Daily Times

On August 23, 1973, a gunman entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden with an intention of robbery. However, before he could rob the bank and run away, the police arrived and an encounter involving firearm ensued. The gunmen managed to take four bank employees as hostages and kept them inside the bank vault. Over the next five days of stalemate between the robber and police, the robber got his accomplice let inside the bank to join him too. On August 28, nevertheless, police got the two robbers overpowered with the help of teargas attack, ending the ordeal, which was the first such an event televised live in Sweden.

There was nothing odd in this crime and police encounter, yet the way the captives of these robbers conducted themselves during and after the captivity surprised all those who followed this event keenly. Although the captives were stripped of their liberty, at gunpoint and under fatal risk but noting the occasional kind word or gesture of kindness from their captors, they developed a weird sympathy with them. When the police chief negotiated his own entrance to the bank vault to confirm the condition of the hostages, he noticed that the hostages demonstrated hostility to him, while they looked friendlier with their captors. Later when in the end, the hostages were finally freed and robbers arrested, the hostages embraced them and cried as police took them away. At least two of the captives kept meeting with their captors in jail and even later.

This strange sympathy witnessed among the captives of their own captors attracted attention of the social scientists across the world to explore the reasons for a masochistic attitude of the captives. And they discovered that it was such a common phenomenon that it deserved a name; hence Swedish psychologist Nils Bejerot Labeled such an attitude as Stockholm syndrome. Later studies found that this syndrome in situations of concentration camp prisoners, cult members, pimp-procured prostitutes, incest victims, physically and emotionally abused children, battered women, victims of hijackings, and of course, as we just recently saw among the hostages freed by, for instance, Taliban.

The strange sympathy witnessed among the captives for their own captors attracted attention of the social scientists across the world to explore the reasons for a masochistic attitude of the captives. And they discovered that it was such a common phenomenon that it deserved a name

Unlike what might be a commonplace impression, it’s not just individuals who suffer from Stockholm syndrome. Different collective bodies such as students, women, and unskilled labour also experience and are victims of this syndrome. Be it individual or any particular group such as politicians and political parties, they can be a victim of this syndrome if for instance there is a perceived threat to survival and the belief that one’s captor or tormentor is willing to act on that threat; or if the captives perceive small kindnesses from the tormenting player as extraordinary within a context of terror coupled with isolation from perspectives other than those of the subjugator, and the perceived inability to escape the literal or virtual hostage like situation.

Stockholm syndrome can be seen as reason for the parliamentary committee’s announcement that contrary to expectations and intent from the committee, the upcoming accountability law will not have jurisdiction over judges and military generals. Ironically, the Corps D’elite from our judiciary and military has repeatedly inflicted politics, politicians and democratic regimes in Pakistan with fatal blows in the name of saving the country without a shred of accountability for those acts. The men from highest echelons of these two institutions, otherwise so rightly revered for their constitutional roles, played like tormentors of popularly elected dispensations and political parties.

More often, the Supreme Court verdicts supported the act of military takeover of the government and where the military takeover had not happened the courts have liberally ousted prime ministers in office or disqualified politicians on most frivolous and flimsy grounds since 1955. Not that politicians themselves were any less blemish for their petty squabbles, lack of maturity, and lust for power, which ultimately rendered them sitting ducks, yet they have collectively shared more disrepute, accountability, and punishment than those who exploited their positions in judiciary and military and more often than not remained scot-free courtesy their seldom-seen-in-action internal accountability mechanisms.

Not a day goes by where, in addition to political commentators, politicians don’t explicitly or implicitly complain of being the only group of people targeted in the name of accountability while the judges and generals are excused in the name of internal accountability mechanism. They are not wrong here; but beyond that they certainly are. Else, if for some fear of institutional retaliation or expedience the politicians can’t muster collective will to extend jurisdiction of ‘national’ accountability to judges and generals, they surely suffer from Stockholm syndrome. A polity in such a collective syndrome is unfortunately abnormal.

The writer is a sociologist with interest in history and politics. E-mail: Zulfirao@yahoo.com, Tweets @ZulfiRao

Published in Daily Times, November 9^th 2017.