No curbs on madressahs

THE US State section on Pakistan in its recent international religious freedom report stresses, among other things, the government’s unsuccessful attempts to restrain madressahs in the country from teaching an extremist ideology. Indeed, the government lately admitted as much by providing the interior ministry with the names of 800 madressahs that had withheld information needed for the National Educational Census. There is considerable confusion as to the number of madressahs in the country. While the interior ministry claims that there are about 13,500 madressahs — of which 12,000 madressahs are registered — independent estimates put the figure at about 20,000. In fact, as the public school system continues to flounder and as extremist ideology gains currency among the population, it is feared that these institutions will go on proliferating. They will continue to evade regulation by the state which, along with the West and Saudi Arabia, had encouraged the growth of militant seminaries in the 1980s to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By the time the events of 9/11 forced the government to take a U-turn on its Afghan policy, the monster of extremism unleashed by the madressahs was no longer under its control, as demonstrated by the recent Lal Masjid episode. This, together with the government’s reliance on religious parties for political strength, accounts for its failure to eliminate militant ideology in madressahs.

Attempts are once again being made to integrate madressahs in the mainstream schooling system. However, given that many leaders are averse to recognising the threat many madressahs pose to civil society by steeping students in the ideology of hate, how sincere will such government efforts be, especially in the face of the resistance put up by the seminaries? Even as the government mulls over this question and prepares to tackle challenges such as regulating their growth and restraining their funding, there is much to be said for the argument of improving the public-sector education system in the country, and making it a viable alternative to madressah education. The religious seminaries essentially fill the void created by a deficient schooling system in the public sector, and cater to the needs of poor students by providing them free board and lodging. If a portion of the billions of rupees allocated towards madressah reforms — which so far have yielded poor results — can be spent on improving the state of government educational institutions, parents might be convinced to send their children to regular schools, thus saving them from the clutches of obscurant religious teachers.

Living with violence

ANY trigger will do. The potential for violence is omnipresent in Pakistan, with no occasion too solemn or sacrosanct for venting emotion to the physical detriment of others. On Sunday, the federal interior minister and the Frontier chief minister were a clearly unwelcome presence at the funeral in Peshawar of a slain JUI leader. But instead of simply being told to leave by the thousands of mourners who far outnumbered the officials and their entourages, they were pushed and shoved and pelted with shoes and stones. Far from being the exception, the incident reflected what is becoming the norm during or following the final rites of political or religio-political personalities who meet an untimely death. The rage syndrome is not, however, limited to the world of politics. Hospitals are ransacked and their staff thrashed by the friends and relatives of persons who may have met with an accident and could not be saved in the emergency ward. Minor traffic altercations can lead to brawls and gunshots, as can disputes over prices between customer and shopkeeper. On November 10 last year, a woman and her teenaged son were strangulated in Lahore by collectors representing a local cable television provider. The victims’ fault? They were behind on their monthly payments. The slightest provocation is now reason enough to kill, such as a kid breaking a neighbour’s window while playing cricket.

What are the reasons behind this mounting frustration that simply has to be vented, come what may? Living conditions in the country, needless to say, are far from ideal for the vast majority. Even those fortunate enough to have jobs are more often than not exploited and abused by employers. Making ends meet is difficult enough on dismal salaries but the woes don’t end there, what with irregular supply of essentials such as water and electricity and with neighbourhoods inundated by sewage and garbage. Air pollution in the cities is, it has been medically proven, enough to drive people to extreme irritation and sudden rage. Then there is the widening class divide. The very poor who have nothing are resigned to their fate for the most part. Not that it can be condoned, their occasionally violent behaviour is limited to the home or the neighbourhood, for they know they are irrelevant in the wider world. It is the lower middle classes, who have a little bit but not enough and who resent those with more, who are most prone to taking their aggression to the streets. Sadly, this state of affairs will continue until Pakistan becomes a land of equal opportunity. And that is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Recycling hospital waste

AS the number of healthcare facilities increases in the country, so does the waste they produce. But the mechanisms to deal with this waste have been evolving at a much slower pace. This sluggishness was highlighted in Lahore when the authorities raided an illegally run plant recycling highly toxic hospital waste. The man running the plant was receiving his extremely dangerous raw material through the connivance of sanitary inspectors of three big public-sector hospitals in the city. The plant has now been sealed. The raid is the first of its kind in the provincial capital but it seems that the illegal practice of recycling hospital waste must have been going on for quite a while. In fact, another recent news report says the Punjab government has issued orders against 70 hospitals across the province for failing to abide by the Hospital Waste Management Rules issued in 2005 under the Environmental Protection Act of 1997. This failure to stick to the rules is turning healthcare facilities into disease-spreading agents. Punjab’s 250 hospitals with a total capacity of 41,000 beds produce 15 tonnes of hospital waste daily. If more than 25 per cent of them are not treating their waste properly and some others are allowing the waste to be recycled illegally, then the provincial authorities should brace themselves for a medical disaster just waiting to happen.

Thursday’s raid aside, the official response to the problem has been marked by bureaucratic inertia and an unwillingness to enforce laws. The federal government took eight years to issue waste management rules after the environment law was promulgated and that too without laying down stringent mechanisms for their implementation. With healthcare providers left to themselves to manage the waste they produce without any outside monitoring, it should be surprising if even the big public-sector hospitals are implementing the rules. Given this indifference, the Lahore raid signals that the authorities are finally waking up to the danger their inaction may cause. But a solitary raid, no matter how successful, remains what it is: a one-off attempt at resolving a problem that requires comprehensive solution.

A joke too far

WHICH of the two is funnier? Take your time, there is no hurry, for the competition is keen. If one of the gems is priceless, then the second can only be called invaluable. Ladies first, so let us quote Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Waiting Ms Benazir Bhutto. She called her rival Nawaz Sharif’s attempt to return to Pakistan to contest elections, “a mockery of democracy”.

If this statement encouraged a belly laugh, as it should, then how do we react to the claim by Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Exitmode Shaukat Aziz? The dapper Mr Aziz had this to say about Nawaz Sharif’s brief stay at Islamabad airport, before he was deported to the ever-accommodating Saudi Arabia: “The government did not force Nawaz Sharif to return to Saudi Arabia. We did not force him. I have been told that he was given two options, either go to prison or proceed to Saudi Arabia.”

There used to be a gentleman, or not very much of a gentleman, in Victorian England named Thomas Hobson. He used to hire out horses. If any customer wanted a horse, he had to take the one nearest the door or he would not get any. The horses did not become famous, but Thomas Hobson did. His name is immortalised in the phrase ‘Hobson’s choice’, which implies that you really have no choice.

Shaukat Hobson Aziz’s nuanced proposition to Nawaz Sharif would have pleased the old Englishman. Nawaz Sharif was not “forced”. He was told, as rudely as possible (simply shoved into a bus and bumped into a waiting plane, while army commandos laughed and joked), that he could either return to a harsh prison in Pakistan or a gilded cage in Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Aziz, alumni of the World Bank School of Diplomacy, was careful not to take the blame himself. He is prime minister of Pakistan but, according to his own version of events, he seemingly had nothing to do with the decision. He was informed after the event. “I have been told,” he said. If this is true, he is not very prime in his ministership.

Would Benazir Bhutto, who is desperate for Shaukat Aziz’s job, accept such a limited, primitive prime ministership? Would she be a quiet little dormouse if Nawaz Sharif turned up at Islamabad airport while she was sitting in Shaukat Aziz’s office, and the president decided whether Mr Sharif should go to prison or purgatory or a democratic paradise called the election trail? I daresay she would, unless she wanted to join Nawaz Sharif in Jeddah or Riyadh.

Careful observers will, of course, have noted that Shaukat Hobson Pontius Pilate Aziz has washed his hands of any suggestion that he might be involved in the persecution of Nawaz Sharif. The first lesson World Bank diplomats are taught is that governments might come and governments might go, but the World Bank lives on forever.

The only bank that Expectant Prime Minister Bhutto can depend upon is the vote bank left by her late father, Zulfikar Ali, assassinated by the cruel rope of a flawed judicial process. She has depleted the Zulfikar Bank resources substantially with a murky triangular deal between her individual self, Washington and President Pervez Musharraf.

It takes some gall to describe a self-serving deal with army rule as restorative democracy, and dismiss Sharif’s attempt to join the electoral process as a “mockery”. It says something about the state of Pakistan’s polity when a lady who would be prime minister has to wait in Washington for permission to seek her nation’s foremost executive post.

One has no idea who advises Benazir Bhutto, that is if anyone has the temerity to do so, but she might want to forget about the 40 suitcases Nawaz Sharif apparently took with him when he was exiled seven years ago.

Benazir Bhutto took away a whole English castle when she was turfed out by the army, not to mention fairly healthy bank accounts in Switzerland. Nawaz Sharif may indeed be as black as black money, but it does not behove a pot to call a kettle black.What is quite extraordinary is the duplicity of the Pakistan People’s Party over the legitimacy and authority of the nation’s Supreme Court. PPP leaders, most notably the pre-eminent lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, were in the forefront of this year’s passionate, nationwide movement to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to office.

This struggle was said to have marked the beginning of a fresh chapter in Pakistan’s democracy, and was certainly instrumental in forcing the army to compromise with civilian power. The moment Benazir Bhutto was offered the scent of office, she joined the army in trampling over an order of the Supreme Court permitting Nawaz Sharif to return home.

The Benazir argument, echoed by her parrots, that Mr Sharif should stay away because of some verbal agreement made seven years ago, is specious and untenable. A Supreme Court’s decision supersedes any private agreement that is disputed by one party and, in any event, has no basis in law.

Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan with the specific permission of the Supreme Court. The Pakistan People’s Party has just dug a future grave by treating the Supreme Court so contemptuously.

President Pervez Musharraf is proving to be a far better tactician with politicians than his commitment to an army uniform might suggest. Ms Benazir Bhutto is not even back in Pakistan and her credibility has already been eroded. General Musharraf has many disadvantages after more than seven years in power, but he does have one serious advantage in terms of public perception.

No one has accused him of being individually corrupt. He is unlikely to surrender that advantage by withdrawing corruption cases against either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif. He might bend under pressure from his mentors in Washington, but one doubts if he will stoop so far. Ms Bhutto will not be deported when she returns to Pakistan in late October, since Washington insists upon some cosmetic changes in the power structure of Islamabad. But that is not quite the same thing as re-gilding the lady in honest hues.

Now that Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party has become the King’s Party, Nawaz Sharif will inherit the popular space along with those smaller parties who see merit in his continued confrontation with army rule. The most vocal of the latter is surely the former cricketer Imran Khan, who commands the attention of the media and makes effective public interventions.

Imran Khan possesses the virtue of clarity. He told President Musharraf bluntly that it was about time he woke up. “If you think that by sending Mr Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia you can save your skin, you better stop fooling yourself. Neither can America save you, nor Benazir, and not even the PML-Q turncoats… God willing, the entire Pakistani nation will rise against you and we will fight you in the streets.”

One can see a new political compass drawing fresh arcs: Benazir Bhutto, pro-Musharraf elements in Nawaz Sharif’s party and America are placed in one group; Nawaz Sharif and friends are now the legitimate opposition. It may be too early to claim that the entire Pakistani nation has joined this opposition. But presumably God, Whose will Imran Khan has invoked, will soon let us know — through events on the Pakistani street.

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

Why be forced into a ghetto?

PAKISTANIS should be proud. In a country where we are forever lamenting the loss of interest in reading and literature, it is heartening that for the first time a compatriot has been shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize in literature.

Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, deals with the meteoric rise and subsequent disillusionment of a young Pakistani college graduate in corporate America. The story unfolds, of course, in a post-9/11 world in which the protagonist grapples with personal ambition and achievement on the one hand and issues of identity and self-worth on the other. Needless to say, the novel, or novella, (it is extremely short) is relevant to the times and makes for an intense and gripping account.

The only problem is that this is not necessarily Hamid’s best work. The author’s first book, Moth Smoke, which wowed readers at home and won critical acclaim abroad as well, is generally recognised as a far more gritty, disturbing, and at the same time quirky, piece of writing. Set in Lahore, Hamid’s hometown, the tale resonates with authenticity as it delves into the life of jaded urbanites and follows the tracks of a young man caught in a desperate downward spiral of drug addiction and unfulfilled dreams.

But the societal conflicts of upper middle class Pakistan is not what commands attention on the world stage and the book did not qualify as a contender for any major award. Naturally, one concedes that it is hard to gain an entry into the hallowed world of literary heavyweights and it is only quite recently that South Asian writers have found a door, through which Indian novelists have been steadily filing in. However, now that Mohsin Hamid has penned a story which fits in with the narrow preoccupation of western audiences, he is suddenly in the running for the highest of accolades.

Which makes one wonder, what is really being evaluated here? It certainly doesn’t seem to be literary merit alone. Apparently, for South Asian writers to succeed, he or she must dwell upon the diaspora or Islamic fundamentalism or as in Hamid’s case, preferably both. Other writers like Kiran Desai and Amitav Ghosh, both current darlings of the literary world, also take care to keep dabbling in these safe waters.

All this is not to take away from the merit of their works but why must we be forced into a ghetto which promotes easy marketability and which does not unduly strain the western imagination? Cannot art and literature that is free of political comment or which stands aloof from popular obsessions be singled out for acclaim?

It is a sad truth that publishing houses promote books, much like any other commodity, based on how likely it is to capture an easy readership. But surely one can hope to expect better from the minds that judge works of fiction and bestow awards. And if this is not the case then one must take a very jaded view of these most prestigious of titles.

Immigration controls

El Pais

AT the same time that the European Justice Minister Franco Frattini is saying that the EU will need some 20 million immigrants over the next two decades, the governments of the United Kingdom and France want to — or are — introducing restrictions on the numbers of foreign workers.

Frattini is looking at creating a European Blue Card, along the lines of the US Green Card, which would, he estimates, correct the imbalance between qualified and unqualified migrants coming into the EU, the aim being to substantially increase the proportion of the former.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested to UK companies that they do their best to employ British nationals, thus reducing the number of unemployed, which currently stands at half a million. Although Brown may have only suggested this idea, the underlying reasoning is in large part in accordance with the concept of “national preference”— somewhat undermining the European Union’s stated commitment to equal rights in this regard, if not to say wholly incompatible.

Given Brown’s comments, it will not be long before anti-immigration parties point out that democratic governments are finally implementing the very policies they have long expounded, even if they are not prepared to admit it, or by trying to disguise them.

But the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, would appear to have no qualms about admitting what he is doing, nor is he trying to disguise his intentions. The aim of deporting 25,000 foreigners — not one more, nor one less — living in France without the required papers could be the centrepiece of a propaganda campaign being prepared by a president known for his love of efficiency, but not for the political instruments needed to tackle the phenomenon of immigration.

Deportation is the last measure in a procedure that involves the judicial system — whose job is to issue fair and just resolutions, not this or that number of resolutions.

Furthermore, the French government would also like to oblige immigrants who want to bring their families to France to include genetic testing — which they would have to pay for — in their visa applications.

If the question of establishing a common immigration policy has been an urgent task for Europe, it is now the only way to make sure that foreign workers do not fall prey to whatever idea the government of the day in a given country comes up with to address the question of immigration.

Rather than establishing a common policy that balances the mutual interests of both sides, along with scrupulous respect for human rights and the law, EU member states are increasingly being tempted to experiment with demagogic ideas aimed at satisfying public opinion. — (Sept 15)

–– Selected by Shadaba Islam