Orderly management

A FORTNIGHT after the earthquake of Oct 8 unleashed devastation in Azad Kashmir and parts of the NWFP, the adequacy of the relief operations and the smoothness in the implementation of these efforts are still a cause for concern. Initially the chaotic conditions in the earthquake-affected regions were understandable since everyone was caught unawares and Pakistan had no disaster management plan in place. The administration and the army were forced to cope as best as they could, and they did. But now that the magnitude of the tragedy is fully before us and aid and volunteers have poured in and an infrastructure for relief — the Federal Relief Commission — has been set up, one expects to see a more organized and systematic approach to crisis management. From the reports coming in, it appears that a lot still remains to be done to provide relief to all the affected people. For instance, the Guardian of London says that 15,000 settlements have still not been accessed.

What are the factors hampering relief operations? There are many, the main one being the difficult mountainous terrain which makes it difficult to reach small villages perched on steep slopes. They are widely scattered, with some of them having a population of only a few hundred. In view of this logistic problem, resource constraint is another major setback. The weather has also added to the challenge of saving lives because the chilly nights and the snowfall round the corner could take a heavy toll of lives if shelter is not provided promptly to the homeless — nearly 3.3 million of them. The president has complained that the aid that has been pledged by foreign donors for reconstruction is wholly inadequate and much below the level needed and requested by Pakistan. This would obviously be a major factor hampering relief and reconstruction work since the availability of adequate funds would enable the government to hire/purchase many of the items needed, such as helicopters and winterized tents.

In this scenario there are two things that are not helping matters at all. One is the blame game that has been going on, with the opposition political parties and a section of the media holding the government responsible for everything that has gone wrong. This is a time of national crisis and an occasion for joining hands, not for picking holes. The other disturbing development is the wildly exaggerated claims being made by people who can get their voices heard. According to some, the number of those made homeless runs into an unbelievable figure and the value of the property destroyed is astronomical. All this can be countered if reliable and authentic statistics are made public. This is an area of national life which has not been our forte. But without some information about the location and size of the ravaged settlements, it is not possible to dispatch relief goods or shelter the homeless. In this context, it was a good idea to set up a web portal to provide information on the earthquake-affected areas. Maintained by a consortium of experts from US and Pakistani universities, the World Bank, NGOs, and the private sector, with support from the government of Pakistan, this website is expected to develop a reliable database. That should help the government and relief agencies to plan their operations accordingly.

Threat of avian flu

ONE does not know how real is the threat of an outbreak of avian flu among humans in Pakistan, or elsewhere for that matter. The potentially deadly virus is transmitted by affected birds to those in direct contact with them. As yet there has been no conclusive evidence to substantiate fears of human-to-human transmission. However, there have been cases in some countries where members of the same family are believed to have contracted the virus from each other. Moreover, researchers are warning that some types of the virus could undergo mutations to evolve as a strain that is contagious among humans, thus creating a health crisis that could affect millions of people around the world. At the moment, they are especially concerned about the H5N1 virus that has caused bird and human casualties in Asia and Europe. Pakistan has good reason to fear the avian virus, a less potent version of which killed about three million chickens in the country two years ago.

The fact that there is no preventive vaccine and that medicines to lessen the severity of the illness in humans are in short supply, makes it necessary to have a careful monitoring policy aimed at regulating the import of poultry products and keeping a vigilant eye on poultry firms and game and wildlife reserves. The government has made a wise move in banning poultry imports from 13 countries where the virus has been detected and must not yield to any pressure from any quarter to revoke its decision until the threat of virus transmission abates. Additionally, it must ensure that domestic stocks of poultry affected by the virus, or suspected of being in contact with infected birds, are killed immediately, despite protests from farmers. Moreover, Pakistan’s wetlands form nesting grounds for a large variety of migratory birds, many of which could be carriers of the virus. Under no circumstances must these birds come into contact with domesticated fowl. To counter the threat of a pandemic it is always a good idea to have a national strategy in case of a health crisis. Pakistan needs to evolve one immediately.

Unsafe school buildings

THAT the massive earthquake of Oct 8 severely damaged school buildings well beyond the main affected areas of AJK and Hazara is now widely known. The NWFP alone has over 8,000 schools either destroyed or damaged while the numbers for Azad Kashmir are not yet fully known but may well be several hundreds. However, schools as far as Kohat, which is several hundred kilometres from the quake’s epicentre, and Gujranwala and Lahore have been damaged as well. And the damage is not restricted to government schools but extends to those in the private sector as well, though they are fewer in number than the former. Surveys were ordered following the quake by both the NWFP and Punjab governments to ascertain the damage to school and college buildings and hopefully these will be carried out by qualified engineers and experts.

Any school building deemed to be structurally unsafe should be closed and students relocated till such time that the building has been strengthened and the damage repaired. Many cases have emerged where, after receiving complaints from students or parents, school authorities have made cosmetic repairs by applying cement on the cracks and painting over these. This amounts to playing with the lives of innocent students. The authorities should look into such cases and punish the guilty. A system should be put in place for lodging complaints of damaged private schools as well and these should be investigated. It is worth recalling, however, that the main reason why so many schools were devastated or damaged by the quake is because government officials responsible for supervising their construction and inspecting them and the contractors who built them did not abide by rules and regulations. The NWFP, AJK and Punjab governments must launch independent inquiries in this regard to hold all such officials and contractors accountable.

Slow foxtrot with India

GIVEN our roller-coaster relationship with India, most people are curious if the current ‘Slow Fox Trot detente’ will lead to a settlement on Kashmir. The Indians would like to spin the Confidence-Building Process (CBP) as long as it takes, before addressing the core issue.

I have during recent visits to India tried to access how much India is likely to give. What sort of an overall framework do they have in mind? In any negotiation — especially a long-drawn one - one’s goal posts must be moderated by a realistic assessment of what is achievable. If you ask for the moon, to quote the ancient Chinese poet Li Po, you end up “embracing the moon in the Yellow River”.

India is not likely to agree to any change in the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir. I am afraid the buck stops there. From India’s point of view, the past is now a closed chapter. Our Kargill misadventure appears to have put the seal of finality. The Indians argue that Kargill, following on the heels of the Lahore Declaration, was an intrusion in bad faith; 4,000 Indian troops died in a difficult but successful operation. Territory retained or won by arms cannot be given away on the table.

Should we accept that the buck stops there? Before I attempt to answer this question, I would like to share with the reader a nugget of history, hitherto unknown to me. Apparently, after Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest in 1953, Nehru is said to have informed Mohammad Ali (Bogra), our then prime minister, that an Asian plebiscite commissioner was acceptable; we turned down the suggestion on the ground that Admiral Chester Nimitz of the US had been appointed by the Security Council, and none other was acceptable to us. If this was indeed a fact, was this not another event in the chain of missed opportunities for Pakistan?

Should we surrender to the principle that might is right? I don’t think so. The struggle must continue in ways that are morally and legally defensible. What cannot be cured must be endured, at least till the paradigm changes, in a world or regional context.

But in our self-righteousness on Kashmir, let us recall a bit of our own history — when the boot was on our leg.

For 225 days after partition, Kalat was an independent state. A series of envoys failed to persuade the Khan to accede to Pakistan. So what did we do? We sent in the army and the Khan signed on the dotted line. Is it open to the Baloch to say that since accession was obtained by coercion, the question should be reopened? Certainly not. Accession, whether by force or fraud is a closed transaction. The case in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is not exactly similar.

The Maharaja too was playing for independence. We made the tragic mistake of letting loose the marauding tribals into the Valley; the Maharaja was left with little choice but to sign on the dotted line acceding to India. The Indian case for Kashmir rests on this paper thin document of accession, just as the Kalat case rests on a similar piece of paper. We had a civil war-like situation is Balochistan in the 1970s, just as the Indians have been at war with the Valley Kashmiris for the past two decades.

The modern nation state worships territorial sovereignty. Disgruntled ethnic groups have either to be persuaded by arms or by other means to fall in line. No nation state is a liberal entity when it comes to the protection of its geographic borders. Legal casuistry, brute force, wholesale violations of human rights, fraud, Gobellsian propaganda, white lies, bribery form part of the repertoire of the Second and Third World countries to hold on to their territorial sovereignties.

Like Lady Macbeth, all nations say ‘what is done cannot be undone’. To take another example from our history: we bought Gwadar from the then impoverished Sultan of Oman in 1955 for a paltry sum of money. A typical transaction of the old world, which reminds one of a similar transaction leading to the sale of Kashmir by the British to Maharaja Ghulab Singh in the 19th century.

The original residents of Gwadar are content being in Pakistan, but, what if they are to say some day in the future that they were sold like cattle and demand the right to belong to Oman or us. Would we call a referendum to determine the wishes of the inhabitants or act according to the dictum of Lady Macbeth?

This is not to say that historic injustices of the past cannot be overcome in the future. History tells us that they are but in ways that cannot be foretold in the present. There is an ebb and flow in history. The historic injustices of Russia in Central Asia, of France in Alsace and Lorraine, of European and Japanese colonialism in Asia were all overcome by a turn of world events.

What then should be our goal posts for the time being in J&K? To begin with, we need clarity. The problem of J&K is Valley-specific. Apart from this area, there are no major separatist problems in any of the other parts of the old J&K state which include Laddakh, Jammu, Punjabi speaking Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. In my past articles appearing in this newspaper, I have suggested that India and Pakistan, by mutual agreement, award to one another the parts of the old state, which are well integrated in the respective countries, so as to shrink the area of dispute. This, by itself, would be a giant step forward in the direction of conflict resolution. On the Valley dispute, the Shimla format accepted by both countries can be used to fill the central crack.

Our present goal post must aim for a reduction of the Indian army in the Valley to the level obtaining in the mid-’80s and the election of the moderate APHC (All Parties Hurriyat Conference) to positions of power. The hardliner in the APHC is Mr. Gilani, who, no doubt, has a sizable following in the Valley. This elderly gentleman belongs to the school that does not believe in political compromise.

Let him and those like him remember that there would have been no Pakistan if the Quaid had not accepted “a motheaten Pakistan”. It was a major compromise. In the interest of the Valley population, Mr. Gilani should consider his party, if not himself, to take part in a free election provided it is manifestly free and fair. The Valley does not need any more arms. It needs massive investment in infrastructure and employment opportunities.

Pakistan is a vital part of the process. It must dismantle militant organizations nesting in Kashmir and Pakistan with a stronger hand. Pakistan army may even consider active cooperation with the Indian army to prevent militants from crossing over into Kashmir.

A reciprocal agreement on reducing the levels of the Indian army and the closure of liberation camps is something that should be quietly negotiated by the special representatives of President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The process should be verifiable by either side. Militants basically need a job; they should be absorbed in our para-military forces, including those of non-Kashmiri origin.

A general amnesty is required to absorb the militants into the political and civil society mainstream on both sides of the LoC. Terrorism will die a natural death once a truly popular government in Srinagar uses its own police force to take care of the residual militancy.

The Indians do realize that the Muslims of the Valley are very alienated from India. The heavy hand of Indian security forces found its ready response in what is described as terrorism. Who would not be a terrorist, if he saw his family molested or home pillaged by merciless heavy-booted aliens? Since the 1980s Kashmir has been a garland of thorns for India. If the Indians are wise, they will promote real autonomy in the Valley as envisaged by their own constitution. In brief, the Indians should climb down the some ladder, step by step, that it climbed up post-1953.

An autonomous Valley, with a minimum of Indian control, will be de jure part of India; but, de facto a part of Pakistan. Such is the case in South Tyrol, wherein a Kashmir-like problem existed between Austria and Italy. Real autonomy has smothered the vanities of sovereignty.

The writer is an MNA. E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk