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| September 18, 2006 | Monday | Sha'aban 24, 1427 |
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Exploitation unchecked
Wanton deforestation
To Amritsar and back
Joachim Fest
IT was on Independence Day this year when a group of Pakistani lawmakers, businesspeople, media persons and NGO workers were invited to Amritsar by the South Asia Free Media Association’s India chapter. Safma Pakistan had made arrangements to cross over the Wagah border into Attari — Amritsar is located only 32 miles east of downtown Lahore.
THE crisis on Iran’s nuclear programme has an air of deja vu about it. An unclassified American Congressional Committee report has alleged that the IAEA has discovered that Iran has already enriched uranium to weapons grade level. This is a false allegation as the world has been told by the IAEA which has described the report as “outrageous and dishonest”. Why is the Bush administration trying to whip up panic about Iran? Obviously because it now finds that it cannot bank on its allies any more. A fortnight after the expiry of the deadline set by the UN Security Council resolution for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment activity, the nuclear powers are still not clear what line of action to adopt vis-a-vis Tehran. Mercifully, the sense of urgency that had caused Iran to be making headlines a few weeks ago as the next potential flashpoint in international politics has dissipated. The major factor that has taken the heat out of the controversy on Iran’s nuclear programme is the split in the attitude of the various governments which constitute the 5+1 that are trying to wean Iran away from uranium enrichment by offering it a package of incentives.
While China and Russia have vehemently opposed the imposition of sanctions, the three European powers (France, Britain and Germany) do not support immediate punitive action either and favour further negotiations to persuade Tehran to reach a compromise. That leaves the United States alone in its call for sanctions which are not explicitly spelt out in resolution 1696. Having been outnumbered, Washington has been compelled to take the back seat for the moment and give the initiative to the Europeans who are best suited to play a mediatory role as they are the architects of the incentives package. Moreover, the need of the hour is also to preempt a confrontation between the US and the Russian-Chinese combine. The West fears that if polarisation between the two sides deepens, the beneficiary would be Iran. In this context, the move to entrust the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, with the task of opening a dialogue with Tehran has proved to be the most sensible one. It has injected cordiality in the atmosphere and has softened Iran’s stance with President Ahmadinejad even offering to resume unconditional talks and suspend uranium enrichment for two months.
With events moving on such a positive note, it is distressing that America is acting the spoiler. President Bush has been insisting that Iran is playing for time while secretly building a bomb. But this time the world refuses to be deceived and the IAEA has categorically stated that Iran has not enriched uranium beyond the three per cent mark which is nowhere close to the 90 per cent needed to produce a bomb. What is worrying is that the US appears to be playing the same dirty trick as it did in 2003 when it heaped false accusations on Iraq. Accusing President Saddam of being in possession of weapons of mass destruction, the US had proceeded to invade Iraq. Of course, this later turned out to be a blatant lie. Once bitten twice shy, UN agencies have now refused to be deceived by the Bush administration. It is surprising that the American government has still to learn a lesson from its misadventure in Iraq. Others, it seems, are more wary this time.
AS the more established channels for illegal migration get blocked, Pakistani manpower traders are finding new avenues to continue to fleece the unemployed. Some 100 Pakistanis are reported to have been caught off the Spanish Canary Islands by Senegalese authorities on Friday. This is said to be the first time that non-Africans have been discovered to be using the Senegal channel in an attempt to get into Spain and Europe. Earlier this month, 61 Pakistanis and Indians were arrested in Ukraine; all of them were detained as illegal immigrants. Deportations of illegal Pakistani migrants from the Gulf countries meanwhile continue unabated. All these are indications of how serious the problem is and how ineffective have been official attempts to prevent the exploitation of unskilled Pakistani men desperate to get out to earn a living for themselves and their families. There appear to be too many loopholes in the procedure meant to check illegal immigration, and many of those running the rackets seem to command influence in the right circles to be able to continue to operate with impunity.
No figures are available to substantiate this, but it is certain that increasingly tighter security at entry points into the Gulf states and in Europe is leading to a greater number of arrests and deportations. Illegal immigrants are first made to pay through their noses to the operators who promise to smuggle them out, and then they are made to travel in the most unsafe and hazardous conditions. Those caught are badly treated and when they arrive back in their own country, they find they have been totally pauperised. Theirs is a story of heartbreak and suffering, and it is a constant reminder of the heartlessness of our own society that is unable to provide employment and security to so many of our citizens. The problem of lack of jobs and the absence of even a rudimentary social welfare net have never received proper attention from any government, including the present military-led one. We tend to penalise the illegal immigrant rather than the man who sent him out, and unless there is a real crackdown on manpower racketeers, the exploitation of the poor and the illiterate will continue.
THE decision to afforest 2.5 million acres of land across Pakistan may be commendable, but can it be implemented considering the high rate at which trees are being cut down? Less than four per cent of the country is wooded — a figure that is nowhere close to the internationally recommended 25 per cent. As a signatory to the millennium development goals, Pakistan is obliged to reverse the loss of its environmental resources, and the forest department’s well-funded and ambitious plan indicates that the government is aware that steps have to be taken to begin making up for deforestation. Indeed, last October’s earthquake in the north drove home this point forcefully as acknowledged by forest officials who say that losses of life and property could have been considerably lower if there had been sufficient vegetative cover to avoid landslides.
Along with efforts to increase the acreage of wooded land across the country, it would be a sensible approach to prevent the rampant cutting down of trees. Large development projects, the presence of a ruthless timber mafia, and local population pressures have together created a situation where more forests are being cut down than replanted. This has threatened many ecosystems with virtual extinction and has meant the loss of precious and rare forests such as those containing juniper trees in Balochistan. To counter this, forest officials will have to see to it that those indulging in illegal logging that leads to the destruction of trees and vegetation are strictly dealt with. At the same time, the existing population pressure on natural resources must be eased to implement a workable forest conservation strategy. This can only come about if development does not destroy the natural habitat and greater participation in conservation efforts by local communities is ensured.
The aim was to celebrate Pakistan’s and India’s independence days by marching from the Minar-i-Pakistan, Lahore, to the Jallianwala Bagh, the scene of the 1919 massacre by Gen Reginald Dyer, in Amritsar. The tragedy had left hundreds of anti-colonial protesters dead. They had gathered there to protest against the imposition of the notorious Rowlett Act that severely curtailed civil liberties. The massacre became a watershed in the Indian resistance movement against the colonial rule.
On this year’s Independence Day, there were no colonial masters on either side of the border, but the uncanny trappings of that era were still present. The uniformed guards on both sides of the border, the stern looks on their faces, the suspicious officials wishing to see, check and note down your passport details even though you had been cleared by immigration for the short walkover, and finally the long gaze that followed you until you were out of their respective territories.
‘Damn! I wish I could have stopped him’ was the overall impression you got from their body language. The day was hot and muggy, but the atmosphere across the border, past officialdom, was warm, and the grass certainly greener, given East Punjab’s green revolution since independence.
There was immense pride among our local hosts, a surprising feeling of triumph for some odd reason which did not become apparent to us until later in the course of our stay.
Amritsar is full of people who had immigrated to the city from West Punjab at independence, and who had not had the opportunity to go back ever since. Many just longed to visit the Sikh holy places in and beyond Lahore, but most had given up that hope years ago.
They felt elated at seeing us; for them it was that one rare occasion when people from West Punjab had come to visit them, and not simply to go on to Delhi — incommunicado. Somehow, the Lahore-Amritsar bus has not taken off the way the Lahore-Delhi bus has. While it is no more impossible to acquire an Indian visa for an average Pakistani to travel to Delhi and beyond, East Punjab remains a largely ‘out of bounds’ destination.
The problem on the other side with Sikh pilgrims seeking a visa to travel to Pakistan is a compounded one. They must travel up to nearly 500km further east to Delhi to apply for a visa and, if granted, they must board the bus from Delhi to Lahore. The waiting period on the sector is two weeks. Neither the Indian nor the Pakistani high commissions encourage direct travel between Amritsar and Lahore. The reason? Perhaps a missing bureaucratic link that has failed to sanctify the more convenient and much shorter journey or simply a walk across the border between the two countries.
It was this irritant that consumed much of the energy of the Indian speakers who participated in a daylong seminar on the India-Pakistan peace process on August 15 in Amritsar. Fire-brand Bharatiya Janata Party cricketer-turned politician and an Amritsar MP in the Lok Sabha Sardar Navjot Singh said he could not believe in the ongoing peace process as long as ordinary people were restricted from travelling between East and West Punjab. He got a standing ovation. The sentiment was echoed by most other speakers and understandably so. Sikhs have most of their holiest places of worship in West Punjab and the Frontier, including the birthplace of Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of the creed, in Nankana Sahib near Lahore.
A large number of journalists, intellectuals and politicians, led by the veteran columnist Kuldip Nayar had come all the way from Delhi to participate in the peace march activities. At midnight between August 14 and 15, we were driven back to the border to light lamps to symbolise the burying of the hatchet that had led to wholesale killings during the partition riots. There, close by, we were also treated to a peace concert arranged under a receding half-moon in the wide open countryside. It seemed like the whole of Amritsar had turned up that night to catch a glimpse of the visiting Pakistanis, who were asked to come on to the stage one after the other to say a few words or just to wave at a crowd comprising no less than several thousand people.
Amritsar is a city of some half a million which makes it rather small by Indian standards. Though a border outpost, it is surprisingly well equipped in terms of amenities, hotels, restaurants, luxury shopping and, well, you name it. Also, it is a very affluent city, that is, again by subcontinent’s standards. There were far fewer beggars in the street, and even those that were there looked reasonably well fed and better clothed than in many bigger Indian cities. Women looked as modern, well dressed and confident riding their motorcycles or scooters or simply going about their business as they do in Delhi or Mumbai — a sharp contrast with many Pakistani cities, big or small.
The city has a variety of restaurants that stay open quite late at night. The fare varies from regular north Indian food to south Indian, fast food and Chinese. The city has a lovely, huge garden, the colonial time Company Bagh, bang in the middle of its fashionable shopping district, the Civil Lines. It has a good number of cinema houses showing the latest Indian and English flicks, a museum and a reasonably well maintained art gallery and an art school. The gates of the art gallery were flung open on a public holiday for some of us Pakistanis who had just ventured there while walking around in the city.
The average man in the street is generally friendly but restricts himself to speaking Punjabi, as opposed to Hindi. However, once you tell them you are visiting from Pakistan, they suddenly switch to Urdu and show courtesy: one in every 10 people you come across invariably tells you they too are from Pakistan, implying that they or their parents had migrated to East Punjab at independence from our side of the border.
Lahore is a universal obsession, with nearly everyone wishing to visit the city once in a lifetime. Indeed, many tell you they ‘are’ from Lahore, of which only memories remain — those shared by their parents or grandparents. A frequently asked spontaneous question was: “how are our Punjabi brethren across the border?” This was invariably followed by an awkward self-response: “Punjabis everywhere are the same”.
In the seminar that took place on India-Pakistan rapprochement on August 15, and in subsequent discussions with individual participants and members of the general audience a constant refrain was ‘why can’t we use Lahore airport to fly in and out of India instead of having to go all the way to Delhi?’ Farmers asked why could they not export their basmati through the Lahore dry port. Industrialists, too, shared similar import-export-related concerns from and to the world beyond South Asia.
Questions abounded but answers went little further than beyond blaming New Delhi and Islamabad, the former more often than the latter, for the slow pace of the peace process. You got the feeling that the memory of Sikhs’ killings outside East Punjab in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s murder lingered more poignantly than the late prime minister’s military action on the Golden Temple. An undercurrent of anger, combined with Punjabi ego and pride over manual hard work Sikhs are known for, was the overall impression you gathered and brought home with you of the people living across the border.
The immense, general goodwill that exists towards Pakistan should be garnered by opening consulates of the two countries in Lahore and Amritsar and by encouraging people-to-people contacts between East and West Punjab. This could serve as a short cut to building more confidence between the two countries and over time creating a people-to-people based vested interest in the continuation of the peace process.
But the question remains: Are New Delhi and Islamabad ready to listen to the heartbeats of their own people?
TWENTIETH-CENTURY German history is a minefield, and few have negotiated it deftly enough to make a lasting difference to our understanding of Hitler and the Third Reich.
Joachim Fest’s illuminating biography of the Nazi leader was published in 1973 when Germans who were young during the war began to re-examine their terrible past. Fest, who has died aged 79, argued that Hitler was an “unperson” driven by ideological obsessions for which he was willing to take huge risks and make sacrifices, even to the point of disaster. Crucially, he emphasised how much that disaster fell upon Germans as well as their victims, principally millions of Jews. Controversy was inevitable.
Fest, publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was attacked later for publicising the revisionist Ernst Nolte, whose work relativised Hitler’s crimes against the background of Stalinist atrocities. The charge was that conservative anti-communists were seeking to “normalise” Germany’s past to create a more comfortable national identity.
Fest’s study of Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, and a riveting account of the dictator’s final days in his bunker (basis for the film Downfall) were popular but the latter was seen to portray Germans more as victims than perpetrators, blurring their culpability.
Historiographical trench warfare over the meaning of the Third Reich seems certain to continue. It will always be hard to “get Hitler right”. Fest may not have quite managed it. But his insights still made a huge contribution. —The Guardian, London