| November 2, 2003 | Sunday | Ramazan 6, 1424 |
Delivering aid in Afghanistan is a civilian task
The farce of price control
ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: Pakistan is taking concrete measures, including diplomatic, to examine the possibility of establishing a multi-billion dollar Pan-Islamic Fund for the promotion of science and technology in the OIC region, officials told Dawn on Thursday.
MAZAR-I-SHARIF: Karim Khan stands disconsolately outside the local government headquarters in the remote village of Tuksar. He used to run the neighbouring village, but was bundled out by a rival militia one night recently, leaving his wife and family behind as virtual prisoners.
The Fund would receive at least 0.1 per cent of GDP annually from each member state with a guarantee that at least 80 per cent of the donated money would be used within the country contributing it in the areas of priority identified by the donor country, officials said.
The steps being pursued by Pakistan are in line with the resolution adopted by the Tenth Session of the Islamic Summit Conference held in Malaysia from Oct 16 to 18, sources said.
According to a document prepared by the Comstech secretariat in Pakistan and circulated among the OIC member states, establishment of the fund is the first step towards addressing the global balance of power tilted against the Muslim countries.
One of the reasons why the Muslims are being suppressed everywhere is that they have no skills in research and development, and they can’t produce their own technologies to support their progress and defend their rights, the document states.
The Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (Comstech) is a specialized committee with its secretariat at Islamabad. It was established by the Third Islamic Summit held in Saudi Arabia during 1981.
As a special emissary of President Gen Pervez Musharraf, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, in his capacity as Coordinator General Comstech, has visited selected countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Qatar, UAE, Malaysia, Morocco and Brunei to obtain the consent of their respective governments for the fund, officials told Dawn.
According to the document, the principal amount of the proposed Fund would be held by an established institution like the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah, and it will be administered by a council of ministers of science and technology of the contributing member states. The president of Islamic Development Bank and Coordinator General Comstech will be co-chairpersons of the council, the document said.
The incident is not isolated. It is being replicated throughout northern Afghanistan in what amounts to low-level civil war as militias use the autumn, the country’s traditional fighting season, to change the map of power.
Casualties are fortunately few and front lines in this largely unreported struggle are invisible. All that is different when places change hands, usually by night and with one side running away, is the loyalty of the men who sit in the fort which commands the highest point in every Afghan village. To which warlord do the new local rulers owe their allegiance, and who will enjoy the “taxes” that the militias exact from ordinary people?
While fighting is growing in intensity in southern Afghanistan, as US forces engage resurgent Taliban forces in the Pakhtoon heartlands two years after they were supposed to have been defeated, the jockeying for power in the north is between three main groups, all of which are financed and supported by the Americans.
How is it possible that the Bush administration could launch its war on international terror while being so unwilling to clip the wings of warlords who inflict terror mainly on other Afghans? The cynics may say the question answers itself. But even a less negative view has to accept that, just as in Iraq, no planning was done for providing immediate security in Afghanistan once the Taliban lost power. Most of Afghanistan was too poor to have had electricity or piped water before the war, so Afghan complaints are different from those of Iraqis. For Afghans, the lack of security is the big issue.
It was not just that a vacuum developed. The Americans encouraged the leaders of the Northern Alliance to resume their old positions. Their forces played little role in defeating the Taliban and only managed to advance on the ground thanks to US carpet-bombing of Taliban positions. But in victory, the Americans behaved as though they were in the warlords’ debt, rather than the other way round.
They ignored the persistent demands of virtually every Afghan, including President Hamid Karzai, to deploy an international peace- keeping force outside Kabul to disarm the warlords. A few weeks ago the US line changed and the UN security council was finally asked to mandate such a force. Implementation? Germany is sending 450 troops to Kunduz, one of the least problematic areas of the north, and no other foreign government has offered to put troops into the Mazar region or the western city of Herat, which is home to another US- supported warlord.
Earlier this year, before the decision to expand the peace- keepers, the Americans and British set up units of their own soldiers, special forces, and civilians who work as “provincial reconstruction teams”. In Mazar, the 85-strong team is British. Its men try to prevent new land-grabs. They monitor local ceasefires and persuade militias to turn in their guns to the warlords’ depots. Good as it is, there is still no plan to “decommission” or destroy weapons and the team was too small to prevent fighting earlier this month on the main road only 20 miles out of Mazar, between heavily armed men loyal to the Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his Tajik rival, Ustad Atta Mohammed.
The British and Americans regained the initiative later by sending Kabul’s new interior ministry up to Mazar to get the warlords’ permission for 300 Kabul police to come into the city. This week the central government appointed new governors for Mazar and the surrounding province, promising the incumbents good jobs elsewhere. The British and the Americans argue that this softly, softly approach to extending the Karzai government’s influence is more productive in a heavily armed and naturally belligerent country than confronting the warlords directly. It is too early to know whether they are right. The ceasefire they brokered is tenuous, and what should have been done two years ago to rebuild the Afghan state after the Taliban is only starting now.
Like its American variants in the central highlands and the south, the British “provincial reconstruction team” in Mazar creates new problems while it tries to solve old ones. Scores of attacks on aid workers in southern Afghanistan, where a full-scale war appears to be resuming, are causing the big international organisations anxiety. Long before the bombing of the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Baghdad this week put the focus on the dangers aid workers face, an ICRC man was killed near Kandahar.
Foreign forces in northern Afghanistan, unlike in the south, are popular for the moment, but the mood could change. To try to forestall the danger, the professional non-governmental organisations are warning that aid must not be allowed to be seen as an arm of a British or American “hearts and minds” campaign.
It may seem innocuous and a positive benefit to have doctors and dentists in combat fatigues drop in to a village for a one-day “clinic”. The army doctors no doubt feel good. But they are blurring a crucial line of principle which damages the image of impartiality of NGOs working in the same field. The bigger NGOs worked under the mujahedin and Taliban regimes and have earned long-term respect from Afghans. They do not want to be seen as part of the political plans of governments which may lose interest in a year’s time or two. Nor do they welcome the risk of being seen by Afghans, however mistakenly, as agents of the military.
Why should civilians from the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) be attached to these provincial reconstruction teams and work with them to identify “quick impact projects” which Britain can fund? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already distorted many western governments’ spending priorities, making “reconstruction” a political exercise designed to satisfy Washington rather than an impartially assessed response to need. Choosing aid projects in collaboration with the military takes the distortion a dangerous stage further.
The choice should be left to national aid-receiving governments, the UN’s specialised agencies, and the NGOs. Under pressure, UN officials in Afghanistan have accepted Washington’s and London’s demands for coalition forces to have an aid role, while urging them to stick to infrastructure issues such as road- and bridge-building or repairing local government offices. The compromise is confusing and a mistake. Hilary Benn, DfID’s new boss, should have his people work with the Karzai government in Kabul and the UN, rather than with the British and American military.
Security belongs to the armed people in uniform. Aid is the task of civilians — who will still be in Afghanistan when the “war on terror” caravan moves on.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
Ramazan 2003 is here. There is truly nothing surprising, so far, with the way the first few days have passed. There is the familiar change of mood in the city; the same quiet, meditative stance, a slowing down of the pace of urban living, a time for prayer, charity, alms-giving; a time for contemplation, reflection; of sharing; days and nights of family togetherness, annual traditional bonding, of individual introspection. And as Ramazan now brings with it a change of weather, a stamp of seasonal ambience is also perceptible; and cooler temperatures in the evenings invoke nostalgia.
But having said all this, let us underline the sore point that it has also brought in that familiar brand of commercialism, known in popular conversation as the profiteering in Ramazan. For years, it has been on this way, to such an extent that there is a public cynicism about all measures that seek to tame prices in this month. Nothing will work.
But before one moves onto this theme in some detail, let me tell you what a friend of mine said last evening. She came up with the observation that in this month somehow it is money that is the focus of exceptional abnormal emphasis, concern. What did she mean? She pointed to the way in which there is an exploitation of the common man, through high prices, often rendering life still more miserable and humiliating for the community. For all the holiness and spirituality that is emphasised by the month, there is demonstrated a lack of morality by shopkeepers, which symbolises the ruthless commercialisation.
With this she also mentioned the sudden burst of enthusiasm there is being witnessed in the realm of fund-raising by various leading NGOs for Zakat collection. This is an extraordinary phenomenon in some ways. Fund-raising around Ramazan time in the name of Zakat has always been there, like there has been the phenomena of the collection of hides and skins. No comparison, really. Yet the thought does come to mind.
Having said this, let us return to the subject of prices, and in particular with reports that manufacturers and producers of various items that are in high demand, have either expressed a reluctance or a complete refusal to bring down their profit margins in this month. The sanctity and the blessing of this month having no bearing on them, no cleansing effect as a colleague says.
Let me refer to the meat sellers who went on strike over the price issue, in a way symbolising the attitude of the business class, perhaps. The general secretary of the Meat Merchants Association declared that “we cannot sell meat at reduced rates as prescribed by the government.” The argument that meat merchants have advanced is that the prices fixed by the city government are unrealistic, artificial. So what is realistic is overcharging.
Moving from the meat merchants to the overall price theme, there is a deplorable tell tale story of how the whole mean scenario has surfaced just before Ramazan, and in its first few days. In fact, what is happening in Karachi, so far, and much of the month still to go, is what is unfolding in the rest of the country. Stories of unrestrained profiteering and public anger have come so far from Islamabad, Lahore, Hyderabad, besides the Sindh capital, and even from Badin. There is something national in terms of scale, and also in terms of attitude, it appears. For example, there comes from Islamabad vis-a-vis the CDA weekly bazaars, a report that stall-holders have been warned against price-hike. The rest of the details evoke a familiarity, except that one feels that perhaps in Islamabad there wouldn’t be this kind of thing happening. But why?
With reference to Karachi there was on Oct 26 a dampener that said that “consumers to enjoy little relief in Ramazan”, and the reason for this was that very many of the multinationals, local firms and millers had flatly refused to offer any cut in prices of their products. All the talks that had been going on for weeks were exercises in futility. No other cliche would tell it better, friend.
Somehow consumers were, in their naivete, anticipating that the manufacturers and others in the business would bring down their prices in the name of Ramazan, and not resort to delaying tactics. Then came reports indicating that the city government’s efforts to check prices were fizzling out. Doesn’t surprise.
And one docile consumer Rahim Bakhsh who resides in Hazara Colony near Kala Pul said that the prices of fruits, vegetables, Atta and sugar had certainly gone up with Ramazan, but that he was not surprised. He was certain that all efforts to control prices would fail, and that eventually people would have to pay more. That is what they are doing. Of course, there are price monitoring cells, and committees and official spokesmen said that action would be taken against profiteers. But it is not an effective and suitable deterrent. Price lists have been a farce, and continue to be treated lightly. That’s it.
Price lists? Now a brief focus on the large costly advertisements that are being released regularly by various organisations seeking Zakat money from citizens. These come from the famous and established organisations that we all know, and from those that have recently come in the field of welfare. There are organizations that are backed or run by, well known stars, and singers, and politicians, and sportsmen; and there are others that have the support and patronage of the corporate sector. There are some that have the patronage of international agencies, and organisations, and they all want Zakat, Sadqa and other forms of charity.
It is not to suggest that these organizations are not doing good work, and play an invaluable role in this society, but one would have imagined that instead of a frenzied marketing that is taking place, there would be a dignified low profile, discreet communication on this theme of Zakat collection, argued one veteran doctor who heads a large institution. There is a sort of “corruption of Zakat values” that is taking place.