[Reader-list] "Telephone Pyaar"

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Insightful article by Taimur Sikander 
 
Kshmendra
 
 
EXCERPTS:
 
- The huge growth in Pakistan's telecom sector is characteristic of many developing countries. But there are few other places where phone calls and connections have had such an impact on a nation's foreign policy, crime, pop culture, entrepreneurship, and more. Indeed, Alexander Graham Bell probably never imagined that his invention could one day bring Pakistan and India to the brink of war, as almost happened on November 27, 2008, when a jailed militant made hoax phone calls from his prison cell to the presidency.
 






- Of course, before leapfrogging into the mobile era, phone connections in Pakistan have played a major role in shaping society, influencing politics, directing foreign policy and more. Long before the Nawaz Sharif-Atal Bihari Vajpayee hotline (which later became the Pervez Musharraf-Vajpayee hotline) made headlines in the 1990s, the telephone was being used by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the first Governor General of Pakistan, and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to calm communal tensions in the post-Partition environment. “Nehru was in fact the first prominent leader to have called Jinnah after independence,” recalls Mian Ata Rabbani, the first aide-de-camp to Jinnah. “Riots, finances, and border issues were all on the agenda,” he adds.    
 
- Two decades later, in 1970, the Americans ‘called’ upon Pakistan, this time to normalise its strained diplomatic relations with China. Pakistan’s then President Yahya Khan was approached by US President Richard M. Nixon to start a dialogue with China. President Khan conducted his role of intermediary largely on the phone, flying to the US and China after the ground work for talks was laid. 
 
- East and West Pakistan were also ‘connected’ in June 1970, President Yahya Khan laid the foundation for satellite communication at Deh Mandro, near Karachi, following a similar move in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan. “I am sure that satellite communication will play a significant role in creating a feeling of unity and openness among our people and in speeding up the process of inter-wing integration,” Khan said at the time. However noble the intention, by this point the gulf between the two wings was too great. Khan’s policy of governing the eastern wing using telephonic channels failed to have any impact. East Pakistan, agitated by the socio-economic neglect by the central government in the western wing, eventually slipped out of Khan’s control as he tried to govern it over the phone. The agitation flared into a bloody struggle and eventually resulted in the formation of Bangladesh on March 25, 1971. 
 
- In the 1980s, fixed line telephones had made enough of an impact on Pakistani society to find reflection in popular culture. Ongoing poor service ensured that phones became the butt of comedians’ jokes, particularly on ‘Fifty Fifty,’ a popular Pakistani television series. 
 
 
- The depiction of a ‘wedding by telephone’ is also a good indication of how profoundly the technology had been assimilated into Pakistani culture.  
 
- Similarly, pop sensation Nazia Hassan’s hit song, ‘Telephone pyaar,’ from her second-most successful album Hotline, picked up on an urban phenomenon during General Ziaul Haq’s regime. Her song touched on how a society constrained by the Islamisation of the country and the imposition of draconian laws was coping via telephone. The idea of a telephonic love hinted at how couples, now denied the opportunity of mingling in public, were continuing to stay in touch over the phone. 
 
 
- In 1991, Instaphone, a subsidiary of Millicom International Cellular based in Luxembourg, started the first mobile phone service in Pakistan. The huge mobile phone sets that came with the service were outlandish, a status symbol that only the wealthy could afford. But this luxury was to soon be the undoing of many wealthy businessmen who were kidnapped for ransom in droves. The police soon determined that the kidnappers, armed with the new phone technology themselves, could track and pinpoint the location of high-value targets as well as use mobile technology to better coordinate the pick-ups. As a result of the spikes in kidnappings, the mobile phone service was phased out by the government of Pakistan in the mid-1990s, though, sadly, kidnappings for ransom remained a constant. 
 
- When Pakistan lost the World Cup cricket quarter final to India in Bangalore, our players received innumerable death threats - all via their phones. Many changed their numbers and requested police protection, but largely lived in fear. Wasim Akram, the captain of the team who was injured for the quarter final was the worst affected: his father was kidnapped. As had become the norm by the mid-1990s, deliberations with the kidnappers and the police continued over the phone and Akram's father was released a day later.  
 
- Meanwhile, politicians began to take advantage of the reach of communications technology. After fleeing Karachi for Britain in 1992, the chief of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Altaf Hussain, ensured that his presence was still felt in the country thanks to long distance phone calls. In the mid-1990s, he kicked off what are still regular ‘telephonic addresses’, attended by thousands of party workers in pin-drop silence. “The authorities keep cutting me off and making noise on the line, but mostly we get through,” Hussain has said of his attempts to garner support for the MQM during the 1996 elections via phone addresses. Even in the present era of video conferencing, Skype, and live streaming online, Hussain's supporters’ old-fashioned technique of attaching loud speakers to the receiver of the telephone still draws huge crowds. 



 
- While phone calls no doubt helped orchestrate the many military coups that have punctuated Pakistani history, the true potential of the telephone in staging a coup was realised in 1999. On October 12 that year, Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of Pakistan, tried to remove General Pervez Musharraf as the army chief and appoint Ziauddin Butt in his place. Musharraf, who was in Sri Lanka, boarded a commercial airliner to return to Pakistan, but Sharif had the Karachi airport sealed to prevent the plane landing, routing it to Nawab Shah Airport instead. But General Musharraf phoned top army generals from the plane, commanding them to oust Sharif's administration. General Musharraf then assumed power for the following nine years. 
 


- Can one phone call forever alter the course of a nation’s domestic and foreign policy? In Pakistan’s case, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Days after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, General Musharraf’s intelligence director reportedly received a late-night call in which the US government threatened to bomb Pakistan “into the Stone Age” if it failed to cooperate. The threat was made by then US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who contacted the Pakistani administration in the lead up to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. In response to that phone call, Pakistan decided to join hands with the US in its ‘war against terror.’ 
 
- In the past decade – the era of mobile connectivity in Pakistan – SMS text messages have had the same social impact that fixed line phones did in the 1970s and 1980s. The perceived power of communication via SMS can be judged by the government’s many attempts to monitor and control text messaging. In 2003, for example, civil rights activists cried foul when words such as MMA, Shia, and Balochistan were blocked in mobile text messages. 
 
- Again, in 2009, the promulgation of the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance (legislation aimed at curtailing cyber crimes) had many concerned – and outraged – that they could face 14 years’ imprisonment for sending offensive text messages. The ordinance barred using digital devices and internet or communications services to criticise the state or rulers. The Federal Investigation Agency also formed a special cell to monitor text messages for content that was offensive to the Pakistani leadership – a move that caused widespread concern about the FIA’s growing powers and the infringement of the Pakistani public’s privacy.  
 
- At the same time, text messages were also used in a revolutionary way, particularly during the movement in 2007 to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, deposed from his post by General Musharraf. On July 20, 2007, when the Justice Chaudhry was first reinstated to his position, 400 million SMS messages were sent nationwide, which according to the PTA, is the highest number of messages sent in one day in Pakistan. 
 
- Later that year, after General Musharraf imposed emergency rule on November 3, bloggers, activists and community organisers used SMS to coordinate protests and send updates on the political situation since most of the media channels were blocked. Indeed, the threat of mobile phones was such that the government used jammers at the Supreme Court, protest sites, and the homes of opposition politicians and lawyers. 
 
- Since then, SMS text messages have been a vital tool for spreading knowledge about and organising protests during lawyers’ movements to restore the chief justice in 2008 and 2009. 
 
- While previously a tool for diplomacy, phones most recently have strained relations between long-time rivals Pakistan and India. Soon after the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, news of how ‘connected’ the terrorists were spread like wildfire. According to eye witnesses, once the coordinated attacks across Mumbai began, the terrorists were constantly on their phones, sometimes juggling a handset in one hand while firing off rounds with the other. The terrorists also used BlackBerries to monitor international reactions to their actions and keep an eye on police response. A satellite phone was found on the boat the terrorists allegedly used to enter Mumbai, and much of their attack was planned using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). 
 
- In the wake of the attacks, the discovery of five cell phones helped establish links between the Mumbai attackers and Pakistan-based militants. One witness told an Indian court that the five Nokia phones had been made in China and shipped to Pakistan. Phone records were also used to prove that the terrorists had been ‘handled’ by commanding militants in Pakistan. 
 
- Post-26/11, Omar Saeed Sheikh, a detained Pakistani militant, further heightened Indo-Pak tensions by placing hoax calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani using a mobile phone from his Hyderabad jail cell. Pretending to be the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Sheikh called and threatened the Pakistani leadership. 
 
- In the past year, many Pakistanis have received SMS text messages warning them not to take calls on their mobile phones from unfamiliar numbers. According to the message, the calls could be a remote trigger for a terrorist attack or even a suicide bombing. The fear that phones control us – rather than the other way around – is an indication of how deeply embedded they are in Pakistani culture and society. 
 
- But it’s not all bad news. There was a time when Pakistanis who wanted to communicate had to head to the PCO, or gather around the phone after a ‘booking’ a call with an operator. Nowadays, people are setting up mobile businesses, conducting mobile money transfers, i-reporting in the name of citizen journalism, navigating via GPS, and even sexting! As such, a history of the Pakistani phone is a history of progress.





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