Owais Aslam Ali, a key figure in South Asian journalism, used examples from the history of his native Pakistan to paint a bleak picture for the future of worldwide civil rights yesterday in a Rockefeller Center lecture on "Civil Liberties in Developing Countries: The Impact of the War on Terrorism."
Ali called into question the motivation for the United States-led war on terrorism. Speaking concisely but passionately, he asked an audience of about two dozen community memebers to consider whether the war's purpose was to create a more just and equitable world, or "to make the world more safe for America."
Ali, currently a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, is Secretary General of the Pakistan Press Foundation, which researches and reports on journalistic freedom in the region and worldwide and trains journalists in rural Pakistan. He also chairs Pakistan Press International, the country's independent national news agency.
Ali began his lecture by reviewing the political history of his relatively young nation, relating a lifetime of government upheavals recurring every decade.
Nominal democracy finally took hold in 1989 after intermittent false starts by socialist, Islamic fundamentalist and military-rule governments, but it was not to last.
Ali described a decade in which government crackdowns on suspected terrorists adopted the methods of their targets, using everything from garden-variety intimidation tactics to "drilling holes in kneecaps."
By 1999, in Ali's words, "democracy had failed."
Ali lamented the Muslim world's decision years earlier to choose "jihad" -- the Islamic notion of a holy war -- as a rallying cry following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
"Once we created the slogan, we created the surrounding environment," he said, referring to the rise of Islamic fundamentalist governments and organizations like the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Now Ali fears a similar situation for the West in general and the United States in particular.
"This time the slogan is 'the war against terrorism,'" he said. "But what is this war for?"
He cited a recent report by the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues which put the United States at the top of a list of 15 countries whose governments have most abused civil-liberties in the name of security since Sept. 11.
If the increase in authoritarianism continues, Ali warned, it will "reduce, not enhance security in the world and in America."
While an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, Ali said, he could not have imagined the current situation. "I never thought I would live to see the day that I would hear the press secretary to the president of the United States warning people in America to watch what they say."
Many of the rights Americans take for granted, he said, "could be rolled back in one fell swoop" if the war on terror escalates.
Ali instead urged the U.S. to take action to get to the root of problem -- the poverty, oppression and corruption in the countries where terrorism breeds.
Following his brief, 20-minute address, Ali answered questions from audience members for over 40 minutes on a range of topics in the realm of journalism, U.S. foreign policy and the current Pakistani political situation.
He stressed the importance of safety training for journalists covering the world's hot spots in his response to one student query about press freedom.
"No story is worth putting your life in danger," he said, noting his organization's efforts to provide such training.
Responding to a question about journalists' roles in explaining foreign cultures to the citizens of different countries, Ali made one of the afternoon's most insightful comments.
"One basic problem with the media is that it reports exceptions," he said.
One audience member remarked that she had more confidence in Pakistan's current leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- who has sometimes been labeled a "benevolent dictator" -- than she did in President Bush.
Ali cautioned her to remember that a stable democratic government is more valuable than a single charismatic leader. "The beauty of democracy is that it doesn't depend on personalities," he said.
Ali also talked at length about the ongoing Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and its "eminently solvable" nature, contrasting it with the current Israeli-Palestinian situation.
"Neither Indians nor Pakistanis are a trigger-happy people," he said. "I don't think [either country's] efforts to demonize the other side have succeeded. Now we just need to start talking."
