| August 12, 2003 | Tuesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 13, 1424 |
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Arafat at 74
A most dishonourable act
JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s recent visit to India, for which he was both anointed and criticized, was seen as setting a new precedent for Indo-Pakistan contacts at the informally political, and not simply the official, level. The scope for this has expanded vastly with the current arrival of a large delegation of Indian parliamentarians for talks with their Pakistani counterparts. The delegation includes elected representatives from all major Indian political parties and should thus be considered as fairly reflective of public opinion across the border. Their Pakistani interlocutors are also all elected representatives of the people, even if they are now engaged in a struggle to get their popular credentials fully accepted in parliament. Interaction between the two should throw up valuable ideas on how the newly launched peace initiative in the subcontinent can be most fruitfully carried forward.
Most of the inter-parliamentary deliberations will reportedly be carried out in private, but the inaugural session in Islamabad on Sunday was open to the press. Some of the participants spoke unreservedly about the need for a new chapter of harmony between Pakistan and India; others, perhaps more conscious of the rigid stands adopted by their parties and governments, repeated known positions. A way out has to be found through the thicket created by 50 years of state policies. This requires more than good intentions, and it requires attention to practical ways to resolve fundamental issues like Kashmir. Track Two diplomacy has been kept going by well-meaning retired foreign service officials and generals for the past several years, and at several stages of the behind-the-scenes negotiations, even concrete formulas have been debated. However, there are vocal lobbies in both Pakistan and India that have looked askance at anything that even remotely suggests a departure from entrenched perceptions. Since politicians, too supine to resist the temptation of playing to the gallery, have often helped their respective establishments to keep the fire stoked, it is now their responsibility to suggest ways to go beyond the small steps taken so far.
The Kashmir issue is far greater than cross-border infiltration; there is a history of denial of people’s rights and of repression of Kashmir nationalists. If this is recognized, the Islamabad conference can perhaps move on to suggest a scaling down of the Indian security forces in Kashmir and greater respect for the civil liberties of the region’s people. This in turn could make possible a softer Kashmir border, with the people of the two parts being allowed to meet and agree on proposals that could be submitted for consideration in tripartite India-Pakistan-Kashmiri talks. To evoke such a response, Pakistani parliamentarians will also have to accept that religious militancy only complicates the case for Kashmiris fighting for their rights, and that the issue should be approached in a less emotional frame of mind.
Where will it all lead to cannot be predicted, but the Islamabad conclave is certainly a most welcome effort to stimulate politicians to take the initiative in normalizing India-Pakistan relations away from the hands of bureaucrats, foreign office experts and generals. In fact, given the present international climate where the spectre of US domination looms large, the establishments in Pakistan and India might actually need some help from parliamentarians to prepare public opinion for a rapprochement that enables closer regional cooperation.
IF there is a man who symbolizes the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom from foreign occupation, it is Yasser Arafat. Barring Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Arafat, who has turned 74, is now the world’s longest surviving statesman. All his contemporaries have passed into history. But Arafat has carried on, surviving 50 assassination attempts to bring the Palestinian question back to the world’s centre-stage. Full of courage, Arafat shot into fame with the battle of Karame (1968), which was Israel’s first military setback. Then he led the Palestine Liberation Organization so skilfully that those who had turned the very word Palestine into taboo were forced to recognize it as the key issue in the Middle East. Utterly indifferent to death, Arafat stayed on in Beirut till the very last moment and left Lebanon’s besieged capital only after all his comrades had been evacuated. Most observers of the international scene had then written off Arafat. However, Israel was shaken to the core when Palestinians in the occupied territories began Intifada, Arafat’s “revolution of stone and stick.” No wonder those who derided Arafat as a terrorist were forced to negotiate with him and sign a treaty on the lawns of the White House (1993). This “terrorist” then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a moment of great triumph when Arafat finally entered Al Quds, with Palestinian flags waving all around him. (During the intifada, exhibiting the Palestinian flag was a crime).
Now besieged in Ramallah, Arafat refuses to give up. Abandoned by the Arab-Islamic world, Arafat continues to personify the Palestinian people’s aspirations, and all attempts by Ariel Sharon and his patrons to sideline him have failed. One does not know whether a sovereign Palestine with Al Quds as its capital will come into being in his lifetime, but, whenever it does, history will consider Abu Ammar’s role as the most important one in articulating his people’s urges and leading them with hope even in moments of utter despair.
THE cold-blooded murder of a mother and her four young daughters in Muridke by a male relative is a gruesome reminder of the fact that many Pakistanis still hold highly repugnant views regarding women. A vegetable market vendor killed his 45-year-old pregnant sister-in-law and her four teenaged daughters after an argument in which he objected to the girls standing on the roof of their house. The mother quite rightly defended her daughters saying there was nothing wrong in that, but the man thought otherwise. He locked the five women in a room and shot them one by one. The tragedy serves to highlight once again the perverted concept of “honour” that men in sections of our society have. Not letting women do something as trivial as stand on the roof of their own home shows the patriarchal and chauvinist strain that runs through our society. In fact, if anything, it is the man in this case who has disgraced his family by committing such an act.
Unfortunately, there are many people who give a religious colour to such bigoted and narrow-minded thinking. Our ulema must take an unequivocal stand on this, making it clear that such retrogressive and primitive views are not sanctioned by Islam, which expressly condemns those who kill others. Such crimes must be condemned by all progressive segments of society so that anyone who holds such a warped sense of honour is forced to rethink his beliefs. This might, of course, be expecting too much from a country with a low rate of literacy and a highly skewed income distribution. Catching the killer and punishing him might serve the cause of justice in this case but will not stop such acts from recurring. What will help is a significant rise in the level of education and tolerance, and increased industrialization, which will bring more women into the mainstream.