Rumour and Conspiracy

Rumour and conspiracy. The dark side of the human imagination digs its claws into Pakistan’s collective consciousness like a feral cat, extracting every last lustful drop of pleasure it can squeeze out of a people living in a dreamscape. The persistent unreality hovering over the Tribal Areas and NWFP, in Darra Adam Khel and Swat, in South Waziristan, Bajaur and Orakzai, in these elemental geographies Deception’s shadow mingles with the blinding light of another fiction - Truth.

In the penumbra is where reality lies.

In that grey-zone, teenagers blow themselves up on the command of cult leaders, men of God who’ve convinced them that this is their duty. There will be no suffering in the act, they tell them: it will, rather, be the end of suffering. Press the button, they command, and with a smile worthy of any politician, promise them the Kingdom of God. Press the button, they profess with the absolute certainty of false prophets, and like a light switch flipping on, the darkness of this world will be instantly illuminated by the light of heaven. As if they've done the journey themselves. The charlatans.

This in the penumbra.

And this also: militancy is the effect. The causes are many. Poverty, illiteracy, culture and a misreading of culture; corruption – political, economic, moral. All fan the flames of a violent imagination. Pashtuns are under attack. ‘They fear us,’ say the Pashtuns. ‘The U.S. wants to destroy us.’ Follow this line of thought and you come to the inevitable conclusion that the Taliban are a tool of the U.S. They set the beast loose on Pashtun lands to sow the seeds of chaos, to disorder a tribal order to which they will now impose an order of their own.

This in the imagination.

And this also: democracy is the saviour. The light of democracy will bring clarity to these clouded people. It will bring Freedom and Equality. It will usher in an era of Enlightenment. This fiction fills the op-ed pages of western newspapers, pours out of the mouths of political pundits like rancid effluence. The voices of the people must be heard!

Truth in the imagination. Falsehood in the penumbra. So deeply intertwined have light and darkness become.

Enamoured with our own words, we close our ears to the voices that really matter. ‘We have a way,’ say the Pashtuns. ‘We have our own truth and it has served us well for centuries.’ But no one actually cares what the Pashtuns want: their land is too important in today’s geopolitical order. Too important for their own good. Better to make them docile toadies of our own vision.

The Pashtuns, however, will not be ruled. That is one lesson the penumbra teaches us: they will not have their destiny scripted for them. These are the fillips for the conspiracy theories that infect the Tribal Areas, these forays into domestication, these misdirected military interventions. To the Pashtuns, it only looks as if the Other is out to get them, again.