Reporting Pakistan

by Meena Menon

  Samina Ali Baig: Pakistan’s first woman Everester

  In this gloomy scenario, Pakistan produced its first woman mountaineer of note, and I was happy to meet Samina Ali Baig and her brother, Mirza Ali Baig, at an event just before they went on a seven-summit tour of the world in November 2013. Some months before that, on 19 May 2013, Mirza Ali Baig had stopped 200 metres short of the summit of Mt Everest to let his sister Samina take the last few steps and become the first woman from Pakistan to climb the world’s highest mountain.

  He wanted to send a message to the world that if he could do this for his sister, others could follow suit and support women in their endeavours. The thirty-year-old Mirza was to attempt Mt Everest in 2014 as part of an Adventure Diplomacy Expedition taking on seven summits in seven continents, along with Samina. A second-year arts student in an Islamabad college, twenty-three-year-old Samina is a native of Shimshal, a remote mountain area in Upper Hunza, which has no phone, power or Internet. The country’s only professional woman mountaineer, she started climbing with her brother at the age of nineteen, inspired by stories of women mountaineers who often came to the area. ‘My family supported me in this and felt that women too had a right to explore natural resources,’ she said. In 2010, they founded a Pakistan Youth Outreach programme to get young people in schools and colleges involved in adventure sports. The Everest expedition was to mainly promote gender equality and to show the world that Pakistani women were also capable of conquering mountains.

  ‘If women can climb mountains, they are mentally and physically strong and they can do anything,’ she smiled. She said she would be keen to climb in India too if there was a chance. ‘I want to tell women to follow their passion and show the world that no mountain can bend before you.’ She was good friends with the Indian twins from Dehradun, Tashi and Nungshi Malik, who reached the summit of Mt Everest together with her.

  The seven summits in seven continents are some of the highest in the world: Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, Vinson Massif in Antarctica, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, Everest in Nepal, Denali/McKinley in the USA and Elbrus in Russia.

  Of other Malalas

  The plump, smiling face of Malala Yousafzai was always in the news and especially at the time she was a contender for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. On the day it was announced and she didn’t get it, all of Pakistan groaned with disappointment (she was only the second Pakistani after Dr Abdus Salam to be awarded the prize, in 2014, along with Kailash Satyarthi from India). On the International Day of the Girl Child, 11 October 2013, lots of young students came for an exhibition at a five-star hotel and I got a chance to interview some of them for a reaction. The girls spoke of how difficult it was for them to study and it was a signal reminder that deifying Malala was not going to resolve the abysmal situation of girls’ education in Pakistan.

  On that day, statistics given out on the education of girls were dismal. One in ten children who were not in primary school lived in Pakistan which spends under 2 per cent of its GDP on education. Salman Asif, a gender specialist with the UN, said that Pakistan fared poorly in the Global Gender Gap Index and was ranked 134 out of 135, and 113 out of 120 on the Education Development Index. With 12 million child labourers and high dropout rates from schools, he said it was a ‘snatched childhood’ for most children.

  The present government had made a commitment to raise the percentage of education expenditure to 4 per cent of the GDP. The minister of state for education, Baligh-ur-Rehman, said that while the gross enrolment rate was 92 per cent, the net enrolment rate was way below at 68 per cent. The school dropout rates are among the highest in the world in Pakistan. Only 63 per cent girls were in school while for boys it was 73 per cent. This amounted to at least 3.8 million girls and 2.9 million boys who were out of school, he said. To rectify this, $7 million from the 10-million-dollar Malala Fund would be spent on education in Pakistan.

  Many of the students felt Islamabad was a better place to study than some rural area, and demanded more schools for girls and finance for their studies. An eighth class student said it was difficult for girls to travel to school even in cities and there must be some protection of sorts.

  Don’t mess with the Lady in Black

  In a country where terrorists shut down schools in the name of Islam and go to extreme lengths to prevent girls from studying, the Burka Avenger cartoon series was a revolution of sorts. To create a burka-clad superheroine was a master stroke. Its rather modest creator, pop and rock star Aaron Haroon Rashid—simply known by his stage name Haroon—gave me a long interview on his work. It was a Friday and while I was almost late and skipped lunch as it was between interviews, I waited for half an hour and nearly gave up before he arrived, full of apology.

  Burka Avenger was launched online first, and he wasn’t prepared for the explosion. The first three days after launching the cartoon, the website got 4 million hits, and it was his presence of mind to host the site on an expensive private server that saved the day. When I met him, Burka Avenger was getting 1 million views a week, going from zero to 120,000 fans in a flash. It was after the first episode went online that people took to it in a big way. Not many had seen the launch on 29 July 2013 on Geo Tez channel. After the initial scepticism about the burka-clad woman, people realized she was a schoolteacher with a purpose. The costume was a disguise but a handful of people who were not used to superhero comics were critical. Unwilling to use a Chinese martial art for his superheroine, Haroon invented a new sport called Takht Kabaddi—takht is slate in Urdu, and Takht Kabaddi is to do with books and pens and advanced acrobatics. It draws strongly on cultural elements and local themes from the subcontinent. The characters in the cartoon have Asian or Pakistani touches—if you look at the robot Rubot, he’s got truck art on him, and Vadero Pajero is the embodiment of the corrupt politician. Haroon said he had a lot of fun inventing the characters and places in the story set in Halwapur—he liked halwa puri—and some of the characters you get familiar with are Tinda, Khamba, Baba Bandook—a very Gabbar Singh-like character—Golu the goat, and Mooli.

  The creator of Burka Avenger comes from a mixed background. His mother was an opera singer from New Zealand and father a British Pakistani. After studying for a degree in business finance in the US, he came back to form a popular band, Awaz, which became the first Pakistani group to make it to MTV Asia. Haroon had also been to Hollywood to produce music videos. All of his music has a positive message, and he said he didn’t believe in mere entertainment. He got the idea for Burka Avenger on hearing of extremists shutting down girls’ schools. He turned the stereotype of a burka-clad woman into a superheroine fighting for education, with pens and books, and showing how the pen is mightier than the sword. He had also realized that a movie would be too large an undertaking and he started with an iPhone game version of Burka Avenger in early 2011. Then he decided to make an animated backstory and once that was done, he got animators, voice-overs and music (the theme music for Burka Avenger is from the original score for the game).

  He set up the animation studio Unicorn Black in April 2012 and finished the first episode in July 2012, and in October, the Malala incident occurred. The Malala episode was purely a coincidence, he said, though this was an ongoing issue in Pakistan and one was constantly reading in the press about girls’ schools being shut down by extremists. By the time the young schoolgirl was shot at, Burka Avenger had completed six episodes. The similarity is not lost on anyone who has seen the cartoon where a school is shut in the first episode itself.

  But Haroon didn’t want to cash in on the event and waited for all thirteen episodes to be finished before it was aired publicly on TV in early 2013. One of the ideas behind Burka Avenger was to give children a positive role model. Jiya, the schoolteacher who morphs into the Burka Avenger veiled in a black cape with only her eyes visible and her fist stuck out in a straight line, is in the best traditions of a superheroine. She stands for justice, peace and education for all in her ordinary a
vatar as a teacher as well, and even without her superheroine persona, she is still fighting for women’s rights.

  The whole series was made locally with Haroon’s staff of thirty-five people who are animators, artists, designers and technicians. There is a lot of interest from people all around the world and he has received many emails from India, including inquiries regarding merchandising, as also offers from one of the largest book publishing companies from India as well as Europe. He was approached by a film agency as well as an Indian film director—they were interested in the rights for a live action movie. Hollywood, too, is keen on rights for the film.

  Haroon is keen to work on projects with Indian producers, animators, writers and musicians. He has got a number of emails from India from people who loved the show, and it’s heart-warming for him. He believes the way forward for peace is through collaboration with artists, writers, thinkers and philosophers. His dream is to work on animated projects with artistes in India.

  Houbara bustard and foreign policy

  As a wildlife enthusiast, I was horrified by the hunting of the houbara bustard every year by wealthy Arab princes and leaders. While licences to hunt were issued for ten days, there was little regulation, and I read that the Arabs often left behind their large SUVs and guns, much to the delight of the poor locals who helped in the hunting. The Arabs consider it an aphrodisiac, and also capture it to train falcons. The large number of dead birds in 2014 provoked outrage and condemnation. The big story came after I left. In August 2015, the Pakistan Supreme Court had banned the hunting of this species classified as vulnerable on the IUCN’s Red List, but the government in a bid to reverse the ban came up with an unexpected contention. The bustards—dead ones—were a cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy, probably the first bird to be so honoured, and the hunting couldn’t be stopped. The Dawn in a sarcastic editorial wrote: ‘The houbara bustard is a highly regarded bird, but perhaps it too would be surprised to learn that it is a cornerstone of Pakistani foreign policy.’12

  Indiscriminate hunting is reducing the numbers of these birds in Pakistan and Iran, which is why there have been petitions seeking to regulate this activity. But the Pakistan government has been giving its Arab friends diplomatic licence to hunt as much as they liked. The Dawn editorial minced no words: ‘A far more sensible approach would have been to submit, along with the core legal arguments, a detailed plan on how the provincial and federal governments would ensure that only limited hunting in strict compliance with licence conditions will be allowed and what fresh conservation steps will be taken to protect the migratory birds. The houbara bustard is a national treasure, not a cornerstone of foreign policy. Perhaps the PML-N needs to rethink its approach to policy, local and foreign—it increasingly appears feckless in both.’

  Then in January 2016, the Supreme Court overturned the ban, much to the dismay of conservationists. The apex court order which had one dissenting judge said: ‘Examination of the laws clearly shows that permanent ban on hunting of houbara bustard is not envisaged.’13

  In April 2014, Shireen Mazari of the PTI who, like many others, was outraged by the killing of 2100 bustards, protested against this rampant hunting. The Dawn published a report, ‘Visit of Prince Fahd bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud regarding hunting of Houbara Bustard’, written by the divisional forest officer of the Balochistan Forest and Wildlife Department, Chagai at Dalbandin, in which it was stated that a Saudi prince hunted for twenty-one days—from 11 January to 31 January 2014—and shot 1977 birds, while other members of his party hunted an additional 123 birds, bringing the total houbara bustard toll to 2100.

  Mazari in a statement said hunting of the internationally protected bird was banned in Pakistan but the federal government issued special permits to royalty from the Gulf states. Permits, which are person specific and cannot be used by anyone else, allow the holders to hunt up to 100 houbara bustards in ten days in the area allocated, excluding reserved and protected areas, she said.

  However, the prince hunted the protected birds in the reserves and protected areas, said the report of 4 February 2014. During the twenty-one-day safari, he hunted the birds for fifteen days in the reserved and protected areas, and poached birds in other areas for six days.

  She said this report is a damning exposé of the Pakistan government’s complicity in breaking its own and international laws relating to endangered species. She demanded the government end these violations of laws by the Gulf royals and ensure that laws relating to protected species are enforced. She also called for transparency in the issuing of licences for legally permitted hunting so that the houbara bustard is not made extinct simply to pander to royalty or any other hunter. Obviously, her pleas fell on deaf ears and were overtaken by making the poor bustard a morbid ambassador of good relations.

  A business card for Pakistan

  Even if I couldn’t ever visit the lovely Northern Areas, a story was possible sitting in Islamabad. I met Raffaele Del Cima who spoke about developing the Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) which is the largest protected area in Pakistan spread over 10,000 square kilometres covering four districts in the Gilgit Baltistan province. It was being promoted as the country’s most beautiful and sustainable tourist destination by a community- driven programme of conservation. About 40 per cent of the area is covered by glaciers and it has rare flora and fauna, including the snow leopard, the lynx, Marco Polo sheep and a variety of birds, as well as medicinal plants. The project worked in the villages on the boundaries of the park ‘between the earth and the sky’. It has some of the most remote and economically deprived communities living off the land at heights above 3500 metres. Most of the communities are pastoral and travelled during the long winters.

  Del Cima, the country operation manager and project director of the Pakistan and Italy government-funded project, Social, Economic and Environmental Development (SEED) for the CKNP, was keen on developing it into a destination not only for mountaineers but also for green industries. He called it a ‘unique and beautiful business card for Pakistan’. Well, I wondered if Indians would be allowed there! Friends who visited the area brought back stunning visuals of sweeping landscapes of great beauty.

  The park is spread over four of the seven districts of Gilgit Baltistan—Ghanche, Skardu, Gilgit and Hunza Nagar. With the world’s second highest mountain K2 as its centrepiece, it has some of the world’s highest peaks and largest glaciers, and attracts top mountaineers from all over the world. There are around 230 villages in the buffer zone of the park with a population of 100,000 who benefit from the forests, water, wildlife, medicinal herbs and minerals in the region.

  However, the sustainable aspect of the project took some time to establish. Agriculturists and pastoralists from the area were taken into confidence and they mapped the area as a first effort. In addition to providing irrigation, firewood and fodder supplies, introducing stall feeding to minimize predator conflict with domestic cattle which also brought in diseases in wild animals, were other aspects of the programme.

  Villages are preventing wildlife and human as well as domestic animal conflict, and also learning the ropes of management. The CKNP authorities are also working closely with communities as partners, and local people are part of the park management as well. By caring for the community which has poor health and water facilities—the area has the highest infant mortality rate in Pakistan at 112 per 1000 live births, and deaths due to poor water quality—the project aims to make a critical difference to the region.

  Now, with Italian help, the Karakoram International University is focusing on subjects related to mountaineering, and providing services and support. The project has also established health clinics for the scattered community. It also wants to create a mining sector for semi-precious stones with processing, cutting and polishing. The area is known for its ancient tradition of woodcraft. The International Mountain Research Centre will create a task force as part of the project in which the PhD students of the Karakoram Internatio
nal University will play a pivotal role. Issues related to the park will be top priority and a water-testing facility with a water laboratory and a map showing the quality of water are under preparation.

  Another area of focus is cleaning up the glaciers. There is a special campaign for tourism and the first step is to map historical sites and provide GIS maps, apart from setting some protocol for research efforts in the area. There are other trendsetting examples from the region.

  The Karakoram International University has the largest solar power system in Gilgit Baltistan as a result of which it has power even in winter. The project also aims to resurrect the image of the area, especially after the brutal killing of eleven mountaineers on 22 June 2013 near the Nanga Parbat base camp which sent waves of terror in the otherwise peaceful region. After my story on the park was published in The Hindu, I was encouraged to hear that some readers thought they learnt about an aspect of Pakistan that was not much written about. It’s a pity that this beautiful region is shut off for Indians for the most part, like the rest of the country, and I could only travel vicariously through photographs or by reading accounts of mountaineering exploits and travelogues.

  9

  Bilateral Ties

  I was posted to Pakistan in 2013 soon after the second successive General Elections which was won by the PMLN. That year, there was a series of events provoking outrage in India, starting with the beheading of an Indian soldier in January 2013, and in August, five soldiers were killed on the LoC at a border outpost. First reports said these men were terrorists, and later Defence Minister A.K. Antony said they were dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms, provoking counter outrage from Pakistan which denied it. The national security adviser to PM Nawaz Sharif, Sartaj Aziz, said in Parliament that in the 2013 firing on the LoC, eleven Pakistani lives were lost and an army captain, three soldiers and three civilians were killed, while thirty-one people were injured. Apart from a joint investigation, Pakistan even suggested that the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) be called in, but this was not accepted by India. Military sources in Pakistan always maintain that the Indian firing on the LoC is unprovoked. India has consistently refused to have UNMOGIP investigate the LoC incidents.