On the cancelled LUMS conference and the noxious Ejaz Haider

It is a terribly sad indictment that LUMS was compelled to cancel it's (online) conference on the 1971 war and genocide. When I first learned of the conference on Twitter, I was pleasantly surprised. An open and honest discussion of the war? That's great! 

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences,LUMS, in collaboration with the National Institute of Pakistan Studies (NIPS),Quaid-i-Azam University, is organizing an online conference to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Bangladesh War of Liberation. Here's the schedule: pic.twitter.com/oOqRN1SUgA

— Ali Usman Qasmi (@AU_Qasmi) March 19, 2021

More than that, while the association of those damn pinkos at LUMS was to be expected -- if something like this was going to happen, you can bet it would involve them in some capacity -- the fact of QAU also being involved was interesting. For better or worse, I interpreted their involvement as a tacit nod from the powers that be that this was okay. And if it was okay, how did it suddenly not become okay? 

I suppose the relevant details in this process will reveal themselves in the coming days. But in the meantime, what has caught most people's ire are the tweets by Col. Chicken Hawk himself

Equal parts pathetic, predictable, and just plain stupid, it is nice to see that Ejaz Haider is still who he always was. (Note: he blocked me on Twitter a long time back for calling out his homophobia but it was easy to see these tweets as screenshots scattered all over my TL). The refrain of right wing nationalists everywhere: why don't you talk more about someone else's crimes and less about ours? Academics and scholars from literally every country on earth have to deal with BS like this, the only difference lies in how much power fools like this guy have. 

I remember about ten years ago this guy was alleging that cutting a cake was provocative on the part of Hazaras. I guess if they'd stuck to mithai they would have avoided LeJ pulling them off buses and massacring them by the dozen. Also from ten years ago is this definitive piece on Ejaz Haider from Majorly Profound. The guy fashions himself as some sort of NatSec/FP guru but he's more Krusty the Clown than Clausewitz. As an IR professor, I can only smile at how desperately he wants to be taken seriously by people in my broader community. 

Haider's noxiousness is almost contagious to the point of infecting others; it is easy to not respect him and difficult to respect anyone who respects him. Any time I see "reasonable" people share anything written by him with an exhortation to "go read this," my two immediate thoughts are "no thanks" and "I will never take anything you say seriously again." 

By the way, the LUMS conference could be defended even within the nationalist/patriot framework that Haider and his friends occupy. Just this week, this happened in their favorite country:

“A liberal university will need a liberal political and social context to flourish....the Founders and the Administration will require renewed commitment to the values of Ashoka, and new courage to secure Ashoka’s freedom.”https://t.co/uuzOMlEhJf

— Pallavi Raghavan (@pallaviraghava1) March 18, 2021

Especially in the context of a rapprochement with India (only allowed when faujis want, by the way, not when elected Prime Ministers want), it would have been a great opportunity to say "While this is happening in India, we are hosting a conference on the '71 genocide." This would not be my reason for supporting the conference, but it would be a reason, one that boot lickers like Haider could have reconciled themselves to. But alas. 

At the end of the day, this isn't really about Haider. He is not really powerful or important enough to get a conference cancelled with tweets. Much more likely -- and this is not just my opinion but also of some people at the receiving end of this decision -- is that he was playing a part in a production written above his pay grade. Regardless of whether he's an odious instigator or an odious puppet, it's not a great look.

You will note that I am not bothering to get into the actual history of the genocide here. In an earlier life, my dissertation was inspired and motivated by this war (you can read the resulting book's chapter on the war for free here or, if you don't quite have the time or patience for that, you can read an op-ed based on that chapter here). What I find truly laughable and detestable is that Haider and some other Fifth Generation Warriors think that the conservative, nationalist position on the 71 war is not allowed a fair hearing in Pakistan. Lol just lol. Hey geniuses, look around. That's the only story allowed. 

Suffice it to say, no one outside GHQ and its circle of keyboard sepoys considers Pakistan's actions in 1971 anything but a genocide. More to the point, an honest discussion of the causes of 54% of the country choosing to split off (and consequently becoming richer and better developed on a per capita basis) has never been broached in broader society and the body politic. This week has been instructive in showing why. 

Let me close with a soft, gentle, and unfair-because-it's-in-hindsight critique of the organizers, who I would like to state for the record are braver, more determined, and more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. Stepping away from this whole imbroglio, you may have come across the famous line "only commit one crime at a time." In other words, if you have drugs or guns in your car, make sure you are not speeding and that your taillight is fixed and that you stop at all the stop signs and you use your signal when you are changing lanes. 

In the spirit of committing only one "crime" at a time, I would say that a conference on the war would have stood less chance of being cancelled had it not (a) been held on March 23, and (b) referred to the war as Bangladesh's war of liberation. In all likelihood, it probably still would have been cancelled, so in a sense my critique is wrong even on its own terms, but my point is, those two aspects could be seen as deliberately provocative (even if they were not designed that way). 

I hope this is not seen as blaming the victim: the organizers and presenters did a lot of hard work on putting this together, and it's totally unfair and wrong what happened. All I'm saying is that, from my admittedly distant vantage point, there was a quieter way to do this, and for better or worse, the organizers opted for a splashier and noisier way.