| 04 January 2005 | Tuesday | 22 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
Palestinian warning
Forest parks
Eight days after tsunamis struck the shores of some 12 countries bordering the Indian Ocean, it is becoming clear that this has been a disaster of almost Biblical proportions.
The United Nations expects the death toll to top 150,000, with Indonesia and Sri Lanka having confirmed 95,000 and 30,000 deaths, respectively. The third worst hit has been south-eastern India, including the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where the collective death toll has risen to nearly 10,000.
Another 16,000 remain unaccounted for in India and Sri Lanka, and 'missing' persons in Thailand are said to number thousands - 3,000 of them from Sweden alone. The number of children affected is at least one-third of the total.
International aid and emergency relief supplies have begun to arrive in the affected areas but distribution problems are enormous because of logistical and bureaucratic hurdles in the way.
The worst-hit area of Aceh in Indonesia and parts of Sri Lanka continue to wrest with heavy downpours which have flooded the roads and rendered ground transport impossible. Besides, many areas affected in the two countries fall in rebel-controlled territories.
Sri Lanka is wary of international assistance going directly to the Jaffna peninsula - controlled by the Tamil Tigers - and Indonesia is resisting allowing unhindered access to its erstwhile rebellious Aceh province.
Pakistan has done well to establish a tsunami relief fund as well as to send out naval ships in the Indian Ocean to join the rescue and relief operations. A number of Pakistan-based charities are also accepting donations in both cash and kind. But, as the UN says, the best donations will be in cash because different affected areas have different priorities. If food and water are the most needed items in Indonesia and Sri Lanka at the moment, the priority elsewhere is to procure building material.
The generosity shown by the international community has been unprecedented, with the total pledges made by some 40 countries now amounting to over two billion dollars, with Japan topping the list with $500 million in emergency relief.
The UN secretary-general has estimated that the biggest ever relief operation now under way will need to maintain its current momentum for nearly 10 years in order to rehabilitate the communities affected. The entire damage caused by the tsunamis amounts to no less than five billion dollars.
At a time when the world is coming to grips with the extent of the disaster at hand, relief efforts and aid pledges have not been without their politics. The US has used the occasion to make jibes at France and the UN, saying the former is not known to be generous when it comes to supporting such efforts and the latter is incapable of handling the situation.
The Bush administration, committing just $350 million and 1,500 marines, has continued on its path of unilateralism, of which France and the UN have been bitter opponents since the Iraq war, even in the relief efforts.
The US has forged together a parallel coalition that includes India, Japan and Australia to carry out relief work, while Britain is going it alone. Independent observers see the situation as a snub to the UN and Washington's attempt at undermining the world body yet again - this at a time of such agonizing human misery.
Palestinian warning
By linking the end of violence to talks aimed at Palestinian statehood, Prime Minister Ahmad Qorei has prodded Israel's aching tooth. Israel has no intention of quitting the occupied territories.
This became abundantly clear when Mr Ariel Sharon became prime minister in early 2001. His predecessors - prime ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu - had at least pretended to talk to Yasser Arafat. But after Mr Sharon took over, Israel has abjured talks as a means of conflict resolution. Instead, he won over America to his side and tried to obfuscate the Palestinian problem by raising non-issues - like "reforms" in Palestinian Authority.
President George Bush, too, focussed on extraneous issues and never quite came to grips with the real point. The real issue in Palestine is the need for Israel to end its occupation of the Palestine territories so that a sovereign Palestinian state could emerge.
With talks on hold, the Palestinians have no choice but to fight for their freedom. In fact, in the face of Israel's state terrorism as seen in the murder of Palestinian civilians every now and then in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian leadership has exercised commendable restraint.
Now, it legitimately expects President Bush to help revive the peace process. So long as Yasser Arafat was alive, President Bush took cover behind the purported corruption in PA to avoid talks.
Now that the Palestinian leader is no longer on the scene, the US must prove its sincerity to the cause of peace in the Middle East by reviving the roadmap he himself had launched in April 2003.
The roadmap had visualized the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state by 2005. That deadline has passed. What next? Election to the office of the PA president is due on Sunday.
Whosoever wins will expect the US to help start the peace process with a view to achieving the aims spelled out by both the Oslo accords and the roadmap - an end to Israeli occupation and the coming into being of a sovereign Palestinian state. If there is no progress on this score, then Mr Qorei's warning must be taken seriously - that without statehood talks, it will be difficult to stop violence.
Forest parks
The Karachi nazim's announcement that 'forest-like' parks will be built and developed needs to be welcomed, especially given the lack of adequate green spaces in the country's largest city.
Over the years, the number of parks and open spaces in Karachi has dwindled, thanks mainly to government neglect and a very aggressive builder's mafia. However, at the same time, the nazim should also ensure that the parks which are already in existence are properly maintained to provide much-needed recreation for the people of the city.
Most are either in complete ruin or have been gobbled by concrete and replaced by ghastly wedding halls, unplanned commercial plazas or unauthorized apartment houses. In quite a few cases, local mosques and madressahs have also usurped amenity plots set aside for public parks.
Large cities the world over, including those in developing countries, are able to balance the demand for urban expansion with the need to have a reasonably clean and livable environment.
In Karachi (and in fact in Pakistan's other urban centres), plans are announced to develop large parks, but at the same time, government agencies act with complete apathy to mercilessly cut down trees.
Clearly, a link needs to be established between what our senior officials say on such matters and the deeds they and their minions do. So, while a plan to develop 'forest-like' parks would be a very good idea, it should be part of an overall effort to increase Karachi's green cover.
The city and the town nazims must act promptly to prevent parks in their jurisdiction from being taken over by the land mafia. The greatest need to do this is in Karachi's lower- and middle-income neighbourhoods, which are hopefully where some of the new parks will also be developed.