A state of emergency?

TUESDAY’s bomb blast that killed 18 persons coincided with a remark by a state minister that the imposition of emergency was one of the options before the government. Speaking on television, Minister of State for Information Tariq Azim said the declaration of a state of emergency was one of the options to enhance the people’s security and improve the law and order situation. While Mr Azim was perhaps giving us an inkling of the government’s thinking, Ms Benazir Bhutto saw the blast as a conspiracy to precipitate the imposition of emergency. Giving her reaction to the carnage in Islamabad that killed many PPP workers, Ms Bhutto said that “a hidden hand” was trying to create anarchy to pave the way for an emergency. She said that a civil war was going on in the country and that the proclamation of an emergency would not end it. While one may differ with Ms Bhutto over the conspiracy and civil war theories, her concern about the possibility of emergency cannot be dismissed lightly. One often hears from government quarters that the life of the existing assemblies could be extended by another year and the election postponed.

It is not clear in what way a declaration of emergency will help improve law and order. What is going on in the country cannot be called a mere deterioration in the law order situation; it is a war unleashed on Pakistan by religious terrorists. That they should have killed innocent men, women and children because they are opposed to the government’s policy shows the perversity of the minds of the elements masquerading as soldiers of Islam. If there is any group of people that deserves to be tackled with an iron hand it is this band of killers on the move. Lal Masjid symbolised not terrorism but rebellion, for the rebels had turned it into their headquarters. It was an act of rebellion not against the government alone but against the country itself and its systems, norms and values. That rebellion had to be crushed, for it was a challenge to Pakistan’s sovereignty, and if any innocent people were lost in that process it is the leaders of the rebellion who are responsible for it. The government committed not one but many mistakes in dealing with the Lal Masjid affair. Also, one takes into account the fact that the illegal additions to the Lal Masjid and the construction of the six-storey Hafsa building took place over more than a decade, several governments can be held responsible for allowing the nucleus of a rebellion to be built in Pakistan’s capital. But we repeat that the ordinary people do not deserve to be killed and injured because someone has reservations abut the Musharraf government’s foreign policy.

The government must come out clearly with an election schedule. The longer the delay in announcing the programme for the election, the greater will be the sense of uncertainty and crisis. A state of emergency will make no difference to the situation. Are there, for instance, any measures which the government cannot take today without imposing emergency? Hardly. On the other hand, the announcement of an election schedule will divert the people’s and parties’ attention into democratic channels, and the politicians will focus all their energies on electioneering. While one would condemn terrorists unreservedly, one cannot but note with regret the utter political mess created by the generals.

A forgotten lot

ISLAMABAD has much on its plate right now. The writ of the state is being challenged in the bloodiest possible terms, the judicial crisis is nearing a denouement likely to be unfavourable to the government and the president’s allies in the West are pushing for the restoration of genuine democracy — something not witnessed in the country since at least 1999. Self-preservation is the order of the day, so much so that the government is wondering if it should impose a state of emergency. Little surprise then that the government has little time to worry about the people whose lives have been torn asunder by storms and floods in Sindh and Balochistan. However, political crises or security threats can never be an excuse for leaving hundreds of thousands of people in the lurch at a time when they direly need the assistance of the state. Sadly, such sheer negligence is nothing new. Self-interest has been the primary preoccupation of successive governments in Pakistan, and the trend continues to this day.

In Sindh, the situation is deteriorating by the day, not improving or even stabilising. More and more villages are coming under water and the number of displaced persons increasing. In all, at least 300,000 people in Sindh and Balochistan are still in dire need of food and shelter, let alone other basic necessities of life. And the problem will not end when the waters recede. Upwards of two million people, barely subsisting to begin with, have lost all that they possessed — homes, household goods, livestock, seed supplies — and could be reduced to a life of beggary if rehabilitation is not forthcoming well in time. Not just one but several generations may suffer, adding to the growing ranks of the rural poor. While humanitarian concerns are paramount at this stage, the political aspect of the current crisis cannot be ignored either. A sense of neglect and marginalisation is strong in Balochistan and Sindh. Failure by the centre to come to the aid of the needy will only reinforce this view.

A deplorable case of abuse

THE arrest of a cleric in Mandi Bahauddin on Monday may not bring much joy to the parents of Mazhar Iqbal, the young boy he is charged with torturing, sexually abusing and killing, but it will prove reassuring for other students. This is not the first time a maulana of a madressah has been charged with sexual abuse but in order to reduce such cases, the law will have to ensure that he is awarded the strictest of punishments. Had it not been for two other students who escaped the madressah and alerted their parents that Iqbal had died at the hands of the maulana, and not because of cholera as was being falsely claimed, the matter would have ended differently. When the parents had an autopsy conducted on their son, they found torture marks, a fractured backbone, failed lungs and kidney and a hole in his chest, the result of severe beating with a wooden rod. That this crime was committed by madressah teacher makes it more despicable. His criminal act must not go unpunished. It is important to make conditions safe and secure for students. Parents must believe their children are safe at schools and madressahs and students must also be able to differentiate between a teacher’s acceptable and inappropriate behaviour. This incident also strengthens the argument for a stricter check on madressahs known for their brutal methods of punishment as well as condoning violence. Their method of teaching as well as what is being taught must be properly regulated.

It is important that the maulana is made to pay for his crime and never allowed to teach again. School administrations must also take the strictest of actions against any teacher charged with abusing his/her powers. There are laws against corporal punishment which must be strictly enforced if there is to be a more congenial environment in madressahs.

Is the world under siege by Muslims?

IS the world under siege by Muslims or are Muslims under siege by the world? Now that the last hope of liberals, Indian Muslims, seem to have joined this world in Glasgow, or perhaps the world has reached their doorstep through Australia, the question has shifted yet further from an answer.

Are we in that dark penumbra of history when the only response to a question is more questions? Let me unburden myself of the one at the top of my mind. Which of the two is more self-defeating — the bruised breast of a self-flagellating Indian liberal who moans that all certainty has collapsed ever since Kafeel Ahmed drove a flaming Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport, or the crude fist of the zealot who gloats that you can put the Muslim anywhere but you cannot change his fundamental fanatic character?

On consideration, the first is the bigger problem if only because nothing better could be expected from the second. Both positions are based on the same fallacy. They lay the sins of a few upon the head of the community.

Must all Indian Muslims be punished with collective guilt because a Kafeel or a Shakeel, provoked by memories and images that could easily range from Babri to Basra, has chosen to vent his rage through unacceptable violence upon innocents? Do we blame Hinduism or Hindus for the malevolence of those who killed and terrorised Muslims in Gujarat five years ago? We do not, and must not. Is there any reason why Muslims converge so easily into a category?

A related question: how Indian is the Indian who has left India? Think about the nuances before jumping into that dangerous pit called a conclusion. Those of us who live in India, and have worked through the snide insults of the sixties, the jeers of the seventies, the doubts of the eighties, the despair of the nineties to arrive at the rising confidence of this decade have a right to some marginal satisfaction at our nation’s achievement.

We have no right to be smug, though, as long as half a billion Indians go to sleep hungry, perhaps even famished. Our social fabric has strengthened, but is still vulnerable to wear and tear. The immediate future is going to be as difficult as the past, as the guns of Naxalites constantly remind us. But there is a question: is India of the 21st century only as strong as its weakest link?

If that is true then there is something untenable about the structure of success.

Cause and effect are such troublesome concepts. Which comes first? That is only the beginning of another round of questions. Cause and effect mutate, then interlink and spawn bastard progeny. In Iraq, George Bush has trapped America in the coils of linkages that have now escaped the limitations of logic.

Five years ago, there was only one terrorist in Iraq: Saddam Hussein. He terrorised his people, perhaps the worst form of terrorism. There was one reason for anger five years ago. Who can count how many reasons jostle for attention in a young person’s mind after four years of war, mayhem and occupation? Four million Iraqis have been displaced; the demographic equivalent in India would be more than 200 million uprooted. That is the scale of the human disaster. No one has an accurate count of the Iraqi dead.

Bush spends a quarter million dollars a minute on just the war in Iraq. Read that again, it isn’t a mistake: a quarter million dollars every minute. That bill doesn’t include the costs in Afghanistan. Even the British appetite for Bush has ebbed, with a cabinet minister saying that British policy will not be joined at the hip to Washington. British casualties are now approaching the rate suffered in the Second World War. And only 22 per cent of Iraqis support the presence of Anglo-American troops.

Whatever the cause, such are the effects. As Paul Wood, defence correspondent for British television’s Today programme, said recently, “Who wants to be the last man to die for a lost cause?”

A newspaper is life distilled into still life. If the siege we mentioned is global, then perhaps a good checkpoint is a global newspaper through which we might ponder the mysteries of cause and effect. On the front page of the July 12 edition is a moving photograph of a woman, her head bowed beyond sight, her tears hidden in the cusp of an anguished hand, sobbing on the coffin of a lost son or husband, one of the over 8,000 Muslims massacred by Serbs in Srebrenica 12 years ago, during the ethnic cleansing that began on July 11, 1995. They have just identified a fresh lot of 465 victims.

Where is one of the principal leaders of this genocide, a mass murderer called General Ratko Mladic? If you want to chat with him, down at the nearest cafe. If you are the European Union or America, then he becomes invisible. He cannot be found.

Below this picture is the story of Lal Masjid, a citadel of paranoia, xenophobia and terrorism masquerading as a mosque and madressah. There are no Christians or Serbs in this battle in Pakistan, which has taken at least a hundred lives. This is a war between different attitudes to faith. And this is proof that terrorism is a fire that can also burn the hand of those who feed it.

To the left of this picture is a story about Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s top security official, a heavyweight in Angela Merkel’s cabinet. He is demanding the detention of potential terrorists in Germany and the extermination (death, in simpler language) of their leaders outside Germany.

Schauble, but naturally, will determine the definitions of “potential” and “leaders”. He will not send anyone to exterminate General Ratko Mladic. He is on the lookout for Lebanese Muslims.

Turn the page. A suicide bomber kills 10, wounds 35 at a military camp in Algeria. Turkey complains about American arms in the possession of Kurdish secessionists.

In Britain, four young Muslims, in their 20s, who “very nearly” succeeded in another outrage on the London tube two years ago, are sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment at the very minimum. What will Iraq be like when they emerge from jail in 2045? Which passions will remain unspent four decades later?

Is the world under siege? Are Muslims under siege? If you know the answer, go collect your Nobel Prize for Peace, or at least an invitation to a seminar in Europe. To me, six of one looks suspiciously like half a dozen of the other.

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

The millennium challenge

WHEN President Bush announced the Millennium Challenge initiative in 2002, it sounded like a promising new approach to foreign aid. The idea was to supply US taxpayer dollars only to governments that could meet strict standards of efficiency and accountability.

The proposal would do so based on the countries' own expressed needs, not development fads or political fealty to the United States. Money would be provided in substantial amounts, over substantial periods, so as to make a genuine impact on poverty. And the whole project would be administered outside the traditional aid bureaucracy, by a congressionally established Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC).

Typical of the Millennium Challenge approach is the five-year compact signed Friday with Mozambique. It will supply $507 million to help one of Africa's poorest countries build much-needed roads and improve access to safe drinking water.

It's still a sound concept. But the Millennium Challenge may be approaching an institutional crossroads. Mr. Bush originally said that he hoped to be sending $5 billion a year to poor countries by 2006, a pledge that never came close to being realized. Congress took two years to pass legislation setting up the program. Since then, the administration's annual budget requests have never reached $5 billion, and Congress has consistently shaved them even further.

Most of the roughly $6 billion that has been appropriated so far has been committed to specific countries. But budget-cutters on Capitol Hill note that only about $71 million has actually been spent. The slow rate is an unfortunate consequence of the MCC's sensible policies: It won't write a check until recipients can document their capacity to use it appropriately, and for many poor countries making reforms and dealing with the MCC's paperwork take time -- a lot of time. Meanwhile, urgent and expensive new U.S. overseas priorities -- from securing U.S. embassies to fighting HIV-AIDS -- keep coming up.

The administration asked for $3 billion for the MCC in its fiscal 2008 budget. House appropriators have cut that to $1.8 billion, about what the MCC got last year, while Senate appropriators have gone even lower, to $1.2 billion, a figure that the MCC says will cripple its ability to make new agreements with countries that have recently qualified for its programs.

One benefit of the Millennium Challenge is that it creates an incentive for poor countries to improve their practices and procedures, but that could be lost if the impression spreads that the United States is pulling the plug.

Given the intense competition for foreign-aid resources, impatience with the Millennium Challenge is understandable and even helpful.

––The Washington Post