Credit where credit is due, people said after Imran Khan’s speech at the UN. He spoke from the heart, it looked so genuine.
I, too, watched the PM’s nearly 50-minute speech. What I saw was an impassioned if rudimentary attempt to cast Pakistan as the victim of crimes beyond its control.
I was pleasantly surprised that he began with the impending disaster that is climate change, noting how 80% of Pakistan’s water comes from glaciers that are directly threatened by global warming. His remarks echoed the general sentiments of so many climate activists, and it was nice for once to see Pakistan on the right side of a world debate.
Soon enough he pivoted to corruption, noting how for years the worlds’ corrupt have used Western capitals as safe havens to park stolen money. He said that to retrieve the stolen wealth is hard because of “laws” (what those laws were, he didn’t mention) and that Pakistan didn’t “have hundreds of millions of dollars to hire lawyers” to fight for the money’s return in international courts. I didn’t understand the argument, which is better suited to a jilted spouse suing for alimony than to a nuclear power representing concerns to the ICC. Yes, Pakistan is a poor country, but the reason it doesn’t litigate in international courts isn’t because can’t afford lawyers.
He spoke about (civilian) corruption a fair bit more, before switching to Islamophobia – which is where he began to have fun.
For the next twenty minutes he went through a disjointed if earnest argument about the rise of Islamophobia in the world, and how Pakistan has been cast as abetting terrorism despite having lost thousands of lives and billions of dollars as part of its role in the War on Terror. He (rightly) called out America for encouraging and then abandoning the Mujahideen at the end of their proxy war with the Soviets. I was particularly surprised/pleased to see him call out the RSS philosophy of Hindu supremacy as the racist, xenophobic, alarmingly violent movement that it is, and to remind the UNGA that because of its openly violently racist acts, Modi himself wasn’t allowed to travel to the US until he was elected.
The speech went on, talking about the plight of the Kashmiris and a campaign that he suspects Modi is hatching to isolate Pakistan internationally. He may well be right on most of these talking points, but on the flip side I also saw the reductive, binary thinking that our PM seems unable, or unwilling, to expand. Sentences like “I’ve played cricket in the West and know how the Western mind works” are, frankly, just not intelligent. Especially when you are addressing the collective world leaders – South Americans, African states, East Asians – and not your ex-in-laws in Knightsbridge.
That last part always gets me because so much of the way Khan sees the world is an extension of a limited “us-vs-them” view that may have served well for cricket but is both silly and ineffective when you are arguing against rising nationalism the world over. (That Khan knew that’s what the speech was doing is, as ever, debatable).
The Indian response to his speech – articulate and scathing though it was – simply did not address many of the points he raised specifically. Slightly pandering, it affected surprise that Pakistan would care about human rights at all, as well as a subtle but unmistakable shift in calling the peoples of Kashmir “Indian citizens”. These are the blustering optics of global politics now; impassioned speeches given at powerless podiums.
But our PM actually did do something in his time in NY: fire Maleeha Lodhi from her Ambassador position in order to appoint a man who held the position during the Musharraf era and who – fun fact – was accused of domestic battery for beating his girlfriend during his last tenure in NY: a charge he escaped because of diplomatic immunity.
Given the shuffle in political appointments, my only wish is that Imran Khan hire an actual speech-writer in the future, not only because of tone deaf forays into the legacy of the Holocaust, but also because there only so many times I can hear about cricket for the next four years.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
I, too, watched the PM’s nearly 50-minute speech. What I saw was an impassioned if rudimentary attempt to cast Pakistan as the victim of crimes beyond its control.
I was pleasantly surprised that he began with the impending disaster that is climate change, noting how 80% of Pakistan’s water comes from glaciers that are directly threatened by global warming. His remarks echoed the general sentiments of so many climate activists, and it was nice for once to see Pakistan on the right side of a world debate.
Soon enough he pivoted to corruption, noting how for years the worlds’ corrupt have used Western capitals as safe havens to park stolen money. He said that to retrieve the stolen wealth is hard because of “laws” (what those laws were, he didn’t mention) and that Pakistan didn’t “have hundreds of millions of dollars to hire lawyers” to fight for the money’s return in international courts. I didn’t understand the argument, which is better suited to a jilted spouse suing for alimony than to a nuclear power representing concerns to the ICC. Yes, Pakistan is a poor country, but the reason it doesn’t litigate in international courts isn’t because can’t afford lawyers.
He spoke about (civilian) corruption a fair bit more, before switching to Islamophobia – which is where he began to have fun.
For the next twenty minutes he went through a disjointed if earnest argument about the rise of Islamophobia in the world, and how Pakistan has been cast as abetting terrorism despite having lost thousands of lives and billions of dollars as part of its role in the War on Terror. He (rightly) called out America for encouraging and then abandoning the Mujahideen at the end of their proxy war with the Soviets. I was particularly surprised/pleased to see him call out the RSS philosophy of Hindu supremacy as the racist, xenophobic, alarmingly violent movement that it is, and to remind the UNGA that because of its openly violently racist acts, Modi himself wasn’t allowed to travel to the US until he was elected.
Sentences like “I’ve played cricket in the West and know how the Western mind works” are, frankly, just not intelligent. Especially when you are addressing the collective world leaders – South Americans, African states, East Asians – and not your ex-in-laws in Knightsbridge
The speech went on, talking about the plight of the Kashmiris and a campaign that he suspects Modi is hatching to isolate Pakistan internationally. He may well be right on most of these talking points, but on the flip side I also saw the reductive, binary thinking that our PM seems unable, or unwilling, to expand. Sentences like “I’ve played cricket in the West and know how the Western mind works” are, frankly, just not intelligent. Especially when you are addressing the collective world leaders – South Americans, African states, East Asians – and not your ex-in-laws in Knightsbridge.
That last part always gets me because so much of the way Khan sees the world is an extension of a limited “us-vs-them” view that may have served well for cricket but is both silly and ineffective when you are arguing against rising nationalism the world over. (That Khan knew that’s what the speech was doing is, as ever, debatable).
The Indian response to his speech – articulate and scathing though it was – simply did not address many of the points he raised specifically. Slightly pandering, it affected surprise that Pakistan would care about human rights at all, as well as a subtle but unmistakable shift in calling the peoples of Kashmir “Indian citizens”. These are the blustering optics of global politics now; impassioned speeches given at powerless podiums.
But our PM actually did do something in his time in NY: fire Maleeha Lodhi from her Ambassador position in order to appoint a man who held the position during the Musharraf era and who – fun fact – was accused of domestic battery for beating his girlfriend during his last tenure in NY: a charge he escaped because of diplomatic immunity.
Given the shuffle in political appointments, my only wish is that Imran Khan hire an actual speech-writer in the future, not only because of tone deaf forays into the legacy of the Holocaust, but also because there only so many times I can hear about cricket for the next four years.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com