Getting a 'mountain' high
A group of eight trekkers make their way to the Miranjani top to celebrate the 2010 snowfall
As told to Syrrina Ahsan Ali Haque
What pulls trekkers, rock climbers, and mountaineers to climb a mountain and arrive at its peak? Gao Xinjiag, a Nobel Laureate, in his acclaimed novel 'Soul Mountain', discusses how there is a strong affiliation between the metaphysical soul and the physical mountain. The height of the mountain provides the uplift that the soul needs, and during the course of climbing, mountaineers venture into an inward journey.

Sadly, there are only two things most Australians would associate with Pakistan: cricket and terrorism. The fault for this lies mostly with the one-sided reporting by Australia's mainstream media, which fails to give a picture of the complex factors that govern Pakistani politics and culture.

Most Australians heard of the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in March last year. In May, they saw reports of the Taliban's insurgency in the Swat Valley. In October, they watched footage about the terror attack on the Pakistan army general headquarters.

At other times, the most they get to see is the occasional 15-second report on the evening news about yet another bomb blast in Lahore or Islamabad. Or they might read a pro-war newspaper columnist argue why the US-led war on Afghanistan must be extended across the Pakistani border.

The West tends to view the Muslim world as a hostile, homogenous entity, which somehow threatens the West. The media reinforces this view constantly. The differences between Muslim nations, and the tensions, debates and clashes within them, are almost never reported. Nor is the real history of western interference in the Muslim world told honestly. For instance, rarely will a western journalist remind readers that successive Australian and US governments supported Pakistani dictators such as Musharraf and Zia-ul-Haq, even though the Pakistani people wanted democracy.

Because of this relentless and skewed coverage, most Australians view Pakistan as an uninviting and dangerous place -- just another battleground in the West's so-called "war on terror".

Before I left to visit Pakistan for a week in late January, my own views about the country were already different. As a journalist for a left-wing Australian newspaper, I had long decided that the portrayal of Pakistan in the mainstream media was wrong and superficial. But it wasn't until I went to Pakistan myself that I gained a fuller understanding of just how much of the real story is simply not being told.

As a guest of the Labour Party Pakistan, I spent time in Lahore and Faisalabad in my all-too-brief visit. It was in Faisalabad I was exposed to the powerful workers organisation, the Labour Qaumi Movement (LQM), which held a huge rally in the city centre on January 29.

For years the LQM, led by Mian Quyyum, has waged a struggle for the rights of textile workers in Faisalabad. Amazingly, I learnt this movement has effectively closed down the city four times in the past two years. The January 29 rally was an impressive show of strength by the LQM. It made media headlines across Pakistan. But there is no coverage of Pakistan's growing labour movement in Australia.

The rally was jointly organised with the Anjuman Mazarin Punjab (AMP) -- an organisation of peasant farmers who have struggled for the right to own their land for a decade. The AMP has resisted attempts by their military landlords to sell their land to multinational corporations. Instead, they demand the government transfer ownership rights to the people who till the soil. Women have played a prominent role in this campaign. Again, news of this struggle for land rights, or other struggles like it, is absent from the Australian news.

I met the leader of the Women Workers Helpline (WWH), Bushra Khaliq, who also addressed the January 29 rally. She received one of the biggest cheers.

The WWH is one of the most important Pakistani feminist groups organising for the rights of women. Through its community development programmes and awareness campaigns, it aims to empower women, socially, politically and economically to build a just and gender-sensitised society.

In the West, we are uniformly told that women in Muslim countries live a kind of hell. This narrative compares the supposed freedoms women enjoy in the West with the supposed uniform repression women face in Muslim countries. George W. Bush even justified the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that the US soldiers would "liberate" Afghan women.

Few Australians would believe that organisations such as WWH are doing such impressive work. And most would be surprised to witness the stirring reception she received for her speech to a crowd of mostly male Pakistani workers. But my brief trip to Pakistan broke down this stereotype as well.

My visit also gave me a deeper awareness of the importance of Pakistan's various ethnic groups -- Punjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Balochis and others -- in the country's political life.

Australian media reports usually rely solely on religious issues to explain Pakistan's internal problems. But the quest for full rights and equality between Pakistan's different national groups appears to be a far more decisive issue in daily politics than religion. This undermines one of the main reasons given for the bogus "war on terror" against the Muslim world -- i.e. that religious extremism is the number one issue everywhere.

Part of the reason for all the distortions is that Australia's media is highly monopolised and controlled by a very small group of media tycoons, including Rupert Murdoch. Like so much of the "free" western media, what gets reported reflects the interests of Australia's elites. Often the truth is lost amid the lies or is omitted altogether.

The worst thing is that the mainstream media reports about Pakistan without reporting on its people and their aspirations. In consequence, Pakistanis are dehumanised. This is typical of the West's media coverage of the entire third world.

For instance, the Australian investigative journalist John Pilger wrote recently of a 10-year study by the University of the West of England of BBC reporting on Venezuela. Pilger said: "Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of Hugo Chavez's government (such as free health and education), while most denigrated his extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler."

The western mainstream media, therefore, often plays a harmful political role. It warps the consciousness of citizens in the west, desensitises them to injustice, and helps garner public support for imperialist wars of aggression overseas, such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

Countless times throughout my visit, I was struck by the big gap between the Australian media coverage of Pakistan and the on-the-ground reality. Clearly, there are many differences between the two countries. But in their aspirations for a better life, for peace and equality, ordinary Australians and Pakistanis actually share much in common.

The myth that Pakistani society is homogenous was shattered by my visit. Pakistan's people face many problems and life for many is very difficult. But it is a dynamic country, with a proud history of struggle, and a future that will be crafted by the actions and ideas of the masses.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to address the huge LQM rally in Faisalabad. In my speech, I commented on the recent one-day cricket series between Pakistan and Australia. I said that while we may be opponents on the cricket field, when it comes to rights of workers to a living wage and dignified life, Australians and Pakistanis must stand united.