"How does it feel to be a problem? they say I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word."
W.E.B.DuBios' words about African Americans could easily be used for Pashtoons in Pakistan. I am born and brought up listening to the question by our countrymen. The word problem is easily interchangeable with Pashtoon. "How is it in Peshawar. They say it is too dangerous out there", a young Karachite asks on phone the other night after telling me that 12 buses were burned that evening, there was no electricity, and that he was scared to death after seeing these horrors. "This is routine here and I am sick of it. I was so stressed I thought I would get some peace after talking to you." Like DuBios puts it, I didn't answer a word. I didn't say how can he ask about the wild Frontier with such fear, if he is feeling unsafe in the megapolis. I couldn't dare say, out of courtesy, that the whole house is on fire. The problem is not only being born as Pashtoon, but we are all living and intensifying the problem. We have become the problem.
But the child in the image doesn't know how we are being depicted. She doesn't even know she is born a problem, she is Pashtoon. She even doesn't know her home is no more, her parents might be drowned, everything lost, nothing left. She is just looking out for someone to come and help her out. She exactly doesn't know what she needs; might be feeling hungry, having a temperature, or feeling damp and cold.
The catastrophe that struck KP is enormous. It has swept away the whole region from Gilgit Baltistan to Nowshehra in one day. The steep terrain didn't give anybody time to settle or even grasp the real intensity before it destroyed everything. UN lost one of its biggest warehouses in Asia. Fifty thousand tons of food commodities washed away in a day, only a couple of thousand left. Immediate relief became impossible. Relief agencies are still grappling with the situation.
But the important question is how our countrymen see the problem. "Experts" are weighing the veracity of statements issued from KP. "Saying Northwestern Pakistan is the most impoverished region in Pakistan is statistically incorrect. Baluchistan is poorer." "And this street talk about KP being neglected has not been proven."
Look at the child in the picture and tell her she does not deserve food or shelter, because "statistics" don't support her need. The problem is not whether there is enough to satisfy the needs of all that have been affected by this catastrophe and that not everybody's needs could be met immediately. Some will get relief soon while others might have to wait. Waiting might cost some their lives. All this understandable, though not easy to live through.
The problem lies in not being able to raise above the narrow parochial thinking. Of not being able to get out of the divisive mode of US and THEM. Of seeing the Pashtoon as a problem. Of not seeing these impoverished people as worthy of our national sympathy, of being mainstream Pakistan. Where will all this lead the nation, if there is any left after all this narrowness. Isn't it high time to come out of our shells, see reality in the face, and understand our inner problem of seeing the other as a problem, of making a problem out of our own very national organism.
People of KP are in trouble. There are more dead in a few days than the toll countrywide during continuing disaster, the "slowly approaching Tsunami." The swiftness of destruction caused enormous damage to this already battered part of the country. Let this smaller time window not add to the miseries of these people. Let neglect not add fuel to the fire of annihilation. let not innocent linger and die because they can't statistically prove their haplessness. lets be human once in our national lifetime. This might be beginning of the long awaited nation building, something that we only witness on TV shows on Independence Day festivities, festivities that went on even amidst the cries and shrieks of the God forsaken problems.
