Reporting on Southasia in German prints focuses mainly on the ongoing war and conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
By Gabriele Köhler
The Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany
Germany is blessed with a rich print media landscape: numerous multi-paged dailies – some of which are read across the nation – and several political weeklies. The culture is one of investigative and in-depth journalism, and readers often become followers of a particular flamboyant political commentator. As in other countries in Europe, each newspaper has its particular political slant. At the same time, the media are the platform for opinionated public discourse. For example, on divisive topics, the weekly Die Zeit has developed a format of its own: it will often publish two – as opposed to one – lengthy editorials filling its entire front page, editorials which diametrically contradict each other, arguing the pro and contra, respectively, on a particular stance – a sort of a Hegelian approach in search of the synthesis view. The sports pages have extensive editorials on the politics and economics of games. During the FIFA World Cup matches last summer, the sociology of football as a global sport, and the psychology of each match made for page-length articles before and after each game.
Overall, the focus of the print media is on domestic politics, economy and social trends – domestic mainly in the sense of Germany. Where it affects German policymaking, domestic policy discussion is led by decisions (to be) shaped in Brussels. The remaining newspaper space is shared between the US, China and the rest of the world, in that order.
So, what does Southasia look like from Germany? Is it understood as a region that, like Europe, is trying to forge a common identity? To what extent are Southasia’s path-breaking social policies – the microcredit schemes, the public works, the social security, the right to food discussions, the universal school meal programmes, the right to information, the affirmative action efforts – reflected in German prints? These policies could conceivably be of interest to Germany, seeing that it too is seeking to re-design its poverty and social assistance programmes, create jobs and incomes for the chronically unemployed and underemployed, and find ways to ensure that the 10 percent of Germany’s children who grow up under the national poverty line have a proper meal every day.
Judging by a random and unsystematic reading of selected German newspapers – such as the large dailies Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the weekly Die Zeit, – Southasia seems to have collapsed into two war- and crisis-ravaged countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Southasia
Granted, Bangladesh is covered from time to time in connection with reports on the despotic work conditions in factories supplying garments to German clothing outlets. The strikes by women workers in Dhaka for fairer wages were reported extensively. India appears occasionally, mainly when there are Maoist attacks. Nepal, despite its historic challenge of building an independent, rights-based republic, has made it in German newspapers once in the past six months, only to report on Prime Minister Nepal stepping down from the government in June. Since then, no follow-up as to where the governmental or constitutional processes stand has been done. Sri Lanka – now that the horrifying war is over – does not appear to merit any reporting. Bhutan is relegated to the tourism section, featured as an idyllic destination for travellers seeking high, beautiful mountains and deep Buddhist meditation. While the political divisions and dysfunctions in the other Southasian countries are reported in some detail, Bhutan enjoys a mystique image. There is never a mention of the expulsion of Lhotsampa that began about twenty years ago.
Roots of biases and prejudices
The interest in Afghanistan is fed by the fact that Germany is politically involved and highly exposed there. The German government chaired the Bonn process after the end of the Taliban regime. German soldiers are stationed in Kundus, Afghanistan, and the current German centre-and-neoliberal coalition government, in office since autumn 2009, has had the courage to admit that there is a war going on in Afghanistan – earlier governments had defined the situation rather vaguely as a conflict. This has a lot to do with German history. After the fall of Hitler fascism and imperialism, Germany had committed to never send soldiers outside of German territory again. The Constitution was amended only a few years back, to enable German forces to become a part of NATO military interventions.
The articles on Afghanistan are (understandably) primarily concerned with the safety of German troops, and on a second plane, then with the justification of the engagement of the ISAF forces there. The airstrike in Kundus last year, when the German command called in an American fighter plane that bombed and killed many civilians, is in the news often. And the Afghan survivors of the air strike are taking the German government to court.
The Taliban movement is the second topic of the numerous pieces on Afghanistan. Its genesis: the ideological support in parts of the population. There are newspaper debates on for and against intervention in Afghanistan, and on military versus cultural and developmental engagement. There are also soul searching articles on how to reach the population.
Some of the discourse is driven by domestic security considerations. For example, Joshka Fischer, former Foreign Minister and former head of the progressive (and originally pacifist) Green Party, asked in a recent editorial whether it would be wise to pull out of Afghanistan. Wise for whom? For Germany. The article was not about how the international community might best assist the vulnerable and the poor in Afghanistan and ensure their human rights, such as their right to food, education, and employment. It was about how the “West” could assure its own safety and security.
The reporting on Pakistan in the past months has been driven by the Indus flooding disaster. There is sympathy with the ordeals of the poorest segments of the Pakistan population, struck by the horrendous flooding. But this is always paired with a critique of corruption, government mismanagement, and the fear of fundamentalism. That the Islamist NGOs were the speediest to respond to the crisis is a big worry.
Die Zeit is somewhat more diversified. These past few months have seen a serial on poverty and the middle classes in India, including the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education adopted this year. The Indian government’s effort to issue identity cards is discussed in some detail with a combination of awe at the size of the endeavour – 1.2 billion people – and the fact that Germany itself is conducting a census in 2011. Right now, this decision on census faces considerable opposition as Germans fear that the state is intruding in their private sphere, and amassing information that is none of its business. A background piece prepared by a senior member of a research institute analysed the Afghanistan challenge as one revolving around the need for development and employment.
Occasional insights
The most insightful writing on South Asia comes from Zeit correspondent Ulrich Ladurner, who is the only writer to view the region from inside and expose the biases, prejudices and self-interest of German discourse on Afghanistan and Pakistan. ‘They don’t know how to do democracy’ is the headline in which he sarcastically mimics German public opinion on an article analysing how Europe is betraying the human rights of the Afghan population, and blaming Afghans for what he sees as the destructive impact of the West’s misguided militarist approach to the region (Ulrich Ladurner, ZEIT, 23 September).
And indeed, some reporting on South Asia compares the Afghanistan and Pakistan situations with that of post-war Germany: the human rights challenges, the total physical destruction, the lack of political and social cohesion. As an example, one interesting article calls for a Marshall Plan for Pakistan to combine disaster relief and post-flood reconstruction with nation building (Andreas Zielcke, SZ, 22 August). Such reference to the post-war Marshall plan perhaps offers one explanation for the press’s focus on the conflict-ravaged countries. Despite all its economic success, the horrors of World War II – the genocide against the Jewish citizens, against the Roma, against political opposition, the deaths of millions of civilians and soldiers, the huge exodus of displaced persons, as well as the destruction of the country itself – remain etched into public memory. And possibly, this is why the media relate so selectively to the countries in Southasia.
Gabriele Köhler is a development economist based in Munich, Germany.
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