The Bajaur massacre

IT is impossible to believe the government’s claim that those killed in the attack on the madressah near Damadola in Bajaur Agency on Monday morning were all militants. Given the firepower in a missile attack of that nature, no one can rule out civilian casualties, even if it is accepted that the madressah was the sole target. Monday’s assault occurred nine months after the devastating American air strike on the same village on Jan 13, but the death toll then was much lower — 18. Now it is Pakistan’s security forces that have owned up to re-enacting the massacre — and on a much bigger scale, the casualty figure being four times the number of those killed in the American air strike.

We have now two distinctly different versions of events: some locals say the attack was carried out by US planes, and that the firing by some helicopters came later. The government’s military spokesman says that the missiles were fired by the army’s helicopter gunships, that the attack was aimed specifically at the madressah, which had been under watch, and that it was being used as a training camp for Al Qaeda terrorists. It is quite possible that the “American planes” which some locals saw were drones which provided information to Pakistani authorities, especially about the presence of one of the wanted men, Maulvi Liaquat Ali. In this scenario, the army then launched the missiles, proving — if proof were needed — that Pakistan need not be told to “do more” and that being “a frontline state” in the war on terror, it was fully cooperating with its Nato and American allies in rooting out terrorists.

While these issues involve what one can call “operational matters”, the question that comes to mind is about the timing of the air strike. The attack came on the day the authorities and tribal elders in the Bajaur agency were to enter into the kind of agreement that the two sides signed in North Waziristan in September. The deal with the Waziris and some members of the Taliban shoora aroused suspicions at home and abroad. This was so because while the Sept 5 accord ensured peace in North Waziristan, it was seen as having been concluded on the militants’ terms. A similar agreement in Bajaur was on the cards, but after what happened on Monday, it appears highly doubtful that the tribal chiefs will be willing to strike such a deal. More ominously, one should not be surprised if the carnage at the Ziaul Uloom madressah leads to a backlash in the entire tribal belt. Indeed, the Sept 5 agreement could itself be in jeopardy.

The government must now come clean on the issue. What precisely were the motives behind the attack? Has the strike on the madressah achieved its purpose in the sense that the area has been pacified for good, and did the lethal explosions also kill many innocent civilians? How does the government propose to face up to the expected backlash of the Bajaur strike? And was the attack an attempt to pre-empt a peace deal between the militants and Pakistani authorities along the lines of the North Waziristan accord? Besides paying compensation to the families of those found to be innocent victims, the government must order an inquiry so that facts can be ascertained and responsibility assigned. At the same time, the decision to ban journalists’ entry into the Bajaur agency is not prudent. It suggests that the government may have much to hide.

Mangla disaster revisited

THE lack of internal accountability in Wapda beggars belief. It has taken the water and power authority 14 years to finally admit its culpability in the worst man-made disaster in the history of the country, and that too under intense pressure from the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Faced with rising reservoir levels, engineers at Mangla Dam clearly panicked on September 9, 1992, and suddenly released some 900,000 cusecs without due warning. A wall of water, described by eyewitnesses as twenty feet high, rushed into the villages and army garrisons situated below the dam, killing over 500 people and washing away entire settlements. Besides the loss of life and property, the disaster also came with a political price, widening as it did the growing chasm between the armed forces and the civilian government headed by Mr Nawaz Sharif. The Mangla corps commander at the time laid the blame on Wapda which, in turn, tried to absolve the authority’s top management of any wrongdoing. In a classic case of passing the buck, Wapda argued that the scope of the investigation should be confined to those manning the dam.

The government of the day, for its part, constituted a committee to look into the tragedy. A leading magazine had this to say in October 1992: “So far, nothing concrete has emerged, except official promises of redressal to the affectees on the basis of the cabinet committee’s report. Given the history of similar reports, the people whose lives have been destroyed by the floods may have a long wait ahead of them.” Fourteen years on, compensation is still unlikely even though Wapda’s guilt now appears to have been established beyond doubt. According to the water and power secretary, compensating the Mangla affectees would open the floodgates of demands from “victims of similar tragedies”. An audit department official present at the PAC meeting was also opposed to the idea, claiming that Wapda would be inundated with false claims because entire families had been wiped out. But there are survivors who need to be identified. Wapda, which brought the entire country to a standstill on Sept 24 this year when the national grid collapsed, cannot be let off the hook in this cavalier manner. Justice has been inordinately delayed, but it must not be denied.

Need for new anti-rabies vaccine

IT is disturbing to know that the National Institute of Health in Islamabad is manufacturing and distributing an anti-rabies vaccine that was declared ineffective 20 years ago by the World Health Organisation. According to the Infectious Diseases Society of Pakistan, the NIH had promised in March to reduce production of the vaccine in question but is said to be producing four times more than it had done before. The NIH argues that it is trying to meet the increased demand as the number of dog-bite cases is growing at an alarming rate. That two hospitals in Karachi received 50 dog-bite cases on just one day in September this year is an indication of how severe the problem is. However, that does not justify patients being treated with a vaccine that is considered obsolete. The WHO recommends using a cell-culture vaccine (CCV) which is available in the country but is more expensive and therefore not an option for a poor patient. The IDSP had recommended to the NIH that it import the CCVs from India, which would be cheaper, but despite agreeing to the idea, no action has been taken yet. The NIH must import the required vaccines so that hospitals can deal with rabies cases more effectively.

Of equal importance is putting in place an effective campaign for stray dog management. Previous shoot-to-kill or poisoning efforts have failed. The only effective method is to implement animal birth control programmes. This involves gathering the dogs, and neutering and vaccinating them before release. This has proved successful in many developing countries and a WHO report says that effective immunisation of 70 per cent of dogs in a given area can stop the transmission of rabies. This humane strategy must be adopted in Pakistan before rabies assumes menacing proportions.

A verdict on the Bush years

IT IS undoubtedly a tantalising prospect: if most of the opinion polls and a majority of American political pundits are correct, it could effectively be curtains for the Bush presidency two years ahead of schedule. That scenario is contingent upon the Democrats winning control of both houses of Congress in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. It can happen, but it would be unwise to get too excited before the results are out. The Democrats have a knack, after all, for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Chances are much higher that they will be able to gain control only of the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, all 435 of whose seats are up for election. A gain of 15 would suffice for the Democrats to obtain a majority, and according to several projections they are on course to do substantially better than that. Control of the Senate requires only just additional seats, but that’s a somewhat trickier proposition, given that only 33 contests will take place on November 7.

Democratic control of the House and a reduced Republican majority in the Senate would probably suffice to send the White House into something of a tailspin. On the other hand, if, heaven forbid, the Republicans retain control of both chambers, even with reduced majorities, it would be George W, Bush’s sweetest victory since the hanging chads fiasco in Florida six years ago, when the Supreme Court stepped in to propel him into the White House, even though Al Gore won more votes.

Bush appears to be aware that a resounding electoral humiliation next week would be more or less entirely laid at his administration’s door. That is why he swung into action at the weekend by embarking on a tour of the Republican heartland in a last-ditch effort to shore up support. For much of the campaign, the party’s strategy has been to maintain a distance between the president and most candidates, lest Bush’s poor approval ratings should make matters worse. The change of plans offers more than a hint of desperation.

Does this mean that Karl Rove — the astute, reputedly unflappable and thus far immoderately successful Republican electoral strategist — is on the verge of panic? Earlier this year, Rove was relieved of his responsibilities as the White House deputy chief of staff and policy supremo, presumably in order to enable him to devote his undivided attention to this month’s elections. However, he has retained his honorary role as Bush’s Machiavelli, and chances are that he has been closely involved with the policy-making on the hop that has lately characterised the administration’s shifting stance on Iraq.

It is, in a way, quite remarkable for any American election to be dominated by a foreign policy issue. Back in 1972, for instance, the majority of Americans were, for a variety of reasons, completely fed up with the Vietnam War. Yet in that year’s presidential election, despite a reasonably clear choice between a peace candidate and a certified warmonger, Richard Nixon was able to defeat George McGovern by a landslide. Less than two years later, Nixon was felled by the domestic Watergate scandal. That same year, 1974, the Republicans lost 48 House seats.

Bush’s team evidently decided at some point this year that to get defensive about Iraq would be suicidal. They also realised that it was untenable to go on painting a rosy picture of the conditions in that occupied country. Therefore, in the middle of a month during which at least 100 American soldiers — and thousands of Iraqis — perished, the president was willing to compare the upsurge in violence during Ramazan with the Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968, which exposed the limits of US power in Indochina and convinced the majority of Americans back home that the war was unwinnable.

A significant difference between Tet 1968 and Ramazan 2006 is that well before the free-for-all in Baghdad reached the point where dozens of violent deaths are a daily occurrence, most Americans were already willing to concede that Iraq was a lost cause. Many of them also appear to have cottoned on that the image of Iraq as a crucial frontline in the so-called war on terror has all along been a sham. They will, sooner or later, also realise that the administration has consistently exaggerated the size and significance of Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch. No one can clearly forecast the course of events in Iraq in the event of a sudden American withdrawal: chances are the sectarian bloodshed would continue, and wouldn’t necessarily deteriorate; and while the jostling for power between rival factions may intensify in the short run, the end of foreign occupation could also place them under greater pressure to sue for peace.

It won’t be pretty picture, but even if things get considerably worse before there is a discernible improvement, there is no chance whatsoever of Al Qaeda “taking over” Iraq, as the US administration has been suggesting. The worst-case scenario didn’t cut much ice with the electorate, which has broadly been receptive to hazy Democratic promises of a change of strategy. In the truth, the Democrats have as little idea as the Republicans about what to do next. They lack a coherent alternative plan. Or even an incoherent one, for that matter. Most of them initially went along with the aggression and stayed the course, so to speak, for much too long. They began distancing themselves from the administration’s position only when the scale of the mess could no longer be denied. The Democrats collectively have no credibility on Iraq.

When, despite that, their vague vow of something different proved to be a popular ploy, the administration decided to follow suit. Embarrassingly, Bush was persuaded not only to drop but to disown his perennial mantra of the past few years: “Listen, we have never been ‘stay the course’,” he lied to George Stephanopoulos on ABC TV last week. Meanwhile, the Iraqi prime minister was bristling after having been informed that his government was being set timelines to achieve certain goals, such as subduing the militias that have defied the world’s strongest army. In a teleconference last Saturday, Bush managed to calm Nouri Al Maliki down somewhat, but tensions between Malikis supposedly sovereign government and Zalmay Khalilzad, the American viceroy in Baghdad, remain unresolved.

The administration also irritated the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, by compelling him to retract the comment that he might ask for more troops. But perhaps what took the cake was State Department spin doctor Alberto Fernandez’s admission on Al Jazeera that “there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the US in Iraq”. That clearly came too close to the truth. A day later he was forced to apologise and claim that he had “misspoken”.

Were the election to be won and lost exclusively on the Iraqi battlefield, those inclined to vote would have found it relatively easy to pick the lesser evil. The local issues range from immigration (which is mostly about building barriers against Mexican workers) and social security to the state of the economy, with the Democrats expecting a voting-day boost as a consequence of their support for minimum-wage initiatives in several states. But combating indifference is only part of the story. Not only have the Republicans generally been better at rallying the faithful, but election rules in certain crucial states are geared towards dissuading the hoi-polloi from venturing too close to a polling station. What’s more, a number of states boast spanking new electronic voting machines that are open to manipulation and vulnerable to hacking.

The Republicans have also had far more cash to play with — only in recent weeks have corporate donors, seeing the popular trend, begun to favour the Democrats — and a substantial proportion of it has gone into negative advertising, including a subliminally racist TV spot in Tennessee, where Democrat Harold Ford is seeking to become the first black senator from the South in well over a century. Apart from the war and the Bush administration’s indefensible stance on torture (which, tellingly, doesn’t appear to bother too many Americans), the Republicans have also had to contend with a series of scandals, ranging from House majority leader Tom DeLay’s political demise over corruption to Congressman Mark Foley’s resignation last month following revelations about his predatory approach to teenage boys. It turned out that the Republican leadership, including House speaker Dennis Hastert, had been aware of Foley’s follies for years and chose to cover up his sleazy activities instead of pulling the plug on him.

Leaks from the deliberations of an Iraq study group led by former secretary of state (and Bush family consigliere) James Baker suggest that a post-November 7 change of course may even include something as sensible as coordination with Syria and Iraq. But that seems a long way off, and chances are that Karl Rove has a dramatic election-eve surprise up his sleeve. If General Musharraf can’t come up with Osama’s head, Maliki may have to oblige with the next best thing: the death penalty for Saddam as the climax to the first phase of his farcical trial in Baghdad.

Would that swing it for the Republicans? No one can say for sure. What’s clear is that in the context of the Bush years, November 7 represents the last opportunity for Americans to redeem themselves. To do so requires common sense more than courage. Will they or won’t they? Let’s see. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, but I refuse to hold my breath.

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