A solution for Chechnya

Is there no solution to the nine-year-old Chechen bloodbath? Russian President Vladimir Putin declares that the only acceptable outcome is the one he seeks to effect through a puppet government imposed on the dissident republic through rigged elections.

Why? Because every other political force in Chechnya is made up of "terrorists" who offer no solutions other than complete secession from Russia and a state based on fundamentalist Islam.

Hence, he concludes, there is no one to talk with and no basis for compromise. And Putin would also have us believe all right-thinking Russian political figures support this view.

Thus armed, he is ready to push doggedly on with a brutal war that claimed the lives of 500 Russians in just one recent week and has killed some 200,000 Chechens - a quarter of their population.

All these assertions by Putin are false. I know this because I twice participated in secret meetings between members of the Russian Duma and representatives of the only government in Chechnya's grim history ever chosen through reasonably fair elections - the one headed by Aslan Maskhadov between 1997 and 1999. Sponsored by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, these unofficial talks were held in August 2001 in Caux, Switzerland, and a year later in Liechtenstein.

The first session brought together nine people, including, from Moscow's side, Yuri Shchekochikin, deputy chairman of the Duma's committee on national security, and Abdul Soltegov from the Duma's Chechnya commission. Maskhadov, who could not leave Chechnya, sent a team headed by his mild and intelligent foreign minister, Ilyas Akhmadov.

There was every reason to expect a hostile standoff. But it soon became evident that more united the two sides than divided them. Both realized that there was enough blame to go around and that everyone's hands were bloody to some degree.

Both saw the war as being sustained by corrupt Russian officers who were reaping illegal profits from it and by the Russian security forces with whom they were in league. And both believed a solution under which Chechnya could have maximum autonomy while remaining part of Russia would work. On this basis they agreed on a number of practical steps to take in the coming period.

The Russians and Chechens were sufficiently encouraged that they met again a year later. Again I was invited to attend. This time the Moscow group expanded to include Duma member Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a highly respected general, an ethnic Chechen and today a Kremlin official on the spot in the Beslan schoolhouse massacre; Rustam Kaliev, special adviser to the Duma's commission on Chechnya; and two former speakers of the Duma, Chechen-born Ruslan Khasbulatov and Ivan Rybkin, who served as national security adviser to Boris Yeltsin. The Chechen delegation was headed by Maskhadov's able vice premier, Akhmed Zakayev, who, like Akhmadov, was then living abroad.

This time the group went further, agreeing on the outlines of a peace plan and charging Khasbulatov, a lawyer by training, with drafting it. They planned a Moscow news conference to disseminate the plan. Aslakhanov volunteered to go to Washington to brief key officials there.

The group also called on Maskhadov to publicly condemn the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen Islamists, which had triggered the renewal of fighting in Chechnya. And in an effort to give Putin a further way out, the group proposed to focus on the corruption that was sustaining the war rather than criticize Putin directly.

The peace plan on which Duma members and Chechen leaders agreed included the same formula worked out a year earlier: Chechnya's continued legal membership in the Russian Federation, but with firm guarantees that it would enjoy the maximum degree of self-rule and autonomy. Maskhadov was quoted as saying he would accept this outcome as the best way of preserving the ethnic existence of the Chechen people.

This lay to rest the red herring of secession about which Putin preached to grieving parents in Beslan after the schoolhouse attack there. In Liechtenstein the two sides differed only on such secondary points as whether Russian or joint Russian-Chechen forces should guard the southern border or whether the rest of Chechnya should be demilitarized.

What happened to these initiatives? When asked at a news conference about the first meeting, Putin flatly denied that it had taken place. When word got out about the second, the Russian White House said it was a scheme devised by Boris Berezovsky, a dissident oligarch, to discredit Putin, even though Berezovsky was in no way connected with it. In short, Putin brushed aside the proposals.

The Liechtenstein plan would still work today, and Maskhadov, while weakened, remains the only viable partner for negotiations on the future of Chechnya. He had nothing to do with the monstrous attack in Beslan and has denounced it as barbaric.

Maskhadov is the only credible Chechen leader who champions the separation of religion from the state and favours modern secular education, even while respecting the Islamic faithful. In office he opposed the fundamentalists.

Many Chechens backed his moderate stance. It is true that the inexperienced Maskhadov failed to reverse Chechnya's downward slide during his brief rule, but it is doubtful anyone else could have done better without assistance from Moscow or abroad, which was denied him.

But is Maskhadov a terrorist, as Putin claims ad nauseam? If he is, why would Britain offer asylum to his envoy and close associate, Zakayev? Why would the United States welcome another close ally, Akhmadov, as it has recently? Neither country is known these days for rolling out a welcome mat for terrorists.

It is no secret that there are terrorists among revenge-seeking Chechens and that there are radical Islamists among the desperate population of that land. But if Putin persists in painting all Chechens with the same brush of terrorism, he will block the only remaining path to a peaceful solution and deny Russians and Chechens the only approach known to have the support of responsible figures on both sides. - Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, US.

Farmers remain deprived

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that there has been no investment in the agriculture sector for the past one and a half decades is only part of the answer to the question why the countryside is writhing in poverty and helplessness.

The fact is that the exploitation of rural India has continued unabated for years to the benefit of the urbanites. So much so that, however proficient an agricultural worker, he remains in the category of "unskilled." This alone has denied the labour in wages a whopping figure of five lakh crore rupees a year and they constitute 93 per cent of the total workforce.

The average daily wage of an agricultural worker is Rs 50. In comparison, a peon gets Rs 150, an industrial labourer Rs 350 and a collector Rs 1,000 a day while professionals may earn Rs 50,000 or more.

This disparity remains even when 70 per cent of India's population lives in villages. During the last Lok Sabha elections, the countryside re-registered its protest by voting against those who mistook cities for villages and said: "India shining."

"There is not a single farmer without debt," says former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal who is also a landlord. He may well be right. For unexplainable reasons, the loan given to agriculturists is charged compound interest, not the simple one as happens in industry or business.

No political party has so far brought any bill, much less enacted a law, to lay down that an agriculturalist will pay simple interest even when he fails to clear the credit he has borrowed from a moneylender or a bank.

The British rulers were far better in this field and had two laws: the Land Improvement Loans Act, 1883, and the Agriculturists' Loan Act, 1884. The rules said: "Compound interest shall not be charged under any circumstance." In free India when we have been mouthing slogans of socialistic pattern and doing little, the government has been acting otherwise.

It brought in 1984 the Amendment Banking Act that "notwithstanding anything contained in the usurious Loans Act or in any other law relating to indebtedness in force in any state, the court should not reopen any transaction between a banking company (including cooperatives) and its debtors on ground of excessive interest."

No state or political party ever protested against the draconian law. The press and public opinion wakes up - always for a short while - when a farmer commits suicide, particularly in Andhra Pradesh or Punjab, the two prosperous states. This is largely because of the burden of compound interest or the daily demand by the 'baniya'.

The money taken on loan goes on accumulating because of compound interest and the debt passes from one generation to the other till someone sells his land, the child or himself or resorts to some other step to mollify the moneylenders.

Believe it or not, even the British rulers had protected their subjects by laying down that the period of recovery "shall ordinarily not exceed 35 years."Still worse is the detention of the farmer if he does not clear the debt.

It is called "civil jail" but the farmer prefers to call it "a visit to friends" to cover up the ignominy of detention. Police use all methods for recovery - illegal detention is one of them. Moneylenders also employ musclemen to recover their debts. A farmer has no protection from the state or from the law.

The different studies have shown that the main reason of uncleared debt is that the farmer has no leeway: the price of the produce does not cover the cost of inputs which goes on rising.

Although political parties say that there should be remunerative price for crops - Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party has included this in its election manifesto - none has worked out what it should be. How much is remunerative? Maybe, the Congress and the Left which have formulated the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) should define it.

True, the support price gives farmers the confidence that the price of their crop has something minimum base below which it will not go. But this does not ensure a remunerative price. Nor is there any permanent guarantee for support price which is considered subsidy, and in economic terms, "a burden on the exchequer." Experts are against it.

In fact, the policy that the Vajpayee government pursued has spurred an agrarian crisis. His government demolished the public distribution system and moved on to free market regime to have "commercial agriculture for profit."

It rejected the dictum: "the land should belong to the tiller." The party also facilitated transfer of land to people with money, including the corporate sector. This was what the national agriculture policy which the Vajpayee government enunciated in 2000 to usher in the 21st century.

The CPM indicates that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) proposes to reverse the process. But the steps contemplated indicate a halting and half-hearted approach. Land reforms continue to be of the old mould of creating surplus land, share cropping, etc.

The main thing is: can we go to the basic and say that the land is not property but a means of livelihood? We have the examples of communist countries like China and the old Soviet Union where individual holding has come back.

But can we rekindle the community spirit in the land of Mahatma Gandhi who wanted villages to be self-sufficient and constitute republics within the Indian republic?

Another problem facing the countryside is unemployment. Old trades and skills have been crowded out by the one-track economic reforms. The alternatives are not just there.

The youth, once they get educated, want a white-collar job and do not want to return to agriculture. In states like Punjab, there the unemployed youth has taken to drugs in a big way. This has invariably resulted in parents selling their shrinking landholdings.

The CMP promised one job to a family for 100 days but four months have gone by and there is no sign of it. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has admitted that he does not have resources to fulfil the promise.

When a vacancy in a city attracts 10,000 applicants, including MBAs, for the job of a peon, the plight of the youth in villages can be well imagined. The government may be hard put about resources but it cannot afford to leave things as they are. If the CMP does not implement the assurance on employment, the UPA may face the fate of NDA in the next election.

The bulk of the poor lives in the rural areas. All of them are loosely integrated with the non-agricultural sectors of the economy. There can be no meaningful indent in poverty unless there are specific programmes towards particular poverty groups in the rural areas. Maybe, a cess can be imposed on income to create jobs as has been done to raise funds in the field of education.

A system that fails to protect farmers from rapacious exploitation can have no justification. No doubt, both the prime minister and the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman have enhanced the allocation for agriculture. They have first to identify the root causes and the nature of agrarian crisis. The community continues to be out of the system. This is its biggest grievance.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

The clash within

The developments across the Muslim world negate the thesis propounded by Samuel Huntington in his magnum opus "Clash of Civilizations". Written in the social, political, economic and ideological context of post-cold war period, the book predicts the emergence of an Islamic civilization as against capitalism after the demise of communism.

Thus Huntington's concept of the world is necessarily bipolar where two opposite ideologies take on each other and with the defeat of one, the other civilization take over to fill in the power vacuum. The underlying idea in the advancement of the theory of a clash between civilizations is more ideological and less economic.

Secondly it has been presumed that scattered and disparate Muslim Ummah would cement itself and rise as a collective entity. This is an erroneous notion as it overlooks huge differences between the Muslim countries.

In spite of various revivalist movements initiated to infuse life in the body of the Ummah, the Islamic world has remained as rudderless as ever. The nationalistic rivalries have hit hard at the idea of Pan-Islamism proving for yet another time the impracticality of the idea of unity.

As against the theory projected by Mr. Huntington, the Islamic world is undergoing changes of gigantic proportions. It has the potential of resetting its direction and locating for it a role which it has long aspired for provided the fight within the Islamic world is won over by the majority against the militant minority. But at the same time there is a lurking fear that if the crises facing the Muslim world are not handled wisely, they may be a harbinger of new miseries and political bondage.

There is now a persistent debate among the Muslims over their miserable plight. They are not happy with the conduct of their respective governments. They now openly accuse them of playing lackey to Washington at the cost of the interest of their nations.

Dr Mahathir Mohammad advised the Muslims to think of imaginative solutions to their problems. He referred to the Jews as the thinking people who succeeded by devising new ways and means.

The process of realization set in motion is not proactive one resulting from the willing consideration of the factors that are responsible for their political downfall.

Rather it is reactive caused by their downward slide into backwardness and American backlash to the recent developments. Now the transformation of this process from reactivity to proactivity would be very important, as it would change the whole tenor of realization.

At the same time, there are some sad developments, which are symptomatic of their perennial institutional breakdown, lack of the rule of law and participatory processes.

Sectarianism presents the most formidable challenge for the Ummah. Only a few days ago, there were incidents of violence in Pakistan in which many people were killed. In spite of tall claims by the successive governments in Pakistan about eradicating sectarianism, the problem has been intensified.

In Iraq the fall of Saddam Hussein has paved the way for sectarianism which has assumed political colours. The Shia-Sunni rift has been associated with power wrangling in Iraq where the Shiite community forms 60 per cent of the total population.

Over the years when Saddam Hussein ruled the country there has been continuous oppression of the shiites who did not have their due share in the power structure. One thing that the US did after taking over Baghdad was to enlist the support of the Shiite leaders keeping their strategic importance in view.

As Al Qaeda and other anti-US forces have been busy in destabilizing Iraq through a variety of ways, the Shiite community has happened to be their victim. The US has not been able to stop this mayhem.

Perhaps it thinks that the overwhelming domination of the community in the power corridors will not be a wise policy as it would give Iran a chance to become an important stakeholder in Iraq.

Secondly, the last few months have seen power wrangling in Iran where mass disqualification of the reformist political candidates took place pitting the country against a deep constitutional crisis after the revolution in 1979.

The very scheme of the problem is a pointer to a permanent flaw in the Islamic polities where a rift between the ruling elites and the reformist and progressive elements is becoming more evident.

In fact, political structures in the Muslim world have been so devised that there is least space for the real representatives of people to emerge from the prevalent electoral processes. The result is the firm grip of the ruling elites on the levers of power.

Thirdly there is the problem of federation-province rivalries along identity pattern of the communities. In Iraq the Kurds have been the target of Saddam's repression. In spite of their sizeable population they were not given share in the power structure that could reduce long-held grievances and include them in the national mainstream.

Now the US has decided to grant them autonomous status, which has raised concern for Turkey which has a large number of Kurds. It was Turky's lack of faith in the US in tackling the Kurdish issue that prevented it from permitting the use of its air bases against Iraq one year ago.

A forlorn hope for civil society

The people living within a unit such as a community constitute the societal element of the community. This element is the life-sustaining force of the unit because its survival ensures the continuance of the community.

The components of the societal element in Pakistan are divisible into the vested interests group and the rest. The group includes the landed, tribal and religious feudals, established political families, major commercial interests, the senior bureaucracy, the military, Islamic hard liners, localized ethnic or sectarian mafias, powerful law-breakers and anti-social elements.

The bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the professionals, the middle-range trading communities, trade and labour unionists and the downtrodden masses, including the ordinary folk on the street, fall in the residual category comprising the rest.

Within this configuration the component referred to as civil society comprises, by dictionary description, the ordinary citizenry as distinct from militry or religious personnel.

In most communities the significance of civil society is gauged by the importance given by communal traditions to citizens' rights, often taken for granted, although, not entirely synonymous with human rights considerations.

In the Pakistani milieu the impact of civil society has invariably been marginal. The marginalization is largely a consequence of the clash between the interests of the vested interests group and the objectives of civil society. Since the control of the affairs of state has at all times remained in the firm grasp of the former, civil society has been suppressed at every turn.

Despite this suppression, the cause of civil society has received valiant support from the programmes of certain NGOs, the activism of human rights groups, the publications of the progressive press, the views of moderate media commentators, increased general awareness of the phenomenon and the tacit allegiance of the liberal cadres in the community.

However, this support is not sufficient for civil society to become an important source for influencing national development. Today civil society is stifled by the military presence which permeates all aspects of national life, giving rise to repeated calls for the restoration of genuine democracy.

Given the interrelationship between democracy and civil society, both being rooted in the concept of individual rights, the policy objectives a democratic order should, in the normal course of events, coincide with the aspirations of civil society.

However, apart from the freeing of the press, this did not really transpire during the four interchangeable democratic dispensations of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. In promoting their political and personal agendas, both contenders overlooked the rights of the opposition and were either fascistic or dismissive in their approach to civil society imperatives.

Given short shrift so far by both the military and civil dispensations, civil society is further imperilled by factors such as Islamic fundamentalism, sectarianism, tribalization, criminalization and lack of leadership, any one of which precludes the adoption of a cohesive approach to civil rights.

The first three factors comprising Islamic fundamentalism, sectarianism and tribalization are authoritarian movements espousing prescriptive forms of conduct deduced from ideological or traditional creeds in contradistinction to the civil rights and liberties formulated by means of inductivism from the Aristotelian concept of a just law which distinguishes between distributive justice and corrective justice and allows individuals to fulfil themselves in society.

Furthermore, the erstwhile nexus between the Pakistani administration and the twin menaces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and its current policy of madressah proliferation have created further schisms between the objectives of civil society and the norms of behaviour generated by these developments.

The fourth factor, criminalization of society, while affecting several countries in greater or lesser degree during the past 30 years, appears to have found permanent abode in Pakistan, so that today, despite the omnipresence of the National Accountability Bureau, the vested interest groups and many others, including members of the military, the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies, are, with some exceptions, tainted by criminality, and therefore, unlikely to subscribe to a civil rights regime which challenges their bona fides by demanding accountability.

However, despite such impediments, civil society can still play a meaningful role in the affairs of state provided it is headed by the right kind of leadership. Which brings us to the next problem facing civil society.

The success of any people-oriented socio-political movement is premised on factors such as the proximity between the objectives of the movement and the aspirations of the affected populace, the meritoriousness of related programmes, and most importantly, the quality of the leadership spearheading the movement.

Pakistan is especially handicapped when it comes to the leadership issue. Despite the exceptional lead given by Mr Jinnah, all his successors have served us poorly, being either substandard or compromised, thus causing unimaginable harm to the institutions of state, including civil society.

Successful promotion of civil rights calls for leaders of the calibre of Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Vaslav Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi and even Sonia Gandhi. Where is the comparable leadership in Pakistan? An overview of the elected members of the national and provincial assemblies does not reveal such propensity amongst them.

Several incumbents have chosen to operate as representatives of the vested interests in preference to their electorate, to rubber-stamp statutory measures prepared by the governing powers instead of legislating them, to promote the forces of obscurantism supporting karo-kari and the Hudood Ordinance in opposition to those of their colleagues who seek to further the interests of civil society by replacing regressive legislation with progressive enactments.

Moreover, given the commitment of most elected members to respective party agendas, the cause of civil society scarcely ranks as a priority with them. So, without suitable leadership, the cause of civil society will drift like a rudderless vessel in uncertain waters, buffeted by fair or ill winds.

If such leadership does emerge, it should first set up an organization that should be committed to making a divided people having varied and often conflicting interests and diverse value systems aware of the merits of a uniform civil society.

Furthermore, it should fill the void existing between the policymakers and the populace by encouraging the latter to adopt effective measures for ensuring the protection of their fundamental rights in all prospective enactments undertaken by the legislature.

Above all, it should be resolute and resilient in facing any injunctive moves including militant opposition when the interests of civil society conflict with those of the power brokers.

At present, there is no structure or institution in Pakistan devoted to the promotion of the cause of civil society. Therefore, the success, in the short term, of moves made to advance civil rights will depend on the effectiveness of individual promoters.

A more elaborate strategy is required for long-term effectiveness, including foundational programmes identifying the objectives of civil society, defining civil rights, and explaining their correlation to the populace in general and to individual citizens in particular, supported by audio-visual material depicting the history of civil rights movements of, for example, Lech Walesa or Vaslav Havel or Martin Luthur king and others.

This should be initiated at the pre-undergraduate level in both English and Urdu-medium educational institutions by specialist NGOs. The programmes should be designed to create maximum awareness amongst the youth and to generate within them the desire for active participation in civil society programmes.

An added impetus to the promotion of civil rights may be forthcoming in due course, from an unlikely source. The American administration's programme, currently under formulation, crudely described as exporting democracy as an antidote to the spread of terrorism, but essentially entailing a long-term US multilateral engagement with countries susceptible to Islamic militancy, will eventually find its way to Pakistan, for it is generally believed that Pakistan has been the crucible for the scourge of Islamic militancy currently threatening the world order, and, therefore, it should not be left on its own to deal with the problem. The resultant interaction while impacting significantly on our political scenario, would also influence the cause of civil society.

Despite the fact that such developments may impinge on our sovereign status, if the programme is accorded priority in US foreign policy objectives, Pakistan would be hard put to resist it.

The truth is that it continues to act irresponsibly in several instances, such as the Afghan strategic depth debacle, or the Kargil misadventure, or the nuclear proliferation scandal.

So if disciplinary measures enjoining Pakistan to comply with norms observed by the liberal nations of the world, were to be imposed on it by an external power, similar to but not having the same implications as the post-World War II arrangements imposed by the allies on Germany and Japan, this may well be a positive step.

General Musharraf is clearly agreeable to embracing enlightened moderation in the national interest. It remains to be seen whether the rest of us are similarly inclined.

The writer is a barrister-at-law and lecturer in legal studies.