| 24 February 2005 | Thursday | 14 Muharram 1426 |
Afghanistan caught in a bind
Spirit behind the letters
A silence louder than explosion
"Corruption is a bi-product of poverty," said President Pervez Musharraf, addressing an "ethics retreat of federal ministers and provincial representatives at the hilly heights of the Prime Minister's House last week. And the government was taking measures to eliminate poverty, he added.
Using military terminology, he said corruption at the strategic level had been eliminated but still persisted at the tactical level. But even the developed countries had been unable to eliminate that," he stressed.
We have been hearing the slogan that corruption has been eliminated at the top since the days of Nawaz sharif as prime minister. The people who were incredulous have been proved right.
The main malaise affecting the country, said the president, was nepotism and the corruption that went with it. He also spoke of the baneful effects of the 'biraderi' system. It is amply visible in the present political set up, particularly in the representation in the assemblies. But the claim that corruption has been eliminated from the higher levels of the government becomes disputed after the bitter accusations of large scale corruption between the Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Abdur Rahim and the revenue minister Imtiaz Shaikh whom he has dismissed.
Who is right, and how much, and who is wrong will be made known by the enquiry committee appointed by the ruling Muslim League President Chaudhri Shujaat Hussain and the PM's inspection team. And that the armed forces are free from corruption has also been belied by the conviction of Adm. Manzoorul Haq, former chief of the naval staff, who got out of jail through plea bargaining. And last week came a report that the entire executive staff of the Defence Housing Authority of Lahore had been suspended on charges of gross malpractices.
Poverty is not the only cause of corruption. Plain greed is a major root cause. The passion to keep up with the Joneses is very strong among various sections of our society.
Many of them have lost all fear of punishment. They are sure they will not be touched since corruption in government offices is a group activity. They see the very corrupt flaunting their wealth at the parties or weddings of their children. And they are the envy of others in their midst.
The honest are supposed to be faint hearted or timid and are usually shunned by the successful among the corrupt from their inner circles. They are seen as deterrents in the way of the successful corrupt.
So, every day some honest people drift to the ranks of the corrupt as they discover that it is the way to live and succeed in life, if not for their own benefit, at least for the benefit of their children.
The question now is: how to check this drift and reverse the process. That has to begin with deterring the corrupt, forfeiting their ill-gotten wealth and punishing them, and their collaborators eventually.
Opportunities for the corrupt in the public sector are increasing. President Musharraf says mega projects worth Rs 350 billion are under way. The steadily increasing Annual Development Outlay has reached Rs. 200 billion this year and would go on rising.
Much of that is aid money. A billion dollar for a year for three years together means Rs. 180 billion. The same goes for the Asian Development Banks loans which have to be returned with interest thereon. And the interest rate is increasing steadily as a global trend. So we have to make the best use of the aid and not waste or misuse it.
The donors want us to have a larger capacity for using aid well, and have less of corruption after we had been at the top of Amnesty International's corrupt states list for several years.
So three international conferences on corruption have been held within a year in Islamabad, including a four-day conference there last week with strong international representation.
The issue has been discussed threadbare time and again. And Pakistan has also voted for the UN Convention against corruption and signed it in the manner we have signed so many UN conventions but not acted on them.
The western world has promised to return the wealth looted from developing countries like Pakistan and return it. Will they do it really? The money deposited by Marcos of the Philippines was lost and not returned to the country. But whether the old money looted and taken away comes back or not, we should prevent new money from going out through tax evasion, corruption, crime, drug trade, kidnapping for ransom etc. And that is a tough task as long as too many people in the government are involved in it and they cooperate with each other readily.
Now that the Hundi transactions have been resumed following its substantial suspension after 9/11, the State Bank comes up with an appeal to prevent the outflow of foreign exchange from Pakistan.
At a time when world oil prices are high and we have to import wheat, sugar and some other edible items in short supply, we need the foreign exchange instead of being forced to use too much of the foreign exchange reserve for import of oil at high prices.
All that can be achieved only through eternal vigilance and ceaseless efforts at detection and prevention. It can be tough doing that in a country where the public institutions are weak and ill-coordinated for making a success of such efforts against shrewd operators.
Corruption at the lower levels of the government cannot be explained away saying that it is a bi-product of the pervasive poverty. It is the poor who are made poorer by being forced to pay bribes to policemen, junior revenue officials, and government clerks.
So impoverishing them further through the local officials cannot be allowed, particularly when most of them are already under heavy debt, and they have to borrow more to pay the officials at heavy rates of interest.
Poverty cannot be eliminated through conventional means or usual charity. If the small and medium enterprises are truly adequate and are a success, they can help the poor by providing employment.
Micro-credit on a large scale and well directed can also be helpful to the poor if the feudal lords and tribal chiefs do not interfere with the system and turn it to their own advantage or to maintain their supremacy in the rural areas.
A study by a foreign expert shows the Pakistani textile worker is the lowest paid in South Asia. He gets 25 to 30 cents an hour, while an Indian textile worker gets 50 cents an hour and the Chinese worker 45 cents.
Naturally, the workers in the principal industry and the largest in Pakistan will remain very poor. We have the notorious group system which gives a raw deal to the workers, which the foreign investors find very unfair.
What the workers get in plenty in Pakistan are holidays, which means no wages for daily workers and serious upsets for the exporters. Holidays should be announced annually according to an agreed schedule and not more holidays through a knee jerk reaction or at the spur of the moment.
This practice must go now and we should work according to a well regulated schedule. Holidays being announced at the spur of the moment by persons in authority in the provinces and cities are being honoured by the government, caring little about the protest of the industrialists and exporters.
The private sector pays the workers and the government declares excess holidays as if it is another free lunch. As one industrialist puts it the government has hardly anything to offer to the people, beginning with drinking water.
So it offers holidays to the workers at the expense of the private sector and ultimately of the country as a whole. Apparently the government is too naive to know its cost and economic consequences which are harmful to the country.
It is easy to say that poverty and corruption could be eliminated through good governance, transparency in administration and real efficiency in official practices but difficult to achieve them unless there is the political will and sustained efforts in that direction.
We need a government in constant touch with the gross roots to make such governance a reality. The judiciary too should improve its performance and deliver sound judgements quick instead of having long holidays and getting far higher salaries from time to time along with large perquisites and vastly enhanced pensions with surprising frequency.
The principal problems of the workers are unemployment and soaring inflation, which are common in Pakistan. The problems are aggravated by high population growth.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz talks of a high rate of growth of eight per cent for the next few years, beginning with this year. If the growth is so good and industrial production is 17 to 18 per cent, more goods should be available at lower prices instead of less goods at higher prices.
Where is this excess production going, ask the people, as that is not reflected in larger exports. Instead the imports have gone up by 49 per cent, including higher priced oil, food items and far more machinery than in the past and raw materials.
Both unemployment and high inflation are difficult to combat. These are times when production is expanding abroad without larger employment. Higher productivity does the trick. But our productivity has not gone up significantly. So the people are baffled, and even the upper middle class elements are protesting against higher prices.
The other problem of the workers, in fact of the people as a whole, is sickness due to lack of industrial hygiene and prolonged under-nourishment. We are told the government is now coming up with a new public health policy and a new pharmaceutical policy.
Of course, the policy implementation will be funded largely by the donors. Let us hope the policy meets the genuine needs of the people to some extent and not deliver too little of what it promises.
The government is also to come up with a new water policy, we are told. Will that mean more drinking water to the people who now drink polluted or contaminated water, and are victims of many water-borne diseases? The large gaps between policies and performance should be bridged and the aid funds put to the best possible use in a country with too many problems afflicting the masses.
Afghanistan caught in a bind
A little more than a year after the shape of Afghanistan's new, and democratic, government was set out in the constitution approved on Jan 4, 2004, by the 'Loya Jirga,' President Hamid Karzai is struggling to stand tall in the shadows of a deteriorating law and order, fragile political stability and an alarming poppy growth.
The newly democratized country is now contributing 87 per cent of the world's drug supply after the Taliban were pushed out of Kabul by the US-led joint international effort in the late 2001.
In a country where people simply do not even have access to basic necessities of life, like food and water, one wonders how to assess the real achievement of the international community's ambitious efforts that continue the flounder after the Taliban government was ousted.
The indicators of a country's progress can be its economic growth and development, and political stability. The World Bank has rated Afghanistan among the poorest countries of the world where 90 per cent of its economy is informal, meaning that the government cannot collect revenue, hindering development. The narcotic trade is an important part of this informal sector and is estimated to represent about one-third of this infant democracy's total economic activity.
Poppy production is certainly not the only measure to judge progress in Afghanistan, but it could be an important indicator of the progress since the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2002.
In Afghanistan's case, both the economic and political indicators are not only at their rock bottom but have slid down too deep. On the political front, President Karzai has managed to score a victory in October's democratic elections but some reports suggest that generally even the votes were compromised. The whole set-up appears to be fragile and temporary having a strong tendency to wither any moment.
Democratization of Afghanistan can be considered a good beginning. But the question is whether the right model has been applied to a country where votes are not individualized but are community-based.
All heads have to vote as directed by the tribal chief, without exception. Society here has its own functional traditional 'jirga', the community-based democratic system. Interestingly, in fact it was through the 'jirga' that the new constitution of Afghanistan was approved.
A tribal society where any type of foreign attempt, no matter how sincere, is seen as an imperialist design it has been fighting against for centuries. After experiencing abandonment when Soviets were crushed, some people have perceived the US as not reliable - the country which has not only wounded them with carpet bombing but double-edged its action with exemption from the war crimes from the European Human Rights Commission before starting operation in Afghanistan! In the region where friendship and enmity pass from generation to generation, one wonders how the new model of democracy would be well accepted and adopted?
With the economy based on drug money, fragile and temporary alliances are based heavily on "concessions". The new government is compromised beyond the main urban centres - Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kunduz - where the influx of returning refugees is putting strains on the devastated infrastructures.
One needs to think twice to even call it progress. If the country has to sustain on drug money, Afghanistan probably does not need any external help. They can do the centuries-old business very well at their own.
If that is progress, then why has the poppy culture spread from four provinces (during the Taliban regime) to 28 out of 32 provinces since 2002? The reason is simple; the alliances President Karzai compromised with allowed concessions, consequently resulting in the easiest way to make quick bucks - growing poppy.
Undoubtedly, the Taliban were the bad guys but they had restricted poppy growth only to sustain and to fulfil their basic needs, and that too was one of the major concerns all over the world then. But what's happening now? Sixty per cent of Afghanistan's GDP in 2003 comes from drug money.
President Karzai's recent call to wage a 'jihad' against poppy growth seems to have reverberated in his own ears, as any serious campaign against it risks causing violence and instability.
Particularly, when the Bonn Agreement hand-picked Pushtoon president is surrounded by hostile Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara warlords, and that he still has to depend on the generally "hated" foreign security personnel.
Not even when the 90 per cent of drugs in the streets of the United Kingdom - the most important ally- originate in Afghanistan, any attempt to fetch a big fish would be more like stepping on a landmine.
The only and well-thought result the international community has achieved in Afghanistan is to have put a lid on the ultra-extremist Taliban rule. The commendable effort was not only desired by the far away West, but had clearly threatened all the neighbouring countries in the region including Central Asian states, Iran, China, India and Pakistan.
But, that achievement, too, appears to be jeopardized by the mixed memories of a better law and order and a comparatively restricted poppy growth during the Taliban era.
Spirit behind the letters
A british politician once wrote that if somebody wanted to find out what really went on inside a country, he should read the letters published in at least one national newspaper. It was by following this sound advice during my student days in London that I discovered when spring had officially started.
The public would wait in pleasurable anticipation, towards the end of winter, for that crucial one-line letter in The Times that heralded the advent of the new season - "I heard the first cuckoo."
There was a sort of competition among ornithologists to announce the advent of spring. The Daily Worker, official organ of the British Communist Party, which subsequently became The Morning Star, thought such an announcement was a lot of bourgeois nonsense, which, of course, it was. But it was a lot of fun.
The same advice certainly applies to this country where readers have been known to skip the headlines and the news, but never the letters, the majority of which highlight not just corruption in high places but also examples of the timeless Pakistani tradition of flippancy as a cover for professionalism.
Citizens who reside in that part of Karachi referred to as Orange County, were pleasantly surprised to discover that letters addressed to the editor do, at times, have the desired effect.
Like the row over the impending plan, now deferred, of locating the US diplomatic mission close to the Karachi Grammar School in Boat Basin. And like the attempt to beautify the roundabout in Clifton referred to as Do Talwar, which would certainly have won first prize for "Flavour of the Month."
A newspaper wag in one of his lighter moments, pointed out in a reception given by a diplomat to say goodbye to people he had never met, that the Boat Basin action must have been made by an environmentalist with a stable of horses. In his opinion the relocation of the US consulate would have solved the transport problem, by ensuring that traffic wouldn't move at all.
The Grammar School reaction had deep implications. Parents were not only worried about the traffic bottlenecks that are bound to be caused, but also possible terrorist attacks. The people, who initially made the decision to hoist the stars and stripes on an amenity plot in Boat Basin, probably hadn't foreseen the furore that this would cause.
The school has its own powerful constituency and no shortage of champions, and it was inevitable that a string of literary missiles would bombard the newspapers.
Interestingly, a letter did surface in this newspaper from a writer who in his anxiety to get the Americans out of their present location because it was causing the most horrendous traffic jams around the Metropole Hotel, criticized the rich Grammarians for their reluctance to cooperate. But the writer was up against three generations of Grammarians who leapt to the defence of their alma mater, as the Greeks did at Thermopylae. For the present, they have managed to keep the traffic going, albeit at a snail's pace.
However, what a lot of people probably don't know is that the consulate officials are not exactly ecstatic about staying where they are, and have been trying for some time, to get out of the structure shaped like an anchored liner, which is badly in need of a complete overhaul. If only Air Marshal Asghar Khan had bought the building when as president of PIA it was offered to him for 1.6 million rupees.
The assault that various functionaries make on a regular basis on fountains, roundabouts and other public attractions, in the belief that they are beautifying the city, often evoke a variety of reactions.
Most harassed motorists just shrug their shoulders and wonder what the world is coming to. But occasionally a conscientious citizen, like Zain Mankani, finds the time to register his protest in writing and his letter certainly bears reproduction.
"The Do Talwar roundabout in Clifton , Karachi has been vandalized by the addition of a series of ambiguous objects that probably correspond to someone's definition of sculpture. It is hideous and an eyesore.
"There should be a limit to what the citizens of Karachi allow to be thrust upon them in the name of art or under the pretext of beautification. It is bad enough that the offices of the nazim have been taken over by a compulsive park builder with little or no aesthetic sense. Now, even those few roundabouts that were comparatively pleasant to look at are being defaced by personal expressions of seemingly untrained minds.
"There should be a body of artists and architects that carefully reviews any object that is about to be put up for public display or any design for a public space that is about to be executed so that we can be spared these monstrosities."
I read the letter twice, not because it was so well written, but because it expressed what a lot of people feel about the wanton desecration of public property but haven't, for one reason or another, been able to communicate. It reminds me of a passage in The Revolt of the Masses by the great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset.
"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will."
In another passage from Invertebrate Spain - The increasing menace of Society, Ortega y Gasset writes... "The process of making man a social animal is terrifying.
It is not content with demanding of me that what is mine is given to others - an excellent idea which causes me no annoyance whatever - but it also insists that what is theirs be mine." The good news is that somebody read Mr Mankani's letter and has restored the roundabout to its original uncluttered form.
Designing, like choreography, is a job for professionals and it is to professionals sitting as a committee, that the city fathers should turn when they are about to embark on the onerous task of disfiguring public landmarks.
In case they want to give the advertising agencies a wide berth, they could always organize a competition with the help of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. However, one should not labour the point in case a 20-man delegation suddenly decides to head for Paris to find out how the Parisians decorate their pissoirs.
The letters column in this newspaper has always covered a wide spectrum and a careful analysis would show that not much has changed since the 1960s. Citizens still complain about the water shortage, corruption in the police, open drains, rubbish dumps, and how the English language is creating elitism.
One still comes across people who have a strange predilection for falling into open manholes, which they do with panache, following the spirited lead of the six star gazers who fell into an open drain on Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road while following the path of Halley's Comet; people who believe that the chaps who plan the various bus routes in the city are unmitigated asses who should be sent to the salt mines; people who live next to a slaughter-house and can't stand the smell and want the abattoir shifted to a spot closer to Thatta; and people who wonder if the national airline has a department which handles arrivals, because when an aircraft lands they can never locate a traffic assistant.
One presumes that the US embassy in Islamabad has by now sorted out the various complaints registered against the Pakistani employees working in their visa section, (Feb 4) who, according to the complainant, are apparently still labouring under the impression that they are being paid to provide the maximum discomfort to visa applicants.
And one presumes that the dead donkey, game to the last, which had continued to perform its civic duty long after giving up the ghost, by temporizing as a landmark in a street in Malir, has by now been carted off to the glue factory, much to the chagrin of the drivers who used the animal as a bus stop. There's never a dull moment when reading letters to the editor.
A silence louder than explosion
The silence, as happens so often, was louder than an explosion. North Korea announced recently that it had nuclear weapons (for "self-defence" naturally) and suspended disarmament talks with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
In simpler language, North Korea was telling America: "We have weapons of mass destruction. Come and get us." The answer so far is - I was going to resort to the familiar "deathly silence" but that phrase might be too close to the bone.
North Korea has been candid before. In September 2004 it announced at the United Nations, no less, that it had transformed material for nuclear weapons "into arms" but it wasn't in the White House's interest to shift attention from Iraq. The paradox is almost funny, except of course that it isn't.
America, which splintered the operating unity of the big powers in the United Nations over its determination to believe that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, ignored an admission as candid as it could get. The White House spokesman said that it was a "regional" issue that should be dealt with by North Korea's neighbours.
How many national armies would have been lined up against Saddam Hussein if he had ever suggested anything even remotely as dangerous? How many armies will line up against Iran today and tomorrow if it suggests, even obliquely, what North Korea has claimed formally, officially, unambiguously, repeatedly? Have different standards been allotted to different regions of the world?
According to Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Monterey Institute Centre for Non proliferation Studies, writing for Yale Global Online, the United States has assessed that North Korea has an arsenal of "roughly eight plutonium-based weapons, and it is known to have production capacity for roughly one weapon per year". North Korea also has facilities for enriching uranium, another actual or potential source for nuclear weapons.
So what happens? Nothing. So why isn't anyone interested in spreading democracy to North Korea? South Koreans have democracy. America already has troops on the North Korean border.
It does not need United Nations authorization for mobilization. And yet a great deal of nothing continues to happen. America urges Pyongyang to engage in talks, and offers scaled levels of incentives for de-weaponization.
When Iran is already engaged in talks with France, Germany and Britain over its nuclear status, Vice-President Dick Cheney coyly suggests that Israel could, or perhaps should, bomb Iran while Condoleezza Rice icily suggests that the time for an invasion of Iran has not arrived "as yet".
One problem, of course, is realism. The cost of invading a nuclear state is far too high simply because of the horrendous damage it could cause even in its descent into defeat and destruction.
North Korea has already indicated its missile capability by "mistakenly" sending a missile over Japan. So while it might not be able to threaten the United States, it remains a serious concern to South Korea and Japan, the bulwark American allies in the region.
The threat of havoc makes nuclear weapons a supremely powerful deterrent. Israel has insured its national security by going nuclear, a right denied to any of its antagonists.
If Saddam actually had nuclear weapons, would America and Britain have invaded the country? That might be called the nuclear paradox. But the world's nuclear regime was challenged and changed not in East Asia but in South Asia.
The world, as defined by the victors of World War II, was fundamentally altered in the summer of 1998 when India conducted three nuclear tests at Pokharan on May 11, followed it up with two low-yield explosions on May 13. On May 28 and 30 Pakistan joined the nuclear club with five tests in the Chagai hills of Balochistan.
The two rewards that the five victors of World War II (America, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China) reserved for themselves were a veto in the Security Council of the United Nations and the right to nuclear weapons. The first was explicit, the second implicit. That was why there was little or no protest when China went nuclear in 1964, despite being outside the UN regime at America's insistence (China's seat was held by Taiwan).
The rest of the world was offered sermons when it sought nuclear capability. Jawaharlal Nehru responded with a ruse. Conscious also of the Gandhi mantle that the Congress leadership still wore, he made disarmament the policy but encouraged India's scientists to develop independent nuclear facilities.
Indira Gandhi made this official with the Pokharan test in 1974. Pakistan began to build its bomb only after 1974 but by 1998 had acquired sufficient capability for psychological parity.
In the past seven years both nations have enhanced their arsenals and improved their delivery systems. The geopolitical implications will be more apparent over time, particularly if tensions between India and Pakistan begin to come down.
The reality is that the nuclear club now consists of eight members and there is nothing much that anyone can do about at least seven of them. The jury is out on the eighth, North Korea. Does North Korea constitute a case for separate treatment?
One concern that the rational world shares above the host of differences in approach and policy is that terrorism is an unacceptable threat to stability and civilization. One of the genuine nightmares in an age of expanding knowledge is the possibility of a garage bomb (a home-made nuclear device) being used by a terrorist group.
Other nightmares include chemical, biological and radiological weapons being used against civil society. It is important, therefore, to identify a rogue state (or, more accurately, a rogue government) that would feel no sense of obligation to world order, and actively connive with terrorist groups or organizations.
Of course it is necessary here to define terms that we are using. An enemy government does not automatically become a rogue government. For more than four decades the western Anglo-European alliance led by America fought a cold war against the Soviet-led alliance that often simmered with a great deal of heat, but while either side had the power to blow up the world many times over neither did so. Even when one of the protagonists accepted de facto defeat, its government did not launch nuclear missiles in despair `or anger.
India and Pakistan have come to the brink as well after going nuclear, but have (perhaps to the disappointment of interventionists) behaved responsibly. If there is uncertainty, then it is only about the government of Kim Jong-II, son of a "Dear Leader" whose deadly idiosyncrasies were in the Idi Amin mould, and who runs a closed, totalitarian state that hides famine behind a cloak of terror. These are widely accepted perceptions.
It is curious that the United States, formally engaged in a worldwide war against terrorism, seems so disengaged about the one country that would fit many of the paradigms that it has designed to describe the syndrome.
There is credible evidence that North Korea supplied uranium to Libya when Colonel Gaddafi was a customer. Its missiles are among the best in the world. What more does North Korea have to do to identify itself as a possible if not active problem?
One is not suggesting that Washington leap into war, which of necessity must remain the last option. But question marks do begin to arise against George Bush's apparent indifference.
His predecessor Bill Clinton showed sustained concern and involved North Korea in a dialogue that showed some promise. George Bush has two eyes as well, but they are focused on only one point.
Is this because North Korea is not situated in the Middle East, astride substantive energy resources? Would George Bush have ordered another mobilization if Pyongyang was where Baku is? "Let the neighbours worry; we have other things to do": would this have been the response if Syria had eight active nuclear bombs, the possibility of many more, and a missile delivery system that had a market around the world?
Such questions seek an answer, but there is a secondary problem: who is now credible enough to give an acceptable answer? Is it time to turn the United Nations into an NGO for tsunami relief and hand over such questions to a new world body? Is a veto by a victor of a war that ended sixty years ago still the means to a solution? I don't know the answers to the previous questions, but I know the answer to the last one. No.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Asia Age, New Delhi.