Civil Society, Anyone?

Children on beach
Hawksbay, Karachi
Pakistan

Though I'm sure many of you are aware of this,
Arundhati Roy got herself in gear and headed over to Karachi to show solidarity with the Women's Action Forum for 'Women to Reclaim Public Spaces' a anti-Talibanization campaign.
While in Karachi, she spoke with a reporter from Dawn about 'Taliban' and what exactly it meant-
Arundhati Roy, writer extraordinaire, makes 'Taliban' into a semantics issue of sorts-

"I’m here to understand what they mean by this term." Roy asked in an interview with Pakistan's Dawn. "Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology?"
and then she revealed her grand plan: "I think both needs to be fought. But if it’s an ideology it has to be fought differently, while if it’s a person with a gun then it has to be fought differently. We know from the history of the war on terror that a military strategy is only making matters worse all over the world."

Here's what I think about Arundhati Roy:
The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize (this may or may not have been a shout out to you, Caitlin), was genius- but it's her views on anti-globalization, her ideas of the negative environmental and economic consequences of dams, and her extremely strong views of Kashmiri separation that really won my respect.

Side note: One of the best things that Roy has said ever, was in regard to United States going to war in Afghanistan, when Roy wrote in her famous peace, War is Peace: President George Bush said, "We're a peaceful nation." America's favorite ambassador, Tony Blair (who also holds the portfolio of Prime Minister of the UK), echoed him: "We are peaceful people." So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Here's what pisses me off: Why is it that a Keralite Christian who spent most of her life in India, has come to Karachi and said some of the most profound things about Pakistan and the War against Taliban that I've heard in a long while.

In her interview with Dawn, Arundhati Roy shares a story about a little boy who asks why women can’t be like plastic bags and banned. Roy says that the point is that "the plastic bag was made in a factory but so was the boy. He was made in a factory that is producing this kind of mind(set). (The question is) who owns that factory, who funds it? Unless we deal with that factory, dealing with the boy doesn’t help us. "

Sure, Kayani's realized the Taliban's an internal threat (finally)
Sure, the U.S. backing Nawaz Sharif means that Pakistan may return to united governing
but is killing people up in Swat Valley really going to stop the little Taliban boy from asking the kinds of question that he asked her? Probably not. When, when, when, are the Pakistani people going to mobilize to deal with the kind of factory mechanism that churns out the little boy in the Swat valley? There's the United State's War Against Terror being fought in a few regions of our country- that's for sure-
but really, isn't there a similar war that you and I can be fighting? One that attempts to educate young women and men, to provide the kinds of family planning and health education that our country may need-
Now, more than ever, the country could use the workings of a civil society- one that acts instead of the government for the welfare of our people.

Roy's interview with Dawn can be read here.