Waging Non-Violent Action in Violent World

Imran Khan

We live in an extreme­ly vio­lent world. States and transna­tion­al non-state actors use vio­lence to achieve their polit­i­cal and strate­gic objec­tives, believ­ing that use of vio­lence is the most effec­tive way to do so, notwith­stand­ing that it does not work most of the time. Only the last decade (2001–2011) saw 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks, a pro­tract­ed and bloody war in Afghanistan, the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Iraq, Israeli aggres­sion against Lebanon and Pales­tine, 7/7 bomb­ing in Lon­don, ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai in 2008 and so on. Lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple died in these vio­lent con­flicts and ter­ror­ist attacks. For that mat­ter, the 20th cen­tu­ry was per­haps one of the most vio­lent cen­turies in human his­to­ry, wit­ness­ing two world wars respon­si­ble for the deaths of mil­lions of peo­ple.

Talk­ing about Pak­istan, we are used to vio­lence in this coun­try. In the weeks and months lead­ing up to the cre­ation of Pak­istan, the sub-con­ti­nent wit­nessed mass killings of both Mus­lims and Hin­dus in com­mu­nal riots. In 64 years of Pakistan’s his­to­ry, we fought four wars against India. We launched at least four mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against our Baloch broth­ers because they offend­ed the state elite by ask­ing for their legit­i­mate rights. Although we haven’t fought any war against a for­eign ene­my dur­ing the last ten years, more than 35,000 Pak­ista­nis were killed dur­ing this peri­od in hun­dreds of ter­ror­ist attacks car­ried out by fel­low Pak­ista­nis led by ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions.

Even now as I write, Karachi — the biggest city of Pak­istan – is burn­ing due to eth­nic-cum-polit­i­cal vio­lence per­pe­trat­ed by the armed gangs of main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties. They use vio­lence in Karachi for their polit­i­cal ends. More than 100 peo­ple have died in tar­get killings dur­ing the last two weeks. Not long ago, we wit­nessed the assas­si­na­tion of Salman Taseer, the then-gov­er­nor of Pun­jab, at the hands of his own body­guard for crit­i­ciz­ing dra­con­ian blas­phe­my laws. Lat­er, the Fed­er­al Min­is­ter for Minori­ties Shah­baz Bhat­ti – the only Chris­t­ian mem­ber of the cab­i­net – was bru­tal­ly assas­si­nat­ed under the same pre­text. And yes, how can I for­get the mys­te­ri­ous abduc­tion and grue­some mur­der of the jour­nal­ist, Saleem Shahzad.

Being an activist, a stu­dent of his­to­ry and a Pak­istani, I was car­ry­ing a bag­gage of vio­lence when I went to the Fletch­er Inter­na­tion­al School to attend a course on Strate­gic Non-Vio­lent Action (June 21–24). The peo­ple I met, the sto­ries I heard and the ideas I was exposed to showed me the oth­er side of the pic­ture.

While I thought that 20th cen­tu­ry was a cen­tu­ry of war, blood­shed, suf­fer­ing and geno­cide, it was also a cen­tu­ry of strate­gic non-vio­lent action, I was told. A cen­tu­ry that wit­nessed many suc­cess­ful non-vio­lent move­ments waged in dif­fer­ent parts of the world.

I did not know about the role Gandhi’s phi­los­o­phy of Satya­gra­ha and the civ­il resis­tance move­ment played in the Inde­pen­dence Move­ment of sub-con­ti­nent. I was not aware of the strate­gies anti-apartheid activists used in South Africa to bring down the bru­tal and repres­sive Apartheid regime. With my class-mates at Fletch­er, I stud­ied the strate­gies which pro-democ­ra­cy activists used in Chile and Ser­bia to bring down the ruth­less dic­ta­tor­ships of Augus­to Pinochet and Slo­bo­dan Miloso­vic respec­tive­ly. I heard about the non-vio­lent Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment against the repres­sive com­mu­nist regime in Poland. These sto­ries con­vinced me that non-vio­lent action as a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy has always had bet­ter chances of vic­to­ry than vio­lent action.

Eri­ca Chenoweth, the author of Why Civ­il Resis­tance Works and an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment at Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, pre­vi­ous­ly a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, told us in her talk that empir­i­cal evi­dence from his­to­ry proved that non-vio­lent move­ments had twice as much chances of suc­cess as vio­lent move­ments. More than any­thing else, I was inspired by the great peo­ple I met at the Fletch­er Sum­mer Insti­tute. Peo­ple like Rev­erend James Law­son, a vet­er­an of Amer­i­can Civ­il Rights Move­ment and a close asso­ciate of Dr Mar­tin Luther King. Dr King once said: “Revered Law­son is the lead­ing the­o­rist and strate­gist of non­vi­o­lence in the world”. The vol­un­teers Rev. Law­son trained in wag­ing non-vio­lent action launched a deseg­re­ga­tion move­ment in 1960s in Nashville, a city in the US state of Ten­nessee, which even­tu­al­ly led to the deseg­re­ga­tion in oth­er parts of the US. The hum­ble and soft-spo­ken rev­erend shared with us his expe­ri­ences as a leader of civ­il rights move­ment.

It was a very enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ence lis­ten­ing to Jack DuVall and Dr Peter Ack­er­man – the founders of the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre on Non-Vio­lent Con­flict that host­ed the course for us. Both Jack and Dr Ack­er­man have devot­ed their lives to the study and prop­a­ga­tion of knowl­edge about strate­gic non-vio­lent action. Iden­ti­fy­ing the ele­ments required for the suc­cess of a move­ment, Dr Ack­er­man told us: “A civ­il resis­tance move­ment must uni­fy the wider spec­trum of soci­ety – young and old, all eth­nic groups, reli­gious groups, all eco­nom­ic stra­ta – around a lim­it­ed set of achiev­able goals. The sec­ond thing that is required is plan­ning. There has to be the capac­i­ty for the lead­er­ship to look objec­tive­ly at what its capa­bil­i­ties are, who it can mobi­lize, what tac­tics it can use, how to sequence those tac­tics that it has biggest neg­a­tive impact on the oppo­nent. The third ele­ment is non-vio­lent dis­ci­pline.” Accord­ing to Dr Ack­er­man, these three ele­ments are pre-req­ui­site for the suc­cess of any civ­il resis­tance move­ment irre­spec­tive of the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal con­text.

While Dr Ack­er­man taught us the strate­gies of non-vio­lent civ­il resis­tance, I was think­ing about Pak­istan. I was relat­ing what he was say­ing to Pak­istan. Our lawyers’ move­ment for the restora­tion of the deposed Chief Jus­tice of Pak­istan had all three ele­ments. Dif­fer­ent seg­ments of soci­ety were unit­ed under the lead­er­ship of lawyers, who immac­u­late­ly planned their every move, orga­niz­ing long march­es and using the tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal media very effec­tive­ly. Non-vio­lent dis­ci­pline was also there. No mat­ter how much force Mushar­raf regime used against peace­ful lawyers, civ­il soci­ety and activists, the lat­ter did not respond with vio­lence.

Dr Ack­er­man told us dur­ing his talk that the con­di­tions under which activists work are always dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous. How­ev­er, he said, we wit­nessed dur­ing the Arab Spring that the con­di­tions can be changed by the skills of the activists. Since the activists were suc­cess­ful in mobi­liz­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple because of their supe­ri­or skills and plan­ning, it was no longer as dan­ger­ous to protest against the tyrants as it was before. The dic­ta­to­r­i­al regimes had become weak­er, where­as the peo­ple had become stronger.

I made many amaz­ing friends at the Fletch­er Sum­mer Insti­tute. They are the peo­ple whose lives are an epit­o­me of non-vio­lent resis­tance in the face of oppres­sion and tyran­ny. My friend Ayman Qwaider is a Pales­tin­ian activist, who has wit­nessed the bru­tal­i­ty of the occu­piers while work­ing for var­i­ous human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions in Gaza. How­ev­er, he still strong­ly believes in non-vio­lent civ­il resis­tance. He thinks that bru­tal­i­ty against bru­tal­i­ty is not the solu­tion. Born, raised and edu­cat­ed in Gaza, Ayman got a schol­ar­ship a few years ago to study in Europe. How­ev­er, the Israeli Army refused to allow him to leave the strip because of their block­ade. An unde­terred Ayman launched a per­son­al advo­ca­cy cam­paign on the social media, even­tu­al­ly forc­ing Israel to issue him a per­mit to leave Gaza. Mashal­lah Ayman has now com­plet­ed his M.A in Inter­na­tion­al Peace, Con­flict and Devel­op­ment from a uni­ver­si­ty in Spain and he is plan­ning to con­tin­ue his peace­ful strug­gle for the lib­er­a­tion of Occu­pied Ter­ri­to­ries.

While India and Pak­istan are archri­vals, the peo­ple of two coun­tries do not have innate hatred for each oth­er. Far from that, we have so much in com­mon. This is what I real­ized when I met Ayush­man Jamw­al, an Indi­an stu­dent from Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, at the Fletch­er. We imme­di­ate­ly became friends and spent most of our time togeth­er dur­ing the course. We dis­cussed the his­to­ry and pol­i­tics of Indo-Pak rela­tions. Ayush­man crit­i­cized the atroc­i­ties Indi­an state has com­mit­ted against Kash­miris and I cas­ti­gat­ed Pak­istan for sup­port­ing non-state actors against India. Thank God nei­ther of us was jin­go­is­tic, which made a con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion and friend­ship pos­si­ble. We dis­cussed the cur­ricu­lum taught in Indi­an and Pak­istani schools and real­ized that both the states were teach­ing a pack of lies, a per­vert­ed and dis­tort­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry to its future lead­ers. We con­clud­ed that whilst both states might con­tin­ue their past poli­cies, the peo­ple will have to come for­ward to make South Asia peace­ful and pros­per­ous.

Imran Khan is a peace activist. He is cur­rent­ly work­ing as Civ­il Soci­ety Cam­paign Man­ag­er at Alif Ailaan.