For Pakistan’s own stability

ADDRESSING a symposium attended by senior military officials from 22 countries in Islamabad the other day, President Musharraf said all the right things about Pakistan’s role in the global war against terrorism. It is Pakistan which has captured and handed over the highest number of militants to the US so far, yet there seems to be only a grudging acknowledgement of this fact. Gen Musharraf warned the US-led coalition forces trying to restore peace in Afghanistan of quitting the ‘war on terror’ if they did not stop questioning Pakistan’s role and intentions in the fight against terrorism. Instead, he proposed that the coalition and Afghan forces, together with those of Pakistan, should jointly fight against the threat posed to Afghanistan’s stability by the resurgent Taliban. This makes good sense because the enemy being fought against in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan is a common one. The threat posed to Pakistan’s own peace and security by foreign militants backed by Al Qaeda, including Uzbeks and the Afghan Taliban hiding in the border region, is no secret. The local tribesmen in South Waziristan have helped the government forces fight off the militants for now. But because of a lack of coordinated effort on the part of the coalition and Afghan forces across the border, there can be no guarantee that the militants will not regroup and resume acts of violence and terror elsewhere. Under the circumstances, it is unwise to play the blame game, as Mr Karzai’s administration has been doing.

For its part, Pakistan has even offered to fence the Durand Line to stop the Taliban guerrillas from crossing the border, but Kabul continues to show resistance to the move for reasons better known to it. Islamabad has also been pressing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to repatriate thousands of Afghans who are still living in Pakistan. It is they, Gen Musharraf insists, and not Pakistani militants, who keep crossing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and who may be responsible for helping the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. Pakistan has suffered enormously as a result of the fallout of the coalition forces’ on-going but ineffective action against the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the former are seen as non-Muslims fighting against Muslims. It has bred religious extremism not only in the adjacent border areas of Pakistan but also deeper inside, threatening radicalisation of society. This Islamabad has to fight off without seeking any help from outsiders. But the least the latter can do is to stop pointing an accusing finger at Pakistan.

The threat of militancy posed by clerics and women madressah students of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, for instance, cannot be ignored. The government’s failure to tackle it firmly and swiftly can lead to a potential snowballing of extremism among radicalised elements elsewhere too. The state can ill-afford to soft-peddle on the issue any longer than it has. The tactic has emboldened rather than moderated the extremists. The emerging threat at home remains a battle that Pakistan must fight with a resolute will and fight it to the finish. The country cannot be allowed to be at the mercy of religious fanatics. The government should take heart from the resistance being put up by civil society to the forces of obscurantism and the show of support for moderate values espoused by the vast majority, as witnessed at the rally held yesterday by citizens of Karachi.

Zakat on property

SHORT cuts have become the hallmark of almost anything involving the prime minister and his closest aides. No surprise then that the most convenient way out of a complex problem is being sought yet again, this time in connection with additional zakat funds for poverty alleviation. The cabinet, it seems, is set to approve the imposition of zakat on real estate assets — a move that smacks of double taxation and fails to address the real issues impeding poverty alleviation. There is no honest talk of belt-tightening within a government that is more extravagant in its ways than the administrations of many developed countries. Nor has there been any effort to significantly reduce defence expenditure in a country which, in the words of the army chief himself, faces no external enemy. Instead of tackling root causes, expediency remains the government’s guiding norm.

Pakistani citizens already pay property tax on built-up real estate assets, and to subject the same to zakat as well is totally unfair to genuine investors and persons with fixed incomes. Instead of taxing holdings, it would be more appropriate and equitable to increase capital gains and capital value taxes on property, stock and commodity transactions. Not only would the revenues be higher, the burden of extra taxation would be borne only by the rich engaged in speculative trading. The government, for its part, believes that zakat on real estate is justified now that wealth tax has been abolished. This begs the question: in the old order, was any percentage of wealth tax revenues ever directed towards zakat disbursement? Also, what proof is there besides the government’s word that zakat collection accounts for less than half the amount supposedly disbursed every year? A detailed audit of zakat transactions over the last several years, supervised by the Public Accounts Committee and open to public scrutiny, is in order. On paper at least, 10 per cent of the proceeds of privatisation must be earmarked for poverty alleviation. According to the minister for privatisation, the sale of 61 state-owned assets netted the government over Rs360 billion between 1999 and 2006. Has any of this, let alone Rs36 billion, gone towards poverty alleviation?

Obstacles in anti-polio drive

AS pointed out in a Dawn report some days ago, there are several factors obstructing the progress of inoculations against polio in Karachi. A major reason is the reluctance of families to allow vaccination teams to enter their houses in the absence of male members of the family. There is also wariness regarding the vaccine and the credentials of the person administering it. All this delays the process of ensuring that each child is vaccinated against the dreaded disease. Very often inoculation teams return to the base tired and frustrated at not being able to administer the drops to the number of children they had targeted. In a city like Karachi where medical outlets are aplenty, parents can easily take their children to a hospital or clinic to get them vaccinated. Nevertheless, the polio teams should not take this for granted. Instead, efforts should be reinforced to ensure door-to-door administration of the polio drops.

Medical teams have asked the government that their timings be rescheduled to weekends and evenings so that the children and the men folk are at home. This is a sensible demand which, if implemented, could help the vaccination teams achieve the desired results. What the teams should also be looking at is greater coordination with the building management of residential high-rises and mohallah committees. Announcing the arrival of the teams in advance and setting up makeshift vaccination camps nearby would encourage mothers to bring their children to be inoculated, especially as this would allow them more time to consult their husbands. The sight of other women bringing their children would also strengthen their faith in the medical team. There is less resistance to polio drops in the urban areas than in far-flung villages, and a determined effort to spread polio awareness among the people there and help them cast off their doubts and superstitions can yield positive results if the exercise is carried out in an intelligent and coordinated manner.

Towards the dark alleys of obscurantism

LAL MASJID boys wearing the Palestinian kaffiyeh are a sight that is laughable. Do those who indoctrinate these raw minds bother to tell their followers that the Palestinians with those bandannas are not having fun but are involved in the deadly business of fighting the Israeli wehrmacht?

In fact, since the second intifada began, over 4,000 Palestinian boys have sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom but not before they had killed nearly 1,100 Israelis in retaliation. For the Lal Masjid boys, however, the polka-dotted kaffiyeh is a fashion, and like all fashions, it is transient, has no moral basis and is designed merely to catch attention.

Whatever has been going on in the Lal Masjid environs and elsewhere in Pakistan smacks of the pre-Islamic Jaheliyah, an Arabic word that defies an exact one-word translation in English. The word stands for the following ideas rolled into one – bigotry, anarchic barbarism, misconceived notions of honour, a tendency to seek instant revenge for a perceived hurt, indifference to human suffering, and a total absence of compassion. In other words, the state of nature as portrayed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan.

Dr Jamil Jalibi, whom some people were fortunate to know as a school teacher in Bahadur Yar Jang School and who later rose to become Vice-Chancellor of the Karachi University and head of the National Language Authority, says there are two kinds of Jehalat: One is jehl-i-murakkab – widespread jehalat in society; the other is jehl-i-baseet, an all-encompassing and overpowering jehalat. Pakistan, says Dr Jalibi, is in the grip of jehl-i-baseet.

In today’s Pakistan the target of one’s vengeance often has no relationship with the cause that prompted it. In February last year, mobs roamed the streets of Pakistani cities paralysing life and burning and vandalising public and private property. Feb13 saw the worst riot in Peshawar’s history, and on Feb 14 in Lahore two people were killed as mobs torched 250 vehicles and damaged 100 buildings, including the Punjab Assembly.

All this not because the dead or any of their relatives or the institutions they belonged to had committed any crime, but because a newspaper in a distant country had published a blasphemous cartoon.

In what way the death of those innocent people and the loss of property serve the cause of Islam or deterred a future European blasphemer is not clear.

Moreover, it would be wrong to assume that a given political party or madressah aroused the crowds to religious frenzy. That those who gave the call for the strike were responsible for the conduct of their acolytes goes without saying. But, those who burnt and vandalised and caused deaths were largely on their own, and this is a greater cause for concern that must make the nation’s thinkers sit up. The poison of instant violence has gone deep and spread in the body politic, and anyone can make use of it – depending on what emotive cause he chooses to exploit.

In Karachi, the murder of Maulanas Yusuf Ludhianvi, Saleem Qadri and Shamzai and the blast in Nishtar Park in April last year on the day of Eid-e-Miladdun-Nabi saw this phenomenon at its peak. Following Maulana Ludhianvi’s assassination, mobs roamed the streets, attacking public and private property, and at least two people were suffocated to death when the offices of Business Recorder were attacked.

Originally, Dawn’s page-one story had intended to inform the readers of the obvious news – that Maulana Ludhianvi had been assassinated. By late in the evening, the picture had completely changed as mobs went about pillaging and burning, with the murder story appearing as a single-column news item.

The main three-column heading was “Mob paralyses Karachi”. The strap line said: “Newspaper offices sacked, bank looted”. The next day, there was a complete strike punishing for no fault of theirs over 10 million men, women and children, while medical services were paralysed.Ambulances being attacked are not a new phenomenon in Pakistan, because a mass insanity seems to descend on mobs when they take to the streets.

On April 11 last year, the bomb blast at Karachi’s Nishtar Park killed over 50 people. The nation was shocked. However, angry crowds blocked the movement of ambulances carrying those very people who were injured in the blast. The behaviour must shame us especially when we realise that, during clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli army, ambulances are allowed to operate in war zones.

So far, it is men who have been violent. A new and more perverse side to the new, national psyche came to the fore when burqa-clad women took to violence in Islamabad last month.

The raid on a home, the dishonouring of a family and the abduction of three women were more than three acts of crime; they underlined the entrenchment in some Pakistani minds of some false values masquerading as a religious obligation.

Holding a press conference a couple of days later, a spokeswoman for the Hafsa girls said there were 22 brothels in

G-Sector in Islamabad alone. Then what was the point in dishonouring and abducting one family? Did that raid and abduction lead to an abolition of prostitution throughout the country? In the first place, an act of crime cannot be justified on the plea that it was meant to end another crime.

But if, for argument’s sake, it is conceded that the abduction and the beating and disgrace to which that woman and her daughters were subjected had led to an elimination of brothels throughout the country, perhaps one could have fewer reservations about it. But, without the benefit of that press conference, we know that Pakistan, like every country in the world, has thousands of women involved in that business.

The phenomena represented by the attack on that Islamabad apartment and its approval by some sections of the clerics represent social diseases beyond the corrective powers of legislation and the law enforcement agencies. Asking the government to see to it that its writ prevails is to be naive. The state cannot take action that will be counterproductive and help exactly those forces against which force is meant to be used.

There are many causes for the rise of forces of bigotry and obscurantism, but one that is often ignored is the profusion of writers on Islam in newspapers catering to popular tastes but without the intellectual and academic calibre needed for the task. In this category also fall some clerics appearing on popular TV talk shows. The other causes include the unabashed use of violence or threat of violence for political purposes projected as religious aims, and the carte blanche which everyone has arrogated to himself or herself to “spread good and suppress evil”.

The tragedy is that the idiom and jargon developed by learned scholars have been pirated and vulgarised by those who lack a world vision, and have interpreted Islam in a way that is devoid of compassion and focuses solely on the use of force and coersion.

What kind of Islam are we then chasing? According to the late Eqbal Ahmad, one of Pakistan’s greatest intellectuals, we are chasing an Islamic order “stripped of its humanism, aesthetics, intellectual quests and spiritual devotion … concerned with power not with the soul, with the mobilisation of people for political purposes rather than with sharing and alleviating their sufferings and aspirations”.

Garden birdwatching

How many people in Britain would get up on a cold January morning, just after a snowfall, and sit in a freezing garden shed for an hour watching birds land in their garden? The answer, apparently, is more than 400,000.

Even if half of those did it from the kitchen window, the statistics of the Big Garden Birdwatch organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) would impress any psephologist -- 6.5 million birds observed across 236,000 gardens on one weekend in January.

If the French and Italian instinct when they see something fly over them on a winter's day is to take out a double-barrelled shotgun, the British tend to reach for nothing more lethal than a pair of binoculars.

But before we get too lyrical about our love of garden birdlife, it is worth reminding ourselves of another statistic from the RSPB: nine million domestic cats kill the equivalent of the population of Britain in birds every year.

The garden is quite a competitive place, as anyone who has tried to keep snails off their hostas will tell you. Making a garden bird-friendly can also involve some bizarre routines, like attempting to lock up the cat at dawn and dusk when they hunt most effectively (a good one that), or putting the bird feeders on light branches, or putting warm water in the bird bath to prevent it freezing over.

Not all birdwatching in winter involves freezing and waiting. You can now buy a bird box fitted with CCTV and watch the soap opera unfolding inside your living room. Hours of drama are to be had.

— The Guardian, London