| May 23, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1426 |
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Protecting wildlife
Truth about sacrilege
AMERICA has given yet another warning to Iran. Speaking in Kuwait after a meeting with the sheikhdom’s foreign minister, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Iran should not consider itself immune to “the major changes” going on in the Middle East. She wanted Tehran to engage in “more stabilizing behaviour” at a time when the region was trying to move towards a “two-state solution” in Palestine. Then there was the familiar charge that Iran was a sponsor of terrorism. About the same time, US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns accused Iran of failing to adopt “a constructive role” towards Iraq. It is surprising that the two officials should expect Iran to adopt a “stabilizing” and “constructive” behaviour, while America’s own policy towards Iran is devoid of these attributes. Since the fall of the monarchy in 1979, Washington has been hostile to the revolutionary regime. President Saddam Hussein, who was later demonized by the US and his regime overthrown, was then America’s close ally. He attacked Iran with full American backing and touched off an eight-year war that cost a million lives. Iran has also been under several layers of US sanctions.
However, the vitriol in America’s anti-Iran rhetoric stems from Tehran’s nuclear plans. For the last several years, Iran has been pursuing a nuclear programme and has been helped in this by Russia, which has supplied a reactor to it. The Bushehr reactor is open to international inspection, and Iran claims that it is for peaceful purposes. Then Iran announced that it intended to enrich uranium, and this touched off an alarm in Tel Aviv and Washington both of which suspect that Tehran intended to manufacture nuclear weapons. Since then the US and Israel have warned Iran of military action if it did not stop uranium enrichment. The latest warning by Ms Rice adds to fears that the neocons in Washington may have their way, and America or Israel may strike at Iranian nuclear installations. The other charge against Iran is that it is sponsoring terrorism. This is a reference to Iran’s support to Hizbollah, which is a thorn in Israel’s flesh. But for Hizbollah, Israel would still be in occupation of south Lebanon.
On both counts — nuclear and terrorism — the boot is on the other leg. Israel is the region’s only nuclear power with an arsenal of weapons estimated at anything up to 400. As for terrorism, the only country in the Middle East which has adopted terror as a state policy and feels no compunction about it is Israel. As the late Edward Said once pointed out, it was unfair to compare the apartheid regime in South Africa to Israel, for the white supremacist regime there never used F-16s against the native population. The contradiction in the US policy towards terrorism and the nuclear issue is thus self-evident.
It would be a big tragedy if America were to try to effect a regime change in Iran. It is already hopelessly trapped in Iraq, having lost more than 1,600 men. An attack on Iran may or may not lead to regime change, but it would certainly destabilize a region that has seen frequent war and bloodshed since the founding of Israel in 1948. More important, a destabilization of Iran could affect neighbouring countries and possibly lead to a fragmentation of the Middle East. Such a scenario will breed terrorists and extremists rather than help in political stability and the development of democratic institutions.
THE news story carried in this paper on the poaching of freshwater turtles in Punjab reflects the overall plight of wildlife in the country. Thanks to a varied terrain — ranging from high mountains to desert, riverine and marine habitats — Pakistan is home to several species of wildlife forming a crucial part of delicate ecosystems throughout the country. A broken link (that can come with the extinction or dwindling numbers of a certain species) in this chain of life can dangerously skew the balance of nature. Conservation efforts, especially relating to those animal species that are endangered and in some cases near extinction, are important if ecosystems are to be prevented from breaking down altogether, thus allowing the consequences of nature’s destruction to take over. Unfortunately, this realization has yet to dawn on the relevant authorities. For, while we have (outdated) wildlife laws in our books and we are signatories to international treaties prohibiting trade in endangered species (CITES) and obliging us to protect our natural habitats (Ramsar Convention), there has been little interest in actively protecting species as rare as the blind dolphin and the gharial.
Around 44 species of animals in the country, such as the Himalayan musk deer and the striped hyena, have been listed as threatened in the World Conservation Union’s red data book. Others like the swamp deer (barasingha) and the cheetah have been classified as ‘locally extinct’. The reasons for this include hunting for commercial or entertainment purposes, and the destruction of habitat for the purposes of development and logging. There has been little attempt by the authorities to curb the destruction wrought on forests by the timber mafia or on unbridled hunting. If anything, the government actually welcomes rich visitors from abroad who arrive every year to hunt the endangered houbara bustard. If it wants to protect wildlife, the government has to play a more meaningful role in enforcing stricter restrictions to discourage hunters and developers. Furthermore, efforts are needed to raise awareness, not only among the people generally but especially among local communities that can play a crucial role in protecting wildlife and its habitat.
NEWSWEEK’S retraction of a small report in which it had cited a “senior US government official” who claimed seeing a US military report containing instances of alleged desecration of the Holy Quran by US guards at Guantanamo Bay raises more questions than it answers. The magazine did this after calls from the Bush administration to mend the “damage” done to America’s image. For its part, on Thursday the US government reiterated its “strong commitment” to respecting the religious rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Newsweek, however, recanted on the article on what seems to be a technicality involving the naming of an anonymous government source — which does not necessarily mean that the alleged desecration never took place. After the report’s publication (and the deaths of 15 people in Afghanistan that it caused), the source retracted the claim of seeing a US military report that confirmed the desecration, forcing the magazine to retract the story.
However, what seems to have gone largely unnoticed is the fact that prior to publication, the article was vetted by a senior Pentagon official. Also, the allegations regarding the desecration of the Holy Quran are nothing new and have been reported in newspapers worldwide since 2003 quoting prisoners released from US military custody. In fact, one prisoner had alleged that similar acts of desecration had occurred at a US military prison in Afghanistan as well. The proportion of prisoners released from US military prisons who have made such allegations cannot be a coincidence or an accident. However, whenever such allegations surfaced in the media, Washington always dismissed them as baseless. If America really wants to clear the doubts that persist in the minds of many in the Muslim world, it should make public its internal reports on the alleged prisoner abuse and hold senior civilian and military officials accountable.