| 05 January 2005 | Wednesday | 23 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
My son, my son
Meeting people's basic needs
The fault lines we choose to ignore
Developments in Afghanistan over the last month have been encouraging even though the insurgency appears to be continuing, insecurity remains the norm and preparations for the parliamentary elections fall further and further behind schedule.
The most important development, perhaps, was President Hamid Karzai's selection and induction of a new cabinet almost a fortnight after his own inauguration.
The announcement of the new cabinet had been expected to coincide with the president's inauguration and the delay aroused fears that Karzai was, once again, failing to contend with the competing claims of various warlords and ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
The announcement of the cabinet, however, served in large measure to belie these fears. Of the 27 cabinet ministers, at least eight are Pushtuns, nine are Tajiks, two are Uzbek, three are Hazara and the Baloch and Turkmen have one representative each.
While press reports have not identified the nationality of the remaining three ministers, it is evident that on the face of it Karzai has been able to perform the delicate balancing act of managing all nationalities to be represented in his cabinet, while not yielding to the inclination to make this an exact reflection of the ethnic composition of Afghanistan.
Had an exact reflection of the ethnic composition been attempted, the Pushtuns would have comprised at least half the cabinet and the Tajiks no more than one quarter, or at best, one third.
It is also noteworthy that, in keeping with the Afghan constitution, all ministers are university graduates and nine of them hold a PhD degree. Karzai has also refused to take advantage of the loophole in the constitution allowing him to appoint ministers who have foreign or dual nationality.
A noteworthy exclusion from the cabinet, now reduced from 30 to 27, is that of Ashraf Ghani, the erstwhile finance minister. The change came presumably because Mr Ghani was not willing to give up his American nationality. His services will, however, continue to be available to President Karzai since he has been appointed chancellor of the Kabul University.
Much more expected and therefore, less noteworthy was the exclusion of Marshal Fahim and Yunus Qanooni, the two stalwarts of the Panjsheri faction of the Tajik community.
The Americans, having ensured at the Bonn Conference that this faction had a virtual monopoly on all levers of power in Kabul under the titular leadership of Karzai, have finally realized over the years that this faction contributed more than any other to the continuance of the Taliban insurgency and of warlord culture.
Fahim's removal from the cabinet and the appointment of his deputy, Pushtun General Abdurrahim Wardak, as minister for national defence will hopefully permit the disarmament of the militia to proceed at a faster rate.
It will almost certainly ensure that the removal of heavy armament from Kabul, largely under the control of Fahim's Shura-i-Nazar, is completed along with the demobilization or redeployment of the militia units that Fahim has maintained, in contravention of the Bonn agreement in Kabul for the last three years.
Wardak, as deputy defence minister, had been largely responsible for pushing the UN-sponsored DDR (disarming, Demobilizing and rehabilitation) programme with regard to the private militia maintained by the warlords.
At the last count, 29,000 militia members have been enrolled in the DDR. The UN estimate that the total strength of the private militia is between 50,000 to 60,000 is almost certainly wrong. Closer to reality would be a figure of 100,000.
Much is being made of the disarming of at least some of the militias of General Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad in the north, but it is generally acknowledged that both these warring commanders continue to maintain large and well armed militia.
There is, therefore, a long way to go before the heavy hand of the warlord is removed from the Afghan scene. The granting of amnesty and inviting the Taliban to re-enter the political mainstream in Afghanistan has also gathered steam after a long lull.
The American commander in Afghanistan has talked of the fact that he has intelligence reports of divisions within the Taliban with a majority wanting to take advantage of the amnesty offer while Karzai has made it clear that only 50 to 100 Taliban leaders would be excluded from the purview of the amnesty.
One can assume that the Pakistan authorities have been asked for and have provided their good offices to negotiate the return of the moderate Taliban to the Afghan political fold.
The Americans have at the same time embarked upon operation "Lightning Freedom", designed to prevent the Taliban from regrouping and to launch a summer offensive and provide more effective support to the now 19 Provincial Reconstruction Teams that the Americans and the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) have set up.
There is, however, little doubt in anyone's mind that the insurgency is far from totally defeated and that strong pockets of support for militant Taliban activities continue to exist all along the Pak-Afghan border.
The limited success of the anti-insurgency and the anti- warlord operations has contributed to the exacerbation of opium- growing in Afghanistan. It employs 10 per cent of the population, its cultivation and related activities generate $2.8 billion or 40 per cent of the country's GDP.
The area under opium cultivation increased last year by 60 per cent. Owing to disease and poor weather conditions, the UN estimates that the total crop went up by only 16 per cent from 3,600 tons to 4,200 tons.
Nevertheless, Afghanistan now produces more drugs than even the cocaine fields of Colombia and it is estimated that 90 per cent of the heroin consumed in Europe will come from Afghanistan.
Much of the emphasis on opium cultivation comes in the absence of other economic opportunities for an impoverished Afghan peasantry. Simply put, even where there is irrigation water available the wheat crop will be worth only $300 while the same plot of land will yield $3,000 if the crop is opium.
The warlords and the Taliban insurgents both have an interest in encouraging the cultivation of opium and deriving enormous revenues from arranging its smuggling to markets in neighbouring countries and Europe.
The Taliban, in their last year of power, had achieved the seemingly impossible - a successful total ban on the cultivation of opium. Today, there is every indication that a part of, if not all, the insurgent activity is financed by narco-trade as of course is the maintenance of the private militias of the warlords.
A constant theme of President Karzai's speeches before and after his inauguration has been the campaign to eliminate opium cultivation. Resources, however, are limited.
The British who, on behalf of the foreign donors are spearheading the drive against opium cultivation have been criticized for their lack of success. They have now indicated that the approximately 1,000 strong British army contingent in Afghanistan will be used for anti- narcotics operations.
This, however, is opposed both by the military because they believe it adversely impacts on their ability to cultivate the informers they need to fight the Taliban and because this puts at risk the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams who must have cooperation from the same farmers that the anti-narcotic drive would seek to eliminate.
For the most part the British are confining themselves to providing training facilities and financing to Afghan anti- narcotics units. These remain, at the moment, woefully inadequate.
The Americans have said that they will help by ferrying Afghan units to the areas where operations are to be carried out but will not make anti-narcotic operations a part of the mandate for their forces.
The opium and heroin trade has, perhaps, to a greater degree than in other narcotics producing countries, become part of the body politic in Afghanistan. There are ugly rumours, for instance, that President Karzai's own brother is the head of a major narcotics trading operation in Kandahar province.
Atta Mohammad, the warlord in the north, imprisoned the governor of his province because he had the temerity to accuse Atta of being involved in drug smuggling and for arresting two of his smuggling aides.
Nimruz, the infamous Afghan city located at the point where the Pakistani, Iranian and Afghan borders meet, has had a prolonged drought which has left farmers impoverished and city dwellers without any piped water.
The city, however, teems with gaudy ostentatious villas built, as all the inhabitants know, from the proceeds of drug money. On the Afghan-Tajik border, warlords control the lucrative movement of opium and heroin for onward transmission to consumers in Russia and points further west.
This trade enables Dostum, Atta and other warlords of the region to maintain their militias and to cock a snook at Karzai-appointed officials in the region. The principal beneficiaries of opium trade want an atmosphere of insecurity in Afghanistan.
This enables their trade to flourish. And security cannot come if opium cultivation continues. For the American and ISAF forces, the elimination of this evil should be the highest priority. Unfortunately, it is not. For the foreseeable future at least, Afghanistan will remain the hub of opium cultivation.
The consequences for Afghanistan's neighbours are and will continue to be dire. One estimate is that of the three routes used for smuggling heroin out of Afghanistan, the one through Pakistan to its coast is the most popular and that the route through Iran is a close second.
Lawlessness in Pakistani Balochistan and Iran's Sistan and Balochistan province owes largely to this. According to one estimate, Iran has one million heroin addicts while Pakistan has 500,000 - all fed by the opium coming from Afghanistan.
My own feeling is that the addict population in Pakistan is much larger and is growing. For Pakistan and Iran, even more so for the West, taking action to restore security in Afghanistan and thereby reducing poppy cultivation should be a high priority.
If this necessitates getting rid of unwelcome guests then this is what must be done. If it requires greater patrolling of borders against all sorts of traffic then this too must to be undertaken.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.
My son, my son
Most parents believe that their children, particularly sons, are made in their image and are therefore infallible. I have heard countless mothers blaming school and college friends for the way wardness of their sons, "My boy is so good and innocent," they say, "it is his companions who teach him wrong ways."
In many cases, it may be the other way round, but mothers won't be convinced. And, in this blind love of sons, fathers are only a step behind their wives. Abraham Lincoln was an impressive writer, though he is better known for his oratory and for his address at the Gettysburg battlefield containing the immortal phrase about democracy being "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
He once wrote a letter to his son's tutor about the qualities that he expected him to inculcate in the boy. Even the realist in him was carried away and he couldn't help saying: "He is such a fine little fellow, my son."
It is an exemplary letter and sets down in simple but beautiful words all that a sensitive, enlightened and non- materialist father would want his son to be. Any other father would have wished for a more ambitious future for his son.
Not so Mr Lincoln who laid down such godly traits for the teacher to instil in the boy that one is inclined to sympathize with the poor man. Sadly we do not know what kind of material that "fine fellow, my son," proved for the teacher to work on.
The East, of which Pakistan is a part, is known for pampered sons taking excessive pride in the wealth or social position of their fathers and behaving like spoiled brats. But fathers too sometimes go overboard with joy when their sons have made good.
So it works both ways. The other day I was told by a lady of a relation of hers who had stopped acknowledging the less prosperous members of the family because his two sons had become millionaires in America. Their success had gone to his head.
It is obvious from Abraham Lincoln's letter that he didn't crave for such success for his son, nor did he want the boy to be devoid of the high values that have come to be accepted by mankind over the centuries as the attributes of a truly noble person - noble in the context of man's development from a wild brute to the image of God's vicegerent on earth, and using his heart and mind for the good of his fellowmen.
Abraham Lincoln Junior was not likely to become a spoilt brat like those mentioned above, for his father wrote to the teacher, "Treat him gently but do not coddle him because only the test of fire makes fine steel.
Let him have the courage to be impatient; let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind."
As a Pakistani accustomed to equating politics with everything that is unethical, I was particularly struck by Mr Lincoln's behest to the tutor to acquaint his young pupil with the verities of practical life.
He wrote: "He will have to learn that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero, that for every selfish politician there is a dedicated leader. Teach him that for every enemy there is a friend." And what a fine manner the fond father chose to deal with the realities of the day-to-day world and the need to stay clear of greed when he said, "It will take time, I know, but teach him, if you can, thata dollar earned is of far more value than five found. Teach him to learn to lose and also to enjoy winning. Let him keep away from envy and learn that bullies are the easiest to lick."
Side by side with this, Mr Lincoln was anxious that the boy should learn to be thoughtful of God's creations as we see them around us. "Teach him, if you please," he counselled the teacher, "the wonder of books, but also give him quiet time to ponder over the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hillside."
Have you noticed that with us this aspect of creation is the one that is always ignored? We do not give it any importance for the simple reason that it had never found a place in our own lives as children.
At this point in the letter I began to wonder what the teacher had thought of the responsibility that an idealistic father had placed on his shoulders. Maybe in his feel for good language and high moral values Mr Lincoln was asking for too much, and maybe the poor teacher was not intellectually fitted to do the difficult job of fashioning a son to the great man's prescription.
I suppose that is why he says in the end, "This is a big order, but see what you can do. He is such a fine little fellow, my son." We don't really know about the teacher, so read on.
"In school", continued Mr Lincoln, "teach him that it is far more honourable to fail than to cheat. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas even if everyone tells him they are wrong.
Teach him to listen to all, but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth and take only the good that comes through." The advice about cheating struck a chord with which we are all too familiar in Pakistan - influential fathers running after examiners to convert the results of sons from fail to pass, and even trying to see if they could stand first!
The bit that follows sounds as if it was written for Pakistan's politicians and government leaders. "Teach him to be gentle with gentle people and tough with the tough.
Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone is getting on the bandwagon." If our johnnies had only done this and nothing else (plus to follow the advice not to cheat) successive prime ministers may not have lost their power and position.
Mr Lincoln is very much alive to the finer sentiments when he says, "Teach him, if you can, to laugh when he is sad, and that there is no shame in tears. Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness."
This is followed by what I liked best in the letter: "Teach him to sell his brawn to the highest bidder, but never to put a price on his heart and soul." I wonder if fathers in Pakistan, howsoever enlightened they may be, will appreciate the sensitivity of these words. Or of the whole letter for that matter.
Meeting people's basic needs
In his address to the nation last Thursday, President Pervez Musharraf very spiritedly defended his decision to stay on as the army chief while holding the civilian office of president. Among others, one argument he advanced was that "uniform is not an issue for the people, but the opposition wants to exploit it for its own benefit".
To a certain extent, the president is right when he says that the people are not interested in the "uniform" issue. But the fact is that the masses of Pakistan have stopped taking interest in any political issue now. They hardly care who wins or who loses an election.
They do not seem to be bothered as to who becomes the prime minister/chief minister - probably most constituents do not even know their names. When a government is dismissed, there is no public reaction.
When elections are held, the people, by and large, are indifferent and their apathy is signified by the dwindling turn- out of voters. If there is anything the masses feel, it is cynicism.
After all, their life goes on as before and it makes little difference to them who is in office - be it a military dictator or a civilian government - their problems remain unmitigated.
The president in his speech said that he had fulfilled all the promises he had made to the people. This included the devolution of power and the holding of fair and free elections in 2002.
Ask a man or a woman on the street and she would not understand what is the concept of the devolution of power while few would be able to recall when elections were last held.
Similarly, the macroeconomic indicators the president and his prime minister speak about in glowing terms every now and then, would make little sense to the common man since the benefits of the 6.5 per cent GDP growth rate and the foreign currency reserves have not trickled down to the grassroots level.
What, then, matters to the common man most? True, he may not be concerned about the apparel of the president. But he doesn't understand macroeconomics either. He is, however, worried when the prices of essential commodities go up as they have spiralled in the last four years.
The State Bank report itself points out that there has been a steep rise in inflation which stood at over 14 per cent in the first quarter of fiscal year 2005. A housewife would recall that five years ago low grade atta cost Rs 9.80 a kg while in July 2003 it was Rs 11.53.
A packet of tea leaves (250 gm) used to cost Rs 53 in 2000. Now it is Rs 65. The poor man's fuel, kerosene, was Rs 13 per litre in the year 2000. Today it is Rs 26. What about opportunities in life a person wants to provide his children? The first step towards that is of course education.
In other words, good schools that are affordable to the poor should be there in abundance. Good quality education is not a luxury. It is a fundamental human right and a basic need of man and society because it increases economic productivity and improves the health and life of the people. How we have fared in this regard is shocking.
In 1999-2000 Pakistan had 170,000 primary schools with 20.3 million children (5-9 year old) enrolled in them. In 2003-04 the number of primary schools had come down to 156,000 and the enrolment had fallen to 17.4 million.
The statistics for middle level school and high school enrolment had the same story to tell, although the number of these institutions registered a rise. The number of middle schools went up from 24,900 in 1999- 2000 to 28,000 in 2003-04 but the number of enrolments declined from 4.6 million to 4.0 million in the same period.
The number of high schools increased from 14,000 to 16,000 but the number of children studying there went down from 1.9 million to 1.6 million in the period when General Musharraf ruled the roost. (All statistics from Pakistan Economic Survey of the government of Pakistan.)
It is plain that people are not protesting against a president in uniform because they have reached the depth of despair. Besides, the political parties claiming to fight for democracy failed to do much for the people when their governments were in office.
Had they really worked to improve the lot of the common man, he would have definitely responded to their call and raised his voice in support of the parties' struggle for a civilian president.
It is important that the president should judge the public mood from some seemingly insignificant phenomena but in reality of far-reaching implications. It is the people's reaction to the failure of good governance for which the government of General Musharraf is held responsible.
When a speeding truck/bus knocks down and kills a motorcyclist/pedestrian on the road, a common response of the people is to burn the truck/bus and beat the driver if they can lay their hands on him.
When there are long hours of load shedding/power breakdowns in summer, the consumers come and agitate before the KESC office and very often create a law and order situation. When there is no water for days in a locality, a water riot takes place.
All this indicates a breakdown in the confidence of the people in the government and its machinery. They feel the police is inept and corrupt and cannot maintain discipline on the roads.
The KESC and the water board functionaries are inefficient and corrupt and they cannot be expected to perform if one takes the normal course for redressal. Hence the people's tendency is to take the law in their own hands, even though this approach creates chaos and offers no solution to the problem.
It is ironical that these hardships are suffered by the low- income classes and those living below the poverty line. Their number is pretty large. The policies that are being followed have stratified society and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.
Those who can afford it do not need to walk on the roadside without pavements. They have their own transport. If they do not receive water in their pipelines, they buy water from bowsers and bottled water to drink.
If there are too many power breakdowns they acquire a generator. They don't need government schools to send their children to study or government hospitals to visit when they fall ill. They can afford private schools and clinics.
This stratification of society is a dangerous phenomenon. The unrest seething below the surface is like a tinderbox waiting for a spark. If General Musharraf's government had attended to these aspects of people's life in Pakistan, even though the principles of democracy had been neglected, he could have rightly claimed today to enjoy the public's total support vis-a-vis the political leaders who are challenging his dual role. In the present circumstances the people are on no one's side.
The fault lines we choose to ignore
Do you ever get the feeling that happy new years are a thing of the past (and, hopefully, the future)? As if terrorism and short-sighted acts of vengeance - by misguided states and single-minded groups of individuals alike - were not enough, nature tends every now and then to reach into its arsenal and pull out a weapon of mass destruction.
Late last year it unleashed two in rapid succession: an earthquake followed within hours by a tidal wave. The quake accounted for a highly unusual reading of nine on the Richter scale. Aspects of the devastation wrought by the consequent tsunami continue to be documented 10 days later.
With entire communities wiped out by the lethal force of a 10-metre wall of water, a precise death toll may never be established, but the total cost in terms of lives lost is likely to be in the vicinity of 200,000.
Among the survivors, nearly two million were deemed to be in dire need of clean water, food and medicine - essentials that have begun to reach them. Longer-term assistance will be required to provide shelter, to guarantee means of survival for those who have been orphaned, to ward off epidemics and to re-establish means of earning a livelihood for those who have lost everything they had.
The United Nations and kindred organizations appear to be aware of the scale of the task that lies ahead, and funds for relief and rehabilitation are accumulating after a slow start. In most of the wealthier countries, the public has responded generously to appeals for cash. The governments, however, needed prodding in some cases.
The United States' initial response, in particular, was incredibly disproportionate to the scale of the calamity and the size of its economy. It raised its offer of $15 million by $20 million after it was pointed out that the first figure represented less than half of what will be spent on George W. Bush's inauguration later this month.
It took an indirect jibe from the UN's Jan Egeland for the American commitment to be increased to a considerably more useful $350 million - a tacit admission that the Bush administration on its first try got it completely wrong yet again. It erred once more in, out of the blue, claiming leadership of the relief effort.
The obvious alternative would have been, in addition to pledging resources, to offer the UN all the assistance it might need in terms of logistics and manpower. Instead, it was deemed necessary to announce the formation of a "coalition" with India, Japan and Australia. If that wasn't actually an attempt to undermine the UN's role as coordinator, it was a pretty good imitation of one.
This week US military personnel have been spotted saving lives in Aceh - a welcome role reversal - and Colin Powell is visiting Asia in the company of a chubby presidential look a like.
The outgoing secretary of state has been afforded the pleasure of Jeb Bush's company ostensibly because the latter, as the governor of hurricane-prone Florida, knows a thing or two about coping with natural disasters. (It probably wouldn't be too unkind to suggest that he grew up with one.)
One fears there may be an ulterior motive, though, in trying to build brother Jeb's international profile. The clique that controls the present administration must, after all, be on the lookout for a suitable candidate for 2008.
It would certainly be interesting to know whether the advice to attach this particular travel companion to an increasingly prickly Powell came from Karl Rove.
It has been suggested, meanwhile, that the US ought to be contributing to the reconstruction of southern Asia at least the amount it expends on maintaining its occupation of Iraq - $3.9 billion a month, according to an estimate provided by Donald Rumsfeld, but probably considerably higher.
That's an unrealistic expectation, of course. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that all the nations that have publicly pledged funds will stick to their commitments. As noted last week in the context of the Iranian town of Bam, that isn't always the case.
Nicaragua and Honduras saw less than a third of the $8.7 billion pledged in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998; Mozambique received less than half of the $400 million promised to it after floods in 2000. Afghanistan is still waiting for most of the reconstruction funds it was offered.
According to a spokesman for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Large-scale disasters tend to result in mammoth pledges which.... do not always materialize in their entirety. The figures look much higher than they really are. What will end up on the ground will be much less."
That's not a particularly reassuring state of affairs. It suggests that once Aceh and eastern Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu and Phi Phi and Phuket fall off the international media radar, the funds will begin to dry up. Which means that, along with debris, the worst-affected areas will remain strewn with misery for a long time to come. Perhaps indefinitely.
Another potential problem is the fear that whatever funds from foreign governments do flow through will be allocated by juggling existing budgets for humanitarian aid. Money earmarked for Sudan or Congo, in other words, may now be redirected to Indonesia or Sri Lanka.
Attention to one part of the world needn't, of course, mean neglecting another area. But that's the usual modus operandi in a milieu where the generosity of governments is dictated by politics rather than compassion.
In the US, meanwhile, the White House has rejected suggestions from Vermont senator Patrick Leahy that some of the unspent $16 billion authorized for the reconstruction of Iraq could be used to alleviate Asia's agony.
It may be a sensible idea, but try explaining that to Bechtel or Halliburton, whose projected profits for the next few years may well be partially based on the prospect of "earning" most of that money.
The western press has been accused in some quarters of paying disproportionate attention to the couple of thousand European tourists killed by the tsunami or adversely affected in its aftermath, at the expense of the primary victims, the tens of thousands of "natives".
The criticism isn't altogether groundless, but nor is it entirely fair. To a certain extent it is natural for any country's media to pay particular heed to the fate of compatriots, and I have not come across many instances of a striking - or obviously racist - imbalance in western coverage.
The greater pity is that in considering the disaster and its aftermath - at tomorrow's Asean-sponsored gathering in Indonesia, and elsewhere - little attention will be paid to fault lines. Not the sort that play a role in seismic disturbances, but the fault lines that split the world, and societies, between rich and poor.
Many of those swept away by the tidal wave lived in coastal communities of subsistence fishermen - a precarious enough basis for existence even without the vagaries of nature.
Beyond these communities, too, the victims were predominantly poverty-stricken. The survivors who have lost everything didn't have a lot to start with, apart from their families.
What, if everything goes according to plan, can they look forward to once the dead have been buried or cremated and the ocean stops washing ashore a human harvest with every tide? A return to subsistence? Back to basics until nature comes culling again?
After all, the disparities that entail dispossession tend not to be seen as a problem by most of those who respond to tsunamis by reaching into their wallets. Or perhaps as a problem that's best ignored because they cannot conceive of a solution. A meaningful redistribution of wealth? Nah, that's so last century.
* * * * *
Some disparities do get noticed, however. The almost morbid fascination with rows of corpses and scenes of utter devastation has led some observers to wonder why hardly any images have emerged from Fallujah after its capture.
The irony of this discrepancy wouldn't have been lost upon Susan Sontag, the American writer and public intellectual who died last week after a 30-year battle with various forms of cancer.
Better known for her essays than her fiction, Sontag was a controversial figure who at different times infuriated both the Right and the Left, and whose ideas on an eclectic range of subjects were invariably provocative and stimulating.
One of her final public interventions was a lengthy essay in The New York Times Magazine last May on the significance of the Abu Ghraib photographs, in which she excoriated the Bush administration and its policies.
A much shorter piece in the New Yorker in September 2001, meanwhile, had reinforced her "un-American" reputation. In it she took aim at "the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators", adding that "whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards".
It also contained two sentences that may serve as a suitable epitaph - and not just for Sontag: "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together."
Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.