When you accidentally meet an extremist. A strange night out.
Two taxi rides in one night. Starkly different experiences.
Late 2018, I was living a fairly casual existence and indulging some long earned personal pursuits. This included attending some lectures and appearances by various people. This time I was listening to Malala Yousafzai speak at Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Center. A wonderful venue. Malala was the 15 year old girl the Pakistani Taliban (formal name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) shot in the face on a school bus in 2012 because she defied them. She survived with help from the UK, and was given asylum along with her family. She continued to speak out, drawing international recognition and praise, including a Nobel Prize. She runs a foundation committed to education for young women, supported by her Father. You can find out about her here .
I detest driving in the city, parking is horrible and expensive. I ordered a taxi for the trip in.
First driver picked me up on time, the car was clean, and he was friendly. Being Australian, I chose the front passenger seat. It’s a weird thing to do in the rest of the world I’m told, but here it’s almost standard. The usual friendly greetings were exchanged, then he asked me in his thick south central Asian accent “You are going to MCEC? To see Malala?” I replied in the affirmative. The smile on his face was quite something, there was a pride there. “She is from my same village in Pakistan, we love her! She is coming to visit our community group this weekend! She is so wonderful”
He was from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, about halfway from Islamabad to the Afghan border. He liked that I knew that. He went on to explain how the Taliban had forced him and his family to flee the area also. There were three options for people under their rule — comply, leave or die. He had to abandon a long worked for acceptance to pilot training on the major Pakistani airline. Now he supported his family driving taxis here. “They were bad men” was how he summed up the devastators of his own, and so many other lives.
We chatted during the 25 or 30 minute drive. I think my understanding of the wars in Afghanistan, and how Pakistan was and remains involved was pleasantly surprising to him. Not many older white Aussie blokes are much informed on that kind of thing, I guess. I’ve made a sincere effort to keep abreast of all the trouble in the Middle East since becoming both concerned and fascinated during Gulf War I. I thought at the time, during the long wait with 500,000 coalition troops in the desert late 1990 that I’d end up being drafted and having to go and fight, you see. I also believed it would spark a very long and far reaching war. Turns out I was right on the second point, although I wouldn’t have been able to tell you exactly why back then.
I can do better now. Here is my recommended reading list.
As he was dropping me off at the venue, he handed me a card and said to message him and he would try to have me to join them when Malala visited the community center. I was honored, and was assured I would be most welcome. “A friend to Malala is a friend to us!” Although this did not end up lining up for various reasons the invitation alone was a huge gesture and one I appreciated very much.
While I enjoyed the appearance, the interview style with noted journalist Annabel Crabbe left me a little underwhelmed. It was a bit like seeing her on the Ellen show, or Oprah. Kind of sanitized and avoiding anything too dark or sad. Hope, courage, female strength and achievement were the focus. Fair enough, there’s plenty of that and quite worth discussing. One notable incident early on when either a door slammed or something was dropped backstage. It sounded just like a gunshot. Loud and sharp. Many jumped, including the guest. Me too.
I would have liked to hear her speak on the ideology of the Islamist group, and life under them before the Pakistani military drove them out in 2009. Apart from them simply stopping young girls and women from attending school, and subjecting them to wearing the chador or burka outside the house. Their control of the area was horrific. I would have liked to understand her feelings knowing that the commander who ordered the attack on her and many others had been killed in an airstrike earlier in the year. Although I‘m not sure I would have asked her that question myself. I’m not sure the majority female audience would have been happy being subjected to that kind of talk either. Knowing the outline of what happened to her and by whom is enough for most, I think. Also Fair enough. Deeper understanding can be tough. It can even sap one of hope for the futures of a vast swathe of lands and nations in some cases.
Afterward I walked for a short distance from the venue to Flinders and Elizabeth streets in the city. I bought a snack, then hailed a passing taxi who pulled over. ‘Fare to Box Hill South mate?” “Sure buddy” Again with the front seat. Again with the south central Asian accent. Another clean taxi, with a friendly driver. He punched in the address I gave him, and started toward home.
Conversation and pleasantries quickly came around to mentioning where I’d just been. I sensed a small shock or bad reaction. I asked him if he knew of her, and what he thought. After a little consideration, he said “I think… that I do not support her”.
Okay, Interesting. Perhaps this fellow knew something I didn’t. Perhaps she’d been caught saying the wrong thing, backing the wrong cause, or with her hand in the till, so to speak. I asked him to elaborate. “She insults our religion” was his opening phrase in reply. I see. I’d just watched her speak for over an hour with her head covered. She has not rejected Islam, and remains a believer. “Her and that other b*tch, who was it?” “You don’t mean Asia Bibi?” “Yes, that one. She made us very angry, of course”.
“That b*tch” — Aasiya Noreen - known as Asia Bibi, a Christian, had recently had her death penalty for blasphemy overturned. It would be another couple of months before the Supreme court in Pakistan upheld that decision. She now lives in Canada. Malala is purported to have said about the case that her beloved Pakistan had ‘gone crazy’. Of course. I mean, who puts ‘blasphemers’ to death in the 21st century? Actually, it’s quite a few places.
As soon as the conversation had taken this turn, I became aware of something, something I’ve not had much experience of. I was in the company of a man who believed in some truly horrible ideas. Although normally I would have pulled him up on the slur and stopped the conversation, possibly even asked to be dropped off — I was somewhat fascinated to be in close quarters with a believer of this type. I’ve read vast amounts on Jihadist ideology and practices, and although I knew we had some extremists living among us, even having the main translator for Islamic State living as a free man in Melbourne’s Footscray for years before his arrest — that this is true for most populations on earth. I’d not personally met one before, however. I drew him out a little. My ‘understanding’ around various points he made encouraged him to become more bold as we traveled along. Various ideas were put forth. “When someone insults the prophet, of course we get very violent” regarding the Danish cartoons and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. “That woman should certainly be killed” on Asia Bibi. “Of course we will protest any release, we want her dead!” on her acquittal. ‘ISIS?… I will say they have the right idea”. “When there is finally Caliphate in all Muslim lands, then peace will come”. I asked if he included Timor Leste in that? “Of course!”. The most horrible one, in a comprehensive list of horrible ideas, was that “the Taliban were right to shoot that one” about Malala.
It was a surreal drive. I didn’t feel danger— more curiosity. It’s not like I was challenging him. It occurred to me when he began criticizing western powers, and westerners in general, that I may be in some personal peril. I didn’t really think so, though. If he was ‘dead set’ as we say, he’d already be dead on a field or crushed under a collapsed building in Syria by then — the fate of thousands of people from all corners of the globe who heeded Al-Baghdadi’s 2014 declaration of a Caliphate, and call for all ‘good Muslims’ to come and live in (and defend/extend) this new instantiation of a pure Islamic society, under strict Sharia. A place they can be ‘free’ to practice their religion ‘correctly’, without fear or interference. Many other religious and ethnic groups living in the area, a vast tract of land spanning most of Syria and a decent chunk of Iraq, were subject to similar choices as the first taxi driver and his family faced under the TTP. Others, the Yazidi in particular, were dead if they were men, or enslaved if women or children.
Despite the collapse of the Caliphate and the death of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Islamic State remains a powerful and dangerous threat in many regions. They may even challenge the original Taliban for control of Afghanistan once the ‘peace deal’ goes ahead. The one where the US, and us among others, essentially hand the country back to them after 19 years of brutal and terrible war. Afghanistan has been at war in one form or another, with many different external powers involved, along with chaotic and brutal internal struggles since around 1975 non-stop. To say both the country and the nation are in utter ruins is a vast understatement.
The Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) was instrumental in channeling US and Saudi/Gulf State funds, perhaps $10 billion dollars worth - and all the weapons and equipment that buys to Afghan and Arab mujaheddin forces. This was to fight the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979. Some of those fighters formed Al Qaeda in the following years. Others formed the Taliban, and eventually ‘won’ control of most of the country by 1994. In fact Bin Laden had secured the favor of his Taliban hosts by sending two AQ suicide bombers diguised as journalists to assassinate their main defiant holdout in the north of the country, Ahmed Shah Masoud. This happened, unnoticed by almost everyone, just two days prior to the attacks on 11th September 2001.
This is only a part of the legacy of such thinking, and the actions of groups of armed men that it encourages.
It was after being dropped off near (but not at) my home that I realized I should probably have noted his name, the taxi registration, something. I’m not sure what I would have done with that. I do have contacts in the ADF, Federal Police, ASIO and various think tanks and policy institutes who may have found the info useful. But then I’m not sure we should necessarily focus resources on those simply believing horrible things. Or should we?