Ray of hope in Afghanistan?

EARLY on Tuesday morning an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale hit north-eastern Afghanistan. The scale of the damage was not known at the time of writing but one can only hope that the tremors which were also felt in Balakot and Muzaffarabad have not done any further harm to a country already suffering from decades of war and doused the faint light at the end of the tunnel that some optimistic observers of the Afghan scene were beginning to see in Afghanistan.

Much of optimism has been generated by political developments. The parliamentary elections for the 249 member Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) and for the provincial councils (420 members) had a much lower turnout than the presidential elections but were correctly regarded as a success since despite Taliban threats they were held in a generally peaceful atmosphere and despite many irregularities and allegations of fraud were seen as being largely fair.

The 102 member Mushrano Jirga (Upper House), in which 68 members were elected by local bodies reached its full strength when President Hamid Karzai used his constitutional powers to appoint the remaining 34 members. The newly elected Afghan parliament is scheduled to meet on December 19.

Optimists also believe that Karzai’s effort to reach out to the Taliban is succeeding. They point to the fact that according to Sebghatullah Mojaddedi, a former president of Afghanistan and the head of the Independent National Commission for Peace in Afghanistan, known as “Peace Commission”, more than 700 Taliban, including the former Taliban foreign minister, Motawakil Wakil, have accepted the amnesty offer and have been reconciled with the government. Some of them like the infamous Mullah Rocketi have even become members of the new parliament.

On the economic front starting from what was an abysmally low base Afghanistan’s economy grew by 30 per cent in 2003 and an estimated 7.5 per cent in 2004. The Afghani, now pegged at 45 to a dollar, is relatively stable and agriculture is beginning a slow recovery with the wheat crop in 2003 being 58 per cent higher than in 2002. Vast sums of money have been expended by the Americans and the international community on reconstruction in Afghanistan and it is hoped that the conference being convened in London in January will bring further pledges of assistance for the rehabilitation of the economy.

The Demobilizing, Disarming and Reintegration (DDR) programme has been termed a success with claims being made that this Japanese financed UN programme has led to the disarming of the many official militias that existed in the country and has weakened the hold of the warlords. A degree of success is also claimed for the successor programme — the Disarming of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) started in June 2005.

The insurgency continues and has intensified in the last year but American and Afghan officials insist that this owes to the fact that the US-led coalition forces are now moving into areas that, in the part, were left in the hands of the Taliban, and while no one is now talking about the insurgency dying out there are claims that steady progress is being made in winning the hearts and minds of the people in the Taliban strongholds in the south and southeast of the country.

The pessimists’ view, and most would say the more realistic view, is that while there has been a marginal improvement in the economic situation and while the trappings of democracy have been introduced, the deteriorating security situation, the growing importance of opium production in the Afghan economy, the continued influence of the warlords, the corruption in government, the mismanagement of reconstruction efforts and the consequent disillusionment of the people have meant that the situation in Afghanistan is today worse than it was in the immediate aftermath of the American invasion.

The facts on the ground would appear to support this pessimism. Despite the expenditure of more than $5 billion in assistance, not one new power plant has been built in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has, at 70 per cent, the highest level of malnutrition in the world and is classified as one of the poorest counties in the world.

Much of the assistance is channelled through the NGOs and it is estimated that their overheads take up some 60 per cent of the amount. Afghans maintain that it is not 60 per cent but 80 per cent. In a recent statement, the Afghan transport minister disclosed that Ariana Airlines was paying two of its foreign advisers $2,000 per diem and that there were other ministries in which foreign advisers were getting $2,500 per diem. It is no wonder that many Afghans say only half jokingly that having suffered in the past from Soviet and Taliban rule they were now suffering under NGO rule.

An investigative report by the Washington Post last month on a USAID programme for building schools and clinics in Afghanistan showed that the programme had been an outstanding failure. An eight room school building cost $426,000 while other donors were building at between $40,000 and $60,000. Many of the buildings were found to be non-existent or collapsed shortly after they were built while a large number of them remained incomplete.

An example was that of a clinic opened in March 2004 with much fanfare in Qala-Qazi village just 30 miles from Kabul and which when visited 15 months later by Post reporters invited the following comment “Mold and mildew stained the ceiling. In one room, the ceiling had fallen. Paint inside and out had blistered and peeled off in sheets. Cracks crawled across exterior walls. In a side yard, two girls laboured in vain to pump water from a new, US-built well.”

The much publicized programme for reducing opium cultivation brought down the area under cultivation by 22 per cent but better weather conditions ensured that the crop was reduced only marginally from 4,200 tons to 4,100 tons. Drug eradication officials fear that since alternative crops and aid to farmers have been in short supply, the area under cultivation will go up again this year.

Since a farmer earns nearly $2,200 for an acre of opium poppies, while those growing wheat make about $220 an acre this is almost inevitable, particularly when virtually no effort has been made to eliminate the drug traffickers who make the major part of the money from the drug trade. It is well known that several of the new members of the Afghan parliament are prominent traffickers as are many of the officials in the Afghan administration.

The Americans have made it clear that their preoccupation in Afghanistan is with the Al Qaeda and they have little or no interest in devoting their resources to fighting the warlords or the drug traffickers many of whom have been their loyal allies in the fight against the Al Qaeda. In any case, they are now reducing their forces in Afghanistan and such forces as remain will focus on combing the hitherto inaccessible areas close to the Pakistan border to smoke out such elements of Al Qaeda as remain there.

Many of the Nato forces which are to move into South Afghanistan next year are reluctant to take on a combat role against the Taliban and the drug traffickers. It seems likely, therefore, that at least for the next few years the Taliban, who are said to be encouraging opium cultivation in the areas under their control and using drug money to finance their operations, will not be deprived of their access to drug money and Pakistan, Iran and Europe will continue to see their heroin addicts receive ample supplies from Afghanistan. There seems to be little doubt that in these circumstances the amnesty offer has had few takers from prominent Taliban.

As regards security, this year has been the deadliest in four years in Afghanistan, with violence claiming the lives of nearly 1,500 people. More than 90 American servicemen have been killed and thanks to the link that seems to have been established between the insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban/Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan the suicide bomber has now become a part of the security scene in Afghanistan with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) forces in Kabul also being targeted.

They can, in the coming years, be expected to increase their activities against the coalition forces and the Karzai government. It is no wonder that President Karzai said while in Saudi Arabia for the OIC summit, that his government will need US led coalition forces to remain in Afghanistan for another 10 years. It is also no wonder that European members of Nato even while agreeing to increase the size of ISAF to 16,000 and to take over responsibility for supporting reconstruction activity in the Taliban south of the country have not yet agreed to participate in anti-narcotics, anti-warlord or anti-Taliban operations.

The British, who are increasing their force presence in Afghanistan by 4,000 men and will be leading Nato forces, are pleading with the Australians and the New Zealanders to provide troops along with the Canadians for the anti-narcotics operations.

If they succeed one might see three forces operating in Afghanistan, a reduced American force operating exclusively to track and eliminate the Al Qaeda and their Taliban sympathizers, the British led effort to eliminate poppy cultivation and the warlords and the Taliban who support such cultivation, and lastly, the Nato forces supporting the provincial reconstruction teams. There could be hardly be a better formula for ensuring the failure of all three efforts and yet this is what seems to be on the cards.

Is there reason for optimism after this? I think so. There is too much at stake for the Americans and the Europeans and they, along with the rest of the international community, are at least agreed that Afghanistan cannot be abandoned. Past mistakes can be corrected. The disagreements within Nato notwithstanding, it will soon become apparent on the ground that no reconstruction will proceed unless there is military action against the Taliban and the drug barons. The January conference in London will provide an opportunity for closer scrutiny of what has gone wrong and what needs to be done.

The fallout from the Afghan situation on Pakistan is becoming increasingly grave. Despite the deployment of 60,000 troops in the tribal areas Pakistan has not, as recent reports from North and South Waziristan show, been able to root out foreign militants or even to establish military control over the area. Press reports suggest that it was Taliban representatives rather than the local administration that apprehended and then hanged “bandits” who were extorting money from travellers on a road in the vicinity of Miranshah, the largest city in North Waziristan.

Other reports claimed that the Taliban were now controlling, or at least patrolling, the streets of Miranshah. In South Waziristan, four people from the paramilitary forces have been abducted presumably by Taliban sympathizers.

While allegations of Afghan officials about Pakistan support for the Taliban can perhaps be ignored, we need to give serious thought to what their continued presence here is doing to the country itself. Whatever may have been our assessment of their value in the past, it should now be clear that our national interest requires us to expel all Afghan Taliban from our soil. This will certainly improve our relations with Afghanistan and curb narcotics and other smuggling into our country but these benefits, substantial though they may be, are less important than removing the threat they pose to our security interests.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Scourge of bonded labour

MOST of us erroneously believe that slavery has never existed in Pakistan and bonded labour ended 13 years ago when the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992 was adopted by the National Assembly. But the fact is that this law abolished bonded labour only on paper, and not in reality.

Had it been so, you would not have been reading in the press today about cases such as Munno Bheel’s, who was released from bonded labour by the HRCP in 1996 to have eight of his family members allegedly kidnapped two years later by the powerful landlord in Mirpurkhas in whose service Mr Bheel had been bonded before his release.

Recently, the press has also reported the case of Mumtaz Mai and her eight-year-old son Nadeem who were sold for Rs 70,000 by one brick kiln owner in Multan to another in Dera Ismail Khan because the woman’s husband had failed to repay the peshgi of Rs 65,000 he had borrowed from the kiln contractor.

Peshgi is one of the most inhuman systems developed in our part of the world to exploit the poverty and illiteracy of workers. It is common among the kiln workers in Punjab and the haris in Sindh. The kiln owners and landlords are only too willing to advance a loan to their workers, albeit on phenomenal rates of interest. As such, the loan never gets repaid and the indebted worker, as well as his family, is bonded for life.

Sometimes the bond is passed on from one generation to the next. Not being able to read and write and entirely at the mercy of their creditors, the workers get bonded without understanding the implications of their action. Even if they understand the consequences, there is not much they can do about it, given their abject poverty. Moreover, the transaction is not recorded in writing and the worker receives no receipts for the payments made.

After much international pressure and a landmark decision of the Supreme Court in 1989 declaring forced labour against peshgis illegal, the National Assembly adopted a law in 1992 abolishing bonded labour.

But it took three years for the government to notify the rules in 1995 and another six to formulate a national policy on bonded labour in 2001 followed by a plan of action.

The latter was mainly the outcome of the efforts of Omar Asghar Khan who was a federal minister at the time and known for his humanism. The National Committee for Bonded Labour set up under this plan required every province to constitute vigilance committees. This was done quite half-heartedly. Thus in Sindh only 12 out of 23 districts set up these committees but only three of them actually met.

The plan also provided for the creation of a fund for the rehabilitation of freed bonded labour, but the Rs 125 million generated for it has still not been utilized.

Why is it that in spite of all the laws — national and international — bonded labour continues to flourish in the country? Piler, a Karachi-based NGO working in the field of labour education and research, has done a lot of insightful work in this field. It identifies nine sectors where ‘forced’ labour is common in Pakistan. These are construction, carpet weaving, mining, glass bangles, tanneries, domestic work, beggary, agriculture and brick kilns.

The last two account for the preponderance of bonded labour that is estimated to be in the range of six million.

It is not difficult to understand how labour is so easily bonded. Tracing its roots to the institution of slavery, Piler feels that bonded labour has been sustained by the illiteracy of the workers and the fact that they figure low down the social hierarchy and are open to oppression by the owners. Underpaid and exploited, the kiln workers and haris find it impossible to make two ends meet. Hence they are obliged to take loans from their employers, which mysteriously never get repaid, all deductions notwithstanding.

According to Piler, women and children have to share the burden of the credit and are obliged to work without proper remuneration for their labour. It is psychologically crippling for them to know that they have been robbed of their freedom. Worse still they are subjected to abuse of all kinds — sexual, verbal and physical.

It may be somewhat difficult to believe that in today’s civilized world there are people in our society who regard bonded labour to be sanctioned by the Quran and the Sunnah. They claim that when the worker borrows money from his employer, he is obliged to repay it. The loan provides him money to tide over his immediate need that is generally of an urgent kind — a wedding, a funeral, or so on. But thereafter, he must return the outstanding amount through his wages. Thinking on these lines, eight kiln owners in Punjab had filed a petition in the Federal Shariat Court challenging the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act contending that it was repugnant to Islam.

The positive side of this bleak picture is that there are people who do care and interventions have been made from time to time for the release and rehabilitation of bonded labour. The most significant move of late has been the landmark judgment of the Federal Shariat Court in October 2005 in the case filed by the aforementioned kiln owners. The honourable judges observed that the law was a beneficial statutory dispensation which advocates the Islamic canons of human dignity and the fundamental rights of the workers. Thus the law has been protected from the first onslaught.

But more such attacks can be expected. Hence, more interventions are needed if the evil of bonded labour is to be rooted out. In the past, the government, the judiciary and civil society have acted to release and rehabilitate bonded labour. The courts have proved to be helpful and have acted swiftly in cases that have come before them.. However, the police have not been equally cooperative. Pressure from the NGOs, especially human rights activists, have secured the release of 5,687 bonded haris and 8,530 workers in the last 15 years. This is like a drop in the ocean.

Unless the provisions of the 1992 act are implemented fully, it is doubtful that we shall ever get rid of the curse of bonded labour in this country. Meanwhile, the international agencies have taken up this issue seriously and exerted pressure on the government to act.

Without these institutionalized interventions, not much of an impact would have been created. But the situation continues to be horrendous. Some excellent field research on bonded labour in agriculture and kiln industry has been done. A number of cases have been recorded and shocking stories have emerged from these accounts. It is worth recording a few typical comments from Piler’s forthcoming report Analysis of Interventions in Bonded Labour in Pakistan by Zulfiqar Shah.

Asghar Bhatti, 50, a kiln worker from Multan says, “I am in this situation because I don’t have money; I was born in a poor family and shall die poor. It’s our fate. I think I am poor because my father was poor.” He has been working at the kiln since childhood and earns a pittance. A worker is paid on piece basis — Rs 176 per 1,000 bricks he makes. A family of four (two parents and two children) can make at the most 1,000 to 1,500 bricks in a day. Small wonder he has landed himself in debt. With no written records, this debt is never repaid and keeps mounting.

Field data reveals that a majority of the released haris have spent one to three years under what they think was bondage. Sharecroppers or wage labourers, they were compelled to work to clear their debts which was unlikely because they kept borrowing small amounts for daily expenses.”

The workers at kilns and the haris are often sold by one owner to another to recover the money they had borrowed. They are also kept in chains and private jails. This is the price they have to pay for their poverty and ignorance. They do not have NICs and very little recourse to legal intervention.

The media has played a key role in creating awareness. But more needs to be done especially in sensitizing the public Above all, the landlords and kiln owners need to be told that workers are not like commodities to be abused. The report states: “Activists and ex-haris say that even the rape of a hari woman is considered their right... and landlords proudly declare and joke with each other that they have kept their haris in chains.”

Recalling a great man

SOME time ago there was something of a controversy in the newspapers on the post-partition politics of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, prime minister from September 1956 to October 1957, in the context of unity between east and west Pakistan.

The discussion had also prompted a letter from his grand-daughter, Barrister Shahida Jamil. This made me look at the chapter on Mr Suhrawardy in Abdul Qayyum’s book “Three Presidents, Three Prime Ministers” published in 1996.

Once my boss in provincial information department, the late Mr Qayyum had served six rulers of Pakistan as PRO, speech-writer and adviser on sensitive correspondence, and I had found his chapter on Mr Suhrawardy throwing light on some facets of the great man’s official acts and personal traits which are normally missed by biographers. Let me quote him on the subject of the discussion.

“Suhrawardy’s commitment to Pakistan as a single, united nation was an article of faith with him. His patriotism as a citizen of Pakistan could never be questioned. He would always attempt to put in perspective the ‘grievances’ of East Pakistan whenever the issue was raised by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. There were several occasions when he ticked off Mujib when he thought him to be getting too emotional. Mujib would often turn to me for succour. Pressing my knees, as he was wont to, he would say, ‘Qayyum Bhai, please tell Netaji (as they all called Suhrawardy) not to rebuke me in front of others.’”

Again, “Referring to relations between the two wings of Pakistan while addressing a mammoth public meeting at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka on 26 March 1957, Suhrawardy said, ‘There is no difference between East and West Pakistan. We are Pakistanis first and Pakistanis last. It is wrong to say that West Pakistan has been oppressing East Pakistan. The same set of people who have oppressed you have oppressed West Pakistan. We are one. Our prestige is founded on the sense of unity. My one success has been that I have removed mutual hatred from Pakistan’.”

In this regard Mr Qayyum says, “It is my firm conviction — however misplaced in many a myopic eye — that had Suhrawardy not got caught up in Pakistan’s ‘political phenomenon,’ and been allowed to pursue his cardinal objective of holding a general election, as he stated on assuming the office of prime minister, the nation would have been spared the ordeal of successive military regimes and the separation of East Pakistan.”

By Pakistan’s political phenomenon Mr Qayyum probably means the machinations, more aptly illustrated by the Urdu expression jor tor, of President Iskander Mirza who was a pastmaster in maintaining his authority by letting political parties fight. Mr Suhrawardy’s tenure ended when Mirza threatened to dismiss him if he did not resign because he had exposed the treachery of the Republican Party which was his Awami League’s coalition partner in the government. The Republican Party was Mirza’s own political product. Mr Qayyum narrates an interesting reaction to the event.

He says: “Suhrawardy’s resignation was so unexpected and sudden that the entire nation — except, presumably, those involved in palace intrigues — was stunned. The students of the University of Karachi put up a full page advertisement in Dawn inviting applications for the ‘most temporary post of Prime Minister of Pakistan’ from those who would ‘be willing to get the boot without notice’.”

Mr Qayyum’s account of his days with Mr Suhrawardy throws light on his political sagacity, his informal and human approach to life, complete indifference to vanity and pomp, the equal ease with which he talked to the lowliest in his country and the highest in world councils, his love of music and dancing, and (something never seen in any Pakistan leader) his dauntless courage in the face of physical danger. Of this last he cites two instances.

Mr Suhrawardy had decided to address a public meeting in Lahore’s Mochi Gate where the atmosphere was very hostile and the crowd (according to intelligence reports) ready for violence because of his avowed advocacy of joint electorates. Governor M.A. Gurmani advised him against going there. But when he said that he couldn’t guarantee the PM’s safety and would not like to be held responsible for physical harm to his person, Suhrawardy asked for pen and paper and wrote a signed note: “Despite the Governor’s advice to the contrary I am attending the Mochi Gate meeting. Should any harm come to me, including losing my life, he should not be held responsible.” Then, handing this note to an aghast Gurmani, he drove off.

At Mochi Gate the air rang with shouts and abuses. Ignoring the hail of stones and invective, the PM took his stand firmly at the microphone and said that in a democracy every citizen had the right to express his views. If anyone in the crowd wanted to speak first he was welcome to take the microphone. When no one came up, he began to speak and soon the shouting subsided. Miraculously, when he ended his speech after 40 minutes, he was greeted with “Suhrawardy zindabad!”

The second instance was when public opinion in the country was terribly agitated by the invasion of the Suez Canal area by Britain, France and Israel. A violent crowd of Karachi University students marched to the PM House and wanted to go inside. This was of course not allowed but they refused to go back. On hearing their shouts Mr Suhrawardy came to the gate and asked for a police van fitted with a loudspeaker. He climbed on to the roof of the van, microphone in hand. The guards did not want to open the gate for him but he ordered them to step aside.

On seeing him come out like this there was a stunned silence. He spoke to the students for nearly half an hour and explained the situation to them in logical words. So persuasive and impressive was his speech that the boys dispersed peacefully.

Mr Suhrawardy died in Beirut. At his funeral in Dhaka, there was literally a sea of humanity present to bury him in the grounds of the High Court. Many glowing tributes were paid to his qualities as a person and a political leader, but what his famous and trusted colleague Abul Hashim said about him was the most striking. “He died a magnificent pauper, receiving the burial of an emperor.”