| September 22, 2003 | Monday | Rajab 24, 1424 |
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A fitting rebuff
Baghdad’s lost treasures
ON his return from a prolonged tour of England and Sweden, the federal railways minister has said that a number of foreign companies have shown interest in investing in the railways sector in Pakistan. This is good news because it indicates that this sector, which has been on the slide for many years, still promises profitability. One may not dispute the idea of inducting private and foreign entrepreneurs into the running of train services on various sections or also in the planning and maintenance of rail projects. It is, however, a bit difficult to believe that the private sector would really want to take up a project which is not very profitable. Besides, it is important not to create monopolies in any area where the private sector is brought in, if prices are to be kept at a reasonable level.
The government boasts of a continuous rise in railway earnings and interprets this as a “sign of improvement in the services”. But the fact is that income has increased because of the periodic rise in fares and freight charges. In terms of the number of passengers and freight carried, the figures show a shocking decline in the decade of the ‘90s. It is only since 2000 that passenger and freight traffic has picked up somewhat, though it is still not anywhere close to what it used to be 25 years ago when as many as 150 million people travelled by rail every year, compared to 69 million today. What is more disconcerting is that the railways’ share of traffic has constantly been in decline. In 1990-91 it carried 13.5 per cent of the passengers who travelled in the country. In 2000-01 this was only 6.6 per cent. Similarly, in the same period the share of freight carried by the railways went down from 14 per cent to four per cent. All this speaks of the rot that has set in over the years. This is substantiated by the drastic fall in rolling stock and route kilometres. PR has been the victim of gross negligence when it should have been developed, maintained and expanded because normally the railway forms the backbone of a country’s communication system. The biggest blow it has received has come from the NLC which has received privileged treatment to enable it to take away a substantial part of lucrative freight traffic from the railways.
The government has, therefore, done well to plan for the improvement of the railways infrastructure at a cost of Rs44 billion in five years (2000-2005). The plan focuses on doubling and repairing the tracks in some sectors, acquiring new rolling stock and upgrading the signalling system. All this calls for funds, and one is not sure whether the promised amount will prove adequate for the purpose. The railways has been running in the red for many years — today its overdraft is to the tune of Rs17 billion. Corruption has been a major bane of the system as it has been in other areas of life in the country. On the one hand, it is essential that the money set apart for improving and expanding the infrastructure is actually used for the purpose it is meant for and not embezzled. On the other hand, there is also the need to provide incentives to attract passenger and freight traffic as that would boost earnings and thus strengthen PR’s finances.
THE UN General Assembly on Friday approved the Security Council resolution earlier vetoed by the US. Passed by an overwhelming majority of UN members, the resolution calls upon Israel to drop its threat to “remove” President Yasser Arafat from the scene. “Remove” here does not necessarily mean the Palestinian leader’s forced exile; it could also mean his cold-blooded murder. Israel’s intentions with regard to Mr Arafat were made clear when Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said killing the Palestinian president could “definitely (be) one of the options.” The resolution serves to register the disapproval of the vast majority of the people of the world of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people and toward the man who symbolizes their aspirations. More specifically, the resolution serves to highlight Israel’s unwillingness to deal with Mr Arafat and the question of Palestinian freedom by political means.
In keeping with its track record, the US joined Israel in voting against the Assembly resolution, its ambassador to the UN calling the motion “unbalanced.” Israel, in turn, described the resolution as “meaningless.” The resolution is non-binding, but even if it were binding — as Security Council resolutions are — Israel could not care less. It has a record of defying Security Council resolutions, and it not only gets away with this, but continues to receive its usual quota of economic and military aid from the US, besides unqualified support for its repressive policies in the occupied territories. Whether Israel will go ahead and murder Mr Arafat is for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a question of choice and of timing. President George Bush’s strong attack on the Palestinian leader on Thursday and his appeal to the Palestinian people to oust him must serve as an encouragement for Sharon to eliminate Mr Arafat, whom he has failed to defeat politically or intimidate or overawe with his military might. If Sharon decides to add one more murder to his long list of such crimes, history will regard Mr Bush as an accomplice in the killing of the acknowledged leader of the Palestinian people and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
BAGHDAD’S National Museum, which was once a proud repository of prized artefacts spanning 5,000 years of human history, is now home to some of the world’s most damaged archaeological treasures. The museum was broken into and its collection vandalized by ‘looters’ following the ‘second’ sack of Baghdad when the American-led forces took the Iraqi capital in April last. Before the war, the Baghdad museum housed a total of 170,000 unique objects of art and culture in its 30 well-maintained galleries and was considered one of the richest repositories of historical treasures in the world. Today, despite the Americans’ pledge to recover the stolen artefacts, more than 10,000 of the museum’s most-prized items are still missing while 3,400 of lesser value have been recovered — most of them in pieces. This was confirmed recently by Paul Bremer’s interim administration which has many more things to worry about, such as the restoration of civic life in Baghdad, before it can turn its attention to history or archaeology. Surprisingly, the vandalizing of the Baghdad museum drew a somewhat muted response from the world at large, including Unesco, even though the antiquities lost were priceless.
Some of the recovered artefacts appeared on open antique auctions in London, Paris and New York within weeks of the looting, which lends credence to claims by Iraqi archaeological experts that the best of the missing pieces may already be part of personal collections in the West. A worse fate befell Baghdad’s National Archives, which housed copies of every book published in Iraq besides ancient Quranic and other manuscripts dating back to the Ottoman period. The archives building was torched and all its collection was consumed by flames three days after the museum was plundered. The tragedy of the Bamiyan statues, which were brought down by the Taliban and which drew condemnation and outrage from across the globe, is dwarfed by the tragedy that has befallen Baghdad’s lost treasures. The question now is purely one of pricking the international conscience.