Tariq Ali Speaks...

Dawn, January 8, 2006
AUTHORS: Optimist of the will
By Raza Naeem

It was a cool October evening and we were waiting at Karachi airport for Pakistan’s celebrated — and notorious — prodigal son, the veteran ’60s radical, intellectual and author Tariq Ali to emerge from the unconcerned crowd of travellers on the just arrived flight from Lahore. When even after a long wait Tariq didn’t seem like coming, we joked amongst ourselves that either he had been held up by the “authorities” — a reference to his detention some years ago at Munich airport for the seemingly innocuous crime of carrying Marx’s On Suicide — or he must be busy signing copies of his latest novel, a fictionalized account of Muslim rule in the Italian city of Palermo.

Moments later, the waiting ended and Tariq appeared, a plain handbag slung onto his equally plain appearance. I introduced myself — having earlier emailed him to set up a sort of interview appointment for the day after. The minute he heard my name he said, “Oh so you are the one who emails me!” I nodded. There couldn’t have been a better introduction.

I knew Tariq was in the city for a very short while because this time he had decided to visit Jamshoro and Hyderabad to address the people there about the World Social Forum and the need for the left to unite in Pakistan. He had been in Pakistan for two weeks commenting and lecturing about the Pakistani uniformed elite’s total apathy towards the October 8 earthquake victims.

Tariq Ali’s lecture at the Sindh Museum in Hyderabad was on ‘Occupation, control, resistance and empire’ in which he made some significant observations about the state of the antiwar movement in the US, the resistance against US imperialism in Iraq and the anti-imperialist consciousness sweeping Latin America personified by the charismatic Venezuelan president and the anti-imperialist Hugo Chavez.

Tariq said that in the contemporary period the biggest war and the greatest resistance is being waged in Iraq. Commenting on the antiwar movement in Pakistan, he said that it was weak and in South Asia in general it was not any different. Social movements in Pakistan, according to him, have on the whole failed to mobilize people against the war, in the absence of which the Islamists have benefited and have a bigger following.

Tariq points out, “It is very important to mobilize the anti-imperialist current all over the world. There were horrible crimes being committed in Iraq, women are being raped and the American occupation has destabilized the whole region. In Baghdad, people will never accept the occupation. In their pre-war propaganda, the Americans used to say that the Iraqis were waiting for the former to liberate them, and that they would be garlanded with flowers and sweets would be distributed.”

On the contrary the resistance to the occupation began very quickly because some Iraqi generals had decided that it was foolish to expect anything from Saddam. According to Tariq, some 20 or 30 attacks take place every week inside the so-called safe area of Baghdad designated as the “Green zone” by the occupying troops. Since the American troops know that they cannot win this war, they plan to divide Iraq into three areas: independent Kurdistan (which would become an Israeli protectorate); Basra (to be governed by the pro-Iranian Shia majority); and central Iraq (to be ruled by former Baathists). There would be American and Israeli bases in Kurdistan. Tariq thinks that the next six months would be crucial in determining the success or failure of the American occupation.

Sharply denouncing the perspective of the mainstream media about a “sectarian and divisive” Iraq, Tariq counters that there were no sectarian conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shiites because the latter were prominent in the central committees of each of Iraq’s oldest political parties owing to their majority in the country. Such propagandas were essential to the imperial strategy of divide and rule, something which had made the Kurds think of themselves as a genuine and pure race different from the Arabs.

Tariq also said that all talk of a future attack on Iran was foolish because if the empire invaded Iran, who would control Iraq? Regarding the state of the antiwar movement in the heart of the empire, Tariq Ali said that recruitment for the armed forces had drastically reduced in the wake of the war in Iraq and more than 50 per cent of the American people were now against the war. Commenting on Palestine, Tariq Ali said that while it was true that the Israelis had left Gaza, they had left it without an airport. Nobody is allowed to enter or leave Gaza under the new arrangements. This so-called withdrawal is merely an eyewash for the international community to show that the settlers have been evicted.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan conditions are getting worse. The friends the empire needs to control Afghanistan are the very same which they bombed and drove out in the wake of 9/11 — the Taliban; and now the empire has started collaborating with the latter to control the country. Those who fought against the Soviet invasion are more than likely to rebel against an American one too. The plight of Afghan women is also worse in occupied Afghanistan.

In the latter part of his lecture, Tariq came to the question of how to resist occupation. He quoted Condoleeza Rice as saying, “Pakistan is a great model for the Muslim world”. But the truth is that US imperialism does not tolerate real democracy. This is the so-called “democratic paradox” as coined by American Cold War counter-insurgency expert turned state intellectual Samuel Huntington who says that if the masses are given too much democracy, they might elect anti-imperialist governments which would call for control over their own resources.

Describing the remarkable surge of anti-imperialist consciousness in Latin America, Tariq says that resistance was very powerful in that continent; not with arms, but against the neo-liberal economic hegemony of the US empire made possible by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The most successful example of this resistance is under Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Venezuela is rich in oil, which is a blessing for its people. The oil largesse has been used to build free schools and hospitals for the poor. According to Tariq, who is a frequent traveller to that country, the system of education now being provided in the state universities is better than the one provided in private universities in Venezuela.

Explaining the background to the coup which briefly toppled Chavez a few years ago, Tariq says that the chosen successor Pedro Carmona was a member of Venezuela’s corrupt oligarchy, “even more corrupt than Pakistan’s own Nawaz Sharif”; however the coup was beneficial to the Chavez government because it enabled the restored Chavez to replace the entire officer corps who were being paid by the CIA and the Venezuelan oligarchy, with the exception of a handful of generals who had not supported the coup. When this method proved unsuccessful, a strike of middle-class professionals was organized to disrupt the Venezuelan economy and create a sense of anger amongst the people.

This spirit of sacrifice among Chavez’s supporters — the poor — gave Chavez a lot of consolation. When Cuba sent 6,000 of its famed doctors to Venezuela for free treatment of Venezuela’s poor, the oligarchic press called them terrorists.

Tariq Ali’s lecture highlighted the importance of bringing diverse ideas, people and movements together on the platform of the World Social Forum. He believes that another world is definitely possible if it is blessed with good movements and leaders.
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Raza Naeem: What are your impressions about Pakistan’s elite, the earthquake relief efforts and the ordinary people here?

Tariq Ali: The Pakistani regime is a typical military regime with a half-hearted civilian cover, backed by corrupt networks which only function provided they are given a little share in the spoils of power.

The relief efforts are best illustrated by the fact that a country like Pakistan, which did not have a functioning social safety net in normal times, would be foolish to expect something like that to be built overnight in the wake of the earthquake.

The people of Pakistan have always deserved better leaders than what they got. Their aspirations have always been betrayed by the politicians and generals. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a real chance in 1971 when the army was thoroughly defeated and discredited, and the Islamists were on a back foot, but he lost it.

RN: There has been a lot of talk recently in the Pakistani media, backed up by diplomatic channels, about the possibility of recognizing Israel, and virtually no one in the mainstream media has actually exposed Israel for what it really is. What is your opinion?

TA: Israel is a colonial settler state which expelled thousands of Palestinian people and still continues to do so. Their army targets 10 to 18 year old boys and calls them “accidents”. The objective is really to destroy new generations of Palestinians.

As far as the issue of Pakistan recognizing Israel is concerned, it maybe a ploy to please the United States. Also it could be a move to counter the India-Israel nexus advanced by the BJP government. However, it is a shocking thing. In my opinion, Israel should only be recognized if it either totally withdraws from the pre-1967 territories and an independent Palestinian state comes into existence; or a bi-national state of Israel and Palestine is formed.

RN: Your two previous books The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon deal with the tragic histories of communism in the Muslim world. Why do you think communism failed in the Muslim world?

TA: I think the two main reasons why communism failed in the Muslim world were because of intense repression by US-backed dictatorships, and a lot of mistakes committed by the communists themselves. Even in Iraq, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) has been rebuilt but it is like any other bourgeois party, while in Indonesia the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) has not been rebuilt; and in Egypt, there is no communist party, it basically dissolved itself into Nassser’s front in the 1960s.

RN: You have frequently written about the relationship between literature and politics. What is your reaction to the award of the 2005 Nobel Literature Prize to Harold Pinter?

TA: I am very happy about it because Pinter is a fellow comrade of mine, despite the fact that this same prize was repeatedly given for political reasons throughout the Cold War.

RN: What would be your reaction were you to be given the same, maybe in 10 years time?

TA: I prefer not to think about it. I am not interested in writing for the sake of awards.

RN: In your Islam quartet so far, you have written about the glory of Muslim empires in Spain, Syria/ Palestine and Sicily/ Palermo. Do you plan to write any novel about Mughal India?

TA: No I haven’t thought about it.

RN: Any novel on Pakistan, more specifically the Pakistani left in the works?

TA: No the Pakistani left is not worth writing about.

RN: Who in your opinion are the most relevant novelists/intellectuals writing today, who should be read?

TA: Most of them are dead, but I think the Saudi novelist Abdelrahman Munif’s trilogy Cities of Salt must be read. You know he was exiled from his native Saudi Arabia and stripped of his nationality as a tribute to these novels and when he died in Syria, the Saudi ambassador to Syria requested his (Munif’s) wife if he could make an official condolence, and he was forbidden to do so by Munif’s wife. In Islam, the greatest insult is to deny a fellow Muslim participation in another Muslim’s funeral.

RN: Would there be any Pakistani names in your selection?

TA: Mohsin Hamid and Kamila Shamsie are good. I like Shamsie’s latest novel Broken Verses. I also think Nadeem Aslam’s Season of the Rainbirds is very good, but not his latest novel.

RN: Would you like your novels to be adapted for the screen and if yes, which director would you prefer? A friend of mine from Egypt would like the great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine to film your novels. What do you think about Chahine’s work?

TA: I think I would not like my novels to be adapted for screen because they would require very big budgets. I would prefer my works to be translated and read rather than filmed. Youssef Chahine is not a great film-maker, he is rather too glitzy, like Bollywood. Please don’t think that I am trying to demean him, he is a legend in his own right, but I am not comfortable with his style. I prefer directors like Bergman and de Sica.

At the end of our interview, as the airport arrived, Tariq’s anecdotes would still not stop. As we parted, Tariq as if to reply to his initial comments upon meeting me the evening earlier, shot back, “And don’t get worked up if I don’t answer your emails!” I smiled and knew that there couldn’t have been a better conclusion just as well.