Concerns on new US law

THERE has been a strong reaction in Pakistan to the passage in the American Congress of the bill on implementing the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States — the 9/11 commission.

The furore centres on the provisions of the bill that require the US president not to provide assistance to Pakistan in 2008 and 2009 unless at least 15 days before the granting of such assistance the “president determines and certifies to the appropriate congressional committees that the government of Pakistan is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control, including in the cities of Quetta and Chaman and in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.”

It should be noted that the president has been granted the authority to waive the requirements of this provision one year at a time if he “determines that it is important to the national security interest to do so”.

The second area of concern for our experts is the requirement that the president must, within 90 days of the implementation of this legislation, submit to Congress a report on the strategy that the administration would follow in engaging with Pakistan as part of a “long-term strategic partnership” to achieve the objectives the Congress has laid out in the bill.

These are: curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology; combating poverty and corruption; building effective government institutions, especially secular public schools; promoting democracy and the rule of law, particularly at the national level; addressing the continued presence of Taliban and other violent extremist forces throughout the country; maintaining the authority of the government of Pakistan in all parts of its national territory; securing the borders of Pakistan to prevent the movement of militants and terrorists into other countries and territories; and effectively dealing with Islamic extremism.

The bill also talks of working with Pakistan “to combat international terrorism, especially in the frontier provinces of Pakistan, and to end the use of Pakistan as a safe haven for forces associated with the Taliban” and of “dramatically” increasing its own assistance and that of the international community to achieve these objectives if “the government of Pakistan demonstrates a commitment to building a moderate, democratic state, including significant steps towards free and fair parliamentary elections in 2007.”

The foreign office has said the references and provisions in the bill “cast a shadow on the existing cooperation between Pakistan and the United States, regardless of the fact that the bill emphasises the importance attached by the United States to a long-term strategic relationship with Pakistan.”

Presumably, the foreign office is objecting to the implicit assertion that Pakistan is “a safe haven” for forces associated with the Taliban and to the requirement that the president certify Pakistan’s efforts to fight the Taliban on its soil before aid is given to Pakistan.

Unofficial experts testifying before an emotional foreign relations committee of our Senate called for attenuating US-Pak relations. Apparently, one expert went so far as to say that in asking for presidential certification regarding Pakistan’s actions against the Taliban and the opening of secular schools, Congress had imposed conditions even more severe than the Pressler Amendment.

The reaction in Pakistan is understandable. For the man on the street, the daily headlines on the civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing instability in both these countries are evidence of ham-handed policies and of a focus on the use of force to resolve problems that need to be addressed at least in part through other means.

Until recently, the government of President Musharraf never really tried to explain that its volte face on the Taliban issue was dictated as much by the realisation of the dangers that Talibanisation could pose to Pakistan as exigent American demands.The public perception was that Pakistan had capitulated under American pressure which, according to President Musharraf, included a threat to bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age. He did talk then, particularly after the stand-off with India, about the dangers of extremism, but never linked this clearly and forcefully to the activities of the Taliban and their supporters.

Even on this, his stand appeared ambivalent since it is now an open secret that in the 2002 elections the MMA won its seats only because the government agencies were prepared to help it and the government chose not to enforce the graduate degree requirement on the MMA candidates. The latter claimed that the “sanad” they had obtained from religious schools had to be recognised as good enough to qualify them as graduates.

We were in a constant state of denial regarding the extent to which our tribal areas and the Balochistan border belt had been Talibanised, despite the fact that Taliban committees were administering large parts of the tribal areas and Baloch cities like Chaman were Taliban strongholds.

While we claimed credit for having arrested more Al Qaeda leaders and workers in Pakistan than any other country, we refused to acknowledge that this showed the extent to which Al Qaeda had dug roots in Pakistan. We made no particular note when publicising arrests that most of those detained had been sheltering with our own religious extremists.

Our belated campaign to cleanse the tribal areas militarily was ill-prepared and ill-coordinated. The political effort needed was missing because in the Frontier, the provincial government was under the control of the MMA for whom maintaining religious fervour among the tribals and encouraging the local Taliban was a political plus. In Balochistan, too, the MMA was an important coalition partner. Moreover, the crisis was exacerbated by military action against Baloch nationalists.

Against this background, it was only natural for the masses, disgruntled by military rule, to perceive all Pakistan’s problems as arising from the government’s unholy alliance with the Americans and from America’s anti-Muslim activities.

While it is understandable for parliamentarians to reflect the public mood, it is also incumbent upon them to guide opinion, in this case on the question of what US-Pakistan ties mean to Pakistan and to what extent have these been affected by the latest legislation.

First, it should be clear that in the new legislation the American president has to certify no more than what the Pakistan government has promised to do — to prevent the use of Pakistan territory by the Taliban to prepare for and to launch operations in Afghanistan.

This certification will have to be added to two other “determinations”. It was in the US national interest to waive the requirement mandatory under American law to give no assistance to a country where a legitimately elected government has been overthrown in a military coup. Such a certificate has been provided every year by President Bush since 2002. There has also to be, if memory serves correctly, a waiver from the nuclear sanctions that came into force after the 1998 nuclear tests.

Second, this is the only certification expected from the American president. There is nothing in the legislation that requires the president to certify, for instance, the progress that America makes in talks with Pakistan on the proliferation issue, or indeed on any other of the issues that Congress has said should be made part of the US strategy for developing a long-term strategic partnership with Pakistan.

Third, Congress has talked of a dramatic increase in assistance if Pakistan is seen as moving towards building a moderate democratic state and holding free and fair elections in 2007. This surely should be seen by all circles in Pakistan as a condition that is good for Pakistan’s future just as much as the expression of hope that in a new strategy Pakistan would be helped to end its use as a safe haven for Taliban associates.

Fourth, the Americans are convinced that the National Intelligence Estimate prepared jointly by all US intelligence agencies is correct in maintaining that Al Qaeda has found safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas and that the group is now as strong as it has ever been since 9/11.

It should be pointed out that the CIA was dead wrong in asserting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. It could also be so in locating Al Qaeda in Pakistan and in assessing its strength, although there is some evidence to suggest that we should not dismiss US assertions out of hand. However, the important point is that American policy is going to be conditioned by what is accepted there as the gospel truth.

Fifth, the Americans have seized upon our partial acknowledgement of the failure of the Sept 2006 agreement reached with some people in the tribal areas to bolster their earlier assertions that the agreement has provided a freer hand to the Taliban for cross-border activity and to extend Talibanisation to the settled districts. It appears from the actions the government is now taking that they are prepared to share this view.

Sixth, the Americans have always felt that in seeking to eliminate the Taliban in Afghanistan their objective is not merely the stabilisation of the country but, more importantly, preventing the rise to power of a similar movement in Pakistan. There are some among us who would dismiss this as an unwarranted fear. Given what happened at Lal Masjid last Friday, I am not brave enough to do so.

Seventh, the Americans feel Al Qaeda will carry out another terrorist attack on the US this year — an apprehension based on the terrorist plots recently foiled in the UK. The fact that the perpetrators of the Glasgow airport bombing had no connections with Pakistan and appeared to be prompted by the Iraq situation, has not changed the view that it is somehow in Pakistan that Al Qaeda is planning nefarious deeds against the US.

Under these circumstances, one could argue that the normally exigent American legislators have been fairly cautious in the demands they have made.

Our case against this legislation should be that there is need for the Congress and the Bush administration to recognise that Pakistan cannot insulate itself from the pernicious Afghan influence unless it is helped to close down Afghan refugee camps and fence those parts of the border that cannot be patrolled. Our legislators and officials should be focusing on this.

The Americans have clearly not been able to get the cooperation they need from their allies including the Afghan government and Nato countries. Their policies, too, are sorely in need of revision if the battle for hearts and minds is to be won. Perhaps, they will fail in Afghanistan also. There is every possibility that the US will be further reviled by our masses as the situation in the Middle East continues to unravel.

We cannot afford to react emotionally at the decision-making level. In the battle against the forces of extremism, we can do battle on our own but it would be helpful if we continue to receive assistance from the US. All our brave words about the turnaround in the economy should not blind us to the fact that we are still politically and economically fragile. We need political reconciliation internally and a continuance of economic backing to enable us to take a holistic approach to resolving this problem.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Emulating Taiwan’s example

TAIWAN made history in recent times. It showed that it is enterprising not only in trade and industry but also capable of setting new precedents in parliamentary politics. It became the first country in living memory (or even dead memory) where the ruling party registered a protest against the opposition by walking out of parliament.

For us in Pakistan walkouts from the National Assembly are a common feature. They are so regularly practised that they no more excite any interest. A walkout will never cause a newspaper to bring out a supplement, or even publish banner headlines, howsoever startling the reason it may have been resorted to. In fact you can’t tell a walk-in-from a walkout.

What makes the act boring and monotonous is the fact that it is always the opposition that walks out. The news of the prime minister of Taiwan walking out with his entire cabinet must have shaken parliamentary circles the world over. It had not only made news, it made history.

Do you know what I find most exasperating in our daily newspapers? It is the monotonous regularity with which the headline “Dull proceedings in NA” or “Another boring day” appears every other day when the National Assembly is in session. If parliament once possessed the explosive characteristics of a boxing ring or a football match, it seems to have lost them. The Speaker can be asked, “How can we get the excitement back into the House?”

Of course the first thing that comes to mind on reading the report from Taiwan is that in order to add spice to the bland proceedings of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz may stage a walkout one day along with the ruling PML and its partners and thus follow the example set by an Asian Tiger. If nothing else, the faces of the opposition members will be worth watching.

But a walkout on what grounds? A justification has to be found. The most obvious one would be the constant heckling and interruptions from the opposition benches, or the failure of the Leader of the Opposition to attend the Assembly sessions regularly. The PM would be heard muttering, “If Taiwan can do it why can’t we?”

It’s really hard on the press corps, saddled as it is with the responsibility of conveying the impression to the public that the National Assembly is one place where big fireworks is on display. The routine story of day-to-day proceedings is of course circulated by the APP. The onerous duty of special correspondents of the dailies is to highlight the odd happening, the witty remark, the pungent exchange of repartee and even the occasional fisticuffs that sometimes break out in the Assembly. But what can special correspondents do if attendance in the House is thin and it looks like a waiting room for stragglers who have come to a municipal office to pursue their applications for water connections?

It is with great difficulty and rigorous training that elected representatives have been taught over long years not to take the business of the House seriously; not to burden their minds with it. Their primary function is to keep the nation amused with stale jokes. Instead of wasting their time in studying the Order of the Day early in the morning, they look into the humorous columns of daily newspapers to gather intellectual fodder for the day.

I have myself seen from the visitors’ gallery members ticking off from a piece of paper the witticisms already delivered by them or somebody else. But the question again is, what are poor reporters to do if the number of members present in the House is not even sufficient to attract the mischief of Section 144?

There is another reason why the press is obliged to call the Assembly sessions dull and dreary. Though members may be well stocked with puns and humorous metaphors, they don’t want to waste them on a near-empty hall. They can’t use this material again when the house is full by saying, “Friends, most of you were absent when I made this delightful observation last week, so I am repeating it for your entertainment.”

The trouble is that Speaker Amir Husain too does not say anything funny to help out the press gallery. He takes his job too seriously. Not his fault really for he didn’t elect himself. The House should have known better when it was looking for a suitable chairman. What it needed was someone like Sheikh Rashid or Malik Hakmeen Khan to liven up the proceedings.

While the Sheikh’s propensity for jokes and vulgar innuendo is well known, Malik Sahib acts as the “Mulla do Piaza” of the court of ‘Queen’ Benazir. Not many of you may remember his classic statement as Punjab’s minister for prisons way back in 1972 or 1973 when he had said, “We’ll spread a network of jails in the province.” Since then every minister of jails has wished he had been the first to say that.

Some of the younger members in the ruling party and the opposition do their best to keep the House amused and the press corps satisfied, but all of us realise that it is for the Honourable Speaker to provide the inspiration in order to inject into the Assembly proceedings the inspiration the hilarity of a Walt Disney cartoon movie.

Some spoilsports want us to believe that parliament is a grave business and shouldn’t become the grave of orderly democratic behaviour. They should all be elected and placed in the National Assembly to appreciate its real functions and spirit. I think too much stress on religion has made us grim and we have lost the capacity to look at the lighter side of the dirty business that is Pakistani politics.

The ordinance must be flawless

LAST week, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry directed the government to promulgate without delay the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance 2007. In the absence of a law to regulate organ transplantation, unscrupulous elements have reduced Pakistan to what is dubbed as a ‘gurda kundi’ where humans are auctioned for their organs.

What is more distressing is that an ordinance to check this criminal practice has been before the government for quite some time now. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s concern expressed earlier vested interests have succeeded in blocking progress.

Hopefully this order issued by a bench of the Supreme Court will galvanise the cabinet into action and it will hasten to issue the ordinance and not succumb to pressure from those who have no qualms about trampling on human dignity.

A word of warning here would not be out of order, though. If the aim of the new law is to clamp down on the commercialisation of organ transplantation, it is important to ensure that the ordinance to be approved by the cabinet this week does not contain the flaws that have been pointed out by transplant specialists as it will then defeat the law’s purpose.

As Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi, the director of SIUT, said at a press conference on Friday, “No law is better than a bad law.” We know from experience that a bad law sticks like an albatross around the neck. Once adopted, it becomes next to impossible to change it. Hence the importance of striving for an ideal law in the first place.

The thrust of any law dealing with organ transplantation should desirably be three-fold. First, it should legalise deceased organ donation by recognising brain death and devise a system for people to will their organs for transplantation after their death. Second, it should ensure that all organ donations by living people should be voluntary and for close blood/spousal relatives.

Third, the law should ensure that all ethical norms are fully observed, the fundamental principle being the one enshrined in WHO’s protocol that very clearly stipulates that procuring human organs in lieu of monetary payment is unethical.

This would require several rules and institutional structures to ensure that no exploitative and unethical practices are legalised that would allow people to sell their organs. The UN has equated such organ sales with human trafficking.

Given the pauperisation of large segments of the population and the acute shortage of organs from the deceased it is not surprising that conditions are so conducive for a thriving organ trade. People mired in poverty and in desperate need of money seek to sell their kidney for a paltry sum — as little as Rs40, 000 — while vendors take away the lion’s share. Such are the pressures of poverty.

More shameful are the ways of avarice. There are surgeons who have chosen to discard the noble traditions of their calling to make a quick buck by criminal means. The business has been made more lucrative by patients from abroad who are denied this facility in their home country.

The lapses on the part of our policymakers have led to this shocking situation. Pakistan is the only country in the region without a law to regulate organ donation and transplantation although this programme has been in place since the 1980s. The SIUT, the largest transplant centre in the country, has transplanted over 1,800 organs in just over two decades. Throughout this period, Dr Rizvi has been demanding the necessary legislation as he was aware of the potential for misuse and exploitation of the poor if no law was adopted. A bill was first placed before the Senate in 1992.

As a result, today there are villages in Punjab where the entire adult population has sold its kidney for a measly sum of Rs40, 000-Rs80, 000. The beneficiaries of the transactions are the vendors who conduct auctions to purchase the best organs and the surgeons who fleece their patients to carry out this illegal operation. A large number of the patients are foreigners from countries where the sale of organs is banned.

The Supreme Court took up the case suo motu when the plight of some donors who had been held in captivity by the middlemen came to its notice. It is, however, important that the judges ensure that the ordinance to be promulgated leaves no opening for commercialism.

The most objectionable clause in the draft ordinance that is said to be under consideration is section 3, subsection 2 that states: “In case of non-availability of a donor as explained under subsection 1 and there is a threat to life of an end stage renal disease failure patient, liver, heart or lungs patients, the evaluation committee may allow donation by a non-blood relative, after satisfying itself that such donation is voluntary. The donor under this subsection shall be compensated as may be prescribed.”

This would leave a lot to the discretion of the evaluation committee. In the absence of specifications of this body and considering the rampant commercialisation and corruption, it is inevitable that this clause would be used to allow the organ trade to flourish on the plea that “there is a threat to life.”

In India, where the conditions are similar to ours, the organ transplant law was enacted in 1994. It specifically forbade commercial dealings in human organs but allowed an unrelated donor transplantation for ‘reason of affection or attachment’ between the two parties but only after the authorisation committee had sanctioned it.

Ten years later, it has been found that in places where the authorisation committee is weak as in Tamil Nadu the organ racket continues unabated. In fact, by virtue of a thoroughly corrupt authorisation committee, the trade has received legal sanction as well. There have now been demands to amend the law and ban all unrelated organ transplantations.

While jurists and legal experts in our case wrangle over the text of the ordinance, it is important to bear in mind the human dimension of the matter. Can a surgeon who is more interested in the money he earns than the welfare of his patients ensure that his patients will receive efficient and professional care of the best kind? Can a patient who receives an organ in a hurry with no adequate tissue typing and is packed off home within a week of his surgery without any follow-up care hope to remain in good health?

Since no records are kept the survival rate cannot be verified but the impression is that mortality is high. This must be checked and a good law is the first step in that direction.

The next step is for transplant surgeons to demonstrate their integrity and commitment to their patients. Karachi, the biggest city and transplant centre in Pakistan, can be proud of the fact that it has upheld the dignity of man because Dr Adeeb Rizvi has stood his ground. By providing free treatment to its patients — and that includes costly transplant surgery and dialysis — SIUT has preempted the commercialisation of organ transplantation in Sindh.

Bet on India

IN large part, modern US nuclear non-proliferation policy began with India. India received US aid under the "Atoms for Peace" programme of the early Cold War era -- only to lose its US fuel supply because India, which had refused to sign the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), exploded a nuclear "device" in 1974. Decades of US non-cooperation with India's civilian atomic energy programme were intended to teach India, and the world, a lesson: You will not prosper if you go nuclear outside the system of international safeguards.

Friday marked another step toward the end of that policy -- also with India. The Bush administration and New Delhi announced the principles by which the United States will resume sales of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India, as promised by President Bush in July 2005.

The fine print of the agreement, which must still be approved by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and by Congress, has not yet been released. But the big picture is clear:

The administration is betting that the benefits to the United States and the world of a "strategic partnership" with India outweigh the risks of a giant exception to the old rules of the non-proliferation game.

There are good reasons to make the bet. India is a booming democracy of more than one billion people, clearly destined to play a growing role on the world stage. It can help the United States as a trading partner and as a strategic counterweight to China and Islamic extremists.

If India uses more nuclear energy, it will emit less greenhouse gas. Perhaps most important, India has developed its own nuclear arsenal without selling materials or know-how to other potentially dangerous states. This is more than can be said for Pakistan, home of the notorious A.Q. Khan nuclear network.

You can call this a double standard, as some of the agreement's critics do: one set of rules for countries we like, another for those we don't. Or you can call it realism: The agreement provides for more international supervision of India's nuclear fuel cycle than there would be without it.

For example, it allows India to reprocess atomic fuel but at a new facility under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, to protect against its diversion into weapons.

––The Washington Post