| December 30, 2006 | Saturday | Zilhaj 08, 1427 |
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The whole truth
US sanctions on Iran
Mines along the border
Think outside the box
The fight against corruption
Goodbye and good luck
Too much to ask?
Not cool
Danger
Turkish Republic of Cyprus
Homeless in Paris
First counting of heads
Rescue mission
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
IN his letter titled “Yet again” (Dec 28), Syed Farhan Qadri has very rightly mentioned the poor law and order situation in Pakistan. I am sorry for the loss that his family has suffered.
However, given the current state of our country, should we to sit back and wait for things to get better on their own? Who is responsible for this country? Is it just the government, or a particular group or an institution?
If all of us who want to help Pakistan wait for the right time to start the building process then the right time will probably never come. Our country doesn’t need this passive approach. Our real contribution would be to take the first step now, otherwise it would be mere selfishness to live in the country when times are good and shun it during troubled times.
However, I do agree that it’s easier said than done but would making an effort hurt? Let’s start working for our country which has given us so much. No matter which part of the world we are in, lets all start contributing towards the progress of Pakistan in whatever manner we can. As they say: “Diyae se diyae jalao”. We can still save our country -InshaAllah.
NAJLA HASHMI
Cairo, Egypt
SYED Farhan Qadri wants to come back to Pakistan and so do other professionals working abroad, but they can’t do so because of state of lawlessness in country. I’ll not try to compare the rate of crime in Pakistan with that in western countries for that is what our government functionaries normally do to justify their shortcomings.
However, I would still ask Mr Qadri to come back to Pakistan because he and other Pakistani professionals can help bring prosperity to our country, which will consequently reduce poverty and increase education. Eventually, it would also help reduce the prevailing lawlessness in our midst. With the help of people like Farhan Qadri we can hope for a brighter future.
SOULAT PASHA
Karachi
I sympathise with Mr Qadri and the families of all those who have either been robbed or subjected to terror. My first cousin was killed in a robbery attempt. He left behind a young widow and two minor daughters. His widow, although completely heart broken, has gathered the courage to fend for her daughters by taking up a job. She did not leave for a foreign land.
It is the right of every individual to work in any country they wish, but if you talk about helping your own country then you have to give sacrifices. One cannot leave the country and wait till such time that the conditions have improved. We need people like you to come back and help this nation during the good times, as well as the bad.
MIR MOATAZID
Karachi
I FELT like vomiting after seeing the photograph on the front page (Dec 29).What happened to the young man is humiliating, insulting and barbaric. This incident shows the ugly face of our rotten bureaucracy and especially the police high-ups who spare no effort in pleasing their political bosses.
The photograph is a slap on this nation’s face. How can a country like Pakistan blame India for human rights abuses in Indian Kashmir? Can we honestly now blame western governments for their excessive and humiliating behavior towards us at their airports?
The universal and simple truth is that only nations who respect their own citizens get respect from others. Unfortunately we don’t fall into this category.
KHALID MUSTAFA
Lahore
YOUR front page photograph showed an unarmed young man named Mohammed bin Masood being beaten and stripped by more than three policemen for protesting over the disappearance of his father. This incident was extremely shocking and hurtful. We Pakistanis are used to being disappointed by the behaviour and misdeeds of the police. But the fact that the newspaper printed a full colour, front page picture of the young man on the receiving end of this misfortune while being stripped not only of his shalwar but dignity as well was very unnerving.
Were there no other pictures of the scuffle available to be printed with the report which mentioned that the young man’s sister was also present among the crowd? And do the police think that the GHQ is such an unsecured location that the ‘efficient’ policemen, accompanied by senior police officers, had to stop a peaceful protest through such measures?
It is incidents like this that give President Musharraf’s government a bad repute. He is an honest man and I am a die hard supporter of his and his government, but where does his authority vanish when an incident like this takes place and goes unreprimanded?
HARIS ZUBERI
Karachi
YOUR editorial titled ‘US Sanctions on Iran’ (Dec 27) rightly states that the Bush administration was bound to impose sanctions on Iran under one pretext or the other. Any plan for economic or military sanctions could not materialise because of Chinese and Russian opposition, and yet another regional conflict was averted by these two permanent members of the Security Council.
As if Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough, one more venture was planned by the neo-cons in the Bush administration. This was done, in spite of the fact that a highly respected Iraq Crisis Report has pleaded for involving Iran in a dialogue to solve the Iraqi crisis, and also to resolve the Palestinian issue. The Bush administration has not learnt a lesson from the Republican Party’s defeat in the midterm elections, which was also a referendum against similar hostile ventures.
The remaining two years of the Bush administration will be a testing time for the American people as well as for the world community. Although the Democrat-dominated Congress will exercise its function of checks and balances, the President still has the ability to create a crisis by improvising various methods or by creating conditions in which Congress will have no option but to go along with the Chief Executive.
Experience in Iraq, and even Afghanistan, demonstrates that even a superpower has its limitations and that the resistance to it can be much more stiff and lethal than ever anticipated. Iran is a large country with a population of over 60 million. Its people are also more united than those in the two neighbouring countries. Furthermore, any misadventure against Iran can prompt that country to completely destabilise the already precarious situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran also has sufficient leverage in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East and can create problems for the United States.
In the interest of world peace, and for its own sake, the Bush administration would be better advised to restrain itself. Dialogue, as the Baker-Hamilton Report has recommended, is the best way to solve regional issues.
DR SYED FAROOQ HASNAT
Washington DC, USA
THE Pakistan government’s decision to mine certain areas of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border so as to stop cross-border movement of terrorists is illogical and would backfire — no pun intended.
First, it amounts to a tacit admission that terrorists are indeed entering Afghanistan from Pakistan. Moreover, it would result in death or injuries to many innocent border crossers, and considering the interwoven culture, spread over the border areas of both countries, the trekking – free of formal border-crossing procedures – would not end overnight.
Granted that Pakistan is one of the countries that have not signed the Ottawa Convention against mining, the moral limitations that the convention puts on the signatory states cannot be simply ignored. The images of maimed and dead children, men and women whose only crime was to be unaware of the markings that the government functionaries say will be placed in the mined areas (as required by the UN resolutions against mining) would make Pakistan look callous.
Moreover, it is obvious that this drastic move would not even achieve its objective. Why would the terrorists not avoid the marked mined areas and continue to use the un-mined areas for their one-way trip across the border? People who unknowingly ignore the markings would be the innocent border crossers.
Instead of taking this desperate and extreme step that would do more harm than good, the government should take Afghanistan-based NATO forces into full confidence about its existing strategy to stymie cross-border terrorism, and welcome suggestions to accentuate it. It should then ask NATO to help the incompetent Afghan leaders to deal with their resilient insecurities that frequently manifest as wild accusations against Pakistan.
SIDDIQUE MALIK
Louisville, USA
I READ with interest the response of B.K. Vasan to M.J. Akbar’s article. The new Brahmins of India are not to be found in temples or some far-flung ashrams. They are found in India’s burgeoning IT industry and in the hundreds of BPOs that colour the Indian economy.
The new Indian Brahmin is Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh. Just as the old Brahmins leveraged their knowledge of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the new Brahmins are engineers, doctors and PhDs who use their superior knowledge to bring about social change. Unlike the old Brahmins, the new Brahmins are changing the way business is conducted worldwide.
For once in India’s history which spans nearly three millennia, its not lineage alone that will determine a person’s standing in society. As to the question of why Indians excel in MIT and Harvard, other than just hard work, I guess its something uniquely South Asian (Pakistanis included) to think outside of the box.
BRIJESH PRABHAKAR
St. Louis, USA
ON Dec 9, NAB commemorated Anti-Corruption day with great fanfare. The objective was to create public awareness against the evils of corruption. It organised walks with the Sindh governor and ministers leading the participants and the prime minister delivered his obligatory speech about the government’s strategy to fight corruption.
Transparency International has placed Pakistan 142nd out of 163 countries on its list of corrupt countries, indicating that corruption has increased since the 1999 military takeover, when Pakistan was ranked 87th. “Pakistan continues to remain among the concentration of so-called failed states at the bottom of the ranking,” reads the report, released on the Anti-Corruption day. Therefore, after spending hundreds of millions of rupees of the taxpayer’s money on NAB, the military government has failed to reduce corruption and we find that white-collar crime is booming.
Bangladesh with its turbulent politics has fared better and has reduced corruption, whereas India, which at one time had been bracketed with Pakistan, has drastically improved its ranking and has risen above Saudi Arabia. What is surprising is that the report indicates that the abuse of public office for private gain is more rampant in the oil-rich Islamic kingdoms of Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya than in remote Bhutan and Uruguay in Latin Americamwhere one half of the population lives below poverty level. This suggests that poverty does not necessarily breed corruption, but simple greed, poor governance and of course the lack of accountability and enforcement of the rule of law, because of a weak judicial system.
The first requirement in dealing with the menace of corruption is to appoint independent and honest, professionally trained investigators, under a senior, retired judge of the Supreme Court, who are well paid and cannot be influenced by those who they are investigating.
Second is that that the investigation must avoid favoritism and must not be used as a political tool to victimise or blackmail. Nobody should be above the law, irrespective of the office he or she holds, including the armed forces and the judiciary. Unless those guilty of these high profile crimes are brought to justice, we will not be able to rid ourselves of corruption and Pakistan will have to live with this indignity of being one of the most corrupt countries of the world.
At the same time, the government must improve the quality of life of the citizens by providing them the basic civic facilities, education, health, etc., which are the fundamental rights of the citizens and not mega projects, exotic beach resorts and tall buildings. Till the government fulfils its basic obligations to the citizens and visible reduction in corruption, NAB has no justification for holding ceremonial Anti-Corruption day walks and conferences in five-star hotels as it dilutes its credibility.
HELPLINE TRUST
Karachi
THIS is in response to Ibne Inayat’s letter (Dec 20). I agree with everything he has said about Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai, even though I am not at all interested in what happens in Afghanistan. However, I was anguished and more so shocked by his suggestion that “Afghan brothers and sisters can live in Pakistan as long as they wish”.
I would like to remind Mr Inayat that Pakistan is for Pakistanis and not for Afghan brothers and sisters. They have already done us a lot of favours, for example fueling the Kalashnikov culture, drugs, smuggling, religious extremism and of course, the economic overload.
Its now time we do Pakistan and ourselves a favour and show all the Afghan refugees the way back to Afghanistan. In their place jobless Pakistanis can do their jobs, while homeless ones could live in their homes and so on. And yes, Ibne Inayat and other sympathetic Pakistanis like him are certainly welcome go to Afghanistan to help their Afghan brothers and sisters. I wish them best of luck.
NAVEED ALI
Manchester, UK
I BELONG to a middle class family. It is not possible for me to maintain a car so I have to take a rickshaw whenever I need to travel around the city.
The rickshaw can be a painful means of transport, especially on the broken roads of Latifabad. Whenever I go out with my family my four month old son constantly cries due to the loud noise and jerks of the rickshaw.
I obviously cannot use a more comfortable mode of transport due to the lack of funds, but I can at least request the district nazim of Hyderbad to improve the condition of roads in the city. Or is that too much to ask?
JUST WASIF
Latifabad, Hyderabad
UPON arriving in Karachi from Chicago via PIA, I was not prepared to see a fellow traveller (young with fashionably long hair and a beard, clearly working hard on the cool factor) light up a cigarette inside the Karachi terminal.
Oh how, I would have liked to see this wannabe do the same in Manchester or Chicago with the same cool indifference. I wanted very much to simply ask him: “Why?” Alas, I was in a hurry to visit my father on his death bed and did not do so.
People cannot complain about the government and absolve themselves of all responsibilities. Expatriates should not leave their education behind when they visit. And as for that young man, lighting up upon arrival was the most disrespectful thing he could have done to his motherland. Not cool.
RAFI SHEIKH
Minneapolis, USA
I would like to draw the attention of Super Highway Authorities to the danger posed by truck drivers who have made several openings on the highway for crossing the road at their convenience.
It is highly risky for speedy motorists, as the sudden appearance of the vehicles in the middle of the road can cause accidents. I have already witnessed one such accident recently. Please act before it is too late.
RAKSHANDA OVAIS
Karachi
IT is to be regretted that the European Union has deferred the admission of Turkey in its fold because Turkey does not allow ships and aircrafts from Greek Cyprus in its ports and airports.
As Turkey says, quite rightly, it will not do so until economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is ended.
It is a pity that except Turkey itself, no other country in the world recognises the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
We are not even concerned with the rest of the world. We need to ask our government why it has not recognised the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Pakistan should recognise the Turkish Republic of Cyprus at once before any other country.
Turkey did no wrong when it invaded Cyprus in retaliation to Greek involvement in an attempted coup in Turkey.
SALAHUDDIN MIRZA
Karachi
THIS is with reference to the front page photograph entitled ‘Homeless in Paris’ (Dec 28).
I was somewhat saddened by the coverage given to homeless people in Paris, when people in our country face a similar problem and in much larger numbers too.
Yet still they are not given any media coverage anywhere.
SHAYAN ASLAM KHAN
Karachi
‘MUSHARRAF ahead of Benazir, Nawaz in popularity poll’ is a finding of the research wing of the US Republican party.
Be that it may, the finding appears to be an amazing extension of what the US secretary of state said recently that “we are not looking for post-Musharraf Pakistan now”.
Z.A. KAZMI
Karachi
MY telephone (number 6800913) has been out of order since Nov 4, 2006. Since then I have been running from pillar to post, registering complaints and meeting top officials for the rectification of my phone. Even the offices of the EVP-OPS South, the GM. STR-III and Director Zone-8 Azizabad telephone exchange have turned a deaf ear to my complaint. Will any one of the concerned officials come to my rescue and rectify my phone?
SOHAIL JAWED
Karachi
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