brrrrrrrrrrr
winter is here!!!

Children of Guest Workers - published in 'The Friday Times'

On the eleventh day of rioting in France the trouble spread to Berlin and five cars were torched in Moabit, a working class neighbourhood in northwest Berlin. The working class immigrant districts of Vedding, Moabit and New Cologne were put on high alert and security was beefed up. As I made my way home travelling on the U-Bahn, Berlin’s underground metro, I noticed dogs and security personnel in every train carriage, on the platforms, on the street, giving every person who looked like an immigrant a long and hard look.

I visited the working class neighbourhood of New Cologne a week ago to meet a Turkish friend who had been living there for some time.

“I was born here, I went to school here, I speak German better than I speak Turkish, I have been living here for thirty years now and I still don’t have the citizenship. My passport is still Turkish and my identity is still stated as ‘child of a guest worker’”

The hordes of youths that stand around the street corners and outside shops all seem to be not too worried about life. They seem to have a lot of time and not much to do with it. Most are unemployed and it seems that the four year slump in the German economy has hurt them most. Immigrants are usually the first to get fired when job cuts are enforced and the last to get hired. As the number of unemployed hits a post world war two high of five million the German government is in a state of disarray. The outgoing Social Democratic Party has had to come into an unholy alliance with the conservative Christian Democratic Union, which was its primary opponent during the election. This development does not help the immigrants cause because policies will now be much tougher to get approved and implement because of the ideologically split parliament.

Funda Erel, like countless other Turks represents the first and second generation Turkish immigrants and she is bitter about her legal status as the child of a guest worker. In the 1960’s when Germany experienced post war economic boom and the well being of the population was significantly raised there was a severe shortage of people willing to do small jobs. This meant that the average ethnic German was much better off than ever before and was unwilling to do jobs which concerned themselves with municipal operations, cleaning and other low wage occupations. A request was sent by the German government for Labour and turkey responded by sending multitudes of people. Alongside came the famed Turkish fast food-Doners and related businesses and a thriving Turkish community came into being. Identity and cultural ties remained strong with Turkey and Turks chose to live in neighbourhoods which were habited by other immigrants. As time went on North African and Middle Eastern immigrants found haven in these neighbourhoods and this is how the districts of Vedding, New Cologne and Moabit became to be best recognized.

The multitudes that were granted visas for work in Turkey were considered Turkish nationals and were given residence permits which specified their legal status as ‘guest workers’ and the status of their offspring as ‘children of guest workers’. After three decades many are still ‘children on guest workers’. This is the root of the problem.

There exists a strong resentment amongst the immigrant youth against the German system and it appears that the system has turned its back on them. Various integration exercises such as the ridiculous efforts enacted in the UK have been emulated in Germany to similarly disappointing results. The general complaint is that Turks have not integrated into Germany and they shouldn’t really be here, and that there is no ‘social cohesion’ in immigrant areas. Most Germans wouldn’t live in these areas if they could help it. Integration is a two way process and I see a highly polarised society. There does not seem to be a common ground for now as the immigrant youth is seething from years of unemployment and a racism that has not only been experienced on the street but is institutionalised to an extent in the law. Legislation pertaining to security and terrorism is targeted at young Muslim males and that has not been a pleasant experience for many.

Mustafa Gokce works at a Doner Kabab outlet in New Cologne and related that “one day plainclothes police came knocking at my door and wanted to know why I was receiving calls from Afghanistan!” It turned out that Mustafa’s cousin was serving in Afghanistan with the International Security Force and would occasionally call to kill the long hours of idleness at the base in Kabul. Legal sanctioning of measures like phone tapping, interrogation, identity paper spot-checks and computer aided profiling has not won the cause of social cohesion any points at all.

German society is not bursting at the seams yet as France has already begun. There is not much of political or religious agenda behind the immigrants. Mostly they spend their time bickering wit each other and lack a coherent agenda. There are individuals like Hassan Al-Khatib who is a first generation Arab immigrant running a legal advisory service for immigrants. These individual devote the better part of their day dealing with family matters, issues that girls have to face when they experience a sharply dichotomised social structure, youths breaking up into fights with each other, youths resorting to crime, dealing with organized crime and its hold on the immigrant population and representing ‘children of guest workers’ into getting German citizenship rights.

Walking through the district of Wedding at night, I see signs of simmering anger, bitterness and spite against a system that alienates its own. Only a handful of cars have been torched. These immigrants cannot reconstruct their lives back home with ease any longer. It is perhaps only rational for them to stay put where they have worked for decades and contributed to society. As the ethnic German population continues to fall and as economic recovery is expected their will be jobs at some point in the future. Germany along with the rest of Western Europe will need more immigrants to fill in roles and current policies of exclusion will cause only further polarisation. Germany is only simmering but if conditions do not change here, it not tough to imagine a bursting at the seams.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner - published in The Friday Times

“Ok so if you make interesting then I make interesting and then you calling in the morning and we talking of renting”

“Danke, danke” and I politely exited from that queer apartment which had everything draped in fabric, including the kitchen which was carpeted. I half imagined the bathtub to have velvet lining. Shuddering while I thought of the creepy apartment and the lady I made my way through the subway system known as the U-Bahn to where the next apartment was situated. I felt the creeps as I thought of the lady with her strange pink outfit and all her hair thrown on to one side of her head and I hoped that the next apartment would have someone sane in it.

The meeting went extremely well with Gunther except the ending soured everything. Just as I was about to seal the deal as he lowered the rent, a big fat, half lion and half cat sauntered into the room.

‘Oh yez, and you must love ze cat, she is our third roommate’

‘Well…..I guess….alright I will tolerate the cat, as long as it doesn’t get on my bed….’ I replied thinking how averse I was to pets in the house.

‘No, no. you must love ze cat. It is our third roommate and you must love it’

‘Well….. I can,t love it but I will tolerate it! I really don’t see why I must love the cat!’

‘No no, you must love ze cat because the cat loves you’

I let it rest at that and gave up for the day. Someone had mentioned that since the wall came down in 1989 the property market crashed because of the large number of East Berlin flats. This has effectively made the cheapest capital in Europe enabling all sorts of hippies, students, anarchists, backpackers to live in the city for extended periods of time. This in turn has lent a very relaxed, tolerant and alternative identity to the multiple centres of the city. Mitte, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg are four such alternative districts.

Such were my first few encounters while apartment hunting in Berlin. I gave up soon after in favour of student dormitories which are far less problematic and more convenient. So as soon as I settled and had registered for the courses that I was taking I decided to hit the city and enlisted the support of my faithful local German colleagues. They suggested a soccer game would be a welcoming prelude to German culture and I agreed. So a game between Schalke, a German team and AC Milan was selected and we made our way over to the stadium en masse the next day. Soccer crazy German fans were decked in their full colours as they fanatically supported their teams. I immediately found an affiliation to the German team and shouted myself hoarse in their favour as well. It is interesting to see how nationalist fervour and spirit is associated with sporting teams and how similar the patterns were to Pakistani crowds supporting the cricket team.

After the game ended in a tie it was decided that since AC Milan was a top class team and Schalke tying with them was an honor and worthy of celebration. Therefore it was decided to celebrate at a café for a few hours. We went to a trendy alternative district of Berlin called Rosenthaler Strasse which essentially is a street lined by café and roadside eateries for a couple of kilometres. We chose a café with a Mexican theme run by Bangladeshi’s and planted ourselves there for a few hours.

‘Now what is a foreigner doing in Berlin tonight!’

Exclaimed an old man from the street. Racism was something I had prepared myself for and was used to as well while on other expeditions in other countries. This old man was harmless when compared to the militant neo-Nazi outfits I had a couple of encounters with in Moscow. The old man has probably been stung hard by the wall coming down and the loss in social security and was quite insistent on finding out what I, a brown skinned individual, was doing in Berlin.

‘I wonder what is a foreigner doing in Berlin tonight?’ he insisted.

‘And I wonder what an East Berliner is doing in the western part of town tonight!’ Cried out a stranger in my defence from a table behind ours.

The events of the evening had pretty much summed up the sentiments of the German nation. The re-unification was just as precarious a process as painful a process the division turned out to be. The recent elections in Germany saw the vote bank split down the middle and the division has never been so stark in Germany since the Unification. It is a common joke in Berlin these days that when the wall was up they wanted to tear it down so brother could meet brother. When the wall finally did come down and the East Berliners invaded West Berlin and the rest of the east moved west emptying out East German cities, west Germans cried out, ‘put the wall back up!’

Later that evening the foreigners in the contingent decided that we must spend three euros and take a ride in a Mercedez Benz taxi cab to see what it feels like. A car that is primarily a status symbol and is owned only by the elites in almost all developing countries plies the roads of Berlin as a taxi.

It had only been a few days in this bizarre city. It is quite remarkable because it has so much diversity and unlike many other cities has at least four alternative down-town districts. Berlin is undergoing a transformation and is the upcoming symbol of not only a unified Germany but a potentially larger and more integrated EU. I was looking forward to being apart of this changing city for the next two years already. More than that I was looking forward to seeing the Francisco Goya exhibition that was visiting town for a week and in honour of which the Altes museum had decided to remain open till three at night over the weekend! Untill the latest reports were filed on the web the waiting time in the queue outside was 5 hours.

Ashiana-e-Ali

The last time I saw her was when her husband had passed away and her son was one year old. She must have been approaching fifty. Ali was adopted a year earlier and Shehzaad sahib had lovingly placed a plaque outside their house. ‘Ashiana-e-Ali’.

‘You won’t have any problems when I am gone’ he said to her. And Ali will be fine.

They had desperately wanted a child and as Shehzaad sahib approached retirement they decided that they possibly couldn’t wait any longer. And one day, Ali came into their lives.

Shehzaad sahib died suddenly and before one knew it she was facing a lawsuit from her brother in law who laid claim to Shehzad sahib’s property. ‘Ashiana-e-Ali’. The brother in law was murdered by his servants who learnt of a stash of a large sum of money in the house. They tied him up and strangled him to death. Soon after wards his death Shehzaad’s brother in law decided that it was his turn and took on the case and pursued it. She had remarried again to gain protection.

‘This society is going to be the end of me’ she had said before she decided to remarry. And then after a few years he died. He wasn’t exceptionally good to her but he wasn’t bad to her either. He was the sanction she needed in order to live in dignity at over fifty years of age.

Seven years later she found herself counting crockery, and pulling out sari’s that her mother in law gifted her decades ago. Mohsin bhai wanted an account of all her wealth and wanted it split down the Islamic way in the land of the pure. The law of the land does not protect the widows and orphans so why should Mohsin sahib stand on the sidelines? Mohsin sahib doggedly pursued the case and finally got his way. She had remarried and she was a woman who had failed to produce a biological heir. There fore she deserved to have an inventory drawn up of everything she ever owned and Mohsin bhai deserved to take ¾ of all. Mohsin Bhai left a fourth for Ali and herself to live off for the rest of their days. What a gracious man Mohsin Bhai is living in a house in the posh area of the posh capital of the land of the pure i.e. Pakistan. What a magnanimous man he is, owning more property in posh central and coming after her house.

Her house. It is all she has. It is absolutely all she has. Ever since her husband’s pension stopped coming five years ago, ever since Shehzaad sahib died, ever through her second marriage and its end it is all she ever had. Shehzaad sahib saved his entire life. Penny by penny was put together to purchase the house. And ever since she never had enough money to get it whitewashed even once. The walls were grey, the doors grey and cobweb infested and Mohsin Bhai strutted about inspecting the goods which would add to his wealth.

Mohsin bhai retired from the military service many years ago with the rank of Colonel. He must be approaching seventy now but what a spirited man I thought. Still going strong. The will to live, to accumulate wealth. For his three young robust sons I bet, while Ali has to live off lentils. How I long to see him collapse with age and disease and then watch those robust sons of his tear him apart for his wealth. How I long to be a servant in his house, and then one night, tie him up and stare into the terror of his eyes as he would struggle for his last gasps of air. How I would love to be believer and end up watching him burn for an eternity.

I think of her. I grew up in the same neighborhood as they did. They spent the better part of their lives putting pennies together so one day they could have their own home,have a son and drive a car. He died shortly after his house, his car and his son were all there with him. He had promised she would be fine. It was all in her name. She was nominated. But that wasn’t enough for his brother in law who was brutally murdered afterwards. It certainly wasn’t enough for Mohsin bhai who was a believing and law abiding citizen of the land. The Islamic legal code of the land of the pure once again fulfills itself and throws a widow and an orphan out on the street. Mohsin bhai in the meanwhile can contemplate how much he will be making off it and can live a life of dignity in his posh house.

All I could do was think of a place where I could go and bawl my eyes out

Iran Iran

The recent landslide victory in Iran is the latest high profile story to hit the international political scene. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, driving out the much hyped Rafsanjani turned out to be embarrassing for the western media channels, all of which made Rafsanjani out to be some sort of balancing act that the rest of the world needed in order to co-exist peacefully and free from a potential nuclear conflict. It is debatable how much Rafsanjani would have been able to influence the Shura council in pleasing the west but the Americans were certainly convinced of his abilities.

The real issue here is the fact that more than 60% of Iranians turned up to vote and treated the elections very seriously and the fact that they brought Ahmedinejad to power should also be treated very seriously. The Iranian nation historically has proved to be a strongly nationalist entity and their drawn out war with Iraq, the revolution and dealing with a hostile and aggressive America poised at their frontier is a discomforting thought for most Iranians. Therefore, it should not appear surprising that Iranians are moving towards a harder shelled leader who will take a stand against the US. It should never be perceived that Iran would be as easy a walk in the park as Iraq was. The initial thrust of the US blitzkrieg would meet with much greater resistance and the ‘insurgency’ to follow would be like something never seen by the Americans before. The real Vietnam lies northeast of Babylon.

With both its hands tied up in Iraq, the US is highly unlikely to mount a campaign in Iran although over the past couple of years the US has made several attempts. CIA hand was suspected in the voting station bombings in the south west of Iran as well as the Tehran students’ rebellion a couple of years ago. Universities in Iran have been the focal point of societal change and the revolution gained impetus from campuses as well. In 2002 students in Tehran hit the streets and immediately received unprecedented support by the US and western media. Wide media coverage and kissing up to the students didn’t really pay off and the US was told off and asked not to meddle in the affairs of the students. What really bothered the American’s was that this was not the government telling them off but the students didn’t appreciate US involvement. It takes a little more than McDonalds, MTV culture and ‘land of opportunity’ propaganda to woo Iranian students who are socially and politically very aware of their country and the world they inhabit. The US is myopic in its dealings with Iran and must understand that the Islamist rule the country sternly and harshly at times but they still have had a landslide mandate since the revolution and two days ago they showed it yet again.

Western corporate media and the US would have the world think that the major issue of the current elections has been ‘rigging’. It is highly unlikely that such highly publicized elections were rigged. Given the levels of public awareness and political activity amongst Iranians had the elections been rigged, the western media would not have missed even a two man protest and made it out to be thousands protesting, just as they manipulated camera footage in Venezuela. Iranians didn’t even give western media that much of space to spin webs in. The main issue surrounding the current election has been Iran attempt in acquiring nuclear arms and in finding strategic partners in the region. India has been a willing partner in the situation where it is surrounded by the US from all sides. Israel has also had a field day since the ‘war of terror’ as it has managed to get after top leadership of resistance groups. Iran finds itself more and more suffocated and finds no alternative but to brace itself for any eventuality by acquiring nuclear weapons, to strike alliances where ever possible such as with India and to pick a fighter of the revolution, one who played a pivotal role in occupying the US embassy in 1979, as the next president.

On the diplomatic front it has scored quite well. It has managed to step out of the firing line by involving the EU in the nuclear issue. Ever since Russia politely removed itself from the equation, the EU has filled the vacuum and its involvement has ensured that they US is kept at Bay.

These are tough times for Iran. Its national security is at risk and it cannot but make certain that the insurgency in Iraq does not subside. Its only guarantee for survival is the further entrenchment of the US in the Iraqi quagmire. With two of its greatest enemies, Israel and America, parked next door, Iran is warming up to some grim times ahead with Ahmedinejad in the driving seat.

The State Strikes Back - followup on the PTCL workers union strike

Many expected this to take a bit of time but the State pulled a surprise this past Saturday. The Rangers moved in to occupy all PTCL installations in the country and the Army signals core moved in to take over operations so that the workers could no longer disrupt lines of communication.

The protests that had ended with so much promise a week earlier and had the potential of churning out something substantive for the direction the economic policies of Pakistan are headed ended in violent suppression. Hundreds of union leaders and members have had to go underground, hundreds more have been arrested, tens have been fired from their jobs, the press has even filed a news item about a 15 year old boy that has been picked up and detained by the security agencies. Intelligence agencies are being kept busy by harassing families of employees driving many more underground. The army seems to have come into its own now as further suppression is on the cards over the coming days.

The aggression and blatant suppression of a peaceful, democratic protest movement, which was lead by thousands of concerned workers, supported by hundreds of thousands of others from all over the country, has been denied its fundamental right to protest. The Union can thank its lucky stars that this is not Uzbekistan but Pakistan is headed towards that model since the military does have the blessings of the US. If enough dissent is shown in this country, the military will not hesitate to bare its fangs.

The Union is now deeply embroiled in the confrontational stage of the conflict and violence has also been introduced into the equation by the Pakistan army and so called democratic and freedom loving neo-liberals of Pakistan. A large umbrella of concerned organizations and unions has been formed as a group, which is going to combat the drive to privatization. Some of these organizations who have links and with international donor agencies, which already espouse the neo-liberal agenda, so one cannot be certain of the extent and honesty of support. Although the union is in dire need of support I think that they had better not look for support beyond other workers Unions and stick it out on their own. The sooner they get politicized the better. Radicalization of this union is no longer an option and seems like more of a certainty in the upcoming months. I see the survival of workers rights and livelihoods in radicalization, especially since the military has cut the ribbon on this race.

All said about the rude shock that the Union has suffered it is time to get its act together. It is serious about its objectives and we already know that it is organized enough to take on the state in this case. The sooner the debate is brought into the macro perspective and the workers wage the war not only on the PTCL front but on the Nationalization-Privatization front, the better their chances will be of success.

Many critics of a national economy would like to enforce privatization as solution to the economic ills of Pakistan. However I maintain that horror stories associated with neo-liberal privatization are far too many. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the neo-liberals received a free hand to do as they pleased in the world and did exactly that. The best example is the US ‘backyard’ of Latin America. From 1991-2002 all countries were subject to fanatical neo-liberal market reforms and by 2002 countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile hit the world headlines as classic representatives of failed economies. Over the past couple of years leftist governments have swept the continent and nationalizing the key industries in their respective countries has brought these countries back on track. For instance, Chavez has performed a miracle by eradicating illiteracy in his country with a national economy in matter of a few years.

It is saddening to note that here, the privatisation is preached as gospel and dissidence is subject to violent oppression. The sooner we flip the coin and examine both sides of it, will a way to economic progress be found. What the government/military is up to of late is all a sham.

Strike One

Something out of the ordinary has happened over the past 3 weeks. The PTCL workers Union has pulled off a successful strike and has managed to get the privatization of the company postponed indefinitely. It is by no means a minute task and is a monumental accomplishment as far as rights based movements are concerned in Pakistan. The spirit of this resistance however has not yet donned the cloak of a resistance movement per se and if it is to sustain itself over a period of time, it must do exactly that.

On Saturday I got out of bed and walked to the front door to get the papers and the news about the strike was on the cover page. I have not smiled the paper like this in years. ‘Finally’, I thought to myself. Finally someone in this country has stood up in the face of oppression and waged a struggle for their rights and forced the oppressor to back down. Finally someone in this country has stood up for an ideal they believe in, and in an unflinching manner, faced the music till the end. And in this case it ended with a euphoric march outside PTCL headquarters in Islamabad and in garlands of flowers for the Union negotiators.

The Union leaders must be lauded for adopting non-violence and not compromising on their ideals. Some may say that compromise is the synergetic way to go, but the struggle would have gone home if ideals were compromised on.

The battle has surely been won but the war is still on. PTCL privatization was something, which the State has been banking on for years and in my opinion a significant reason for the Union’s success was that they took the State by surprise. No one anticipated that the workers could launch such a spirited offensive. A workers union activity on this scale has not been witnessed in decades. Now comes the real test.

Harassment by the intelligence agencies and use of violence by the Rangers id not bear the desired results. The State will get smarter and already should be well on their way to breaking the unity of the Union. If the WAPDA and other Unions in the country are supporting this movement there should be good chance that the union will continue to make its presence felt. It must continue to do that and it must figure out ways to keep money out of the equation. The ideal has proved to be strong to this point but that is because the State was taken unawares. They will try every trick in the book and will go all-out to infiltrate the Union. It remains to be seen whether the Union will hold its ground.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if PTCL began showing shrinking profits. So far a big criticism of the corporation has been its health. It’s a financially healthy organization, which employs over 60,000 employees and yet manages to show annual profits up to Dollars 30 million. What logic could possibly work in selling the idea of privatization? Parts of WAPDA were sold off into entities like KESCO, IESCO, MESCO, and LESCO etc but the problems that plagued WAPDA now plague these organizations. Instead of finding ways to making performance better in the organization, the solution that we have adopted is to cut off the ailing organization into pieces and hope that they will function well as smaller entities. Time usually tells, and it tells us that this privatization may not be the way out. Why is the idea of privatization being preached as gospel when it’s not proving to be all that it promised to be?

The debate is essentially between Privatization and Nationalization. The debate is also between profiteering and performing. I think that when looking at large state run corporations its more important to look at how many people are provided livelihoods, how many people are serviced and how many families survive off the corporation rather than whether the corporation is profiteering or not. In the case of PTCL, I think its criminal of the state to even think of disbanding an organization that supports tens of thousands of families, feeds hundreds of thousands of mouths and at the same time actually makes supernormal profits.