| 06 October 2004 | Wednesday | 19 Shaban 1425 |
Options on Kashmir
Poor vaccine coverage
The situation in South Waziristan does not seem to show any signs of perceptible improvement. The tribesmen's decision to cease fire for 10 days deserves to be welcomed, but that does not mean this will lead to a solution of the problem.
The military operations there during the last four months have not apparently crippled the ability of foreign militants and their tribal allies to keep fighting or even going on the offensive.
The security forces have had limited success, including the death of some well-known militants, but they have been unable to flush out all foreign militants and to make the area peaceful.
The truth is that there can be no military solution to the problem. The government - in theory at least - is committed to a political solution of the problem. Last month, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz announced the lifting of the economic blockade in parts of the tribal area and pledged an economic development package.
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain have also repeatedly promised peaceful solution to the crisis. However, both sides have made mistakes.
The government's recklessness has often failed to make a difference between militants - foreign or local - and non-combatants. This has resulted in the death of innocent men, women and children in "retaliatory" fire.
The other side too attacked soldiers within days of the lifting of the economic blockade imposed in May. Similarly, four students were killed when their vehicle blew up on the Wana-Tank road. One fails to understand who gained from the death of the four students.
Foreign militants can be made to surrender only through pressure and persuasion, and for this there are several channels. First, the local tribesmen must be made to understand the reasons behind the government's drive.
No government tolerates militants - much less foreign ones - on its soil. In South Waziristan the foreign militants are fanatical followers of Osama bin Laden. What chances they have of success and what exactly are their strategic aims only they know. But the way they are fighting shows they cannot be subdued by military means. Fortunately, as previous examples show, they do listen to their tribal hosts. Two, not all tribesmen sympathize with the foreign militants.
Thus, the latter can be a useful channel for interceding on behalf of the government with those who actively help foreign militants. In this one must recognize the useful work the 21-man committee consisting of Mehsud tribesmen is doing.
The credit for the 10-day ceasefire goes to them, and they are now trying to make it last through Ramazan. Three, elements in the mainstream of Pakistan's politics, including the MMA, should not be ignored.
On the Wana issue, not only the MMA but also the PPP and PML-N have serious reservations about the government's policy. So does the ANP. There is a general impression - perhaps misplaced - that the official policy in South Waziristan is being pursued at America's behest.
This misperception flows from the tactical mistakes the government has made. Fighting terrorism is in Pakistan's interest. The recent blast in a mosque in Sialkot shows how the curse of terrorism continues to haunt us.
For that reason, the government must make the war on terror a challenge for the entire nation and not the government's exclusive preserve. Let there be a national consensus on the anti-terror campaign, with the opposition fully supporting it.
Options on Kashmir
The statement by the Foreign Office that options away from stated positions are being considered to find a solution to the Kashmir dispute with India at a time when a group of Pakistani journalists are visiting Jammu and Srinagar is reassuring.
Reports emanating from across the border speak of a similar approach being adopted by members of civil society and political parties there. The recent efforts should be seen in the context of the commitment the two countries made in January in Islamabad to pursue a sustained peace dialogue and its reaffirmation by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York last month.
A number of confidence-building measures taken by the two countries since January, including those aimed at encouraging people-to-people contacts, seem to be bearing some fruit.
A visit to Jammu and Srinagar by Pakistani journalists, for instance, was not even a remote possibility before the current thaw in bilateral relations set in. The need now is to keep the momentum going. For this it is necessary to involve and engage as many stakeholders in the peace process as possible.
Kashmir is not merely a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan but one that centres round the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people. Nothing can bear out this truth more than the history of hostilities between the two countries and the 15-year-old insurgency going on in the disputed state itself.
Therefore, it is only logical to say that any lasting solution of the problem will have to be based on the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The sooner New Delhi begins to engage the All Parties Hurriyat Conference which comprises popular representatives of the people of Kashmir, the better chance the current normalization process will have of moving forward on the road to peace in South Asia.
To break the ice, India should ease up the siege its over half-a-million-strong security forces have laid on the Valley. This will strengthen the position of all those who believe in pursuing a meaningful dialogue to settle the Kashmir dispute as against those taking up arms and seeking a military solution.
Poor vaccine coverage
The heartrending pictures carried recently by this paper showing some young children of Abadpur union council in Rahim Yar Khan with limbs crippled by disease reflect the inadequate, often haphazard, vaccine coverage by the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI).
The programme is part of a global effort to curtail the incidence of a number of preventable childhood diseases through vaccines. However, it appears that inadequate public awareness and poor health facilities in Abadpur have contributed to a situation where, in the last decade, many children have died of complications resulting from measles and tetanus, whereas others have been crippled for life from polio.
All three diseases are covered by the EPI, and had prescribed doses of the vaccines been administered to the children, most would still be alive today, while those that survived would not have had to grapple with lifelong infirmities.
Although there is no denying that we have come a long way from the time when few children were administered routine vaccines, the state of affairs in Abadpur shows that the country still has a long way to go before achieving maximum coverage.
This can be put down to the fact that vaccination teams find many parts of the country inaccessible, or are viewed with suspicion in others where ignorant attitudes prevail.
Moreover, several basic health units and rural health centres in outlying areas are ill-equipped and short of the necessary manpower and vaccines: there are many doubts whether a cold chain is maintained in transporting vaccines to outlying areas.
In addition, many parents are unable to have the prescribed doses administered to their children, thus undermining the effect of the vaccine. The health authorities, especially those responsible for underdeveloped areas need to put in greater effort to educate the people on the EPI and to ensure that BHUs and RHCs are fully equipped to provide at least this basic medical service to the children.