R O N I Nammar yasir’s personal blog

What does the world out there think of an average Pakistani? Post 9/11 this question would have a very different answer but things drastically changed for the land of green we all call home. So what went wrong? Not any of the attackers in 9/11 were Pakistani. Osama Bin Laden was in Afghanistan at the time of the attack. Saddam Hussayn which was danger to United States was the President of Iraq and not Pakistan. For the past 8 years we ‘supported’ US in their war, we practically took back our stance on Kashmir and sincerely started peace talk with neighbour India. And despite incidents like Samjhota Express where a service office was involved in the Killing of Pakistanis, we hardly ever confronted the Bharat Sarkaar for their demanding role in this relationship. For all these years our president taught us the lesson of moderation and we tried not to be extremists and evolved as Enlighten Moderated Pakistanis Muslims (if there is such a term).

The above para might sound irrelevant to this post but it surely defines the time line in which the Pakistani blogosphere was born. So to understand the psyche of an average Pakistani blogger one needs to go and study the post 9/11 Pakistan. Last Sunday bloggeres from Karachi were invited to t2f (the second floor) to meet Nick Fielding who is associated with immediate.org.uk. Nick is a senior journalist, public speaker and co-author of Masterminds of Terror. As a senior reporter of Sunday times he covered the repercussions of 9/11 from Afghanistan.

The agenda of the meet up was to have a perspective on the use of technology and new media and how an average Pakistani is getting benefitted from it. He was amazed to find out that we Pakistanis have a growing network of bloggers. He knew about teabreak which came as a surprise to me. But this clearly reflects the quality of the blogs that are the part of our network. On his question of what an average Pakistani blogger thinks; my answer was; that an average Pakistani blogger is a patriot who scribbles its quill to show the world that this country comprises of hard working men and women who have nothing to do with terrorism or west perceived extremism. We don’t regard Taliban or Alqaeda members as our heroes nor find the US (drone) attacks and intervention in the country praiseworthy.

In the end we agreed to advocate blogism and found it obligatory to spread the word. It was encouraging to witness that an average powerless Pakistani blogger can actually help to improve country’s image; a duty which payed ministers and bureaucrats failed to perform.

Photo credits: Madam Jehan Ara

People who showed up at the event: Jehan Ara,Sabeen Mahmud, Mohammed Nawaz, Farzal Dojki, Munir Usman, Fariha Akhtar, Sahar Ali, Nick Fielding and RONIN

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