PA cash flow issue

BEHIND the controversy surrounding the cash flow strategies now being devised, there is every possibility that the real issue in the Middle East could be lost sight of: the gut issue is the need for reviving the peace process and getting Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories so that a sovereign Palestinian state comes into being. The latest news is from Brussels, where the European Union leaders have endorsed a new plan to ensure cash flow into the West Bank and Gaza. The crisis which the EU is now trying to resolve is artificial. It should not have been there in the first place, because it is the EU, along with Israel and the US, which created this crisis with a view to thwarting the elected Hamas government. Instead of letting the Hamas regime settle down and watching the possible change that the assumption of power could cause in Hamas thinking, Israel, the US and the EU decided to cut off non-humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The hope was that since the Hamas government would not be able to pay salaries to l65, 000 of its employees, there would be a popular backlash leading to the government’s collapse. But so far it has managed to survive, and there is no reason to believe that a movement that flourished underground and survived the hardships of persecution would simply vanish into thin air because money is not forthcoming.

To tide over the financial difficulties, Hamas is getting cash into the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is now reported to be thinking of closing the Rafah border so as to stop PA officials and Palestinian individuals from bringing cash into the territories. All this is designed to obfuscate the real issue and is reminiscent of the concerted drive made by Israel and the US to demand reforms in the PA and to ask Yasser Arafat to appoint a prime minister. However, the appointment of a prime minister and the reforms did nothing to advance the cause of peace, for Israel sabotaged the peace process by prevailing upon the Bush administration to accept its decision to retain some West Bank lands even after withdrawing from the territories. That is the position today. The roadmap, crafted by the US, EU, UN and Russia is dead, and further progress is not possible since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refuses to negotiate with Hamas, insisting rightly that the latter must first accept Israel’s right to existence. Israel is also responsible for the new flare-up in Gaza, because its massacre of Palestinian picnickers last week forced Hamas to break the 16-month ceasefire with Israel. Israel has even threatened to murder Prime Minister Ismail Haniye.

While Israel has messed up the situation, Hamas and Fatah too have contributed to it. Fatah, it seems, has not yet reconciled itself to the loss of power and appears in no mood to let the Hamas government work. Hamas too has not behaved in a manner that could make one believe that it is seriously interested in running the PA on democratic lines and working out a modus vivendi with Fatah. Both factions should know that their bickering is hurting the Palestinian cause. It is true that Israel will not negotiate with the Hamas-led PA under any circumstances, no matter how tranquil and democratic the Palestinian scene, but at least the world would know which the intransigent party is.

Nepal: peace in the offing?

THE agreement reached between the Nepalese government and the rebel Maoists on Friday would have been unimaginable a few months ago when the people had yet to take to the streets against the country’s autocratic monarchy. But now, after weeks of massive protests forced the king to relinquish his powers and reinstate parliament, peace and normality in Nepal now seems a distinct possibility, especially as the Maoists will now be inducted in an interim government. True, several differences between the country’s major political parties and the rebels will have to be solved. It is worth noting that no decision was taken during Friday’s talks on the question of disarming the rebels, and this can prove to be a thorny issue, as the experience of the Northern Ireland peace process shows. However, overall the outlook is good. The Maoists will give up their parallel administration in the countryside and there are hopes that an interim government, following the dissolution of the current parliament, will take over within the next few weeks and that a new constituent assembly will be in place by April next year.

Watching the political developments closely are the Nepalese people. After practically bringing down the monarchy, which remains only in name, it is unlikely that they would allow the peace process to slacken or to be sabotaged by one or the other party. The decade-long civil strife in the country, between the Maoists and the Nepalese army, has cost them dearly in terms of their security and development. More than 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Poverty has worsened and high expenditure on the royal family and the Nepalese army has meant that socio-economic development has suffered. Frequent blockades by the rebels have caused tremendous loss to business and industry, including tourism which, after agriculture, is the mainstay of the Nepalese economy. Any wrong moves on the part of either the rebels or the government at this point could turn the process into another cycle of violence and bloodshed. This is a possibility that both parties must avoid at all costs.

A ‘save Lahore’ initiative

IT is heartening to note that a group of prominent citizens and a number of civil society organisations have joined hands to form a ‘Lahore Bachao’ (save Lahore) committee. Comprising architects, conservationists, environmentalists, teachers, writers, businessmen, etc., the committee aims at playing the role of a watchdog. Foremost among its objectives is to save the city’s architectural heritage from being pulled down or defaced by the greedy building mafia, and to salvage green areas from being encroached upon by government agencies in the name of development. The city district and the Punjab governments, which are duty-bound under a series of environmental laws to scrap any plans that might have an adverse impact on urban environment, have instead been party to felling thousands of trees and to the rampant commercialisation of residential areas taking place in recent months under one pretext or another. Only last month, an old Hindu temple was pulled down to make room for a commercial plaza inside the walled city; a colonial-time building with a clock tower on The Mall met the same fate a week ago; and now there are plans to cut down some 4,000 old trees to add more lanes to the Canal Bank Road. This kind of questionable development has to stop, say the committee’s members having technical expertise in urban planning, arguing that more urbane alternatives exist which should be adopted to achieve sustainable development.

Lahore, admittedly, has the worst air pollution problem in the country, with the statistics topping the World Health Organisation’s acceptable levels of air pollution by as much as 20 times. Any more felling of trees, and in that big a number as is being proposed by the authorities concerned, could spell a disaster for the city’s fragile environment. If a concerned citizens’ group can stop this form of vandalism, it will have only done well by the city and its people.

Revisiting Syria’s history

The sun rises at 4.30 am. It is already high by 7.30 and will fade only at 7.45 in the evening. The sun puts in a 15-hour day, but Amman begins to take it easy after a late lunch. Government offices wrap up by three, having wrapped in at eight. The one exception is the border between Jordan and Syria, which works through the night. There is Friday freedom on the highways as we race from Amman to Damascus in the clean sharp light of the morning.

Tourism begins at the border. Can a queue be fat instead of lean, plural instead of singular, jostling instead of obedient? Yes. The Jordanian officials are patient. Everyone is nice; they might even be well-meaning. The older Arab women, many in a chador, make excellent use of lament, passports clutched in hands extended in supplication, eager to finish formalities. The younger women wear T-Shirts and smiles, and chat at nearby tables while their documents are processed: they are young, and time is on their side. The young men loiter, trying to look busy. I am lucky. The counter for foreigners is empty. Unfortunately, it is empty on both sides. A supervisor recognises my helplessness, stretches a hand across a seated officer’s head, takes my passport. “Hindwi?” Hindwi. The common signature of a hundred governments thuds into the booklet: the ubiquitous rubber stamp, invented, believe it or not, by a British ICS Sahib posted to Hooghly district in Bengal in the nineteenth century, who forgot to patent his invention. I get my passport back with a smile. Arabs, everywhere, are gracious hosts.

The Syrian checkposts are more military, but immigration is more laid-back. The travellers do not care very much about the delineation of counters; everyone owns the shortest queue. The face of a young man in uniform wanders between semi-laughter and semi-exasperation at the periodic tantrums of his computer. A swarthy traveller who forgot to shave a fortnight back, and forgot to bathe that morning, shoves me aside and opens a conversation which does not stop till it is complete. A second man sidles up. He is more polite, possibly because he has a piece of paper instead of a passport. The ranking immigration officer takes a look at the paper with the resigned air of a professional facilitator. He is clearly a man of experience, weight and power: the experience is in his eyes, the weight in his stomach and the power in his demeanour. The paper goes into his pocket. My turn comes, and the passport is returned quickly, politely.

The room is filling up with families. Three young women chat away the waiting minutes. One has a T-shirt suggesting that diamonds are her best friends. Her friends have less garrulous clothes. Other girls are in long skirts or jeans. No one wears a veil. A friend in Amman later explains that the veil is part of Persian culture, a fashion that spread east rather than west, until the thin gauze of Iran coagulated into the dark cowl of Afghanistan and the tribal frontier of Pakistan.

The searing brown of the desert, already softening in north Jordan, suddenly gives way to green and yellow, the colours of agriculture. Rivers have replaced rock and sand. The land of Euphrates has grass and wheat farms. The media-nurtured image of Syria as an impoverished nation, perhaps a necessary adjunct of the axis-of-evil syndrome, is an exaggeration. This isn’t El Dorado, but it isn’t Starvation Valley either. The economy has solid roots in food, oil and natural resources. The cars on the streets of Damascus are a mix of old and new, and thin dust seems to hang over the urban infrastructure but the shops are full and the kebabs in restaurants exquisite.

We drive to the top of a hill for a bird’s-eye view of one of the oldest cities of the world, and it lies before us like a becalmed eagle, its outstretched wings forming the boundaries of an ever-growing metropolis. Silence, punctuated by the urban rattle, is the mood on Fridays. Damascus takes its holidays seriously. Around noon, the call of the muezzins wakes up a string of mosques.

There is a hint of Byzantine in the dominant mosque of the city, built by the Omayyad rulers 13 centuries ago, surrounded by a warren of bazaars, hamams and seminaries that could have hosted a million tourists if George Bush was not in constant search of enemies. The steepled walls and dome of the prayer hall inherit the city’s past, when it was a jewel in the dominions of the Christian Byzantine empire of Constantinople. Damascus fell to the brilliant thrust of Muslim Arabs in the seventh century, but has never rejected its history. The patriarch of the Syrian Christian Church still lives in the city, and the services of his church have never stopped. Through the difficult centuries of the Crusades, Damascus was a constant target of Europe’s princes. Damascus often tottered, but never fell.

A mufti in black turban and flowing robes addresses an eager gathering of women in black, interspersed by a few women, in a corner of the courtyard as I enter the mosque. The scene could belong to any of the 14 centuries of the Islamic calendar. The huge, even awesome, prayer hall is stitched together by carpets and lit by chandeliers. Smack in the middle, to the left of the minbar from where the imam leads the prayer, is a shrine protected by golden bars. This is the grave of Hazrat Yahya, more familiar to the Christian world as John the Baptist. Hundreds of photographs, passport-size and passport-face, are strewn around the grave, calling cards of young men who have sought the intercession of the prophet in their prayers to Allah.

There is nothing surprising or remarkable about this. It is on this land, from Makkah and Madina to Jerusalem and Galilee and the Dead Sea and Damascus, that the prophets have preached their message to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

The sun is hard but not harsh, hot but not humid, as I return to the courtyard. I walk a brief way while in the shade of the corridor before the eye is arrested by a sign on a simple, undemonstrative door. The simplicity is deceptive. This is the second shrine of Imam Husain, the martyred son of Hazrat Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Husain was killed, and his small band of followers massacred, by the forces of the Omayyad kings, who built this mosque, on the desert-field of Karbala in Iraq. It is a sin commemorated each year during the month of Moharram by Muslims of all persuasions. Pilgrims flock to the splendid Husain shrine at Karbala in Iraq, where his body is buried. This is literally true. Husain’s head was decapitated and brought to the court in Damascus as a trophy for the tyrannical Omayyad king, Yazid. This head was buried on the premises of this mosque.

A chant from the soul rises from the women clasping to the marble of the small mausoleum, their tears indistinguishable from their prayers. Yazid, who claimed victory in 780, has been eaten by worms, lost even to the desolation of archives. Husain lives on, powerful, unforgettable. A martyr never dies.

The writer is the editor-in-chief of The Asian Age based in New Delhi.

Prayers in the military

The military has been making a good-faith effort to write rules on religious activities that preserve both the rights of free expression among service members and the separation of church and state.

It’s unfortunate, therefore, that the House of Representatives, responding to pressure from evangelical Christian groups, has unnecessarily inserted itself into this debate, with a provision in the recent defense authorization bill aimed at ensuring that evangelical chaplains can pray in Jesus’s name at public ceremonies.

The Senate is debating a version that wisely leaves out the House provision and lets the military services continue to work out this complex issue the right way — without congressional interference.

No one questions that military chaplains of all denominations may pray as they wish in voluntary, private services. The issue is what they can say in public prayers.

The provision guarantees chaplains “the prerogative to pray according to the dictates of the chaplain’s own conscience, except as must be limited by military necessity, with any such limitation being imposed in the least restrictive manner feasible.” In other words, almost anything goes. This tilts too far in the direction of chaplains’ freedom to pray, without due respect for those whose beliefs differ.

Maybe the solution isn’t to drain prayer at public ceremonies of specific religious content, but to discourage prayer at such events as inherently and unnecessarily divisive. Chaplains shouldn’t be required to mute their faith, but neither should service members who aren’t believers be compelled to be present for such prayers.

— The Washington Post