, a group of religious conservatives raided Dawn and accused the paper of printing “obscene” content. Undeterred, Zubeida went on to write about contraception and reproductive health. She also covered the case of rape victim turned women’s advocate when other writers were afraid to mention it.

A mother of two daughters, Zubeida not only broke the the social barrier against women working, but of mothers working.

On Monday night in Los Angeles and last week in New York, Zubeida Mustafa was honored by the International Women’s Media Foundation and the U.S. media elite with the Courage in Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award. What follows is my interview with Zubeida.

Tabby Biddle: I want to talk about Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old girl who was recently shot by the Taliban for her outspoken advocacy of a girl’s right to an education. She started her blog at age 11. Is she an anomaly, or are there many girls like her who feel very strongly about having a voice in Pakistan?

Zubeida Mustafa: I think she is an exception. Malala has the support of her family, especially her father, and that really helped her. When she was campaigning, it was her father who accompanied her to many of the places that she went because she was attending seminars and meetings to speak about her experience, her love for education and how others girls should also be educated. I can say that she is rare. That is why we cherish her a lot, we appreciate whatever she did, and admire her because she is inspiring. We are happy that she is on her way to recovery and hopefully we will have more like her in the future.

TB: You were the first woman to work in Pakistan’s mainstream media. How did you break through the cultural gender barriers to get to this position?

ZM: Initially I had worked for a few years at a think tank before I joined the media. I would say that, for me, the gender barrier had been broken then because it was a major decision then to go and work in a place where there were generally all men around. I had a very good friend at the think tank. She had joined as a research officer, so we were a great support to one another. Then a few years later, I went into the newspaper. So it was not something new for me to enter a man’s world.

Of course initially I had to work hard to establish my credentials because otherwise I wasn’t taken very seriously. You see, women had been working in the media, but they were on the fringes. They were looking after women’s pages – the fashion pages, cookery, and things like that. Writing about serious issues like foreign policy was something new for a woman. I managed to make headway there because once my work was accepted the focus was more on my work than my gender. So the barriers came down.

TB: You pioneered a path for Pakistani women in journalism, beginning in the 70s, by writing about foreign policy, education, health and women’s empowerment. What is the climate like now for women journalists in Pakistan?

ZM: There are a lot more women journalists now. It is definitely a different field than when I first started. Television has helped a lot, and also electronic media. People somehow want to have women on television, whether they are anchors, newscasters or producers, but moreso when they are visible. That barrier is definitely not there. But what I would like to see more of is women at the policy-making level in the media. They are there, but we need more of them.

TB: When you were writing about issues that hadn’t been touched on before in Pakistan, like family planning, breast cancer, and abortion, were you ever afraid for your life?

ZM: No, I wasn’t afraid for my life. I would say things are more difficult in that way for men who are writing about strategic issues, terrorism, and things like that. Many of them have actually been killed because those are very sensitive issues. It was never like that for me. Actually, for me it was more about not doing something very conventional. So it was that which I had to put up with. I think somehow I didn’t care. I just wanted to do what I was doing, and I would go ahead and do it. I didn’t fear for my life. Sometimes when I wrote things, there was a strong reaction, but cultural issues don’t really create the same kind of a threat as political or strategic issues. You can be defamed, but nobody really comes and shoots you for that.

It is different these days because we have a bunch of extremists. They are using culture for their own political reasons because they want to control the country. So they bring up all these issues and make them religious or cultural and use them as an excuse to attack education in schools and women who are not adequately covered. This has always been a part of our society that we have a crust of women who are very emancipated, very highly educated, and who’ve been working in some area or another. This is very small, but it has been growing. Even now though it needs to be expanded so that women are brought into the mainstream in all professions.

TB: While the numbers of emancipated women are growing, it seems that still the large percentage of the society is gender segregated. First off, am I correct in saying this? And if so, how do you feel this affects Pakistani society from a developmental standpoint?

ZM: I think we still have a long way to go as far as women’s issues. Women should be allowed more freedom and more education. But what is happening is that there is greater awareness. I wouldn’t say it’s each and every woman because many women are still steeped in superstition and conservatism, but many of them at least want to do something. Of course they don’t have the means to do it, or the opportunities aren’t there, but at least the will is there. This is most important because I think that is what the women’s movement that started in the 80s did. Now you cannot even conceive of any political party going in for an election and not having some program for women in their manifestos or at least mentioning them. Although they don’t always do what they say, the mere fact that it is expected that they talk about some women’s issues is important.

TB: What is it like now in Pakistan in terms of women in leadership positions — in both politics and business?

ZM: It has grown, and particularly in politics. Of course I’ll mention Benazir Bhutto who became a role model for women who were in politics and who wanted to be there. There have been some ministers who have been women. Our foreign minister right now is a woman. In the provinces there are number of women in key positions. Even in places where there are very traditional societies, women have come up and are in leadership positions. It is not unusual to find women either at the top or in a very key position. So that is something that is important. I find it more important that once they are there, they open up doors for others, as I did myself. They show the way to others or provide opportunities.

TB: It sounds like things are definitely progressing, but there are still over 3 million girls out of school in Pakistan. Why is this?

ZM: First, it was wrongly believed that all men do not want to educate their girls. I think there was a time many years ago when men didn’t want to send their girls to school because they just thought that the girls are meant to stay at home and get married, so education was not required. But that was a long time ago. Now most parents want to send their girls to school. But if they are out of school it’s because the facilities are not there. I think the most important factor is that there aren’t enough schools. It’s not just having a big school in a few areas. You have to have many schools close to where the girls are because it’s hard for them to travel long distances. Girls’ security is a major factor. Sometimes the other reason girls are not in school is poverty. Men feel they cannot afford educate all the children, so the boys get entrance. Sometimes where the girls are married off early, the girls might go to school, but just for a few years. But now surveys have shown that the marriage age has gone up in Pakistan. So if the girls are out of school, I think it is partly because of lack of opportunity, partly because of poverty and partly because of culture.

TB: I read that the Pakistani government is determined to support girls’ and women’s education. Is that actually true?

ZM: I’m afraid that you’d have to ask the Pakistani government, but that is what they claim. I think they could do better.

TB: The perception is that Pakistan is very religiously conservative. Is there a progressive component to Pakistan?

ZM: One thing I can tell you is that society as a whole outside of Pakistan, and even sometimes within Pakistan, gives the impression through the media that the people generally are very narrow-minded; they are extremists; and they are ultra-religious. I really don’t believe that because I have been to many places where this is not true. Last month I was in Balochistan for a children’s literature festival and generally I found that was not the case. I would say the people are religious. I wouldn’t deny that. They believe that what they believe is between them and their God or their own community, but they would not try to impose that on everyone. Of course they may not be as emancipated and progressive as the small crust of women I talked about earlier, but they are at average and life is not difficult to live that way.

But what has happened is this impression that has been created by extremism. Extremists are armed; they are very vocal; and they create an impact. So obviously the rest of the society is not in a position to contest them because generally people are not armed in Pakistan. It’s only a few people who want to carry arms, so people are at a disadvantage with the extremists. This is what you see today as a result — the extremists are dominating.

Another thing that has come up is that at the universities and higher education institutions, there are some religious parties that are trying to get hold of students and are trying to influence them. Over there you do find some students who give you the impression of being extremely conservative with their religious views. I find that the student parties are off-shoots of the religious parties. They try to organize the students and educate them. This is one reason why I think education is so important, and that it’s important to modernize education and have a better system.

TB: How can the international community support women’s empowerment in Pakistan? And do the Pakistani women want that?

ZM: That is what I feel disappointed about. Of course I am grateful that the international community has come up in a big way and there is a lot of support for the education of girls and for women’s empowerment. But what is actually happening is that there is a lot of aid going in and it’s just making the country dependent on the donors.

What I would want is the aid to be second nature to empowering the people to be self-reliant, to creating opportunities for production and to economic opportunity. If a country increases its production in whatever areas they specialize in, it will be the best way of helping a society — rather than making them aid dependent. I feel many of the schools that have been opened in my country are actually dependent on aid. The agreement is for five years, and we do not know what will happen after that. The donors should see to it that they are making the people self-reliant and independent. Like what the Chinese say, “If a man is hungry, you can provide him fish. But teach him how to fish and he get can the fish himself.” That is what I feel should be done for women’s empowerment.

TB: If every girl and young woman in Pakistan could hear your voice, what message would you want to impart to them?

ZM: I would tell them please do whatever you can to educate yourself and educate your girls because if people are educated, many of their problems are solved. This is because they have a better understanding of the problem and they have a better understanding of how those problems get resolved. This is what I would tell each and every woman and girl in Pakistan.

The mission of the International Women’s Media Foundation is to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide as a means to further freedom of the press. The Courage in Journalism Awards are the only international awards that recognize the bravery of women journalists.

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Elite education for the masses

Brian Caffo teaches a public-health course at Johns Hopkins University that he calls a “mathematical biostatistics boot camp.” It typically draws a few dozen graduate students. Never more than 70.

This fall, Caffo was swarmed. He had 15,000 students.

They included Patrycja Jablonska in Poland, Ephraim Baron in California, Mohammad Hijazi in Lebanon and many others far from Baltimore who ordinarily would not have a chance to study at the elite Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They logged on to a Web site called Coursera and signed up. They paid nothing for it.

These students, a sliver of the more than 1.7 million who have registered with Coursera since April, reflect a surge of interest this year in free online learning that could reshape higher education. The phenomenon puts big issues on the table: the growth of tuition, the role of a professor, the definition of a student, the value of a degree and even the mission of universities.

“Massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, have caught fire in academia. They offer, at no charge to anyone with Internet access, what was until now exclusive to those who earn college admission and pay tuition. Thirty-three prominent schools, including the universities of Virginia and Maryland, have enlisted to provide classes via Coursera.

For his seven-week course — which covers advanced math and statistics in the context of public health and biomedical sciences — Caffo posts video lectures, gives quizzes and homework, and monitors a student discussion forum. On the first day, the forum lit up with greetings from around the world. Heady stuff for a 39-year-old associate professor who is accomplished in his field but hardly a global academic celebrity.

“I can’t use another word than unbelievable,” Caffo said. Then he found some more: “Crazy . . . surreal . . . heartwarming.”

For universities, the word for it is revolutionary. And higher education’s elite is in the vanguard.

In addition to for-profit Coursera, MOOC providers include a fledgling nonprofit competitor, edX, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of users to free online courses from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. On Oct. 15, the University of Texas system joined them.

“We want to dramatically increase access to learning for students worldwide while, at the same time, reinventing campus education,” said Anant Agarwal, president of edX.

A third high-traffic MOOC platform, for-profit Udacity, declares that “higher education is a basic human right.”

The courses pose questions for top universities: Are they diluting or enhancing brands built on generations of selectivity? Are they undercutting a time-tested financial model that relies on students willing to pay a high price for a degree from a prestigious institution? Or are they accelerating the onset of a democratized, globalized version of higher education?

MOOC students, for the most part, aren’t earning credit toward degrees. Educators say that before credits can be awarded, they must be assured that there are adequate systems to prevent cheating and verify student identities. But at the very least, these students can claim to have been educated by some of the world’s most prestigious universities.

“Students and families that are being asked to pony up $150,000 or $200,000 for a credential are going to start asking, ‘What’s the value of this thing?’ ” said Richard A. DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech, which is part of the Coursera venture.

In a tech-crazed culture, many developments are heralded as “disruptive” to this or that industry. Sometimes their influence fades. But MOOCs just might merit the label .

“The real question is, if you start to get very good online MOOCs, why do you need a university?” said Joseph A. Burns, dean of faculty at Cornell University. “And what does an Ivy League university bring to the table? What do you give to students that they can’t get sitting at home and eating potato chips?” The campus ideal, he said, “of a teacher and five students crowded around their feet on a sunny lawn or something like that — that’s gone.

Burns predicted that Cornell will join the MOOC movement. Some distinguished professors, he said, are fired up about the prospect of teaching 100,000 students instead of 20.

Steven Knapp, president of George Washington University, said his school will hold off for now. He worries about quality control. “It’s like teaching a stadium,” Knapp said. “You could teach a lecture course in a stadium, but how engaged would the students be sitting in the top row?”

U-Va. joined Coursera in July, a few weeks after its president, Teresa A. Sullivan, was forced to quit and then rehired. During the upheaval, Sullivan’s critics said that she was not moving fast enough to put U-Va. at the forefront of digital innovation. The university’s participation in MOOCs helped Sullivan rebut them.

Colleges have forged rapidly into online education since the 1990s. Every year, legions of tuition-paying students earn degrees online from such schools as Liberty University in Virginia, University of Maryland University College and many others.

Exactly how MOOC platforms will make money without charging tuition remains to be seen. There is talk of selling branded certificates to students who pass a course. Another idea is to provide job-placement services.

“Quite a few employers have contacted us, unsolicited, asking to hire our top students,” said Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng, a Stanford University computer scientist. He said companies seem willing to pay for recruiting help. With student consent, Ng said, Coursera has begun making introductions to a few employers.

The company also has struck a deal with Antioch University, based in Ohio, that will enable tuition-paying students to take Coursera courses for credit at that school.

Still, Ng said, Coursera has so far generated almost no revenue. It is relying on venture capital. “Right now, we are more focused on getting the product right first than in monetizing,” Ng said.

For universities, MOOCs deliver worldwide exposure now and offer the possibility of cash flow in the future. Contracts with Coursera indicate that 6 to 15 percent of gross revenue from a given course, plus an additional share of profit, would go to the partner schools. Universities are responsible for the upfront costs of producing their courses.

Educators also believe that MOOCs will yield insights about student learning that can be applied on campus. Large lecture courses might morph if students can receive more content online, freeing up class hours for them to work with professors on projects.

“We only want to do this if it’s going to result in a better learning environment for our students,” said Mary Ann Rankin, provost of U-Md., which joined Coursera in September. “There’s potential here.”

Burck Smith, chief executive of StraighterLine, which sells low-price online courses, contends that MOOCs are overhyped. He said universities that give their product away are likely to face challenges similar to those newspapers confronted when they launched open-access Web sites.

“Free content has never really been a successful business model,” Smith said.

But it is alluring. Jablonska, 26, a college biophysics instructor, read about Coursera through a Polish news outlet. “It gives me an opportunity to learn from the best,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The courses are provided by renowned universities and this allows me to compare my education to [what is] provided by them.”

Hijazi, 23, a digital-marketing consultant in Beirut, signed up for dozens of MOOCs.

“It helps you meet people from all around the world and actually gives meaning to the term ‘global classroom,’ ” Hijazi wrote, “where tens of thousands of students from all countries work together and get to know each other.”

In Silicon Valley, Baron, 52, is taking Caffo’s course with a daughter who lives in Oregon. Sometimes he listens to lectures on a plane or in a hotel.

“I can take a course on a whim and drop it if I find I don’t like it or can’t keep up,” Baron wrote. “There’s no threat of a bad grade dragging down my GPA. In fact, I really don’t care about my grades at all. ”

Giving it away

Coursera offers about 200 courses on topics from artificial intelligence to modern poetry. As of mid-October, the eight Johns Hopkins public-health courses on Coursera had drawn more than 170,000 students.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Why do you give it away for free?’ ” said Michael Klag, dean of the university’s public-health school. “The reason, of course, is it’s consistent with our mission.” Also, he said, “it does build our brand.”

It is unclear how much Coursera students actually study. Ng estimates that 40 to 60 percent of those who register in a typical course might attempt the first assignment. Perhaps 10 to 15 percent might finish all the work.

Several weeks into his course, Caffo said about half of his students had watched at least one video. About 18 percent had taken at least one quiz. Hijazi had moved on, drawn to other MOOCs on “gamification” and “securing digital democracy.”

A biostatistician whose research analyzes data related to brain disorders and diseases, Caffo spends a few hours a week on the Coursera class, recording lectures in the school’s basement and giving feedback to online discussions. The course, which requires proficiency in calculus, teaches students about probability modeling in medical sciences. Lectures, from six to 32 minutes long, cover such topics as conditional probability, random variables and confidence intervals.

Each week, his students are given a multiple-choice quiz and a homework assignment. Their work is graded instantly by computer. Students get three chances on each quiz, and they must check a box indicating that they complied with an honor code. They can view lectures as often as they like, rewinding them to absorb key points.

“What’s also great about the courses is that I can watch them on my iPhone,” Jablonska said. “So even when I’m not at home, but have a spare moment, I can watch some videos.”

Those who finish the quizzes and score 70 percent or better pass the course and receive a statement of completion, which does not convey any official Johns Hopkins grade, credit or degree. But that does not lessen the zeal of some students. “There are people who are taking it very seriously,” Caffo said. “They want all the quizzes, all the homework and a certification that comes out of it. They want the certification for their own reasons, if only to feel good that they did it.”

If credits were at stake, test security and academic integrity would become major issues. It is inherently difficult to assess the work of tens of thousands of people from around the world without rigorous identity verification.

But the challenge is not necessarily insurmountable. In June, Udacity announced a partnership with a testing company to enable students to take proctored exams at locations in 170 countries.

Far-flung connections

In humanities courses, computer-graded quizzes are much less useful. But professors can’t be expected to grade tens of thousands of papers. Coursera’s answer: peer review.

In modern and contemporary American poetry, students were asked to write a 500-word essay about an Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “I taste a liquor never brewed.” Those who submitted an essay were then asked to comment on four other essays. There weren’t any formal grades, but there was something perhaps better: vigorous discussion among thousands of people about a major 19th-century poet.

Al Filreis, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the class of 33,000 has an unexpected intimacy. Students far from the Philadelphia campus have arranged meetings in Athens, Manila and New Jersey. On Sunday mornings, he said, a “motley crew of Angelenos” convenes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“I’ve had students write to me very sincerely, ‘I went to college for four years but never had a class that made me feel more connected,’ ” Filreis said. “This course has been an excuse for small communities to gather around with a common interest in poetry all over the world. It moves me.”

In Baltimore, Caffo spent an October afternoon recording boot camp Lecture 14 in the public health school’s Studio 3. As a series of written notes appeared on the computer screen, Caffo explained how certain operations help a biostatistician analyze what appear to be skewed data.

In a sense, there was something askew about the scene itself: A professor in a sound booth, lecturing to the world. Who knew how many students would listen and how much they would learn?

“Well, thanks, troops,” Caffo said. “That was the end of the final lecture. It was a pleasure having you in class. . . . I hope you go on to do great things with this knowledge.”