The strategy of the coalition campaign against Yemen could have been lifted from a colonial blueprint: the aircraft strike military and civilian targets in equal measure, including among the latter: agricultural extension offices, irrigated farms, fishing ports and fishing boats, clinics and hospitals, markets and roads. The artisanal fishing on the Red Sea coast, formerly a major source of livelihood—fish exports used to be Yemen’s second biggest earner after oil—is now almost totally at a standstill. The bombing raids are augmented by a blockade, which includes commercial food imports in a country that was, immediately prior to the war, dependent on such imports for 80 percent of its grains. It is also amplified by an economic war, which involved moving the Central Bank from Houthi-controlled Sana’a to Aden, and halting all payments of salaries to civil servants.
Continue Reading →Starvation had utility for the Nazis. As indeed it had for colonizers before and since. Acts of colonial conquest, subjugation and extraction had created famine, from the East India Company in Bengal in the 1770s through the American settlers’ use of hunger to expropriate Native American lands, through the British concentration camps in South Africa. The 1863 Lieber Code that regulated the conduct of the Union armies during the Civil War infamously provided that ‘it is lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed, so that it leads to the speedier subjection of the enemy.’ In his 1906 Handbook for Small Wars, Colonel Sir Charles Callwell advised his fellow officers that pacification operations would likely involve confiscating cattle and burning villages, ‘an aspect that may shock the humanitarian.’
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The synopsis taught in Irish schools of the demographic impact of the Great Hunger that devastated Ireland from 1845-52 is as follows: 1 million dead, 2 million emigrants. Is it a general rule that famines generate mass migration or was Ireland the exception? Remarkably, despite long-standing demographic research into famine and intensive current interest in migration, there is no definitive answer. But there is urgent policy interest in the link between mass starvation and migration. This article examines the causes and migration patterns of episodes of mass starvation from the 19th century onward and demonstrates the critical need for deeper research on the linkages between famine and migration. Among the unanswered questions: Does migration mitigate starvation or worsen it? Does it precede or follow famine? And how?
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Even though Pakistani women artists must start acting more responsibly yet mainly it remains the State and government’s responsibility to provide and supply technology and digital solutions against virtual harassment of women artists enabling them to perform their job effectively and without mental stress. This misogyny led defaming and stigmatization by random individuals has to be blocked officially through all four pillars of the state. Policies need to be in place to control online trolls. Simultaneously, the government of Pakistan must clearly recognize that its women artists have a right to uphold their occupational identity without getting stigmatized in the process.
Continue Reading →As an Islamic Republic, Pakistan treats its women as responsible ‘individuals/adults’ liable to pay all government taxes on incomes, savings, investments and property. A Pakistani Muslim professional woman is not expected to hide behind her wali or male guardian (and /or chaperone) on this account and claim exemption from taxes. If the expectation that she be duty-bound and clear all dues to the State and Government of Pakistan is warranted than so is the expectation from the State and Government of Pakistan to be rights-bound and thereby safeguard women’s freedoms while protecting them against any forms of harassment in the real and/or virtual world.
Continue Reading →This article highlights the globalized personhood of young women artists of Pakistan in the backdrop of gender nationalism. Towards the end a few major issues in digital governance of Pakistan are discussed. The main premise of the argument remains that Pakistan’s women artists have a right to uphold their ‘occupational’ identity without getting stigmatized in the process and more than anyone, the State and government of Islamic Republic of Pakistan is responsible for putting an end to online misogyny by investing in providing innovative digital solutions. In this regard the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), Islamabad, should take lead in planning a policy initiative that involves women artists, state/government institutions and the technology sector.
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