| January 2, 2002 | Wednesday | Shawwal 17, 1422 |
Iqbal needs a new paradigm
LBs’ offices at BHUs in Chitral: COMMENT
New Delhi’s arm-twisting: DATELINE ISLAMABAD
Thick clouds of war over peace prospects: NEWS ANALYSIS
IF it’s working, don’t try and fix it. There was nothing terribly wrong with the way international cricket was being played before the ICC got pro-active and decided to bring in fair play through the introduction of a code of conduct for the players and match referees to enforce it. In effect, to legislate the spirit of the game.
ALL the newly-formed 24 union councils and two tehsil councils of the district government in Chitral have set up assembly offices inside the premises of basic health units (BHUs), rural health centres and tehsil headquarters hospitals in various parts of the valley, sources in the local health office confirmed.
IT was no surprise that Israel stepped up pressure on the Palestinian Authority to rein in the freedom-fighters in the occupied territories after the coalition launched the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
ISLAMABAD: Hopes of a breakthrough in the escalating crisis between Pakistan and India look realistic now the two sides have agreed to talk at the foreign minister level in Kathmandu, Nepal, venue of the 11th SAARC summit. But the clouds of war are still hanging thick on the horizon.
I have been covering cricket for more years than I care to admit and though there were controversies, mainly accusations of biased umpiring, I do not remember anything particularly untoward that warranted a code of conduct. There was dissent as there is now but I do not recall any brawls.
The latest player to fall victim to the ire of the match referee is Steve Waugh. He stood his ground momentarily when he was given out by Darrell Hair who chose not to refer the run out to the third umpire and was fined. He is upset and has called for a revamp of the code of conduct procedures. Of course, he is right because there is no right of appeal against the judgement of the match referee.
It is ironic that Steve Waugh should have seen the light when it has affected him personally. Earlier in the season, he had given a high minded statement that his side would lead the way in world cricket in accepting the umpire’s decision.
“If you are given out when it’s not out, then bad luck. If you’re given not out when it’s out, then it is your good luck”, he said with moral uprightness.
He had imagined that he was above reproach or possibly no match-referee would dare to take action against him. He, after all, was Steve Waugh, the captain of the mighty Australians. Good for Rajan Madugalle, the match referee.
After what happened in South Africa with the Mike Denness fiasco and the very clumsy handling of it by all concerned, the ICC, the BCCI and the UCB of South Africa, one hopes that the idea of a code of conduct will be re-examined and I would recommend that it should be done away with entirely and the umpires should be entrusted with determining what is fair or unfair play.
The moment something as subjective as this codified, the problems arise about its interpretation. You cannot legislate social behaviour. If you were to go to a building or an office and there is huge sign that says NO SPITTING, the chances are than the most spat on the building or office is that board that says no spitting! Cricket does not need more legislation. It needs less. The ICC which gives the impression of being overstaffed, is bringing in bureaucracy in the game. The best way, as always, is to keep it simple, as it once was.
Bangladesh is finding Test cricket pretty tough sledding and was routed in New Zealand and now is due to play Pakistan at home. The going will be even tougher. Pakistan should have been at full strength but will miss Saeed Anwar who has been ruled out of cricket for several weeks because of injury.
This will not affect the overall strength of the Pakistan team against modest opposition but one sincerely hopes that he gets fit as soon as possible against tougher opponents with whom Pakistan would be playing and I don’t include the West Indies among them. The West Indies are making an awful lot of fuss about security concerns for their team’s tour of Pakistan. I am surprised that they are doing so.
Given their present standard which is very much at the bottom of the ladder, one would have thought that they would be grateful that a quality team like Pakistan is prepared to play against them. It isn’t even sure that Brian Lara will be in the team and without Lara, the present West Indian team is a club side and will certainly not attract crowds as they once used to.
Besides, if the PCB feels that there is the slightest danger to the series, it will call it off themselves. The safety of visiting players is the responsibility of the host country.
The much touted Australia-South Africa series is turning out to be hopelessly one-sided. South Africa is being trounced not by a team that is invincible, New Zealand drew the series against the same Australians and almost won, but South Africa is not as hot as it is cracked up to be.
With Allan Donald, either not fully fit or getting over the hill, South Africa does not have the bowling to get Australia out twice. Shaun Pollock himself seems off the boil and there is absolutely no menace in the other bowlers.
The batting is not clicking primarily. Gary Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs are not giving them the sort of starts they need. But what must be alarming from the South African point of view, is their fielding which has become scrappy.
The South Africans are fielding as if they have something else on their mind. They are certainly missing Jonty Rhodes, not just his own brilliance but the fact that he is like a dynamo in the field and lifted the others. South Africa looks to be a team in transition but no new players are emerging. Things are not helped by the Ministry of Sports who seem to be putting pressure to play black players and appeared not to be amused that Makhaya Ntini was dropped. I don’t think being black is qualification enough to be picked in the Test team.
I don’t think Ntini is a good enough cricketer and his type of medium-fast bowling is food and drink for the Australian batsmen. One thing is certain: South Africa is not the second best team in cricket after Australia. There are other contenders but I do feel that they are very good one-day team particularly because Rhodes will be a part of it.
HAS Iqbal’s prescription for the survival of the Ummah failed? Dr Manzoor Ahmed, a leading Pakistani philosopher and educationist, believes that it has, so there is need for a new paradigm if the Muslims want to lift themselves from the morass they find themselves in.
Dr Ahmed, former vice-chancellor of Hamdard University, is known for his forthrightness. Although one may not agree with him, it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of purpose behind his arguments.
His recent lectures at the Muqtadra-i-Qaumi Zaban, under the title Islami Fikr Mein Baseerat Ki Riwayat Aur Iqbal, should serve as a wake-up call from a person whose patriotism and cultural leanings have remained above board for the vast majority of his countrymen and co- religionists.
While he pays tribute to Iqbal for his correct diagnosis of the ailments from which the Muslims of the subcontinent suffered, he laments that even Iqbal couldn’t realize the importance of his contribution. Not only this, Dr Ahmed thinks that Iqbal himself lost the vigour of his thinking. Iqbal had based his prescription for the awakening of the Muslims on their destined goal of the acquisition of power.
Dr Ahmed contends that no religion could arrogate the ultimate truth to itself. He elaborates this point by quoting the Holy Quran. I believe that his plea should go a long way in strengthening all those who want to rub home the point that Islam is a religion of peace. Some manifestations of militant behaviour on the part of Muslims of certain areas of the world were the acts of despair and frustration and the adherents of all religions of the world have resorted to these methods at one time or another.
Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism, none could claim immunity from periodic violent acts in their history. What the Tamils are doing in Sri Lanka, what the Jews were doing in the period of British mandate and what they are doing now, what the Christians did to the Jews in Germany during and before the World War II and what the Japanese did to the Koreans and Chinese — their co-religionists — and what Muslims did to Muslims in the 15th and 16th centuries is known to all.
Dr Ahmed goes a step further and contends that the Shariat had within itself the mechanisms for change and it is erroneous to think that the doors of Ijtihad have been closed for ever. If we believe for a moment that it is so, then the claim of Islam for being a universal religion doesn’t hold good.
Dr Ahmed, while emphasizing the importance of Ijtihad, thinks that it has become impossible for the present to see all the qualifications of Ijtihad present in one person and an assembly of experts in different fields is the answer. He has traced the history of Ijtihad in the Ummah that it is rather unfortunate that the history of Ijtihad leaves us cold. It remained dynamic during the days of Khulafa-i-Rashidin, but with the dawn of dynastic Islam the Ulema, more often than not, had supported the despotic rulers and legitimized their directions with the result that Ijtihad could never become a vehicle for enlightenment since then.
He raised the question why it is so that the spirit coursing through Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Islamic Thought is nowhere being seen in action. Pakistan has good reasons to practise Iqbal’s prescriptions for survival but it is really unfortunate that Pakistan, as a nation, is lukewarm to Iqbal’s thought. Dr Ahmed thinks that Muslim societies are in the grip of a ‘fear’ of being misplaced in this world and this fear is growing in intensity by the day. Other religions have also passed through this kind of ‘fear’ but they took less time in adjusting their sails to the winds of change.
He said Islam has to rediscover the significance of Ijtihad — and the role for the development of society it could exert — in the days of Hazrat Umar and it is said Muslims had not gone beyond that point of radicalism in their endeavours to press the Islamic injunctions for the promotion of principles of fair play and equity. Some of his decisions appear to be deviating from the Quranic injunctions but no one questioned his understanding of the Quran or Sunnah and those decisions are valid even today — even in some sections of the Ummah which have reservations about his right to head the Islamic state.
Dr Ahmed contends that the fear which had gripped the Ummah in the early stages of its history continues till today. If Muslim societies continue to strive for Ijtihad in the set paradigm which has been guiding its destiny to date, then no Ijtihad is possible. We will have to construct, he stressed, a new paradigm.
He said the usefulness of the old paradigm was questionable in the light of the fact that what was preventing the 56 independent Muslim countries from chalking out a blueprint for their survival and development. Perhaps it was the hegemony of the West - political, economic and intellectual - which was not letting them break the stranglehold. It was only through outsmarting the West in its own fields of proven excellence that the task of creating wealth by dint of ‘ideas’ could be possible.
Dr Ahmed surmised that unless the Muslim societies are powerful and self- reliant, it couldn’t be possible for them to compete with the West.
Dr Ahmed’s lecture boils down to one thing: we should strive for constructing a new paradigm. The old paradigm has outlived its utility and so have the thinkers who were using the old paradigm for the explanation of their ideas?
Most of the health centres, particularly in the far-flung areas of the valley, have been inoperative due to non-availability of medical and paramedical staff and diagnostic facilities.
According to the health officials, 14 out of 21 basic health units (BHUs) are without medical staff and 16 posts of medical officers are vacant in the three tehsil headquarters hospitals, whereas two out of the three rural health centres have no doctors at all.
District Nazim Shahzada Mohiuddin told Dawnthat in the absence of office accommodation for the new assemblies the government had authorized the local bodies to use vacant government premises, and the buildings in the health units have been taken over by the local bodies for the purpose after consultation and in agreement with the health department authorities.
Confirming the decision, acting EDO, health, Dr Nazir Ahmed, said that only unused portions of the health unit buildings had been given to the local bodies on specific conditions. He said the buildings would be taken back when needed.
There are three tehsil headquarters hospitals, one each in Drosh, Garamchashma and Booni, and three rural health centres are located in Koghozi, Ayun and Mastuj villages.
The 21 BHUs, most of which have come under the use of the local bodies, are located in the following villages: Gobor and Shoghor in the Lotkoh tehsil; Broz and Moroi in the Chitral tehsil; Keso, Tar, Naghar, Asuret and Arandu in the Drosh tehsil; Reshun, Shangush, Sonoghar, Brep, Brok (Laspur) in the Mastuj tehsil; Kosht, Drasun, Nishkoh and Zondrangram in the Mul Khow tehsil, and Khot, Rech and Shagram in the Tor Khow tehsil.
About the unending problem of shortage of medical staff, the health officials said that only the director-general of health, NWFP, was authorized to appoint and transfer doctors in the district and because of financial constraints and unwillingness of doctors to work in rural areas, most of the health-care units had almost been inoperative or running without medical staff and supplies.
Official figures showed that three out of four specialist posts have remained vacant, and six posts of medical officers (MOs) are unfilled in the tehsil headquarters hospital in Drosh. In the 10-bed Garamchashma tehsil hospital, out of six MOs and one dental surgeon’s posts, only two doctors are available, and in Booni two posts of MOs have been lying vacant for a long time.
Similarly, in the three rural health centres, only one doctor out of three is working in Koghozi, all three posts are vacant in Ayun, and one dental surgeon is available against three MO posts in Mastuj.
Fourteen out of 21 BHUs in the district have no doctors and necessary diagnostic facilities: These BHUs are located in Shoghor, Lot Koh tehsil; Moroi in the Chitral tehsil; Tar, Asuret, Naghar and Arandu in the Drosh tehsil; Shangush, Sonoghar, Brep, Brok (Laspur) in the Mastuj tehsil; Rech in Tor Khow and Drasun, Nishkoh and Zondrangram in the Mul Khow tehsil.
Because of geographical disparities and absence of communication facilities health-care facilities have become almost non-existent in the district which remains completely cut off from the rest of the country for about six months when it snows on the 10,000-foot Lowari Pass in the winter.
FUNDS: A sum of Rs0.9 million has been allocated to each of the 24 union councils, and special grant would be allocated for women’s progress under the Khushhal Pakistan Programme, district Nazim Shahzada Mohiuddin said.
He said the provincial government had allocated Rs10 million for the under-construction portion of Mastuj Road and the Frontier Works Organization had been approached for starting work on the Shandur Road from the Mastuj side, linking Chitral with Karakuram Highway via Gahguch-Gilgit. Work on the road from the Gahguch, Gilgit, side had already been started.
The district Nazim said that after completion of the 4.8 megawatt Reshun power house, at a cost of Rs410 million, most of the villages of upper Chitral, including those in Yarkhoon, Laspur, Mul Khow and Tor Khow, would be electrified.
Similarly, it would have been naive not to have expected that New Delhi would pull some act or the other of the kind which it is now doing to force Pakistan to take action against those in the country who are supporting the mujahideen in occupied Kashmir.
It would not be wrong to perceive the coalition’s anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan as having provided the licence for both Israel and India to exert similar kind of pressure on the Palestinian Authority and Islamabad, respectively, on the “militants” issue.
New Delhi had been itching for the opportunity to take Pakistan down for supporting Kashmiri “terrorists”. So much so that an apparently highly secretive hijacking exercise in India to test the country’s preparedness in countering terrorism was projected over the international media as an attack by some Urdu- speaking terrorists purportedly from Pakistan before the mistake was realized and embarrassingly admitted.
The Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament was an incident that provided just the kind of excuse New Delhi had been waiting for to launch its offensive against Islamabad and set in motion the chain of events which has escalated tension between the two countries to an all-time high.
It would have been wishful thinking not to expect New Delhi to strike while the iron was hot. There was no better time than now, when Islamabad was under pressure from the West to control the madrassahs and the activities of the militants within the country, to pressure it to succumb to New Delhi’s demands.
Ironically for Pakistan, New Delhi’s belligerent behaviour towards Islamabad is serving America’s interests of reining in the militants. If Sept 11 was the first excuse used to exert pressure on Islamabad to take action against the militants, then Dec 13 has served and is serving to renew pressure on Islamabad to squash them once and for all.
If the two groups accused by New Delhi were responsible for the Dec 13 attack, what have they achieved from it? At a time when the whole world is at war against terrorism, such a terrorist act would only have served to harm rather than benefit the Kashmir freedom movement.
And this is exactly what seems to be happening. The focus of attention has shifted to the “terrorist” deeds of the Kashmiri militants and thus the need to stop them and wipe them out. The real issue at hand, which is the Kashmiri people’s fifty-five- year struggle for freedom from repressive Indian occupation and rule is being camouflaged by the all-pervading terrorism issue.
New Delhi, in any case, seems to have much more in common with America than Islamabad has, despite the latter’s role as the frontline state in the West’s anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan. This is specially so with reference to both the Kashmir and the nuclear issues.
In fact, India is well aware that its current arm-twisting of Islamabad to pressure it into taking further and stronger action against the militants in the country suits American interests. The important question is to what extent are Pakistan’s national interests on the Kashmir and nuclear issues being compromised in the process of succumbing to such external pressures.
It would be naive for Islamabad to think that it can ever rely or depend on America in any Pakistan-Indian clash of interests. Look at what the countless attempts of American mediation in the Middle East and their peace attempts on the Palestinian issue have resulted in. Over the years, the Palestinians have come to face an ever increasingly aggressive and uncompromising Israel and their dream of getting their lands unoccupied is further from reality than ever before, American peace efforts notwithstanding.
The fact is that the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat have been left to fend for themselves against Israel. If the Americans have been any help at all, it has been to Tel Aviv rather than to Yasser Arafat. America’s recent veto on the deployment of UN forces to watch over the ceasefire in the occupied territories is one of the many examples.
Similarly, Pakistan cannot expect anything much from America vis-a-vis its problems with India. When it comes to the crunch, Islamabad will by and large be on its own against India. Policymakers in Islamabad should, therefore, bear this hard reality in mind when charting the strategy and policies for the nation in future.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who flew yesterday to Nepal, will hold crucial parleys with his Indian counterpart, Jaswant Singh. His aim is to defuse tension and to pave the way for the de-escalation of the military build-up, both on the 750-km-long Line of Control and the international border. This small but significant window of opportunity to arrest a sure drift towards conflict has been provided by intense pressure from the United States, whose President George W. Bush, spoke from his ranch at Crawford in Texas to both President General Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bahari Vajpayee. The US along with its other coalition partners, including the UK and France, are working hard to lower the regional temperature. The effort seems to be yielding results. However, while the message from Washington has opened up the diplomatic path to talks between the two sides, there are clear and present dangers of war.
Senior Pakistani officials say that Pakistan is not leaving anything to the chance of an understanding in Kathmandu. They are encouraged by recession in rhetoric from Delhi. The announcement on Sunday by Pramod Mahajan, Indian parliamentary affairs minister, that his government’s sole focus was on diplomacy has gone down well in Pakistan. But, the military build-up and amassing of military hardware from the Indian side on its border with Pakistan, is unprecedented and makes a clear statement of hostile intentions. “This cannot be ignored”, officials say.
Another reason why optimism is being expressed so cautiously is that Pakistan has read the Indian plan carefully. Officials say that Delhi is applying the twin pressure of a military build-up and diplomatic manouvering against Pakistan to win maximum concessions on Kashmir. Its core goal, according to official assessments, is to get all types of militancy in occupied Kashmir designated as terrorist activity and eventually cripple the genuine resistance to its brutal rule in the disputed territory. This is why, officials say, India is so keen to get all those groups involved in the Kashmir struggle snuffed out and their leaders caught, tried and punished. What officials do not say is that India also wants some of these individuals extradited. It also wants verifiable and ironclad guarantees that all the points in Azad Kashmir from where the alleged infiltration takes place are closed. In other words, Delhi is putting forward maximum demands. Home Minister L. K. Advani, who loves to play the bad cop of the Indian cabinet, stated on Sunday that “Pakistan can even now give firm assurance to the world community and India that it would stop aiding and abetting terrorism...(However) to our demands of freezing of the assets or arresting of the leaders (of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad), there is still no sign of anything concrete.”
Indian absolutist position is also informed by the desire to make the most of the existing environment. The Indians have carefully chosen this moment to apply maximum pressure on Pakistan and to create a dangerously volatile situation in the whole region. Delhi understands perfectly well that American attention on terrorism in the region is at its concentrated best. Funds, intelligence, physical presence, the means to use force and the political will to apply force-all elements of a counter-terrorism strategy are in place. However, this attention will get whittled down once Osama bin Laden is caught. Delhi does not want to lose the moment. It wants Washington’s current focus on terrorism to shift to Kashmir before leaving this region. Just as the Chittisingh Pura massacre of the Sikhs had firmly held former president Bill Clinton’s attention on terrorism during his visit to the region, India by ratcheting up tensions with Pakistan, wants the Bush administration to back its attempts to put an end to the Kashmir struggle, particularly the support it gets from Pakistan.
Recalling its High Commissioner, scaling down to half the diplomatic staff in Delhi, restricting their movement, closing down Samjhota Express and Lahore-Delhi bus service and threats to abrogate the 1960 Indus Water Treaty are signals from Delhi to Washington that the US can ignore this situation only at the cost of allowing another war to take place in the region. Delhi is desperate not to miss the opportunity. It can easily fight a war for that.
The drift towards war is also being impelled by the dynamics of war hysteria in India, unleashed in the first instance by the lashing tongues of the hard-line Hindu nationalists. Unlike in Pakistan, where emotions are still in control, Indian public opinion is already mobilized in favour of war. Media nationalism is feeding jingoism popularizing the argument that it is time to apply the final solution to the “Pakistan problem”. The rabidity of this thought is amply expressed by one Sumer Kaul, who, in the Free Press Journal, writes: “Never mind the so-called world opinion, never mind who says what. We have done what was right in the past in Hyderabad, in Goa, in East Bengal, in Pokharan...we must now launch consign and conclusive action against the terrorists and their camps and punish their mentors...The longer this government fails to take the necessary action, the less representative it will be of Indian public opinion.”
This is the result of nearly three weeks of brinkmanship and saber rattling on a grand scale. To sell a diplomatic way out of the present crisis to such belligerent public opinion would be hard for even the most bold and truly representative governments. For one like the BJP riddled with scandals and obsessed with clinging to power, it would be near impossible. Against the backdrop of the ongoing efforts for peace, therefore, war remains a real possibility.