Crowd Control
by Imran Ali
I last visited Pakistan in April 2006, to spend a couple weeks visiting family in Karachi and Lahore. Even as a British-born Pakistani, I’m constantly amazed by the generosity and warmth of the Pakistani people…
One of my strongest impressions during my last visit was the proliferation of mobile phones - most people I met under 30 had at least two handsets, and invariably a third. Upon further investigation, Pakistani users - like many others - utilise multiple handsets and SIM cards as a form of presence management and a means to mediate their various social relationships - whether friend, family, or coworker.
It comes as no surprise that the proliferation of mobile technology in Pakistan is increasingly playing a part in directing the country’s civil and political life. America’s hapless War On Terror has intersected twice with this proliferation, once with the capture of Al Qaeda’s ‘20th hijacker’ Ramzi Binalshibh as he boasted over a satellite phone that he’d indefinitely evade capture….one for the Darwin Awards!
Secondly, and more acutely, with the assasination of former PM and kleptocrat Benazir Bhutto last month, Pakistan’s military government didn’t understand how rapidly SMS, mobile video, voice calls and photomessaging would undermine their barely plausible explanation of the assassination. See this blog for a useful photo+video account of events. Collectively, Pakistanis had unwittingly shot a multi-dimensional Zapruder film,
As the nation’s 75m mobile subscribers overwhelmed Pakistan’s mobile infrastructure, the Interior Ministry began to concoct a narrative based on TV coverage. (I based this on some specious commentary from Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria on the Daily Show!).
As the accidentally crowdsourced evidence - snippets of photo messages and mobile phone footage - emerged, the government was forced to backtrack and eventually agree to re-open investigations with the assistance of detectives from Britain’s Scotland Yard.
Though the focus of coverage has been on delayed elections, nuclear security, geopolitics and extremism in Pakistan. I believe something more subtle and fundamental has been overlooked - the empowerment of Pakistani citizens with democratising technologies. As successive civilian, and military governments have failed Pakistanis, perhaps this is the beginnings of a bootstrapped civic culture, carefully asserting influence over the country’s future.
It’s hard to silence 75m cameraphones.
