Marta Lavandier/AP

The FTX Arena name is still visible where the Miami Heat basketball team plays, Nov. 12, 2022, in Miami. Lawyers for FTX disclosed that a “substantial amount" of assets have been stolen from the accounts of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, diminishing the odds that investors will get their money back.

The collapse of a key company in an industry that’s creating a new kind of money has put an odd twist on an age-old question: Why do bad people happen to good things?

The latest character in this financial saga appears to be Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, which served as an exchange for a digital form of money called cryptocurrency. On Nov. 11, FTX collapsed in spectacular fashion, declaring bankruptcy after 10 tumultuous days of revelations that the company was using customers’ money to buy assets of a sister company. Since FTX is the world’s No. 2 exchange for cryptocurrencies, its failure has stunned the crypto world the way that the failure of, say, the NASDAQ exchange could cause stock investors to panic.

Already this week, BlockFi filed for bankruptcy and a Japanese exchange called Bitfront shut down. Analysts say other dominoes could fall in the crypto world, which is already reeling from a string of bankruptcies this year, including Celsius and Three Arrows Capital. FTX’s collapse has also shaken confidence in the technology and left its supporters red-faced, including celebrity athletes such as football’s Tom Brady and basketball’s Steph Curry. And yet, in the midst of what’s become known as the crypto winter, many enthusiasts remain steadfast in their confidence that the technology will transform the way people pay each other.

“I’m embarrassed to be working in an industry that has had this tendency to rally around people like Sam Bankman-Fried or the people who own Celsius or Three Arrows Capital,” says Omid Malekan, a Columbia Business School professor and author of a new book, “Re-Architecting Trust: The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets, and Platforms.” “Unfortunately, there’s actually a long history with new and transformative industries – whether we’re talking about railroads, whether we’re talking about the internet itself, other telecommunication – that there’ll always be violent boom-bust cycles in the beginning. And there’s also a tendency to attract certain kinds of grifters and scam artists.”

That confidence stems from the technology that underlies cryptocurrencies, called blockchain. It’s a ledger of transactions spread over a network of computers that makes it easy to check transactions and hard for anyone to hack them. Blockchain is so secure that it’s streamlining real estate sales, giving banks new ways to lend money, and allowing artists to digitally authenticate their art.

“Blockchain is certainly a technology that is here to stay and will continue to evolve,” says Joseph Silvia, a Chicago-based attorney with Dickinson Wright representing financial institutions with a focus on financial technology and crypto.

With cryptocurrencies, the outlook is murkier, in part because of several contradictions that muddy the crypto world.

The most obvious contradiction is that most people who buy crypto tout it for one reason but invest in it for another. Crypto is a digital money that’s built to move. It doesn’t require a banking system to transfer funds. The sender and the receiver don’t need to know each other or trust each other. The currency’s blockchain takes care of that. But the lion’s share of crypto trading has little to do with trust. It’s about greed.

Investors in the biggest cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are eager to become instant millionaires. Their optimism isn’t totally unfounded. In the past five years, bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has fallen from more than $14,000 to about $3,500, then topped $61,000 just over a year ago to plunge to about $16,000 today. Investment adviser Cathie Wood predicts bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030.

Such volatility attracts speculators but hardly represents the stability that everyday users look for in a currency. That currency is more likely to be a special kind of crypto called stablecoins, designed to maintain their value with the U.S. dollar or some other financial asset. Throughout the crypto winter, these stablecoins, when properly backed by a physical asset, have maintained their value.

The contradiction is that as trustworthy as the underlying technology is, it hasn’t protected the crypto world from bad actors. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace proved as stunning as the failure of his company. Until this month, he was hailed as a hero for bailing out two crypto companies after two cryptocurrencies collapsed in May. But when another crypto trading company headed by Mr. Bankman-Fried began to lose money, FTX reportedly began using its customers’ funds to bail out that trading company. When that became known in early November, the firm quickly imploded.

“Everything we talk about in finance regarding good corporate governance ... things that prevent people from stealing from the company or customers – were really absent in that company,” says Richard Thakor, a finance professor at the University of Minnesota. What’s needed, he and many other analysts say, is regulation from the same government entities that cryptocurrency purists thought they could avoid.

Thus, stablecoins won’t replace today’s currencies anytime soon. They may serve as an alternative currency, these analysts say. The big question: If most of the trading in these cryptocurrencies is high-risk speculation and they will require traditional regulation anyway, does the world really need such alternative money?

“A financial innovation is going to last in the long run if it serves the core function,” says Professor Thakor. “With cryptocurrency, I really struggle with regard to what its core economic function is and what exactly drives the value of the cryptocurrency.”

Some central banks are pushing forward with the idea of issuing their own government-backed stablecoin, notably in China and the European Union. That could help modernize today’s creaky financial system, but it raises a hornet’s nest of privacy and other issues. For instance: Will people use a currency that allows their government to so easily track their every expenditure?

Businesses, with fewer privacy concerns and more financial savvy than consumers, may lead the charge in driving wider acceptance of stablecoins, says Mr. Silvia, the corporate attorney.

And in certain niches, consumers are also turning to crypto. Denis Smykalov, who sells luxury real estate in Miami, has seen interest grow in crypto, especially from his international clients. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both nations have made it harder for their citizens to get money out of the country. So they have turned to crypto as an alternative to snap up foreign real estate.

“It’s growing steadily,” says Mr. Smykalov, with about 15% of his deals at Wolsen Real Estate transacted in crypto. “Crypto was, five years ago, something nobody knew,” he says. “A year ago, everybody started accepting it. ... They’re not concerned about FTX at all.”

The bird lies on its side, a clump of feathers no bigger than a crumpled leaf. It’s just a dark speck on the concrete, with massive glass and steel skyscrapers rising above it in the pre-dawn light.

Annette Prince sees it at once. She hurries over and lifts it gently in her right hand. It has a slender bill, a tuft of yellow on its rump, and dark eyes that show no glimmer of life. A yellow-rumped warbler, bound for the warmth of the Caribbean or the American South, has met its end in Chicago’s Loop.

She stuffs it into a plastic bag and writes down the date and address. Then she moves on.

“Sometimes, you come downtown and there are birds everywhere,” says Ms. Prince, a volunteer who has monitored bird collisions for two decades. “It’s not quite like that yet.”

In the contest between birds and cities, the cities are winning. Scientists estimate that, on average, at least a million birds die in collisions with buildings each day in the United States – and as many as a billion a year. Most perish during the spring and fall migrations in which vast numbers journey up and down the continent, flying mainly at night. City lights attract and disorient them, and many end up crashing into windows, not just the sides of gleaming office towers but suburban patio doors as well.

Ann Hermes/Staff

As director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, Annette Prince is intimately familiar with the toll taken on migratory birds in her city. She has been monitoring bird collisions with Chicago's glass buildings for two decades. "Sometimes you come downtown and there are birds everywhere," she says.

The problem, then, is twofold: lights and glass. The light from ever-expanding cities is disrupting the movement of creatures that evolved to migrate in the dark, using the stars and the Earth’s magnetism as their guides. And the modern architectural penchant for glass has proved deadly for them.

Most glass is invisible to birds, appearing either as clear air to fly through or as a reflection of the trees and sky behind them. There are growing efforts to make cities safer for birds. The National Audubon Society’s Lights Out programs, in which owners and managers agree to switch off exterior lights during migration, have spread to 45 U.S. cities. Architects and developers are learning how to make buildings bird-friendly by using specially treated glass that birds can see. Grassroots activists like Ms. Prince are monitoring collisions, pressuring businesses and local officials to take bird safety seriously, and in some places asking homeowners to consider their own windows. Scientists say more birds die by hitting houses – urban and rural – than by striking downtown skyscrapers.

For many conservationists, the issue is far more than birds. They say that protecting birds is part of a larger imperative: the need to reduce the human impact on the natural world in an age of habitat destruction and climate change. To them, the mass death of birds is a symbol of how humans treat the world around them.

“It’s a proxy for a much bigger problem of our stewardship of the planet,” says Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and an expert on bird collisions. “How it relates to systemwide collapse, we don’t know. But I worry about that.”

Birds are clearly in trouble. A 2019 study by the Cornell Lab concluded that the North American bird population had declined by 29%, more than 3 billion birds, over the previous half-century. The biggest reason, scientists say, is probably habitat loss. Feral cats also kill birds – by some estimates more than windows – as do collisions with vehicles and power lines. But the combination of buildings and city lights is deadly.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Annette Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, recovers a migratory bird that struck the glass of an Apple Store in downtown Chicago.

By this measure, Chicago may be the deadliest city of all. According to a 2019 study, Chicago endangers more migrating birds than any American city, followed by Dallas and Houston. It’s a matter of lighting, but also geography. Chicago sits on the Lake Michigan shore and within the Mississippi Flyway, a broad path that funnels migrating birds from as far as the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, and beyond.

Yet if Chicago is one of the worst cities for birds, it’s also one of the best. It has produced a strong response in defense of avian migrants, including a well-established Lights Out program and architects who use bird-friendly designs. It also has some of the most determined advocates for bird safety in the country. Ms. Prince’s group started with just a handful of volunteers two decades ago and has grown to more than 150. These monitors take turns patrolling a square mile or more of downtown Chicago, searching at daybreak for dead or wounded birds. It’s difficult, labor-intensive work, and few cities can match the scale of the effort.

If a bird is alive, monitors take it to a rehabilitation center in the suburbs. They take the dead ones to Chicago’s Field Museum, where volunteers prepare them for storage in the museum’s collections. Over the years, the museum has acquired more than 100,000 birds this way. Songbirds, especially warblers and sparrows, are the most common, but bird kills encompass as many as 170 species.

The monitors also work with building managers to reduce collisions. Turning off exterior lighting is a start. The lights of entryways, lobbies, and glassed-in atria also attract birds. Moreover, birds drawn to a city typically spend a day or two there, pausing to rest and feed before continuing their journey. Most collisions happen on the lower floors, during the day. Monitors encourage building managers to dim interior lights, move plants away from windows, and apply speckled film to clear glass so birds can see it.

Geoffrey Credi was one of the first to embrace this effort. Two decades ago, Mr. Credi, director of operations at Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower in downtown Chicago, attended a symposium about birds and buildings. He was surprised to discover that his building, which overlooks Grant Park, was considered one of the worst in town. He already knew there was a problem. Collision monitors and custodial staff had found birds outside. Mr. Credi threw himself into efforts to make the building safer. He and his staff began to track where birds were hitting. They had speckled film applied to clear-glass entryways. An olive tree in an atrium attracted birds, so Mr. Credi had it moved.

“It wasn’t perfect, but it was a vast improvement,” he says.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Sparrows feed along Michigan Avenue in the city’s urban core.

The effect of city lights on birds is well established. One of the most dramatic examples involves the 9/11 memorial in New York. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s “Tribute in Light” consists of two columns of light shining into the night, a symbol of the fallen towers. It’s switched on once a year to mark the anniversary.

Members of NYC Audubon and others were alarmed when it was first turned on in 2002. Videos show hundreds of birds circling and crossing through the light, like insects in a car beam. Radar and ground observation revealed that the number of birds in lower Manhattan increased from around 500 to as many as 15,700. Conservationists reached a compromise with the museum. Monitors would consult radar and watch the sky. When the number of birds in the beams exceeds 1,000 in 20 minutes, the organizers would turn off the lights for 20 minutes.

“There was an immediate reduction,” says Dr. Farnsworth. Some years, he says, the lights go off eight times on the tribute night. Other years, when migration is low, they stay on all night.

Meanwhile, architects are beginning to design buildings that reduce bird collisions. Jeanne Gang, a prominent Chicago architect, is well known for her efforts. Her designs do not eschew glass, but modify it in critical places to discourage collisions. On lower floors, the glass is fritted – printed in the factory with a ceramic pattern that is both durable and visible to birds.

A simple pattern consists of lots of small dots. But other patterns work, too. Glass on a dormitory complex that Ms. Gang designed for the University of Chicago is imprinted with pale white chevrons, making an aesthetic element out of a safety feature. Elsewhere in the building, decorative steel panels screen the glass. Retractable shades reduce transparency. At glass corners, vertical shields eliminate the see-through effect that is perilous for birds. This and other buildings, together with her outspoken advocacy of bird-friendly architecture, have won Ms. Gang the praise of many conservationists.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Patterned glass, like this enveloping the lobby of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower in Chicago, is increasingly being used by architects to reduce bird collisions.

“She came out with this early on,” says Ms. Prince. “She talked truth in Chicago with us.”

The world of bird-friendly architecture is evolving rapidly. Glass companies are coming out with more products, including glass imprinted with patterns only visible to humans under ultraviolet light. Birds can see the patterns; people can’t. Architects also are finding new ways to reconcile the competing demands of function, aesthetics, and economics. At the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, architects used fritted glass to reduce sunlight into the building and save on energy bills. The pattern also reduces bird collisions.

In Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago, architects printed patterns of small dots on glass to make a new community center safer for birds. But they varied how they spaced the dots on different facades, using them to create more or less transparency and to enliven what might otherwise have been a dull, uniform pattern.

“The solutions are becoming more creative,” says Brian Foote, project manager for Woodhouse Tinucci Architects, which designed Evanston’s Robert Crown Community Center. “There’s now a whole cottage industry that is attempting to find technological solutions to this problem. So I think the solutions available are more attractive architecturally. They’re more integrated solutions. It’s not just something you add at the end.”

It’s also about learning as you go. In the early 2000s, Daniel Piselli’s architectural firm designed the Center for Global Conservation at the Bronx Zoo in New York, incorporating features that designers hoped would help birds. Not all of them did. Overhangs didn’t reduce collisions. Wooden slats installed as sun shades were too far apart to make a difference.

“The aesthetics of architecture have always changed,” says Mr. Piselli, who is director of sustainability for FXCollaborative in New York. “We are in a time when we need to be designing our buildings to deal with the issues of our times: climate change and destruction of the environment in general. To me, there needs to be a new concept of design aesthetics. ... This is part of it.”

Ann Hermes/Staff

The birds David Willard has recovered from collisions with the McCormick Place convention center, which are part of these collections, have provided ornithologists with 44 years of data on the issue.

One of the most diligent students of bird collisions is David Willard, an ornithologist and collections manager emeritus at the Field Museum. In 1978 he got a tip from a colleague that birds were hitting the windows of McCormick Place, a convention center that had been rebuilt seven years earlier after a fire. Designed by a protégé of architectural pioneer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the new McCormick Place was a monument of Modernist architecture, a giant rectangle of glass, brick, and steel, with a wide flat roof and windows 50 feet high. It was also a 10-minute walk from Dr. Willard’s office. One day he made the trip.

“I went out of curiosity, without any idea of what I was getting into,” he says.

What he was getting into was a job of collection and study that has lasted almost a half-century. That first time, Dr. Willard recalls, he did find a few birds – enough to spur him to come back. And back. He began going to McCormick Place almost every morning during the spring and fall migrations, each of which spans several months. He brought the dead birds back to his lab, where he recorded – by hand in a big ledger – their species, size, and other characteristics. Stuffed and preserved, the birds filled drawer after drawer in tall wooden cabinets in the museum’s musty backrooms.

Today, 44 years later, Dr. Willard is still going back, circling McCormick Place at dawn. On a recent morning, the building is brightly lit, and he picks up 13 birds, mostly sparrows. One, a tiny Lincoln’s sparrow, feels warm in his hand. Its small black eye, he notes, “still looks like there’s life in it.” Tall, soft-spoken, and graying now, he walks with his head bent, yet alert for the carts and forklifts of workers also up early to prepare the center for the day’s exhibition. Dr. Willard estimates he has picked up 30,000 birds at McCormick Place. In the early years of his visits, when the convention business was booming and the building in constant use, he found as many as 200 a day. Nowadays, he says, he averages about 20. (A spokesperson for the building’s managers, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, says workers turn off lights when the building is not in use. Trees around the building have also matured, which may reduce collisions.)

Ann Hermes/Staff

Collections at the Field Museum include more than 100,000 birds killed in collisions with buildings in Chicago. Each bird is stuffed and tagged.

Ann Hermes/Staff

David Willard, an ornithologist and pioneer in the study of bird collisions with buildings, records information about each bird he recovers in his ledger at the Chicago Field Museum, where he is collections manager emeritus.

But Dr. Willard has done more than gather up dead birds. He and his colleagues saw early on that McCormick Place offered an opportunity to study migration patterns, as well as one building’s effect on collisions. The most important revelation came when convention business declined in the early 2000s. They found that on nights when the center turned off its lights for lack of conference activity, bird deaths declined by 60%. This suggested that Lights Out programs worked.

Of course, big buildings are only one hazard for birds, and not the worst. Across the country, efforts have sprung up to encourage homeowners to do their part to prevent the thump of a warbler or thrush against their windows.

James Cubie, a lawyer who has worked for activist Ralph Nader and the U.S. Senate, started his own campaign in South Carolina several years ago after learning that North America had lost nearly a third of its birds. “I thought, ‘30% loss, I’ve got to get to work,’” he says.

He lived then in Sun City Hilton Head, a retirement community, where he belonged to a birding club. He started by encouraging members to plant native species like azaleas and hollies to increase bird habitat. “It was very successful,” he says. Then he shifted his focus to windows. He collected different products that were available: netting, decals applied to the glass, and arrangements of hanging monofilament line or parachute cord. He turned his sunroom into a display area. He made a video. He wrote a guide. “The whole shebang,” he says.

The results were disappointing. “People don’t want to spend any money,” says Mr. Cubie. “They’ll spend $500 on plants, but they don’t want to spend $100 on collision prevention.”

This feeling is widespread among those most concerned about bird deaths – that progress is far too slow. Chicago’s downtown skyline may dim noticeably on fall and spring nights, but the city still throws up an immense blaze of light into the night sky, as satellite images readily show. And many cities lack even a basic commitment to dimming lights.

“The first stage is light reduction,” says Ms. Prince, the bird volunteer in Chicago. “That in itself seems the simplest of things. But it can be a challenge. It doesn’t cost anything to turn the lights out. But people, buildings, city businesses, they want the lights on.”

Ann Hermes/Staff

Dorothy Pesch, one of more than 150 volunteers who monitor bird collisions in Chicago, looks for avian migrants to rescue or recover in the early morning hours. She’s been volunteering since 2006.

Till now, most efforts have depended on individual initiative. In some places that’s changing. New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as well as some smaller cities have adopted ordinances that require bird-friendly features on new buildings. But these laws are recent and apply mainly to the largest structures. And such designs, especially patterned glass, are used mainly by public institutions and universities. Most private developers avoid it, either because of the extra expense or because of their attachment to transparency.

“The fact that architects and builders are using bird-friendly technology, that is a positive,” says the Cornell Lab’s Dr. Farnsworth. “But it’s not [happening] as fast as it needs to be.”

Daniel Klem, an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has watched the long awakening of concern about birds and buildings. Starting in the 1970s, he became not only a leading scholar of bird collisions but also an apostle for bird safety – and at times a voice in the wilderness. He worries that too many “feel-good” stories about Lights Out programs have obscured the bigger issue of dangerous glass. He’s tried to interest a celebrity in the cause, but has had no success. He has even patented his own glass, with UV patterning that he says works better than other varieties on the market. That’s the future, he says. And yet he, too, is frustrated that more people don’t take bird collisions more seriously.

“This is something you can’t ignore,” he says. “It’s happening everywhere. All you have to do is open your eyes and see it. But you can’t twist arms.”

It’s not yet dawn when Ms. Prince climbs out of her van and begins her rounds. A cold wind blows from the north. After a few days of unsettled weather, radar suggests a heavy migration: 690 million birds on the move, most through the country’s heartland.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Ms. Prince, who oversees Chicago’s volunteer network of bird collision monitors, carries a net and rescue gear as she looks for birds to recover on a crisp November morning.

Ms. Prince moves briskly, scanning the base of each building she passes. She wears sneakers, a baseball cap, and a pale green vest with pockets big enough to hold small chickens. She carries a voluminous tote and a small white net. She strides along beneath cantilevered overhangs, climbs up and down concrete staircases, explores narrow passages, crosses plazas and patios, and sometimes pauses to look into doorways to see if a bird is trapped.

There aren’t dead birds everywhere, but Ms. Prince does find a few. She also spots a warbler sitting on the concrete, upright but dazed. She moves in quickly, traps it with a flick of her net, and thrusts it into a paper bag. “It probably hit one of the upper floors,” she says. “It’s a little wobbly.” She’ll take it to the rehab center.

Ms. Prince has learned to see the city with a bird’s eye. She imagines what it must be like to be a young warbler, growing up in a northern forest and then one morning finding itself in Chicago, exhausted and confused. “I wonder if it’s not the first time they’ve seen buildings,” she says. “It must be so weird for them.”

Ms. Prince’s sympathy for birds has also made her a sharp critic of buildings. Even watching television, she can’t help but notice the ones that look hazardous to birds. Now, as she reaches the Chicago River, she gestures toward a big glass cube – an Apple Store – on the opposite side. A dozen gulls stand on its flat roof.

“I have to look hard to see the walls,” she says, with a mixture of anger and exasperation. “It looks like a big open space.”

For Ms. Prince, it’s a reminder of how much remains to be done.

Anjum Naveed/AP

Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa arrives for a military parade to mark Pakistan National Day in Islamabad, March 23, 2022. In his final speech as head of Pakistan’s powerful military, the beleaguered army chief publicly called for an end to the institution's political meddling.

In his final speech as head of Pakistan’s powerful military, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa publicly called for an end to the army’s seven decades of political meddling. 

Following a particularly tumultuous year for Pakistani politics, the beleaguered army chief, who retired earlier today after six years in office, made a point of assuring the public that the army had learned its lesson and would henceforth refrain from trying to influence the democratic process. “The army has started its catharsis,” he said in a farewell address last week, “and I hope our political parties will also take this opportunity to reflect on their behavior, because it’s a fact that every institution in Pakistan … has made mistakes.”

On the surface, any future in which the army confines itself to its constitutional role is so strange a proposition as to be almost unbelievable. In the 75 years since Pakistan gained its independence, the country has suffered through three periods of extended military rule. When the generals haven’t been in power directly, they have exerted their influence through a series of puppet politicians whom they have nurtured at great cost and ultimately discarded. So constant has been their hegemony, in fact, that they are euphemistically referred to as the country’s “establishment.”

It is because of this history, no doubt, that for all the hope elicited by General Bajwa’s address, there are many in Pakistan who remain unconvinced about its sincerity. 

“I for one welcome their statement … but similar statements have been made in the past and, to the nation’s dismay, not honored,” says Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, a former senator. “One can only hope that they’ve also come to the conclusion like many others that Pakistan’s continuation as a security state is no longer viable.”

Former Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz, who was part of the government deposed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf in the coup of 1999, is more optimistic.

“General Bajwa’s farewell speech was bold, candid, and open. He presented a broad historical perspective on the positive contributions the army has made,” he says. “But the most important part of his speech was his assertion that the army, having learnt from past mistakes, has decided, as an institution, not to interfere in politics in the future. … I think they have learnt that meddling only makes them controversial and are committed to remain apolitical if allowed to do so.”

“Weakened to the core”

Genenal Bajwa leaves his post with a tainted legacy. As army chief, he advocated for improved ties with India, was credited with reopening the Kashmir border in 2019, and made several diplomatic visits to China, the United States, and other vital nations. 

Yet experts say he leaves behind a deeply divided military. Under his watch, the 2018 general election was allegedly manipulated to ensure that Imran Khan became prime minister. After General Bajwa fell out with Mr. Khan last October, the army stopped propping up Mr. Khan’s government, and all the members of parliament the army had convinced to support the prime minister jumped ship. Strong pro-Khan sentiment within the army’s ranks will complicate future efforts to reshape the military’s role in society. 

Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

Supporters of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan sit on scaffolding to see their leader in his first public appearance since being wounded in a gun attack earlier this month, during a march calling for new elections, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Nov. 26, 2022. The 2018 general election was allegedly manipulated under Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa's watch to ensure that Mr. Khan won, and strong pro-Khan sentiment still lingers within the army’s ranks despite the leaders' falling out.

And that’s if the army actually strives to change; Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appointed Lt. Gen. Asim Munir as General Bajwa’s successor last week. While the former spy chief has worked closely with General Bajwa in the past, it is not known if he shares the general’s vision for an apolitical army.

It is clear, however, that not everyone is willing to take the army at face value. Free speech campaigner Usama Khilji says nobody believes the general’s promise can become a reality. 

“I think the damage that they’ve done to civilian and democratic institutions over the last seventy years is so deep rooted that it’s going to take more than an instant decision to fix it,” he says. “The system has been weakened to the core; civilian leadership has been consistently undermined so that it’s not popular enough with the public.”

For human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari, meanwhile, there can be no catharsis without liability. 

“Until the military is held accountable for its crimes against the people of Pakistan – either through Truth and Reconciliation or otherwise – there is no hope for democracy,” she says. “The wounds inflicted on our people cannot be erased. Rule of law does not exist here because of their abuse of the legal system.”

Ms. Mazari cites impunity for enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, election engineering, and other violations of the constitution as evidence that “civilians should not be looking towards the military for solutions or assistance.”

“There is no space for generals at the negotiating table of Pakistan’s politics,” she adds. “The sooner we realize that the better.”

W.K. Yousufzai/AP

Pakistan army Lt. Gen. Asim Munir attends a ceremony in Islamabad, Nov. 1, 2022. The former spymaster takes charge as Pakistan's new military chief amid a government standoff with former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the end of a monthslong cease-fire between the government and the Pakistani Taliban.

A vicious cycle?

There are still others who do not believe the army should necessarily be apolitical. Veteran politician Ijaz ul-Haq, son of former military dictator Zia ul-Haq, argues that Pakistan’s unique geostrategic location means that decisions on national security and foreign policy must involve consultation between military and civilian stakeholders. 

“The army must remain neutral as far as the politics is concerned, but not neutral as far as the national interest is concerned,” he explains. “If certain politicians take decisions which are going to be harming the country – particularly in the context of Kashmir and our nuclear program – if these are compromised … that is going to be where someone will have to intervene.”

Mr. Ul-Haq also argues that if politicians wish for the military to stay out of politics, they themselves have a duty to stop trying to politicize the institution, particularly in the context of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s premier intelligence agency. He blames politicians for trying to use the agency against their opponents. 

“Let the institution do what the institution is supposed to do, keep away from trying to get its support, keep away from appointing your own people where you think you can get some political mileage,” he says. “From Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif to Imran Khan, everyone fell out [with the army] because they tried to interfere.”

This reliance of the political class on military support, according to diplomat Maleeha Lodhi, explains why the army “retains considerable power and influence despite setbacks and public questioning of its interventions.” 

“The military is so deeply involved in all spheres of life that it is a vicious cycle from which there is no withdrawal,” says one retired military officer, who asked not to be named, given the risks associated with speaking out against the army.  

Some say this cycle distracts politicians from the issues that really matter to ordinary voters, such as homelessness, poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity. 

Human rights defender Tahira Abdullah argues that Pakistan’s political system needs a complete reset. “Democracy will flourish in Pakistan only when our politicians and political parties are no longer led by feudal-minded dynasties driven by personal greed … and when our leaders start feeling empathy with the people of Pakistan.”

Andrew Shaylor/Courtesy of Other Press

Matthew Teller is the author of "Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City."

Matthew Teller’s name is synonymous with the Middle East. For nearly three decades, the British journalist and broadcaster has written articles and produced documentaries from across the Arab world, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. He also wrote the definitive travel guide to Jordan. In “Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City,” he turns to a city known across the world but understood by few: Jerusalem. 

Mr. Teller recently spoke with the Monitor on why he believes Jerusalem’s people are overlooked, and how the Old City’s diverse cultures, sects, languages, and traditions defy its “quartering.” 

 Why did you focus on the people, rather than the religious sites, of Jerusalem?

People who live and work in the Old City have been overlooked politically, economically, and socially throughout the centuries. They have a voice; in fact, they have been yelling for years, but many people in my culture, the English-speaking West, have not been listening. There is a T.E. Lawrence quote that the people of Jerusalem are as “characterless as hotel servants.” There is a basis of racism there. I wanted to amplify their voices. 

How many visits did it take before you felt you really “knew” Jerusalem?

I first came to Jerusalem in 1980 as a child with a British Zionist perspective; Israel was very important to my family, and I contextualized Jerusalem as a Jewish place. Being in Jerusalem as a teenager, I sensed a depth of personality that I did not fully understand – that this place expresses itself in mysterious ways. Over the next 20 years traveling around the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, I sought out new ways of reporting on people with different perspectives than those I grew up with. I started to investigate new ways of understanding Jerusalem. After decades of these stories, I felt I had something to say. 

What did you notice about how visitors often treated Jerusalemites?

Going back to Jerusalem repeatedly in my 20s and 30s, I was seeing how people like me – tourists and pilgrims – interacted with the people who live and work in the Old City. We were visiting to tick boxes: pray at this church, visit this mosque, or kiss the Western Wall. I was observing people in the midst of this culmination of their spirituality treating the people of the Old City as obstacles between them and these holy places. “Why is there all this commerce in the Old City? Why are these people getting in my way?” It didn’t seem right to me. It didn’t seem respectful. 

"Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City," by Matthew Teller, Other Press, 400 pp.

What were the biggest surprises for you researching “Nine Quarters”? 

A particular highlight for me was meeting Maysoon al-Maslohi, guardian of the tomb of Abu Madyan, a Sufi Islamic saint who was the fabled founder of Jerusalem’s North African quarter. To sit in that space, the only surviving building of the Moroccan Quarter, and hear firsthand her family’s experience of the neighborhood’s destruction in 1967 was an enormous privilege. Another was learning about the Karaites, a marginalized group within the Jewish Israeli community who are excluded by the dominant groups who control access to Jerusalem and Israel. A part of the book was to demonstrate that the Old City and Palestinian society are diverse and inclusive of all these marginalized communities. 

Why did you title the book “Nine Quarters” instead of “Four Quarters”?

When we only see Jerusalem as a Muslim Quarter bumping up against a Christian Quarter against a Jewish Quarter against an Armenian Quarter, it summons an image of warring factions at each other’s throats. All of this is nonsense. It is terribly misleading to reduce Jerusalem to four warring quarters, and these undertones impact how people interact with Jerusalemites and how outsiders treat the city. The word “quarter” has its roots in the military; it contains this sense of exclusivity. Once I investigated further, I discovered these quarters were colonial impositions by the British. 

One thing I hope readers come away with is that the quarters system doesn’t reflect the situation on the ground in Jerusalem. The “quarters” have served their time and I think they should be quietly left in the dustbin of history. 

You also bring to life some of Jerusalem’s visitors who have been overlooked by the history books. Are there any that surprised you?

Identifying the first African American to visit Jerusalem. David Dorr was born enslaved and was brought by his slave-
owning “master” on this long tour of Europe and the Middle East. When they got home to Louisiana, his “master” went back on a promise to liberate Dorr, who subsequently escaped, made a new life in Ohio, and self-published his travelogue. His book is an extraordinary testament to himself, his personality, his resilience, and is an example of early travel writing from the perspective of African Americans in the 1850s, which is rare. Dorr is witty, he is deeply compelling, and should be much better known. To be able to give him a bit of a platform – although it comes 150 years too late – was a privilege. 

You also focus on a tomb of a woman on the outskirts of the Old City revered by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian worshippers. Why?

There is a web of stories that link this tomb to the Sufi saint Rabia al-Adawiyya, but also link it to two other significant women identified by Christians as St. Pelagia or by Jewish worshippers as the prophetess Huldah. Being there next to that tomb brought a feeling of unity encompassing all these historical narratives intertwining at one location, which is a very Jerusalem thing.

I was surrounded by geraniums the way a gazelle is surrounded by a pride of lions. Each one had its red blossoms bared, growling to be watered. I thought I’d already watered the one with five heads, but with 12 plants encircling me, it was hard to remember. And having already watered David and Jodi’s plants for more than half an hour, I was beginning to think the sun would set before I finished the whole house.

Under my breath I muttered that only retired people whose children lived half a continent away had this sort of time. Not a single plant looked stressed. No wilted leaves. Jodi and David were keeping them all blissfully alive. How? We were in Montana! Most of these plants came from near the equator.

Nikea and I live in a basement apartment in western Montana. Even during the summer months, cold clings to the air, and the sun struggles through the window wells. Winter’s short days make us wither in the dark.

David and Jodi live upriver and above ground. When they were young and living in the same city as we do now, they also experienced a submerged life and so recognize the need for light. This empathy resulted in their opening their home to us when they visited family back east last February. 

We fantasized about warming ourselves, basking like cats in front of their many south-facing windows. All they asked was that we take out the garbage, pick up the mail, and water the plants.

We’d watered plants before: a potted basil above the sink, an aloe on the windowsill, a Christmas cactus on a cabinet. Nikea and I could handle this. 

We’d spent many evenings dining with David and Jodi. We’d sat and socialized in the room with the enormous ficus tree more than 8 feet tall. But it wasn’t until we opened Jodi’s email with specific instructions that we realized how many plants they had. 

There were 20 geraniums, at least – maybe just on the first floor. But also moth orchids, vining- and split-leaf philodendrons, five kinds of lily, fan palms, prayer plants, snake plants, and a dragon tree. 

Tendrils unfurled from hanging pots and brushed our heads. Fronds the length of my arm curtained pots. Leaves the size of my chest swayed against our hands and legs. 

Nikea called to me from the kitchen as I methodically searched windowsills and bookshelves for plants: “A half-cup for those cornstalk plants! Just a splash under the faucet for the white lilies!”

We’d spent 50 minutes on task when I carted the watering can to the landing. How much more was there to do? 

I peeked into the upstairs shower, half dutifully and half incredulously that I’d find a plant. But there it was! By the sliding window sat a needled being that I held under the shower head for a moment. Was it a cactus? Why did it need to be in the shower?

By the time I finished the plants in the guest room, the chore had eclipsed an hour. I lugged two watering cans into the main bedroom and found the floor covered in green. The window was full of afternoon light, the sunbeams a river cascading down on the plants. I don’t think one can smell photosynthesis, but in that moment of warmth, light, and feasting plants, I smelled the living beings we’d been entrusted to water. They were fecund and bright, flourishing with vitality.

And as quickly as light falls on leaves, that’s how quickly my attitude changed toward these plants. I felt responsible. I felt as though I were part of a living, breathing place. Every blossom and leaf brought a smile to my face. I felt more human in the presence of all this life.

Careful not to spill water on the carpet, I reveled in the warm breath of this green family. I chided myself for thinking this was taking too long. I saw and smelled what David and Jodi must see and smell every time they walk into these rooms to care for their plants, these organisms that eat light and change the very air we breathe. 

I was surrounded by plants the way a river stone is surrounded by water.

Reuters

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (left) and a colleague bow Nov. 26 after she announced she has resigned as Democratic Progressive Party chair to take responsibility for the party's performance in the local elections.

Last weekend, when protesters across China called on Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to step down over his strict “zero-COVID” policies, just 100 miles away in Taiwan, the leader of the island nation’s ruling party did just that. On Saturday evening, President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the Democratic Progressive Party following the party’s major defeat in local elections.

“We humbly accept ... the decision of the people of Taiwan,” Ms. Tsai wrote on Facebook. She’ll remain president until the end of her second term in 2024. In a 2020 national election, she won by a landslide.

One key reason for the party’s defeat in the city and county races was Ms. Tsai’s fumbled response to a surge in COVID-19 cases earlier this year. Also, the government faced controversy over its handling of vaccines after an initial success against the pandemic in 2020.

In China, the official response to public anger over COVID-19 policies – especially citywide lockdowns – has been a severe police crackdown. In sharp contrast, similar discontent in Taiwan has been peacefully channeled through a thriving democracy, resulting in victories for the main opposition party, the Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as KMT. Even the former top official in the fight against the pandemic, Chen Shih-chung, lost in his bid to become mayor of the capital, Taipei.

China touts its authoritarian model as best for the world. Yet Ms. Tsai’s reaction to her party’s loss shows a key quality rarely evoked in a dictatorship. Just after her election in 2016, her first instruction to her party and supporters was to “be humble and be more humble.”

She needed it herself. In June last year, after Taiwan saw a surge in the pandemic, Ms. Tsai said, “As your president, I want to take this opportunity to convey my deepest sorrow and apologies.”

Elected leaders – unlike in China – must accept either the admiration or admonishment of voters. “Humble human beings feel themselves to be dwellers on earth (the word humility derives from humus),” wrote John Keane, professor of politics at the University of Sydney, after Ms. Tsai’s 2016 speech.

“They know they do not know everything; they are well aware they are not God, or a minor deity,” he wrote in The Conversation.

The protesters in China have said as much.