A tribute to Ehsan Yarshater

A great tribute to Ehsan Yarshater has appeared in the New York Times today. It is refreshing to see that a popular news source would celebrate the life-absorbing project of a serious and dedicated scholar. Patricia Cohen, the author, has recognized not only the significance of Yarshater’s project – to produce a comprehensive Encyclopedia of Iran – but also the example that he provides of what a life of scholarly commitment consists of. I have never met Yarshater but I have been aware of his work, and have already been mining the Encyclopedia for nuggets available nowhere else. It is worth remembering that for Yarshater “Iran” can include a wide swath of territory, depending on the time, as Persians have had an influence on affairs in virtually all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Ganges and from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean. This is truly a grand project.
In some university settings professors are obliged to think primarily about getting published early and often in order to gain tenure, a practice that tends to force the grand projects into a distant future. Yarshater has demonstrated that a major enterprise like his, spanning many years, can bring forth a distinctive scholarly resource that will be appreciated for decades. Thanks to the work of Ms. Cohen we are reminded that a few great visionaries in the scholarly world still exist. RLC

New York Times August 12, 2011
A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran
By PATRICIA COHEN
Ralph Ellison wrote for 40 years without finishing his novel “Juneteenth.” Antoni Gaudí labored 43 years on the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona, but construction continues today. And in the annals of grand quixotica, Ehsan Yarshater also deserves a prominent chapter.
At 53, he embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. At 75, he started looking for a successor. He didn’t find one so he kept going himself. Now he’s 91. He’s up to “K.”
“My mission is to finish the encyclopedia,” he said recently from his office at Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies. He knows he won’t be able to do it personally, especially since the task keeps expanding as progress is made. There are topics to be added and entries to be updated. So Mr. Yarshater has tried to make sure the work will continue by establishing a private foundation with a $12 million endowment and finally choosing three scholars to replace him as general editor.
The sheer ambition of Mr. Yarshater’s vision is daunting. With money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia.
“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, which briefly summarizes existing knowledge, Mr. Yarshater’s work, Encyclopedia Iranica, is producing original scholarship. “Most of the articles require research,” said Mr. Banuazizi, because they are topics no one has studied in much depth.
Mr. Yarshater has raised the bar further. “Our aim is that for each subject,” he said, “we should find the best person in the entire world.” With that in mind, he has been searching two and a half years for an expert to write about Sirjan and Rafsanjan, townships in the south of Iran.
Mr. Yarshater has not been back to Iran in 32 years, ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and established an Islamic republic in 1979. “The encyclopedia’s impartiality does not please the current Persian government,” Mr. Yarshater said in a low, breathy voice. A troublesome tremor that started in his hand several years ago has moved to his knees and vocal cords, slowing him down and compelling him to use an assistant. But otherwise he feels healthy. “My immune system is excellent,” he boasted.
For years Mr. Yarshater’s routine was to work late into the night, coming home only when his wife walked down the hallway from their apartment to the Iranian center to fetch him. “I don’t know many wives who would tolerate that,” he said appreciatively. (She died in 1999; the couple had no children.)
“I’ve seen him work 12 hours without a break,” said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, who has known Mr. Yarshater for more than 40 years. He remembers a visit when Mr. Yarshater stayed up until 3 a.m. editing. Three hours later, he was in the shower, getting ready to return to work.
Mr. Yarshater expects others to have equal enthusiasm for the task. It took him 17 years to choose his replacements, rejecting one potential successor when he concluded that the man was “too concerned about the number of holidays he could take and the number of hours he would work.”
Now Mr. Yarshater works only until 9 p.m., staying long after his colleagues have turned off their lights. When he returns home, he indulges in his latest hobby: learning Russian.
The 1,480 contributors from around the world who, so far, have composed 6,500 entries are familiar with Mr. Yarshater’s relentlessness. “By hook or by crook, he gets you to do what he wants you to do,” Mr. Karimi-Hakkak said. (Eight hundred entries out of alphabetical order are posted in an online version.)
. . .
[For a link to the source article click on the title above.]

A lesson of Salman Taseer's Murder: Authentic belief is too dangerous to be borne

Taseer's murder was merely one episode in a familiar pattern of minority abuse in Pakistan. There have been many attacks on Shias and Ahmedis and Sufi shrines in Pakistan, but in this case the attack was implicitly against Christians. Taseer's mistake was to stand up for a helpless Christian woman. Aasia Bibi has been accused, not convicted, of insulting Muhammad, a crime considered worthy of death according to Pakistan's blasphemy law. As a Christian she belongs to a community that in Pakistan is small and very poor.

But Taseer's murder will affect the country at large as well as the Christian community, which of course has reason to be terrified. The murder will cost the ordinary citizens of the country plenty, for now no one will dare to say what they truly believe. Fear reigns.

For many Pakistanis the killing was in fact no crime. The religious establishment seems to consider Taseer's activities and declarations in support of Aasia Bibi worthy of death even without a trial. They have transformed Taseer's murderer into a hero. According to Reuters [1/5/2011]

Five hundred moderate Pakistani religious scholars have warned that anyone who expresses grief over the assassination of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, who opposed the country’s blasphemy law, could suffer the same fate.

A threat against public grieving, a warning against authentic outrage, by "moderate" religious scholars.

The breadth of support for killing Taseer extended even to his other guards, who were aware of Qadri's plans to kill him and had agreed in advance not to stop him as he pumped more than two dozen bullets into Taseer's body.

The viewpoint that Christians are a threat to society -- which was implicitly challenged by Taseer's defense of Aasia Bibi -- is familiar in neighboring countries. In the last few weeks a number of Afghan Christians have been put in prison on spurious grounds. One person in Mazar-i Sharif has been warned to recant his faith or otherwise be condemned to death. Others in Kabul await a similar verdict. Likewise in Iran Christians have in the last few weeks been rooted out of their homes at night and carried off to prison without explicit charges. Some have been beaten [according to sources close to their families -- but as is well known, the Iranian government has treated their own dissenting mullahs no better.]

What could could be the danger that such folks constitute to their societies? What risk to society was entailed in Taseer's defense of Aasia Bibi? Apparently the presumptions of a democratic society have yet to become ensconced in the public imagination; such ideas are unfamiliar and apparently threatening. The idea that minorities need to be protected, that authentic beliefs can be allowed, that different points of view have a right to be heard, or at least tolerated, appears to be alien in these societies. No, not alien: dangerous, dangerous enough to deserve capital punishment.

In the western world where these issues were hashed out in previous generations we take the right to belief and opinion for granted. The reality is that in the hashing out process -- even in the western world -- folks suffered for the right to believe and practice what they believed. Innocent people were brutalized, wars were fought, careers ruined, families destroyed. It is easy for us to suppose that our perspectives are natural. They are not: they were created in social contexts that were initially threatened by such notions. The right to authentic belief had to be thought up, formulated, proposed, defended in societies that could not countenance a world without enforced conformity. And so people suffered on all sides of the issue. [See Dec 12 note, "Another Accusation of Blasphemy"

The freedom to assert what you honestly think, what you sincerely believe, was never exactly free. It was costly and therefore should be considered precious -- how precious has been demonstrated before our eyes in Pakistan. We are all diminished when a human being cannot be allowed to raise authentic questions, hold personal views about moral and spiritual issues, or practice their own forms of worship, or insist on the right of minorities to be treated honorably.

So what price will Pakistan pay for the murder of Salmon Taseer? Plenty. The loss of authentic debate in public affairs with cost in due process, in effective administration, and in investment. Now it is clear to everyone in Pakistan, displayed before the eyes of the world: minority views, minority opinions, are a threat to the social order, so threatening as to be worthy of death, even open murder on the street. In such a place who will dare to be authentic? Only those like Salmon Taseer who are ready to give up their lives.
=========
1/20/2011 [A correction on the above]
My friend and former colleague, Dr Kathie Laird, who has been following Pakistan affairs for some years, wrote a note to correct my statement about Aasia Bibi. Thanks, Kathie.

I think she has, in fact, been convicted.

>Per Jinnah Institute (etc.): Aasia Bibi, a Christian labourer and mother of five, sentenced to death under the Blasphemy Law by a court in the Nankana Sahib district of Punjab was to be hanged on November 8 2010.

>Per PPP-affiliated site: President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday stayed the execution of a Christian woman who was sentenced to death on charges of blasphemy. The woman, Aasia Bibi, was given the death sentence by an additional sessions judge in Nankana Sahib district a week ago on charges of committing blasphemy.

Kathie

The Chinese Navy in the Indian Ocean

In my previous post I noted that the Chinese have spent 1.5 billion dollars in constructing a deep sea port at Gwadar, Pakistan. Today's NYT says Chinese warships are planing to escort their commercial vessels with warships in the Indian Ocean, "from as far as the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca". As recently as March a Chinese warship docked in Abu Dhabi, the first time their warships have docked in the Middle East for years. Gwadar makes the perfect base for such ships. So, what some thought was supposed to be mainly a terminus for a planned pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to the Baluchistan port of Gwadar obviously will have other uses.

A Brief Guide to the Crisis in South Asia

[A statement in draft that meets length limits of under 1200 words for a publisher.]

By fall, 2009, the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan has turned ominous. The Taliban are gaining ever more strength in communities around Afghanistan. General McChrystal, who heads ISAF, the coalition forces opposing the Taliban, believes that without changes the war could be lost within a year. In the mean time the countries providing troops for ISAF are losing resolve. The Italians have declared their desire to leave, and the Germans want out. Even the Americans, whose commitment is crucial, are dithering as they consider the proposals. The generals want lots more troops (as many as 40,000) while the Vice President wants less; prominent Senators demand a time-table for getting out, and some senators are ready to quit now. The British alone seem confident about staying -- they say so often, as if to keep up their resolve.

At the same time the legitimacy of the Afghanistan government for which these forces have been fighting has been deeply compromised by voting irregularities in the last election. Corruption seems to have percolated all the way down: local officials, underpaid and under protected, demand cash and special favors to perform merely elementary services. And there is the drug industry: uncounted numbers of folks, powerful and weak, rural and urban, are involved in an illicit economy that brings in nearly half the country’s income.

General McChrystal’s broadly published judgment of the situation cannot have helped the situation on the ground, for it re-affirms what the Taliban have been claiming all along: they will be there when the Americans have left; and ultimately they will prevail. What can the ordinary good people of Afghanistan do but re-consider their connections in such a climate? After so many years of war, they have learned how to survive. Dr. Monsutti reports that the Hazara families situate their relatives on both sides of a conflict in order to ensure viable options, whatever the outcome; similar strategies must be in practice elsewhere in the country. This society, after so many years of conflict, is now composed of fragile alliances and agreements that can be invoked or ignored as circumstances require. These are the means through which folks cope with the exigencies of internecine and intermittent war that grinds on for decades.

But when it comes to preferences, there is no doubt about the genuine wishes of the Afghanistan peoples: They want a government that responds to their circumstances, not one that provides no services or protection like the present one, and not one that limits simple pleasures – kite flying, music, television -- as the Taliban did when they were in power. Scarcely 6% admit to wanting the Taliban back. Rather, they would like a democracy that works. Thousands of people, women as well as men, of every ethnic stripe, participated in the first national election. At that time the voting booth inked finger was a mark of pride. It is largely frustration with the current administration and fear of the threats of the Taliban that reduced participation in the last election. The evident corruption of the process has deflated hope but reportedly few people want to go through the election again.

Most of the talk among Americans is about what to do about Afghanistan while little is being said about the source of the Taliban problem: Pakistan. It was the Pakistani military that in the mid-1990s made use of a group of sincere, zealous schoolboys led by their Quranic teacher, Mullah Muhammd Omar, to create an organized, trained, and equipped essentially Pashtun military force. After their defeat in 2001 the Taliban who escaped into Pakistan’s tribal areas found a supportive environment for reconstituting themselves, which reportedly they began to do as early as 2003. They could not have acquired their present sophistication without the help of Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence Directorate, the agency that protected, trained, and provisioned the Afghan Taliban for the real agenda, the on-going war against India.

Because the real concern of the Pakistani military is the struggle with India over Kashmir, they consider radical fighting groups like the Taliban to be vital resources. As a Muslim state claiming the right to rule adjacent Muslim lands, the military has allowed radical Islamist groups to form so that they can be deployed in case of war (well, in the continued war) with India. The most notable of those which the ISI fostered and supplied were the Jaish-i Muhammad, the group that captured and murdered Daniel Pearl, and the Lashkar-I Taiba who produced suicide bombers for Kashmir and only last year masterminded the attacks in Mumbai in which 173 people were killed. Owing to the tolerance of the ISI, Mullah Muhammad Omar, head of the original Taliban, has long had his headquarters in Quetta despite official claims that he cannot be found.

This policy arises from Pakistan's need for a friendly Afghanistan. Ever since the 1980s the Pakistanis have recognized the importance of Central Asia in their future. For them Afghanistan must be a friendly state through which the resource-rich lands of the Central Asian republics can be accessed. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan gas pipeline, for example, which has been in the planning stage for years, is crucial to Pakistan’s future prosperity. For that, the Pakistanis have, with Chinese help, already invested over a billion dollars to build a new port on the Indian Ocean at Gwadar. Another reason for Pakistan’s desire for a friendly government in Kabul is the perceived need for “strategic depth” in case of war with India.

In truth, Pakistan is a conflicted state. It is fighting a war with India while it claims to be helping in the “War on terror” against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And while affirming friendship with the United States the Pakistan government regards Afghanistan as allied to India and thus an enemy regime. For this situation the Taliban, posed as they are against the Kabul government, are prized assets for the war with India. The contradiction of this policy came vividly to light in 2008 and 2009 when some of the Taliban began to push beyond the tribal zones where they had been based conveniently close to the Afghanistan border, and established themselves in neighboring sectors of Pakistan. After taking over Swat they announced their intention to impose their brand of “Islamic sharia” there. But what finally aroused the Pakistani military was a prominent Taliban leader’s announcement that they were ready to bring their brand of Islamic sharia to all of Pakistan. The Pakistan army responded by attacking the Taliban of Swat; friends only a few weeks before, now they were mortal enemies. The fighting in Swat forced a sudden migration: more than two and half million natives of Swat fled, creating a crisis for the government that was barely alleviated before the Swatis were allowed to return home.

So the picture in South Asia is convoluted: A fractured society (Afghanistan), a conflicted state (Pakistan), a resolute opposition that is faced in two directions (the Taliban), a looming neighbor (India), and a foreign military force (ISAF) that scarcely understands how to deal with this tangle of antagonistic forces.

And into this bundle of interlocked problems we must include a few other issues of vital importance to the region: the still-active Al Qaeda cells, the Nuclear worry about Iran, nuclear weaponry in the arsenals of both Pakistan and India, and the vulnerability of oil flows through the Indian Ocean. Now we have not a regional crisis but a world crisis -- no less than a situation perilous to the world order as we know it.

Graham Usher's insight into the real reason the Pakistani army tolerates the Taliban -- or at least some of them

The most valuable publication on the Taliban situation in Pakistan in a long time is an article by Graham Usher that appeared in the London Review of Books (April 2009). He explains that the real reason the army behaves the way it does in Pakistan -- and despite appearances the army is the actual ruler of Pakistan -- is that the Pakistani army has been 'at war' with India since 1948, that is, since the inception of the country and thus of the army itself. This is why the Pakistani army treats some Taliban as enemies [those that are active against Pakistan] and some of them as friends [those that want to attack Afghanistan]. This is because Afghanistan, in the army's mind, is allied with India. For that reason much of what Karzai does is considered to reflect India's interests and so cannot be taken at face value.

From the army's viewpoint there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. Baitullah Mehsud is an enemy because he is responsible for suicide attacks inside Pakistan against the army. And he is believed to have recruited hundreds of Afghan fighters who are "agents" from the Indian intelligence services -- that is, of the real enemy, India, not Bin Laden.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, on the other hand, is a friend of Pakistan. He directs the "central front" against Afghanistan from bases in North and South Waziristan. Also, Mullah Muhammad Omar, head of the original Taliban, is a friend operating from his bases in Quetta. "They are our friends, not our enemies" says a member of Pakistan's Intelligence Services.

So, if they attack NATO forces or American forces in Afghanistan they are friends of the Pakistani army. If they attack the army or other installations inside Pakistan they are "enemies."

Such is the logic of an army created and shaped by generations of war with its neighbor. What would have to happen for them to realize they have another enemy? What would have to happen for them to see India as a benign neighbor and not an enemy?

Brahimi on Sri Lanka: "A Slaughter Waiting to Happen"

Lakhdar Brahimi, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (from 3 October 2001 to 31 December 2004), and before that the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from July 1997 until October 1999, has written a special appeal on behalf of civilians caught in the last throes of the Sri Lankan civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are now desperate and using civilians as cover rather than consenting to the situation they have, namely, total defeat. RLC

Here is his article from the International Herald Tribune.

A slaughter waiting to happen
By Lakhdar Brahimi
Thursday, March 19, 2009

The already severe humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is on the brink of catastrophe. It will take the quick arrival of humanitarian relief and high-level international political muscle to bring the nightmarish situation to an end and prevent a slaughter.

An estimated 150,000 civilians are now trapped in a tiny pocket of land between Sri Lankan military forces, whose artillery shells regularly fall among them, and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who shoot at them if they try to escape. Food, clean water and medical assistance are all increasingly scarce.

According to U.N. figures, 2,300 civilians have already died and at least 6,500 have been injured since January. Some 500 children have been killed and over 1,400 injured. What happens to the rest of those caught in the middle of the government’s onslaught and the Tigers’ fight to the death depends not only on the two parties but on the international response as well.

The crisis is born of acts by both sides that most probably amount to serious violations of humanitarian law and perhaps to war crimes or crimes against humanity.

As it has withdrawn before the government forces, the LTTE has sought refuge in the civilian population. It has been holding men, women and children as hostages, forcibly recruiting them and using them as human shields.

The government has responded with attacks that independent observers describe as indiscriminate. Distinguishing combatants from noncombatants has become impossible with fighters and civilians packed so closely together. Alarming reports are coming in that government forces are shelling even those areas they themselves have declared ‘‘no-fire zones.’’

If both groups do not end the fighting immediately, the lives of tens of thousands of civilians are at risk. Both parties must understand that the continuation of their current actions is not acceptable.

The situation is even more tragic because it represents an unnecessarily devastating coda to a war that is already over.

Totally overwhelmed by government forces, the LTTE has lost. Holding civilian hostages and showing complete disregard for the Tamil population that it claims to want to liberate will not resurrect its ability to fight this war.

Nor will the annihilation of thousands of civilians secure the government’s long-cherished victory over terrorism. On the contrary, the indiscriminate killing of its own citizens will make it harder for Colombo to seal its military victory with post-conflict reconciliation and development of the Tamil-majority north.

Opinion among the millions of Tamils around the world, especially those in southern India, is being dangerously radicalized by images and stories of intense civilian suffering.

The international community should not let the already desperate situation end up an all-out humanitarian catastrophe. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should insist on immediate access for U.N. staff to no-fire zones in order to assess the needs of the population. He should appoint a special representative to work with the government of Sri Lanka and all the relevant parties to guarantee the rights and protection of the endangered civilians.

On the political side, other international leaders — in particular, President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders from Asia, the nonaligned movement and the Commonwealth — must urgently use their leverage to convince the Sri Lankan government to stop its offensive.

They should help shift the government from a strategy of total annihilation to one of containment by addressing government fears that LTTE leaders will use a pause in the fighting to flee and regroup.

In addition to assisting the U.N. in the evacuation of civilians, all these friends of Sri Lanka should commit themselves to supervise the surrender of the LTTE, with guarantees of the physical security of those who surrender, backed up by the presence of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees wherever the military receives civilians or surrendered fighters.

The United States and India could also offer to increase naval surveillance in order to prevent remaining Tiger fighters from escaping by sea.

None of these measures will be easy to achieve. The government and the LTTE are locked in a war to the last man and seem oblivious to the civilian death toll around them.

The international community has the means to act; it must not, it cannot fail to act. Being a spectator when 150,000 thousand people are trapped in a death zone is not an option.

Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the U.N. secretary general, is a board member of the International Crisis Group.