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| August 12, 2007 | Sunday | Rajab 27, 1428 |
After the rains
Protection for minorities
Militancy: the predicament in Fata
ONE would rather dismiss the statement of the US Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, about the intrusive deployment of US troops in Pakistan’s tribal territory, as a case of talking too much too soon. In a speech the other day, he said that President Pervez Musharraf “must” do more to shut down “terrorist” operations in Pakistan and “evict” foreign fighters or “risk” a US troops’ “invasion”.
WITH the constitutional drama being enacted in Islamabad keeping the nation on tenterhooks, the voters’ list issue had all but been forgotten. It was brought back into public attention on Friday when a Supreme Court bench headed by the Chief Justice asked the Election Commission to complete the enrolment of the eligible voters missing from the computerised electoral lists within 30 days. In the present circumstances, the court has done well to order the EC to submit a formula for enrolment of voters in the stipulated period and has directed the legal counsel of the petitioner (the PPP-P) to meet the Chief Election Commissioner for evolving a mechanism for this purpose. If the elections are to be fair and free, and if they are to be credible in the eyes of all contesting political parties, it is important for all participants to be satisfied with the election mechanism, the key element being the electoral list. With as many as 20 million voters registered in 2002 missing from the new rolls, it is not surprising that there are widespread misgivings about the fairness of coming electoral process. By introducing the requirement of being a CNIC holder to be registered as a voter, the EC has narrowed the number of voters who would be considered eligible.
The Supreme Court has asked the EC to remove the condition of being a CNIC holder from its rules since the Constitution does not provide for it. This will no doubt facilitate and expedite the preparation of the electoral lists, thus ensuring that the polling is not postponed on account of delays in the finalisation of the rolls. But it is also important that the voters’ lists do not suffer from duplication of names, false entries or other factual inaccuracies that can mar the electoral process. This makes the formula the EC has been asked to device very crucial. Obviously, the Supreme Court will be in a position to assess the feasibility of the formula for holding free and fair polls. Assuming that the People’s Party, the main petitioner in the case, will also have a say in developing the mechanism to rectify the errors in the electoral rolls, one hopes the ultimate voters’ lists will satisfy all the parties in the field.
The point is that for an election to serve its purpose it must be held fairly and transparently. If the Election Commission does not enjoy the confidence of all contestants charges of foul play can be expected from all losers. In fact, elections believed to be rigged are as bad as no elections at all. It is well known that dishonest rulers have invented new methods of pre-poll rigging to ensure their victory. Transparency therefore is most important. It is not known why the Election Commission has not posted the electoral rolls on its website. If that is done, it would be easy for voters and political parties to check the rolls. It is also important that the political parties launch a drive to get people to enrol as voters. Given the political apathy that has taken grip of the nation, many people are not bothered about taking the initiative in the matter. If the parties, which have a machinery at the grassroots level, were to mobilise their supporters to register as voters, it would create a momentum that the EC will find difficult to resist.
RARELY does Karachi witness so much rain in just two days. By Friday afternoon, over six inches had fallen while the average for August is under two and a half. The severity of the downpour, however, cannot serve as an apologia for the civic agencies and their abject failure to keep Karachi functional. After all, far less rain has at times flooded the city in previous years, and the extra inches that fell this week are no justification for the damage and suffering witnessed in the metropolis. At least 21 deaths had been confirmed by Friday night and more were feared. As is often the case, electrocution took a heavy toll. Major arteries were inundated, as was the Liaquatabad underpass, while some localities came under waist-high water as the drainage system all but collapsed. Clearly, the city nazim’s orders that storm-water drains must be cleaned on a regular — as opposed to emergency — basis have had little effect even though a year has passed since the directive was issued on August 11, 2006. But then Karachi is no stranger to lip service from its administrators.
The rain and the havoc it caused will no doubt rekindle the debate on whether Karachi’s municipal affairs should be managed by a single authority. At present, 13 civic agencies are in charge of various parts of the metropolis, with the incumbent city government (CDGK) demanding that they be brought under its control. In terms of planning, centralisation is a sound idea. It would allow greater coordination among the agencies and create an umbrella supervisory body, thereby making authorities such as the DHA accountable for their actions and failures. However, day-to-day administration and operations on the ground should not be handed over to the CDGK, for a city as large as Karachi cannot be effectively managed without delegation of authority and demarcation of responsibility. Besides, the city government’s track record in areas under its control is hardly inspiring. There is also the danger that the concentration of power in one institution will encourage corruption and fuel the autocratic tendencies that have already made a mockery of the City Council.
THERE is an urgent need to take seriously the threats being hurled at the Christian community in Peshawar. On Friday, members of the community met the police chief and told him about the threatening letters they had received, asking them to convert to Islam in 10 days or face dire consequences. The police have increased security vigilance in the Christian-populated areas although they suspect the letters could just be pranks as was the case a few months ago when the same thing happened in Charsadda. However, it will be unwise to take these threats lightly for there is every likelihood that they are seriously meant, especially given the current climate of religious extremism in the province. In May, it took a while for the police in Charsadda to respond to Christians’ fears when they received threatening letters which apparently were bogus. But the letters did succeed in frightening the Christians in Charsadda, many of whom left the area. It also prompted some 100 Christians to write to the President and the Chief Minister of NWFP appealing for help to protect their lives. Threats were also hurled at a bible school in Peshawar earlier this year. These threats can no longer be ignored.
It is tragic that with each passing day, minorities feel increasingly unsafe in their own country. Every time a minority community or place of worship is attacked, members move out — be they Christians, Hindus or Sikhs who have been living in their areas for decades. Apart from beefing up security around sensitive areas, like places of worship, the government must engage all religious leaders in a dialogue on mutual tolerance and harmony. This is the only way a change in attitude can come about. Of equal importance is a change in discriminatory laws like the blasphemy law which is routinely misused against the non-Muslims.
What cannot be dismissed so lightly is the time span contemplated in Mr Obama’s statement for a militarised US presence in Pakistan’s volatile north and southwest for an indeterminate length of time. If lucky, Mr Obama would make it to the White House not before January 2009 and would take at least a few weeks, if not months, to order an “invasion” of Pakistan.
Whether he would be able or need to take the extreme measure is not so important as the murky prospect of his country’s military forces being there for a long haul in much the same disastrous way as in Iraq and in no less a wanton mode as in Afghanistan.
While Iraq stands virtually in ruins, Afghanistan seems headed for a similar fate. Unlike the nine-year-long Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan, the US-led forces stationed there have played havoc with Afghan civilian life and property — many times more than the Soviet occupation forces did.
Visiting Afghanistan in 1992, less than three years after the withdrawal of the last Soviet contingent in February 1989, I found Kabul, by and large, in one piece, barring skeletons of urban property here and there. Up north from Mazar-i-Sharif all the way to Juzjan, close to the Tashkent border, it bore hardly any glaring traces of war damage to civilian property.
The Soviet Union’s was a regular war — even if between two such asymmetrical forces as the Mujahideen guerillas on one side and the Soviet military on the other. The Soviets suffered some 57,000 war casualties as against just a few hundred by the International Security Assistance Force and Nato since 2002 to date. The Afghan loss of civilian life and property — from the devastating Tora Bora bombings of November-December 2001 to date — remains unaccounted for in an on-going operation entailing heavy collateral damage, more or less on a daily basis.
Senator Obama’s democratic rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, denounced his statement as “naďve” and “irresponsible”. She also accused President Bush of “botching” the war on terror. She would nevertheless upstage Obama in warning Pakistan against direct military action by US forces on the basis of “actionable intelligence”.
Clinton’s statement differed with Obama’s more in rhetoric than in substance. Both expressed their country’s disappointment with Pakistan’s not doing enough to combat the Taliban- and Al Qaeda-led terrorism and the possibility of having to redress it unilaterally if and when necessary.
In a recent interview with the CNN’s Larry King, US Vice-President Dick Cheney rhetorically admitted to having captured and killed “a lot” of Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan. When asked if the US was “going to go” after the Al Qaeda activists (allegedly) holed up in their “safe havens” in Pakistan’s tribal belt, Mr Cheney said, while he didn’t expect that to happen, “they make good reason to go after Al Qaeda.” Pakistan, he said, was “obviously” a sovereign state and the US recognised Pakistan’s sovereignty.
It is a sinisterly loaded and uncalled-for re-statement of an established fact relating to Pakistan as a sovereign entity. Whether it is a reassurance of US friendship or a reflection on the status of Pakistan’s sovereignty as real or obvious remains open to interpretation.
Historically, the US has always associated Pakistan’s strength and durability as a state with an individual, especially a solider, in power at a given time — from Ayub all the way down to Musharraf. Yahya, for all his eccentricities as a ruler, enjoyed the best of relations with Washington — President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — for his role in providing an opening to China.
Zia was President Reagan’s most trusted ally. He and the Afghan Mujahideen reminded him of the “founding fathers”. Zia’s Islamic lore might have been music to the ears of the administration. Musharraf, in the aftermath of the 9/11, became the administration’s other name for the state of Pakistan. As a strategic regional player, he held the key to success in the global war on terror. No longer.
Obama vows to act within Pakistan’s own territory with or without Musharraf. “If President Musharraf won’t act, we will… there are terrorists holed up in those mountains (Pakistan’s tribal belt) who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again…” The presidential hopeful, blissfully ignorant of ground realities, was confusing 3,000 American casualties in Iraq with a few hundred in Afghanistan.
The US Congress recently adopted the draft bill linking the continuance of US military and economic assistance for Pakistan to effective anti-terrorist efforts — another dig at Pakistan’s status as a sovereign and independent state with its own national agenda.
Is this what Pakistan is all about in American eyes? To endure only as an American ally in the latter’s global anti-terrorist war or fade away as a failed state. It happens to be an election year in Pakistan. Musharraf may still stay on as president for the next five years.
However, in the post-election diffused and volatile scenario, his powers as an absolute ruler would be considerably diluted. Born out of a prolonged political vacuum, he would be confronting a variety of challenges following the end of seven years of high-powered presidential rule.
To revive the atrophied political process on a national scale would call for maximum moral and political resource and resolve of the emerging political leadership. There will be no end to formidable challenges waiting to jump out of the sealed Pandora’s Box suddenly unsealed.
In an article on the ‘Implications of Bush-Musharraf Alliance’, Paula Newberg identified some as follows:
i. Rising border instabilities with Afghanistan.
ii. Renegade Islamic militancy in the heart of the capital (the Lal Masjid episode) and
iii. Resurgent Taliban — “the bread and butter” of Pakistan’s relationship with the US overshadowed by the “deepening problems of Pakistan’s failing governance.”
In Pakistan’s peculiar context where the government of the day is practically the other name of the state, “failing governance” would be little better than a failing state. This is a point well worth engaging the attention of those in authority and the political leadership to pre-empt the rage of the masses and the resulting anarchy beyond the normal law of the land to control.
In yet another paragraph, she goes on to point out a fundamental flaw in the US-Pakistan security relationship “grounded in profound illegality. Pakistan’s Constitution upheld by its highest court forbids Musharraf from holding concurrently the office of president and army chief.”
The president, despite his promises (under the Seventeenth Amendment to retire from the army by December 31, 2004), wishes to retain both offices and wouldn’t step down and run for reelection.
Washington Post’s gadfly, David Ignatius remains bitterly critical of Pakistan’s (Musharraf’s) inadequate performance in Waziristan and argues for a joint US-Pakistan operation there. Such a combined military operation would inevitably entail the physical deployment, intrusive presence and active operational role of the US forces across our tribal areas to make a mockery of our sovereignty.
Isn’t the existing tripartite commission consisting of the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan good enough for the task of fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda without impinging on the sovereign status of the parties involved? Would Pakistan ever approve of stationing foreign forces within its national territory? Furthermore, if ever a contingency like that is allowed to emerge, wouldn’t that call into question the competence of Pakistan’s own armed forces and their patriotic sentiment?
According to the US National Intelligence Estimate, “Al Qaeda has regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability and a safe haven in the lawless frontier area of Waziristan”. The question is: what is the United States going to do about it?
For us the question is: What is Pakistan going to do about it? Are we going to put at risk the stability and future of the state as an independent and sovereign nation to protect our security relationship with the US?
More to the point, are we going to allow our haphazard and wayward power politics to endanger the social, economic and constitutional fabric of the state — even perhaps the very existence of the country?
Tail piece: Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns joins Obama in urging Pakistan to defeat Al Qaeda in the battlefield or else the US would not hesitate to use its own forces to achieve the objective. A virtual ultimatum!
The writer is a retired brigadier.