| April 8, 2003 | Tuesday | Safar 5, 1424 |
Pressure to back PML(Q) led to break — Imran: DAWN DIALOGUE
Some people knew it all along
Kashmor, Buxapur: Law of jungle: SINDHI PRESS DIGEST
LONDON: In a memo to the League of Nations in 1930, an astonished Foreign Office official said that the idea the great powers should be made to keep their promises was ‘a conception which is almost fantastic’. The Kurds appeared to have been promised their own state in the Treaty of Sevres after the First World War. But there was a catch. Buried in the small print was the requirement that the League must be convinced that they were ‘capable’ of independence.
COMMENTING on the Kashmor carnage and the Buxapur bloodshed, Kawish writes that a week had not passed since the first massacre and Sindh police high-ups were still busy issuing “stern warnings” to law-breakers when a tribal clash killed 13 people, including six women, in the second incident. As the clash had occurred in the Sindh-Balochistan border area, the police in both provinces tried to absolve themselves of the responsibility by insisting that the incident had taken place in the area of the other.
Our men at the FO implied that the Kurds were Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden’ — ‘fluttered folk and wild/Your new-caught sullen peoples/Half devil and half child’. It was preposterous to think that they might be capable of governing themselves.
“Although they admittedly possess many sterling qualities, the Kurds of Iraq are entirely lacking in those characteristics of political cohesion which are essential to self-government. Their organization and outlook are essentially tribal. They are without traditions of self-government or self-governing institutions. Their mode of life is primitive, and for the most part they are illiterate and untutored, resentful of authority and lacking in any sense of discipline or responsibility. In these circumstances it would be unkind to the Kurds themselves to do anything which would lend encouragement to the sterile idea of Kurdish independence.”
Being cruel to be kind to Kurds has become a habit since. They are the largest people on earth without a state of their own. Spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey — and oppressed in all four countries — their fate in the twentieth century was to be played with and persecuted.
In the early 1970s, the Iraqi Baathist regime was getting too close to the Soviet Union for America’s liking and threatening the Shah of Iran, a US client. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to revolt. Saddam Hussein responded to the pressure and came to terms with Washington. American, Israeli and Iranian advisers pulled out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Saddam sealed the borders and slaughtered. The standards of the Cold War were lax, but America’s betrayal of an ally was still shocking. The Congressional select committee on intelligence said that “the President, Dr Kissinger and the Shah hoped that (the Kurds) would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of (Iraq). The policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue to fight. Even in the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical exercise.”
In 1988 Saddam killed somewhere around 100,000 Kurds in the ‘Anzal’ campaign to Arabize northern Iraq. The scale of the killing was such that no one knows the precise death toll, but for once, the overused word ‘genocidal’ was an accurate description of his policy.
After the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds along with the rest of Iraq took George Bush (senior) at his word and rose up when he called on the ‘Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands’. They were massacred again. In 1996, they fought among themselves. Kurds being wiped out was a staple of international relations. The truth of the Kurdish proverb, ‘we’ve no friends but the mountains’, was indisputable.
The change in the Iraqi Kurds’ fortunes since 1996 has been remarkable. It’s foolish to make predictions in such fluid times, but it does look as if history is at last being kind to the Kurds. Consider their position. Despite the enmity of Turkey, Saddam, Iran and fundamentalists, they managed to build a reasonably decent autonomous government in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq.
At the start of the war, it looked as if the Turks would occupy their mini-state to stop its own Kurds getting the idea in their heads that they might govern themselves. But because Ankara refused to cut a deal with Washington, the threat has receded and American troops have become the Kurds’ protectors. The clever Kurdish leadership has put its guerrillas under US control to emphasize that the Kurds at least are an ally America can rely on. Fear that they will be attacked with poison gas again is receding as the Iraqi regime weakens. Every day last week, there were small reports of the Kurds retaking villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Saddam.
It’s as if the Palestinians were to wake up and find that the world’s only superpower was on their side and land they thought they had lost forever was back in their possession. The comparison isn’t meant frivolously. What Baathism has created in northern Iraq is a West Bank, and even friends of the Kurds are worried about what will happen when the regime falls and the ethnically cleansed go home.
Human Rights Watch and the Kurdish authorities estimate that 120,000 people have been driven from the Kirkuk area since 1991. The government confiscated documents proving the ownership of property. As far as the paperwork is concerned they never lived in Kirkuk and have no rights. It seems a matter of basic justice to allow the exiles to return, but their houses have been taken by Arab families, some of whom have been in Kirkuk for two or three generations and know no other home.
The ‘untutored’ Kurds are no different from anyone else. If you found someone else in your home, you would demand they left and become aggressive, possibly violent, if they refused because they had nowhere else to go. The Kurds may have got lucky for the first time since the First World War, but they’re not out of the woods yet.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
ISLAMABAD: The following is the edited version of the Dawn Dialogue interview with Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan.
Imran Khan: I wish to say something first about the establishment. After having gone through the whole (political) process, I realize that unless and until the establishment stops interfering in Pakistan’s politics, we can never have true democracy.
Question: Perhaps you would like to put on record your experiences with the (intelligence) agencies.
Answer: You see, the problem is that the agencies do not have an understanding of either the political or the social system of Pakistan because of the very insular environment in which they are developing. If they had a better understanding, this existing mess in parliament would not have been created. My experience with the agencies has been that I kept telling them that people wanted a change, but they kept insisting that only certain people would win the elections. It didn’t matter whether these people were corrupt or (they)...would destroy Pakistan. They wanted me to join these people.
Q: Was there any establishment hand in the formation of your party?
A: No, they never had any hand. All they wanted was that Tehrik-i-Insaaf should become part of the status quo parties that had contributed to the political disaster. People from the agencies wanted me to be part of this set-up. I had no exposure to these agencies at all. This was the first time I had encountered them. They are a disaster for Pakistan. Their analysis is deeply flawed because of the peculiar environment in which they have evolved. That environment is too insular and they don’t understand Pakistan’s politics, and hence their conclusion that people vote for the same political houses even if (they)...were crooks.
But they do not understand why is it that people are forced to vote for these crooks — because people do not have protection from political victimization. Is it a vote of choice by the people for these crooks or is it a vote out of fear? It’s because people have no institutions to protect their rights, to protect them after the elections from victimization. Rather than giving the people the protection to overthrow the oppressors, the agencies actually strengthened the oppressors and reinstated the status quo in Pakistan. This was where our paths diverged.
I had supported the previous (Musharraf) government because I felt that in Pakistan we did not have the institutions — neither a strong and independent election commission nor a strong judicial system, nor an independent accountability commission to keep these mafias out of politics. Politics is now big money in Pakistan. You cannot win elections if you do not have money, and the money is with the crooks. I had felt that the only way to stop this was that if a benevolent dictator came along and cleaned up the system, upheld the rule of law, and held free and fair elections. And by free and fair elections, I mean not allowing crooked money and criminals to participate in elections, which in western democracies is supposed to be the role played by the judicial system and the electoral commission.
Q: Did you expect General Musharraf to be a benevolent dictator?
A: I have to say that I had expected General Musharraf’s regime to bring about this change, which could not be brought about because of our weak institutions. (Because of) our 11 years’ experience with the two governments (of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif)...we hoped General Musharraf would clean up the system, strengthen institutions and hold free and fair elections.
But the establishment mistook my support for them. They thought I too was only in the line to get ministries and that I too supported them for personal interests. So we were told to join the establishment parties, and when we did not, then our paths diverged.
Q: Do you believe there has been a real transfer of power, or is President Musharraf still the real ruler?
A: I do not think there has been a transfer of power. Everyone knows who calls the shots. I’m on the (opposition) committee which is talking to the PML-Q leadership about the LFO (Legal Framework Order), and at my first meeting it was very obvious to me that power did not lie with them. Power lies still with the establishment.
And let me tell you this system cannot work because it violates the fundamental principles of management that whoever holds responsibility must have authority. A system where authority is with someone and responsibility is with someone else has never functioned in an organization or any political system.
Q: When do you think General Musharraf will finally relinquish power and really transfer authority to the civilian government — four or five years or beyond that?
A: I don’t know what his plans are. General Musharraf did not have constitutional legality when he took over. There was only one thing that could have given him legitimacy and that was his performance. The main reason why people like me backed him (initially) and the majority of people in Pakistan backed him was (that) we had expected him to clean up the system....
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If after three years this is the set-up that has come up, then the big question is: what was wrong with Nawaz Sharif? The second big question is: why not simply remove Nawaz Sharif? Why was his parliament — which was probably a better, more cohesive and capable parliament than the one right now — also removed? If this is the result after three years, people ask then what is the legitimacy of continuing? This is no reform.
The economy
Q: There is a perception that General Musharraf has done something positive about the economy. What do you think?
A: To give them due credit, at least we don’t know of any corruption at the top level. This is a positive thing.
But when you look at things from the common person’s point of view, poverty has increased. A lot of the macroeconomic stability which they talk about is because of September 11 (2001 attacks on the United States) and our siding with an unjust war against Afghanistan...as a result of which we had loan-rescheduling and we suddenly were looked upon well by all the IFIs (international finance institutions). Remittances also came in through the channels — all this stabilised the economy. The (government) policies alone cannot take the credit for this. Anyway, whatever the reasons, at least they have produced some sort of stability and credit should be given for that.
But the problem is that poverty in Pakistan has increased. I have studied the situation at the micro-level in my constituency, and I can tell you that the system is collapsing. The state-run education setup is in a state of collapse. Law and order is in a state of collapse. The people do not have access to justice at the lower level. They have no access to clean drinking water, education, health — the basic health units, you just have to see the state they are in. This is what the majority of the masses in Pakistan are feeling. And removing the subsidies on the orders of donor agencies, particularly IMF and Asian Development Bank conditionalities, has increased poverty further. There is unemployment ..., recession has increased.
No investment is coming in. Agreed that the international situation is not exactly conducive, but if I were a common man, I would still ask the question, what is there for me in all this?
Q: How would you go about it if you had the powers to reshape the economic policy?
A: Firstly, I don’t think the economy is isolated from other things. Unless there is radical reform in the country which throws up a strong judiciary — which is the basis of protection to capital — I don’t think we are going to be able to attract investment. A strong judicial system improves the governance system. The governance system is what attracts investment and protects capital and that, in turn, creates employment.
Secondly, I think I would start labour intensive projects all over Pakistan. ...I would spend money especially in rural areas where there is a tremendous amount of poverty, on lining of canals, building small dams — wherever you could give employment to the people. I would even stand up against the IMF and tell them you have to subsidize farmers to a point because rural poverty is increasing in Pakistan.
I would not follow the path of lowering the deficit. I think it is inhuman. It is causing a lot of problems in a society where people cannot cope. Their tolerance level is shortening by the day. Prices keep rising but income is not rising, especially in the case of the salaried class, which has been completely killed in Pakistan. How can they survive on the money they have? This is causing more corruption in the lower bureaucracy than ever before, simply because it is corruption for need.
Q: Do you think NAB was used as an instrument of oppression to shape the results of the October elections?
A: NAB was used to form the PML-Q. NAB was used to strengthen the PML-Q by sending the electibles into NAB. And who are the electibles? They are the people who have the muscle and the money to fight elections. I mean, how come PML-Q has no vote bank? In all the opinion polls, PML-Q had no vote bank.
Q: Do you think this National Assembly will be able to complete its tenure?
A: I am deeply sceptical. The number one reason why it will not be able to complete its tenure is because the system cannot work with authority lying with the establishment and responsibility lying with the assembly and elected government.
Secondly, the compromises that had gone into making this set- up viable and to show a facade of democracy — it is just too untenable. I think Sindh is a very bizarre situation. The party that has the majority of votes has been manipulated out of power. And apart from anything else, it would create further alienation of the people in the interior of Sindh. Moreover, the government is a strange marriage between the MQM governor and the Sindh chief minister.... And also the way the ministries have been distributed in the centre....I see pitfalls. This is the honeymoon period you are seeing. Once the assembly starts functioning, I see lots of problems ahead.
Q: Do you think Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif will eventually be allowed to come back into active politics in Pakistan?
A: I don’t know how many more compromises are in store. We’ve seen great compromises done and I don’t know how many more are in store.
Q: How do you feel being your party’s only MNA in the assembly?
A: It is a very interesting experience because this is my first time in the assembly. It makes me understand how the assembly works. It would have been much easier for me if I had a lot of my own party members there. It is a difficult thing to stand up alone. At the same time, I think it gives me a great opportunity because I cannot be bought by any ministry; NAB cannot scare me with a file to shut me up. So here I am, a free voice that can talk about issues, and I am dying for the National Assembly to start functioning so that I can say something.
Q: How far are you prepared to go on the LFO? Suppose the mainstream parties struck some kind of a deal,... would you then be taking your own position?
A: Well, at the moment...we have all agreed that the LFO is unacceptable. If General Musharraf wants an amnesty, or protection from Article 6 (about treason) of the constitution I believe, then we, except one party which is not with us, are prepared — and I agree with the MMA on this — to accept General Musharraf as president provided he takes his uniform off for the next five years. In that way he is protected and at the same time, democracy is protected. At least we have the chance of moving forward. But anything else means we would have compromised on the fundamentals of democracy in Pakistan.
Q: Do you believe a joint session of parliament could be held with the president addressing it without a decision on the LFO first?
A: I cannot see this happening. I think the opposition’s stand, if anything, has hardened on the LFO. I don’t think it has weakened.... If one or two leaders had (earlier) thought of compromising, I wonder if they would now be willing to compromise because they will be exposed now — I think they would be destroyed in politics.
Q: How do you propose we improve relations with India?
A: I was invited to India to attend a big forum and I spoke on this conflict. I can tell you very clearly that in my mind I am convinced that we should try everything to resolve this conflict on Kashmir.
Q: Even start trade with India before a solution on Kashmir?
A: I think the time has come where we got to sit down and talk to India and insist on solving the issue.
Q: But they don’t want to talk to us.
A: I think we should try, and let me tell you why. What is the point of trying to free Kashmiris from the Indian yoke when we ourselves have been slaves of America?... If it was the independence of Kashmir we are fighting for, how come we ourselves, out of fear of India, have become slaves of America? When we cannot even stand up and have an independent foreign policy, when we are made to go against the wishes of the people in siding with the war in Afghanistan, when we cannot come up with a categorical statement backing the feelings of almost every Pakistani (on Iraq war)... what is the point then of standing up for the independence of Kashmir?
Q: What do you think about the view that Kashmir cannot be resolved because of the vested interests of the armies in Pakistan and India?
A: There is no doubt that there is now a fundamentalist government in India which is thriving on anti-Muslim and anti- Pakistan feelings.... But let me say there is a big liberal movement in India which is anti-fundamentalist and at least we should start having contacts with them.
Q: Now, to change subjects a bit, what do you think should be done to rejuvenate cricket in Pakistan after the World Cup disaster?
A: The cricket problem in Pakistan is exactly the same as other problems in the country. It is an institutional problem. People like us have studied abroad and have seen the system there. It is very evident why their democracy works. It is because of strong, autonomous institutions which function within their own constitutional orbit. Our cricket has failed because we have not developed the proper institutions. Why these institutions aren’t developing is because there is a vested interest sitting within the (Pakistan) Cricket Board (PCB), just like there are vested interests sitting in parliament which will not allow independent institutions like the judiciary to function because they themselves will lose out.
We have representatives of the sponsors sitting on the cricket board. If we had taken the right decisions and built the PCB into a proper institution, then these people would all lose their jobs. So how do you expect them to allow any change to take place?
...I’ve been telling them that nowhere in the world does there exist a system where the sponsors play their own team. For 20 years — and 10 years as captain — I kept telling them that this is faulty. The only reason we have succeeded in Pakistan is because our players were polished. We have abundant talent in Pakistan. The only good thing we did was that our talent was polished in English county cricket — in another system, not our own system. We were all products of English county cricket. Unfortunately whenever the team did well, the cricket board always used to take the credit. But it should not have taken the credit because the board did not produce cricketers. It has destroyed cricketers.
Had it been a functioning system, then Imran Nazir would be a world class batsman today. And it’s not just me who thinks so. When I saw Imran Nazir, I thought he was potentially a world- class cricket player. Clive Lloyd and Ian Chappel, in front of me, told (PCB chairman) General Tauqir Zia that we had a world- class potential in Imran Nazir. But he has not been picked even after our team has been destroyed. What happened to him? Once a player gets dropped from the national team and goes back into the system, they destroy him.
The other example is Inzamam. He is the greatest batsman that Pakistan cricket has produced in the past 10 years. But I had to fight with the selectors to get him into the team and one selector resigned because of this. He said that you have picked a failure and that he had no potential at all.
Unless we change the structure and build it like it is everywhere in the world on a regional basis, we will always keep changing captains, we will always keep changing coaches, and we will always keep changing selection committees that are going to be the same.
Q: Our generals enjoy a lot of perks and privileges. They get lands, they have clubs, golf courses, etc. Don’t you think this is legalized corruption?
A: We have had democratic governments which had allowed all this lavish colonial lifestyle. Look at the way our prime minister and president live. To me commonsense says that if I don’t have money, I have to tighten my belt. My commonsense does not tell me that I start borrowing money and live the same lavish lifestyle. Therefore, I have never understood why governments of the day never gathered everyone, all the stake-holders together, including the army... and say look, this is the money we have..., there are 140 million people in this country and let’s reinvest in them. Let’s just work out how to share this little small cake.
The Dawn Dialogue panel comprised M. Ziauddin, Raja Asghar, Ihtasham ul Haque, Ahmad Hassan and Aileen Qaiser.
I THINK I told you the other week that I like to read old newspapers. Well, a friend has done one better —- he reads old magazines and some of them make quite sinister predictions. He has sent me a copy of an article published by the EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) dated April 3-9, 1979.
The article is too long to be reproduced in full. But let me excerpt it here. The author, Judith Wyer, says, among other things:
Egypt’s President Sadat, who has now sold his soul to the devil, is already being discarded. According to information from intelligence sources, Sadat has been targeted for assassination by a British intelligence operation conducted through the Muslim Brotherhood, an act that is to be blamed on the Iraqis or the PLO and used as a pretext for Israel to launch a war against the Arab East. (Sadat was indeed murdered)
As the Arab states meet to plan strategy against the Camp David threat, British and Israeli intelligence has already set into motion Phase II of the Camp David process: the balkanization of the Middle East according to the design of Bernard Lewis, the Oxford Zionist now based at Princeton. Among the states slated for attack are Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia....
Any armed insurrection against Taraki could have global consequences since his government has a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. The destabilization there is ominously reminiscent of an assertion by US National Security Adviser Brzezinski that “Islamic fundamentalism can stop communism.”
Taraki himself minced no words in publicly stating that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind the offensive against him and that it is headquartered in London and Paris.
The destabilization is in part being carried out by a clique of Jamaat-allied Afghan exiles who are being stirred for the rebellion against Taraki. A recent meeting of Afghan exile groups held in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, called for a holy war against the Taraki government. There are also reports of anti-government elements being supported by the Iranian military in the city of Herat in Afghani territory on the Iranian border. Radio Moscow reported that Afghan forces found large stocks of US and Chinese manufactured arms in Herat.
Although president Carter recently exacerbated the delicate situation by openly accusing the Soviets of arming Afghanistan, the dismemberment and war confrontation scenario may yet take some manoeuvring to pull off. Even in Balochistan there is a division between a Maoist, which has been the source of the secessionist guerrilla movement, and a moderate secular Baloch movement.
The Bernard Lewis plan, named for its author, Princeton-based Middle East specialist Bernard Lewis, is a plan to fragment present Middle Eastern nations along tribal, ethnic and religious lines. Key to the plan is the breaking of Arab unity envisioned in the Camp David peace treaty, and the use of British and Israeli subversion to incite tribes and religious groups. Note that, in its latest revisions, the plan moots tribal and ethnic rebellions in portions of the Soviet Union as well as throughout the Arab world.
SEN Jesse Helms entered a strong criticism of Camp David in the Congressional Record for March 27, 1979. Excerpts follow:
....The heart of the problem is that the (Camp David) treaty is not a comprehensive settlement, that major questions remain outstanding, not only between Israel and Egypt, but also among Israel, Syria, and the rest of the Arab world. These outstanding questions are already eroding the stability of the agreement. The treaty may not be a step toward a comprehensive agreement at all; it may be a step that makes comprehensive agreement unlikely....
....The Soviet need fear only one development: that the war could spread and include Soviet and American military forces in direct confrontation and war. But, to limit this risk, they need merely keep their own military personnel in the Middle East to unofficial advisory status, and let the Arabs and the non-Soviet East bloc personnel do the actual fighting. And this is within their control.
Unfortunately, there is always the possibility that one side or the other may make a dreadful miscalculation with events spiralling out of control into general war. Although the possibility of this happening should not be underestimated by us, the Soviets may well believe that they can keep this risk under control.
For that reason, Israeli military planners will now be compelled to make the next war not a limited one, but the broadest conflict possible. It must be so decisive that it alters the fundamental situation in the Middle East. Anything less than that could be fatal to Israel’s territorial ambitions.
Now, a successful war from the Israeli point of view must include most of the following elements:
First, the end of Arab OPEC and the Arab oil weapon. Second, the eviction of many of the Arabs from the West Bank.
Third, the utter destruction of the Arab armies.
Fourth, the destruction of Arab morale.
Fifth, the active involvement of the United States in actual military operations in conjunction with Israel.
This war plan, while ambitious, is necessary for Israel. A war which would leave Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf oil fields unscathed would only mean that economic sanctions against the US in the postwar environment would create new pressures on Israel to withdraw from the captured territories. It would also mean that plenty of money would be available to rearm the Arab armies.... There are a number of scenarios by which it might be accomplished (US-Israeli military linkup) beginning with encouraging the US to upgrade its military capability to intervene abroad. Joint contingency planning exercises between American and Israeli military planners for a seizure of the Saudi oil fields would also be important.
MR Khurshid Anwer, who is a regular contributor to our correspondence columns, writes to say: “Reference your piece on March 10, “The State and the individual,” you may like to read what Alexander Solzhenitryn, the great Russian author, thinks of the matter:
“Western society follows the letter of the law. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of legal framework. It is demeaning to elect such mechanical, legalistic smoothness —- the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by mass-living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.
“The defence of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenceless against individuals. It is time to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
“The press has become the greatest power in the West, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would like to ask, by what law has it been elected, and to whom is it responsible?
“We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find that we were being deprived of our spiritual life. In the East by the government. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it.
“The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main areas.”
The daily points out that the Jacobabad district has been a hub of criminal activities for the last couple of months. During this period, besides other incidents, outlaws also raided two police check-posts located near Buxapur and Risaldar and kidnapped two policemen from the latter and snatched official weapons at the former.
Even if these events were not enough to serve as a wakeup call for the area police, the Kashmor incident — through which attackers created a heightened sense of insecurity in the entire area by killing 14 people, injuring 18 and kidnapping eight — should have been followed by extraordinary security measures. But the administration and the police failed to take any notice of the carnage in Kashmor, which was followed by the bloody clash in the nearby Buxapur area.
According to Kawish, the roots of this lawlessness lie in the tribal system in which different tribal communities have organized bands of warriors who on the one hand take part in tribal clashes and, on the other, also indulge in robberies, dacoities, kidnapping for ransom and other criminal activities. The outlaws believe that they are accountable only to their tribal chiefs and not to the state. The disputes created by the outlaws are settled through tribal laws in tribal jirgas which, in one way or the other, are supported by the government. Hence the law of the jungle.
If the government really wants to restore writ of law, the daily says, it should not only provide security of life to citizens but also strike at the roots of the lawlessness by reining in the forces of tribalism.
Sach comments on the farm tax recovery drive in Badin, and says the provincial government has declared the district a calamity-hit area and postponed recovery of agricultural taxes for three months. Yet the revenue officials (tapedars) are forcing growers to pay the taxes. This illegal demand is compelling small farmers to sell their lands to arrange money for payment to the revenue officials. The daily points out that it is a common practice among the tapedars in Sindh not to give a receipt for the entire payment received by them from the landholders. Therefore, it is suspected that the tapedars may be keeping some of the money received in the name of farm taxes. The government should ensure implementation of its decision to postpone the tax recovery drive in the calamity-affected area and also investigate the alleged embezzlement by the tapedars, Sach says.
In an editorial published on April 4, Ibrat writes that the US-UK invasion of Iraq again makes one remember executed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who, if alive, could have played a vital role in the present volatile situation. The daily adds that his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, despite being the leader of the party, has failed to establish herself as the heir to her father’s anti-imperialist politics.
Commenting on the latest developments taking place in the Iraqi war theatre, Tameer-i-Sindh says that the battle for Baghdad will decide the outcome of the war. However, keeping in view the imbalance of power between the warring sides, no prediction can be made, but at least it can be said that the time taken by the US-UK “swift action” is in itself a victory for a weak nation facing the wrath of the biggest superpower of the world.