A Letter From Containeristan

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/bina-shah-a-letter-from-containeristan.html

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KARACHI, Pakistan — In a Pakistani election, each party is represented by a ballot icon — the Pakistan Peoples Party an arrow, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz a tiger, the Awami National Party a lantern — so that illiterate voters can identify the candidates. It may be only a matter of time before a party adopts the shipping container as the most ubiquitous image of Pakistani politics.

After a month of upheaval in Islamabad, the clumsy giant boxes now litter the capital, having been used both as roadblocks to frustrate protesters and as platforms from which to arouse them — and in such profusion that some Pakistanis are calling their country “Containeristan.”

In mid-August, the Pakistan Movement for Justice, a party headed by the former cricket star Imran Khan, began the protests with calls for the resignation of Nawaz Sharif, the current prime minister, and broad electoral reforms, on grounds that his election in 2013 had been rigged. Joining Mr. Khan was the religious leader Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, who leads the Pakistan Peoples Movement. The two camped out in Islamabad alongside their supporters, who remain, but in dwindling numbers.

In advance of the protests, Mr. Khan could travel the three hours from Lahore by car and arrive just outside Islamabad’s red zone, a security area that houses Pakistan’s government buildings and diplomatic missions. But a few days before the protests, security agencies had placed shipping containers on the boulevards leading to the zone. Their aim: to thwart crowds trying to assemble there.

“Is this not part of Pakistan?” Mr. Khan thundered, transforming the blockage into another outrage to be condemned. In the government’s silence, the answer was clear: Welcome to Containeristan.

This was not the first time a Pakistani leader had used shipping containers as roadblocks. In a BBC program, the Pakistani journalist Fahad Desmukh traced the phenomenon to 2007 and a conflict between Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president at the time, and the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The jurist was to arrive at the Karachi airport that May 12, and to travel into the city to address a rally. But overnight, dozens of containers appeared on the streets, barring the way for demonstrators to greet him at the airport. Gun battles broke out between Mr. Musharraf’s supporters and supporters of the chief justice; 40 people died.

Despite that grisly scene, or perhaps because of it, the container idea fired the Interior Ministry’s imagination. Soon containers were stationed near every government building, installation or road that led to them, ready to be positioned in the event of a terrorist attack — or such was the claim. The government requisitioned thousands of the vessels — an economical, if inelegant, solution to the security needs of a country where the police are understaffed and underequipped. The containers blocked roads during protest marches like the long march of 2009, when Pakistani lawyers again demanded reinstatement of the chief justice.

Then the container mutated from roadblock to revolutionary residence: Mr. Qadri lived in one during his own long march, in 2013, and during the current protests. Mr. Khan has lived in another. But these dwellings are no ordinary containers; they’re more like movie stars’ trailers, made bulletproof and retrofitted with air-conditioners and bathrooms. Mr. Khan’s is reportedly worth 74,000 pounds, or about $120,000. They are trucked from city to city for rallies. In the evenings, the occupant climbs atop and makes a rousing speech while crowds cheer, dance and wave flags and placards. Things have certainly changed since the days of Benazir Bhutto, whose long marches were conducted atop a specially fitted truck that, while solid, offered little protection from terrorist bombs. She was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007, while leaving a rally in an even smaller vehicle.

At the onset of the current protests, Mr. Khan’s followers produced a crane to move the shipping containers that blocked them; then the crowds surged through to the red zone. It may not have been as glorious as the storming of the Bastille in 1789. But for one moment in Pakistan’s tarnished political history, images of ordinary people overcoming the barricades inspired citizens to wonder if they could be more important to their republic than the highhanded governments that have ruled them.

Both party leaders then called nighttime rallies at D-Chowk, a grassy square in front of the Supreme Court that was likened, somewhat simplistically, to Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Two weeks on, with no resolution in sight, Mr. Khan and Mr. Qadri told their supporters to march peacefully toward the prime minister’s residence. Again, the crane came out to clear the way. But this time, the police arrested the operator and tear-gassed the protesters, who defended themselves with sticks and slingshots. Hundreds were injured and several died. Political chaos has paralyzed Islamabad since.

Now, as the protests lose momentum and the city starts returning to normal, the one thing that seems permanent is those hulking containers on the roads. As Mr. Desmukh reported, they are here to stay.

In ordinary times, Pakistan’s experience with shipping containers has been distinctly less grand: a gigantic truck with a container precariously fastened to its flat bed menaces pedestrians and other drivers on an overcrowded road, with the possibility that the container might slip its moorings and fall on you at any moment. Entire families have been crushed when containers tumbled onto cars.

This is an unwittingly apt metaphor for what life in Pakistan feels like today, thanks to the hubris and aloofness of the people who rule us, whether dictator or democrat. No matter whether Pakistan’s politicians defy the container or adapt it for their own use, we will know that things have changed for the better only when all the containers go back to the shipyards, where they belong.

Bina Shah is the author of several novels, including “Slum Child,” and short-story collections.