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| March 28, 2006 | Tuesday | Safar 27, 1427 |
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Health care inadequacies
Polluting tanneries
The politics of Iran’s N-programme
IRAN’S nuclear programme has been the focus of intense international scrutiny and controversy for more than three years now.
BALOCHISTAN should have received priority in economic development much earlier than it is getting now. That this was not done has cost the country dearly. The political fallout from the lack of development has often led to violence. The attention now being paid to Balochistan’s economic development can give results provided both the government and those demanding more rights for the province show sincerity to the cause of the Baloch people. In the past, the Baloch cause has suffered because of the negative attitude of the federal government and some Baloch leaders. While successive governments showed utter indifference to Balochistan’s problems, some Baloch leaders tried to politicise the situation to make political capital out of it. On Sunday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz announced a new economic package providing for 30,000 jobs for the Baloch, besides more funding — Rs 2.9 billion for district nazims, a debt relief of Rs 2.5 billion, a grant of Rs 800 million, and an additional six billion rupees under the National Finance Award.
At his press conference, the prime minister coupled his economic offer with a warning to “saboteurs” that the government would not allow its writ to be challenged. His warning could not be more timely, for on the same day there were three acts of terrorism. In Lasbela, unknown persons detonated a bomb near the home of Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Mohammad Yusuf, while a roadside bomb blew up in Khuzdar. There were no casualties at either place, but a soldier and two terrorists were killed in a shootout near Sui in Dera Bugti following an attack on a mountain post manned by the Frontier Constabulary. The three incidents go to show the extent of violence in the province. Not a day passes without some rocket attack or bomb blast targeting gas installations, power transmission lines or railway tracks. More often than not, the victims are innocent civilians. As the prime minister said, subversion was neither in the country’s interests nor in the interest of Balochistan.
Those resorting to violence and subversion ought to know that this will not promote Balochistan’s cause. By such criminal acts they are losing the sympathy of the people in the other three provinces who genuinely believe that Balochistan so far has had a raw deal and that the government should make sincere efforts to ameliorate the lot of the Baloch people by meeting their just demands. While work on the ‘mega’ projects must proceed with speed, the government must continue to talk to all sections of the Baloch leadership. Nothing is now being heard about the two parliamentary committees which had completed their findings and made some very useful suggestions. The people must be told what stands in the way of the implementation of those recommendations. It is true that the government has been forced to take action because of the terrorist activity by a few sardars, but ultimately it is a political solution that will normalize the situation and pave the way for faster economic development. At the same time, the government should ensure the safety of those who have returned to their homes in the Sui area. They were forced to leave their ancestral place, and it is obvious that those who had expelled them will not welcome their return and will do everything they can to evict them again. It is therefore the federal and provincial governments’ joint responsibility to ensure their safety.
PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf’s assurance that his government will provide medical care to the people at the grassroots level will be received with a measure of scepticism. Since verbal promises mean nothing unless translated into action, the government will have to put in greater effort to upgrade the health sector if the president wishes his credibility to be protected. The dismal state of the health sector is clearly established by Pakistan’s health indicators (especially the infant and maternal mortality rates) which are the worst in South Asia. One major factor for this dismal state is the low spending by the government on health, being barely one per cent of the GDP. The official policy of shifting responsibility for health care to the private sector under the garb of public-private partnership has also made health care more expensive, putting it beyond the reach of a large section of the population. As the government itself admits, the most vulnerable section of the population in terms of health and disease are the poor who cannot pay the high charges of private hospitals and practitioners. The services provided at government hospitals are not only deteriorating because of inadequate funding; they are also under tremendous pressure.
The irony of the situation is that the government is not promoting preventive medicine in a big way and its own policies are also contributing to the spread of diseases that are already rampant. Thus sanitation, the provision of clean water, garbage clearance, campaigns to eradicate mosquitoes and environment protection are no longer considered to be the responsibility of the government. Negligence in these areas has contributed to an increase in diseases. There is also the need for the government to draw up a proper health policy that is effective. The efficient utilisation of funds necessary to optimise the benefits of higher allocations for the health sector can materialise only when there is a policy in place and corruption is checked. Planning and plugging the leaks are essential if health care is to reach the people in the rural areas and the needy are provided treatment free of cost. Failure to attend to these problems has forced many people to turn to quacks and faith healers.
PLANS may be afoot to instal an effluent treatment plant in Sialkot and to shift tanneries in the area to an industrial zone created specifically for the purpose, but until these are implemented, people living there will continue to be exposed to hazardous chemicals emitted by the leather industry. It is estimated that there are approximately 264 tanneries in Sialkot district that are responsible for discharging more than a million litres of water — mostly untreated — a day into water channels. The level of pollutants released into the water far exceeds the permissible limits set by the National Environmental Quality Standards, and thus poses a grave health risk to people and animals besides causing damage to agricultural lands. Apart from chemicals, solid waste and portions of animal hides contaminated by bacteria are also released into the water.
Realizing the importance of the leather industry, which contributes more than $600 million annually to the economy, and the fact that the demand for goods produced under environment-friendly conditions is growing, the government should implement its plans for an industrial zone and treatment plant as soon as possible. Meanwhile, it remains the duty of environment protection agencies — in Punjab as well as in Sindh, because several tanneries are located in Karachi — to ensure that manufacturing units limit the amount of pollutants released into the air, soil and water. This they can do by investigating and putting into effect environment-friendly technologies — such as using less toxic chemicals — that would allow them to produce quality goods without necessarily polluting the surroundings. Pakistan approved a detailed environmental act in 1997, and the authorities should take action according to its provisos to control the pollution generated by the leather industry and take stern action against violators of the law.
While it is true that some of the technical aspects of this programme bank yet to be clarified to the satisfaction of the International Atomic Energy Agency resulting in its referral to the UN Security Council, it has also undeniably been sucked into the vortex of regional and international politics making it more and more difficult to consider the issues relevant to it objectively. Consequently, the task of reaching a negotiated settlement has been made that much more difficult.
The central issue relates to the nature of the Iranian nuclear programme: whereas Iran continues to claim that its nuclear programme is peaceful in character and consistent with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the western countries led by the United States allege that it is geared to the development of nuclear weapons forbidden by the NPT. Further, the Western countries and some other members of the international community want Iran to forego uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities, which are allowed under the NPT, because they can be used both for peaceful purposes and for the development of nuclear weapons. Iran so far has refused to accept this demand on a permanent basis although it suspended such activities in November 2004 as a voluntary confidence building measure.
Iran, following its rejection of the EU package of economic and political incentives on August 5, 2005, resumed uranium conversion activities by feeding uranium ore into its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.
On September 24, 2005, the IAEA board of governors adopted a resolution by 22 votes in favour, one against and 12 abstentions accusing Iran of non-compliance with its obligations under its NPT Safeguards Agreement, calling upon it to re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities, and determining that Iran’s nuclear programme had given rise to questions which were within the competence of the UN Security Council.
Iran rejected the resolution as unacceptable and illegal, and in January this year it resumed uranium enrichment at its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz consisting of a cascade of 20 centrifuges.
The IAEA board of governors adopted another resolution on February 4, repeating its earlier demands but also asking the IAEA director-general to report the matter to the UN Security Council on an interim basis pending the board’s next meeting. Thus the stage was set for consideration of the matter by the Security Council in case of lack of progress. Since no progress could be made on the matter at the next meeting of the board held in the beginning of March, the matter was again referred to the Security Council on March 8.
There is no doubt that terrorism and the proliferation of WMDs are currently the most important items on the agenda of the international community. The western countries are particularly concerned about the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of states espousing extremist views.
However, political factors have vitiated the atmosphere and queered the pitch for a negotiated settlement of the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme. The top most among them is the hostility between the US and Iran rooted in historical grievances against each other and strong policy differences on such issues as terrorism and the Middle East peace process.
President Bush branded Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil’ in the beginning of 2002 even before the controversy about Iran’s nuclear programme started. The new US National Security Strategy report released on March 16, 2006, considers Iran as the main enemy. Besides the nuclear issue, it lists other US concerns regarding Iran as follows: “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel; seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq; and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom.”
Iran’s complaints against the US, on the other hand, include charges of gross interference in Iran’s internal affairs going back to the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Mossadegh in the 1950s, freezing of Iranian assets and imposition of economic sanctions against Iran.
The situation at the national level both in Iran and the US does not augur well for a negotiated settlement concerning Iran’s nuclear programme. In Iran, the hardliners have assumed control of the executive and legislative branches of the government besides other powerful organs of the state. It will be very difficult for them to make the painful concessions necessary for a negotiated settlement of the issue. The conditions are not much better in the US where the neoconservatives wedded to extremist views on foreign policy issues still seem to be in the driving seat despite the setbacks in Iraq and the steep decline in President Bush’s popularity ratings.
The recent statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran questioning Israel’s right to exist and the authenticity of the Holocaust have served to aggravate the US hostility towards Iran and harden the western position in general and the US position in particular on the Iranian nuclear programme.
The ball is now in the court of the UN Security Council which is currently considering a draft presidential statement submitted by Britain and France. The draft basically repeats the demands of the IAEA board of governors by calling upon Iran to re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities, take steps to build confidence in the peaceful purpose of its nuclear programme and ratify the additional protocol which allows snap inspections of nuclear facilities. It also requires the director-general of the IAEA to report to the Security Council in 14 days on Iran’s compliance with the requirements set out by the IAEA Board.
For obvious strategic and economic reasons, Russia and China, during the discussions in the UN Security Council, have expressed their opposition to sanctions and insisted that the IAEA should keep the lead role in handling the issue. They have also called for a longer time-frame for a report by the IAEA director-general.
According to the latest reports, some progress has been made in reaching on agreement in the Security Council on the draft presidential statement. The consensus seems to be developing towards a report by the IAEA director-general to be submitted simultaneously both to the IAEA board of governors and the UN Security Council after about four to six weeks.
From a purely technical point of view, the issue does not pose insurmountable difficulties. One option could be to allow Iran to carry out enrichment and reprocessing activities under especially stringent IAEA safeguards which would make it impossible for Iran to divert its nuclear programme to non-peaceful purposes. It is quite clear that the western countries are totally opposed to this option even though some of them have been engaged in enrichment and reprocessing activities themselves without calling into question the peaceful character of their nuclear programmes.
The other option is the one offered by the Russian proposal under which uranium enrichment would be carried out in Russia perhaps as a joint Iranian-Russian venture and low enriched uranium would be supplied to Iran as fuel for its nuclear power reactors. Iran seems to be inching towards this proposal as its talks with the Russian authorities indicate. However, both as a matter of its legal right under the NPT and perhaps also for the purpose of face-saving, it would like to carry out on its soil uranium enrichment R&D work involving a small number of centrifuges while foregoing for a specified period industrial scale uranium enrichment.
Washington is adding to the pressure on Iran by not ruling out the possibility of a military strike on Iran. Separately but surely in coordination with the US, Israel has also been hinting at the possibility of such a military strike. But the military option is not cost-free for Washington as it would inflame and destabilize the Middle East, intensify anti-US feelings and weaken pro-US governments in the Islamic world, aggravate US difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, worsen the problem of “terrorism” targeted against US interests, and result in skyrocketing oil prices with devastating consequences for the world economy. Further, the success of such a military strike is not guaranteed because of the dispersal of Iranian nuclear facilities many of which are underground.
An article in the Washington Post of March 13, reported that the Bush administration had shifted to a more robust policy aimed at the Iranian government. Richard N. Haas, former head of the policy planning wing of the state department during Bush’s first term, was quoted as having said that “the upper hand (in the Bush administration) is with those who are pushing regime change (in Iran) rather than those advocating more diplomacy.”
The US administration has also launched a $75 million programme to “advance democracy in Iran” which are code words for bringing about a change of regime in Iran. The state department has created an Iran desk which will consist of 10 officials working full time on Iran as against only two last year. It is also strengthening its embassies in the vicinity of Iran to watch Tehran. Clearly, the US seems to be gearing up for significant activities involving Iran.
Iran is confronted by a policy dilemma of the highest order. It faces painful choices concerning its nuclear programme. One would like to hope that in the face of this challenge, its leadership will respond with sagacity and sobriety as would be expected from a nation known for its wisdom and culture. Above all, it should not commit the fallacy of treating rhetoric as a substitute for policy, or become preoccupied with form rather than substance of the issue. It should certainly not walk into the trap that the US has laid for it by showing a judicious combination of flexibility and firmness in the negotiations on its nuclear programme.
The writer is a former ambassador to Iran.
E-mail: javid_husain@yahoo.com