| March 27, 2002 | Wednesday | Muharram 12, 1423 |
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Back to school in Kabul
Big Brother watching
ONE should say “amen” to President Musharraf’s hope that the coming general election will produce an honest and sincere leadership. Speaking to the nation on the occasion of Pakistan Day, the president dwelt at length on what led to the emergence of Pakistan and referred to the kind of leadership that controlled the destiny of the Muslims of South Asia. The nation, he said, needed that kind of leadership again. Implied in the president’s hope and prayer was criticism of the kind of breed that has ruled Pakistan since independence. There is no doubt that, if the post-independence leadership had even an iota of the qualities the leaders of the Pakistan Movement had, things today would have been vastly different.
Yet, it should be said in all fairness to the pre-1958 politicians that, all said and done, they never questioned democracy itself. They might have violated democratic principles in the pursuit of power, but they never betrayed the kind of autocratic instincts bordering on fascism which their successors exhibited while in power. The pre-Ayub leadership, for instance, never talked of giving a new system to the nation, nor did it believe in driving their rivals out of the political arena by trying them on bogus criminal charges and persecuting them and their families to the point of physical elimination. Regrettably, that brings us to another breed of politicians — those in uniform.
The generals who overthrew civilian governments are no less responsible for the mess the country is in. Each time a general quit, he left behind a greater mess than the one he inherited. Ayub, Yahya and Ziaul Haq all left behind them a country in total chaos and without any constitutional institutions in place. They decried the politicians of their time, accusing them of every imaginable crime and sin. But invariably they showed themselves to be quite capable of distorting and deviating from the Constitution, manipulating the political and judicial processes and rigging elections.
All nations have a uniform level of morality. It is absurd to say that a given section of society is morally superior to the others. The crisis of character in Pakistan today is not confined to the politicians; bureaucrats, businessmen, generals, “ulema”, and leaders in the academic and judicial fields have been no less guilty of peculation and aggrandizement.However, no one destroys a nation the way politicians do, because they control the state apparatus.
The question, then, in the context of the president’s March 23 speech is: what is it that can lead to the emergence of an honest and selfless leadership? Frankly, there is no quick-fix solution, nor a military-devised nostrum that can work miracles. The only satisfactory answer possibly is that only an uninterrupted political process can reform the system and lead to an improvement in the quality of the political leadership. The military leadership has made no contribution, not even a marginal one, toward improving the quality of the rulers in terms of morality or political acumen. In fact, the result of the October election will throw up another Junejo — no disrespect meant to the late politician —, who in all fairness will only be a stop-gap arrangement before a new general election throws up a new breed of leadership. It is this leadership that will find itself at a crossroads. The question again will be: will the generals let it work, or will they again gatecrash into the political system to repeat a pattern with which the now thoroughly disillusioned people of Pakistan are so familiar?
SO far the best thing to come out of the fall of the Taliban regime is the return to school of hundreds of thousands of Afghan girls after a lapse of four or more years. Last week the Afghan interim government lifted the mindless restriction, which was imposed on girl students by the Taliban soon after they assumed power in 1996. The ban had also affected hundreds of female teachers across Afghanistan, who, in many cases, had been the sole breadwinners for their war-ravaged families. The ban had forced them to quit their jobs and sit idle at home. Declaring March 23 Education Day, and henceforth a national holiday, Hamid Karzai, head of the interim Afghan government, pledged to provide equal opportunities to female students and teachers alongside their male counterparts, as he opened the new school year amid cheers in Kabul. It was befitting to see the United Nations’ special envoy on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Unicef officials pledge the world body’s support in rebuilding that country’s all but eroded education sector.
The lifting of the ban on women’s participation in public life comes as more than a symbolic sign of better things to come in a country that has not seen normality of life in more than twenty years. The jubilant return to school of Afghan girls and female teachers only tells the truth about the regressive tribal mindset of the Taliban militia, which had, in direct contravention of clear Islamic injunctions, denied Muslim women their right to education. Now with that scourge of ignorance behind them, Afghan women can once again look forward to being treated with respect and dignity, and play their due role in rebuilding their country, much like the vast majority of their counterparts in other Muslim societies.
A DECISION by the Bush administration to install round-the-clock surveillance cameras at Washington DC’s major monuments has rightly invited severe criticism from humans rights groups and even members of Congress who have said that it might infringe on the people’s right to be left alone. The US Parks Services, which oversees these sites, has said that the cameras will be in place within six months. However, what is disturbing about this proposal is that it seems to have cropped up all of a sudden and without any public debate. This contentious scheme follows a controversial decision by the Justice Department — that it would interview 3,000 visitors, who entered the country between November 2001 and February 2002 and came from countries where, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, “Al Qaeda is operative”. Several ethnic and rights groups have with some justification pointed out that such interviews amount to nothing more than racial profiling.
It is not clear how simply installing cameras will help prevent terrorist attacks, since technology cannot be the answer to everything. This is especially true of intelligence gathering, since the utility of information collected often depends on how it is evaluated. No wonder many politicians, including Washington’s deputy mayor, have spoken out against the move. Understandably, there are many in America who feel concerned that the Bush administration might be overplaying the events of Sept 11 to increase its ability to monitor and keep under surveillance the general population. America likes to tell the world the virtues of democracy, and most Americans are quick to remind others of their abundant personal liberties. But measures like installing cameras at national monuments are unfortunately a step towards the abridgment of many of the freedoms the Americans cherish.