Earthquake tragedy

WITH a death toll that could go into the thousands, yesterday’s massive earthquake which hit the northern half of the country as well as regions in Afghanistan and India has the makings of a tragedy of immense proportions. Even initial reports of the devastation caused are chilling and indicate the magnitude of the challenge posed in terms of rescue and rehabilitation. The quake registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, making it one of the most powerful temblors ever to rock South Asia. The one in 2001 which struck the Indian state of Gujarat, killing over 20,000, had registered 7.7 and Saturday’s is greater in magnitude than even the earthquake of 1935 which destroyed Quetta, killing nearly 60,000. According to the US Geological Survey, the quake’s epicentre was just northeast of Muzaffarabad in AJK’s Neelum valley and was described by experts as “shallow” (meaning that its origin was close to the earth’s surface) which explains why it was felt so intensely by those who experienced it.

The death and destruction shown on TV screens throughout Saturday, especially the collapse of a luxury high-rise complex in Islamabad, could be just the tip of the iceberg. Since most of the affected area in Pakistan is mountainous with poor communication and road links (many of which have now disappeared or remain badly disrupted), it may take days for the extent and nature of damage and the actual death toll to emerge. As footage of the collapsed apartment building in Islamabad showed, the government’s ability to cope with such a catastrophe was found extremely wanting — the IG police of Islamabad in fact appealed to private construction firms to lend heavy equipment to remove the debris. And if that was the case in the federal capital, one can well imagine what might have happened in distant villages in the mountains further north.

The immediate priority for the federal government should be to use all possible resources to get to those trapped, especially those in the more remote regions, so that lives may be saved. Hospitals, government as well as those in the private sector, should be co-opted to treat the injured and an emergency should be sounded for blood donations. In addition, a comprehensive survey needs to be undertaken on a war footing to assess structural damage to buildings to order evacuations if necessary: aftershocks were still being felt hours after the first jolt. Those who are able-bodied and can help should come forward to aid the government and relief agencies.

Energy accord with Russia

THE signing of a memorandum of understanding with a Russian energy firm should help broaden cooperation between Pakistan and Russia in the development of Pakistan’s gas and other fossil fuel resources. Besides help in the construction, development and operation of transnational gas pipelines, the agreement is wide-ranging in scope. It provides, apart from the transmission of gas from Qatar, Iran and Turkmenistan, for the Russian firm’s help in the development of underground gas storage systems by utilizing depleted gas fields. In addition, the Russians will help Pakistan in the use of gas as fuel for converted diesel engines. The importance of the MoU should be seen against the background of the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Both Pakistan and India are under pressure from the US for cancelling the deal. Also unhelpful was India’s vote against Iran at the IAEA’s meeting in Vienna last month. The project will cost a huge amount, and it is highly unlikely that a western firm or any of the international donor agencies will underwrite it. For this reason, any initiative by any traditional non-western source should be welcomed.

The deal should help improve Pakistan’s relations with Russia at a time when the unipolar world is undergoing a change. The emergence of China as an economic power and the Franco-German opposition to America’s Iraq policy point to the gradual erosion of what has so far been a world exposed to the unilateralism of the sole superpower. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan has served notice on America to end its military presence there. Even though this was prompted by American and European criticism of the Karimov government’s rights abuses, Russia has welcomed this development. China borders Central Asia, and its main interest is in the region’s energy resources. For China, too, Central Asia is a region where it has vital stakes.

Pakistan has always been on the wrong side of the Soviet Union. It was a member of the US-led military pacts during the fifties and sixties and provided bases to America. The U-2 spy plane shot down by the USSR had flown from a US base in Pakistan. In the eighties again, Pakistan served as the channel for the CIA’s overt and covert war against the Soviet Union following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With the USSR having disappeared, it is time both Islamabad and Moscow put the bitterness of the past behind them. Russia may be having economic and political difficulties in the post-Soviet era, but all its assets — its huge territory, highly-developed human resources and its technological level — remain intact. Pakistan can gain a lot from economic and political cooperation with Russia. Because of the situation in Chechnya, Russia has concerns about the activities of some Islamic extremist groups in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Islamabad is in a position to address these concerns by stepping up cooperation with Moscow against terrorism. President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to Moscow in February 2003 was a move in that direction. We must be clear in mind that warm and fruitful relations with Russia are in no way incompatible with Pakistan’s relations with China and America.

Doctors for rural health

THE Sindh health minister’s description of health facilities and the lack of doctors in the interior the other day comes as no surprise. For decades, rural health centres and basic health units across the country have been lying in a state of dereliction. Not only are facilities such as running water and electricity missing in many of them, a large number have also been illegally occupied. The absence of doctors has compounded the problem. As it is, statistics show there is one doctor for 1,300 patients in the country. In the rural areas, comprising the bulk of the population, the patient-doctor ratio is higher, as most medical practitioners prefer to work in towns and cities where hospital and living conditions are better, and where they can supplement their regular income. The government has tried time and again to send doctors to the rural hinterland, but there is so much corruption in the system that it is not uncommon to find doctors drawing salaries from rural health centres, while actually practising in urban centres.

It has been suggested that it should be made compulsory for medical graduates to work in rural areas for about two years to qualify for their degree. But for this to work, it is necessary to upgrade hospital and living conditions in the rural areas so that doctors are not inconvenienced either personally or professionally. This would require action on the elaborate plan that was drawn up over the years to improve the health sector, and better salaries for doctors who are to serve in the rural areas. Closer scrutiny of the medical curriculum is also required and efforts made for greater focus on experience in community-oriented medical care so that doctors used to working in large city hospitals have the necessary facilities to work in rural areas.

Turkey and EU: rough road ahead

THE opening on October 3 of Turkey’s negotiations to join the European Union was supposed to be a solemn affair, a ceremony marked by dignified speeches and toasts to the beginning of a new era in relations between Ankara and the 25-nation bloc.

The entry talks were launched at just a few minutes past midnight on the appointed day. But not exactly in the manner and mood they were expected to.

Instead of a solemn ceremony, there was high drama, tension and suspense. EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg for eleventh-hour crisis talks starting on October 2 squabbled and bickered over the final membership terms for Turkey for almost 30 hours — with a short five hour break to get some sleep.

The focus was on British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw — who hosted the emergency meeting in Luxembourg — as he struggled to convince a skeptical Austria to stop insisting that Turkey should be offered some form of watered-down privileged partnership rather than full EU membership.

There were endless unsuccessful bilateral encounters between an increasingly weary Straw and the glamorous but stubborn Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik who stuck to her guns until the very last hour — and only gave the green light to the talks with Turkey once Vienna had received a go-ahead from EU governments for the parallel opening of accession negotiations with Croatia.

Straw’s negotiating juggling act included not only talks with Austria and other EU states but also with Turkish leaders who were waiting impatiently in Ankara to hear if the negotiations were going to start as promised and whether the terms being offered by the EU were acceptable. Straw also held phone discussions with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who had to call Turkish officials to convince them that one of the key provisions in the final EU package would not infringe on Ankara’s obligations in the Nato defence alliance.

The official EU circus, comprised of foreign ministers, their close aides, officials and spokespeople was only part of the story, however. The other half of the stage was occupied by at least 1,000 reporters, TV cameramen and photographers, all anxious to be part of the biggest EU story in several years — and to tell it like it is to their readers, listeners and viewers.

In fact, most reporters in Brussels had been on full “Ankara alert” for weeks preceding the Luxembourg meeting. First it was Cyprus that insisted that the EU must make clear that Turkish recognition of Nicosia must be part of the accession negotiations and that Ankara must grant full access to Cypriot ships and air carriers. Only hours after that hurdle was cleared, Austria put up its own controversial demands.

In the end, Straw and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul were able to celebrate the opening of accession negotiations — almost on time. It was just past midnight, when Straw and Gul shook hands and told reporters they had “made history.” The “Jack and Abdullah” show was launched in earnest.

But the way ahead is not going to be easy. The prospect of Turkey’s EU membership poses a test of the very fabric of the bloc — and cuts to the heart of what it means to be European. As French President Jacques Chirac said only hours after the Luxembourg meeting, Turkey will need to undergo a “major cultural revolution” to gain entry into the EU.

Scepticism about Turkey is also the name of the game in the camp of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy who is widely expected to run against Chirac in presidential elections in France set for 2007. Germany, meanwhile, may also soon have an anti-Turkey leader in the guise of Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel in the government driving seat.

For many in Europe, belonging to the old guard of the continent, accepting the poor, predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million into the mostly affluent EU family raises religious, economic and security issues that will be tough to resolve even over the decade or more set aside for negotiations. “Will Turkey succeed? I cannot say. I hope so. But I am not at all sure,” Chirac said at a news conference in Paris.

Others in the EU, however, have taken a more tolerant, forward-looking view. “It’s a historic step Europe has won today,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters, adding: “It’s a big chance for both sides.”

Proponents say Turkey is wealthier even now than eastern European countries like Bulgaria and Romania were when they began membership talks. Since EU entry for Turkey is not expected for at least another 10 years, these advocates of Turkish accession argue that Ankara by that time will be stronger economically and strict EU membership conditions will have helped democratic values take root. That would reinforce Turkey’s role as a member of Nato and a vital EU link with the volatile Middle East.

Supporters also say that instead of fearing Turkey’s vast pool of young, cheap labour, Europeans should see it as a human windfall that could help offset the continent’s growing demographic crisis, rooted in its increasingly elderly population and falling birthrates. According to this argument, the Turkish workforce will be an essential ingredient in competing with the likes of China and India, the

century’s emerging economic powers.

For many in Europe, the real obstacle impeding Turkey’s membership of the EU is Islam. Although Turkey has a secular constitution, many in Europe are finding it difficult to cope with Islam in the aftermath of 9/11, the Madrid train bombings last year and the attacks on the London transport network in July this year. The killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a young Moroccan and the controversy in France last year over the ban imposed on the wearing of Muslim headscarves by schoolgirls has added to European fears of being confronted by increasingly militant Muslims living in their own territory.

But, for many in Europe, such fears are all the more reason for Europe to reach out to Turkey, whose entry has become a powerful symbol to the Muslim world and to the Muslim minority within Europe. As Germany’s Fischer argued, Turkey is central to the EU’s security concerns in the 21st century. Straw said negotiations with Ankara were proof that Islam and the West could thrive side by side in harmony.

Still, the road ahead looks set to be difficult. Negotiations are expected to take between 10 to 15 years and could be suspended at any time if even one EU country raises objections. As EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn told Turkish officials last week , Ankara will have to press ahead with political and human rights reforms — and ensure their implementation.

“I have come to Turkey ... to encourage you to focus all energies on reforms and the accession process from now on,” Rehn told a news conference in Ankara after meeting Turkish Foreign Minister Gul. “This means vigorously implementing political reforms in the area of rule of law, human rights, women’s rights, the rights of religious communities and trade unions. That is, to make the rule of law an everyday reality in all walks of life,” Rehn said, adding that “Turkey will be under ever closer scrutiny by the EU, by European public opinion and by member states.”

While the EU has to work hard to convince a still sceptical European public of the advantages of Turkish accession, politicians in Ankara also face a tough task ahead. Opposition politicians in Turkey and some academics say the government made too many concessions in signing up to a negotiating framework accord with the 25-nation bloc in a rush to get the accession talks started. They say the EU, which still has deep reservations about admitting Turkey into the bloc, has effectively offered Turkey ties short of full membership.

There is some justification for such concerns. Although Turkey is being offered full entry, EU membership conditions spell out for the first time that accession will depend on the EU’s ability to absorb Turkey as a full member. In fact, the negotiating framework for Turkey has several caveats. EU governments insist for instance that the negotiations are “an open-ended process, the outcome of which cannot be guaranteed beforehand.”

Also in case of a serious and persistent breach in Turkey of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law on which the union is founded, the commission can, on its own initiative or on the request of one third of the member-states, recommend the suspension of negotiations and propose the conditions for eventual resumption.

Meanwhile, the agonizing process of negotiating a mandate for Turkey to open membership talks with the EU seems to have exhausted the enthusiasm of many EU governments for any further enlargement. While Croatia managed to slip in under the wire to open its own accession talks, thanks to a last-minute report from the international war crimes tribunal that Zagreb is finally co-operating fully in the hunt for Ante Gotovina, the country’s most notorious war criminal, there is no denying that the EU is in the grips of so-called “enlargement fatigue.”

This was definitely a factor which led French and Dutch voters to reject the EU constitutional treaty this summer. While more and more countries — in the western Balkans and in the western republics of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus — knock on the EU’s doors, the focus of ordinary Europeans is on jobs, security and fighting off illegal immigration. The start of negotiations with Turkey is a signal that Europeans can at times look beyond their immediate fears to a brighter world beyond. But the question now is whether EU politicians can take up the same challenge?