Landing problems

BENAZIR Bhutto is not off the mark when she says that it is the PML-Q leadership and not Gen Musharraf that has ‘problems’ with her proposed return to Pakistan tomorrow. Chaudhry Shujaat, the Q-League president, has minced no words in describing the National Reconciliation Ordinance as a political trick played by the government to entrap the PPP and split the opposition. If the Supreme Court strikes down the NRO, he has further gloated, the government was under no obligation to re-promulgate the ordinance. On Saturday, the minister of state for information also asked the PPP chairperson to delay her return until ‘the challenges [to the amnesty law] are cleared’, noting ominously that all cases and corruption charges against her would be reopened if the NRO is declared null and void. It also seems that the PML-Q leadership is delighted with the public criticism — perfectly justified in its own right — of the amnesty granted to those accused of corruption. Though he claimed on Monday that the PPP chairperson was free to return to the country, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was quick to point out that ‘the people have had a strong reaction to the removal of corruption cases against Ms Bhutto’. This concern is instructive in itself, coming as it does from a government that has remained blissfully oblivious to public opinion for the last five years.

Further confusing an already uncertain situation — or perhaps just eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the national PML-Q boss — the Sindh chief minister has ordered the Karachi police and city officials to remove banners welcoming Ms Bhutto from all government buildings and installations. Perhaps keen to distance the MQM from this unnecessary provocation, the city nazim was reported as saying that the entire stretch from the airport to Bilawal House came under the jurisdiction of the cantonment boards and not the local government. The nazim would indeed be helpless if the jurisdiction claim weren’t patently false. Ms Bhutto, for her part, is adamant that she will land in Karachi on the 18th as planned.

The PML-Q’s desire to make life as difficult as possible for Ms Bhutto is perfectly understandable. The incumbents came to power through an election whose authenticity convinced no one and remained in office only by hanging on to the coat-tails of Gen Musharraf. The rag-tag king’s party never enjoyed legitimacy in the eyes of the public — indeed never cared whether it did or not — and many of its leading lights know they cannot win an election not tilted in their favour. True, Gen Musharraf has also asked Ms Bhutto to delay her return. But then he is the person who offered the NRO to the People’s Party and, pending a court decision, there is no knowing if he can live up to his word. At the same time, the legality of his own re-election is still to be confirmed by the Supreme Court. Of course his true motives are best known to the president himself. But this much is certain: unlike the Q-League, the president stands to benefit from a deal with the PPP and there is little reason why he would jeopardise the alliance so late in the day.

Easy loans, but with a trick

EASY access to money can be tempting – and deceptive. Even when they involve exorbitant costs, offers of a readily available loan or an unrealistic rate of profit requiring little documentation is something most people – especially those with many needs and few resources -- will find hard to resist. Our consumerist culture has also created new incentives for people to seek ways and means of making a few quick bucks. Many an ingenuous and enterprising — though unscrupulous — individual has time and again attempted to make the most of this simple psychological fact. Unfortunately for their victims, most of them succeed most of the times.

A group of fraudsters, arrested in Lahore last week, could have done just that but for the timely protestations by their clients. Operating as a business entity in various parts of the city and offering easy loans and high profits on investment, these individuals seem to be as cunning as the now notorious Double Shah. Their network was tiny as compared to his, though. Shah was caught in April early this year after having attracted billions of rupees from people in Lahore’s nearby districts of Gujrat, Gujranwala and Sialkot promising extremely high profit rates. It was perhaps in reaction to this enormous scandal that the Punjab Assembly passed a law on June 30, 2007, prohibiting private money lending in the province. The practice still goes on, nevertheless, mostly because it is almost impossible for the government to monitor every single monetary transaction taking place between individuals. It’s here that individual responsibility comes in. If people are discrete about the earnings from their investments and cautious about the loans they seek, chances of scams and scandals like the one mentioned earlier, may be greatly minimised if not altogether removed. To put a complete end to these illegal practices, something bigger – that is, economic conditions of the country – is needed to change for the better. Until that happens, it is better for everyone to be on their guard themselves against anyone and anything offering quick bucks. Seeking administrative and legal remedies after the damage has been done can be both costly and time-consuming as the victims of Double Shah are finding out.

Islamabad’s polluted lakes

THE twin cities were last week reminded of how polluted the water from their taps could be when the federal ombudsman chastised the environment regulatory authority, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency, for failing to control pollution in Khanpur Lake, one of the three man-made lakes which supply water to Islamabad and Rawalpindi, the other two being Simly and Rawal Lakes. The week before, the Water and Sewage Agency, Rawalpindi, had also pointed out, once again, the ‘disastrous level’ of pollution in Rawal Lake. Awareness of contamination in these water bodies has existed for long, particularly after the passage of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, but it was not until recently that serious measures were considered to try and curb this pollution. Committees were formed to discuss the sources of pollution and the necessary measures. Meanwhile, the National Environmental Quality Standards was established, and Pak-EPA and other regulatory bodies like the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources started conducting regular monitoring of the water quality in these lakes. But other than pointing out that there is pollution in these lakes and naming the sources and each agency blaming the other for not acting on the problem, neither of the twin cities has been able to come up with a viable ‘master plan’ on curbing existing and potential pollution of their precious water bodies.

The problem is more than pollution. In the case of Simly Lake which supplies water to Islamabad, some environmentalists predict this lake will practically dry up if the planned New Murree City project materialises, this being expected to destroy large portions of the lake’s catchment areas. In the case of Khanpur Lake, environmentalists say total silting of its left bank canal and serious leakage of water from it has considerably reduced the volume of water being supplied to the twin cities from this lake. There is no simple solution to address these problems. An integrated, multi-faceted and multi-stakeholder approach is required to monitor and check the sources of pollution in these lakes and ensure that they remain efficient sources of water supply for the twin cities.

Profits of doom

AT around noon on Sunday, Sept 16, an Iraqi doctor was on her way to pick up her pathologist husband from a Baghdad hospital. Her 20-year-old son was behind the wheel. When they reached Nisour Square, a bullet out of nowhere struck and killed the young man.

The car kept moving forward, until a barrage of gunfire cut short his mother’s agonised screams. Within moments, a grenade launcher was deployed to incinerate the vehicle.

Thereafter, bullets began flying in every direction. Shortly afterwards, the shooting spree was repeated some 500 metres from the square. At the end of it, 17 Iraqis lay dead and at least as many were seriously injured. Callous as it may seem to point this out, that’s not an enormous toll by local standards: aerial bombardments, suicide bombings and other actions by the occupying forces or their foes frequently claim more lives. But what sets this particular incident apart is the fact that the perpetrators were neither insurgents nor, strictly speaking, US troops.

They were employees of Blackwater USA, one of the scores of private “security” firms that are, quite literally, making a killing in Iraq. The estimated 180,000 ‘private contractors’ exceed by 20,000 the American troop strength in the country. Of them, at least 50,000 are designated for combat roles. Blackwater enjoys an edge because it is favoured by the US State Department. It provided protection for Paul Bremer and its services have been retained by subsequent proconsuls. Official visitors from the US invariably rely on it whenever they venture outside the Green Zone.

As a consequence, when the Iraqi administration of Nouri al-Maliki reacted to the Nisour Square bloodbath by revoking Blackwater’s licence, that effectively halted excursions outside the Green Zone by US diplomats. The ban was quietly lifted after three days, following a muted expression of contrition from Condoleezza Rice and the promise of a transparent investigation. According to the State Department, Rice expressed her regret ‘over the death of innocent civilians that occurred during the attack on an embassy convoy’. Blackwater initially denied the charge: ‘The ‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies,’ a spokeswoman said.

Although the firm continues to insist the convoy came under fire after a car bomb went off nearby, this appears to be a blatant falsehood. Iraqi witnesses have, without exception, maintained all along that the Blackwater guards had opened fire without provocation. None of the victims was armed, and no one had so much as hurled a stone at the uniformed gunmen. US military investigators found no evidence to contradict this view. In fact, one of the Blackwater employees reportedly tried to restrain his colleagues, obviously to little avail.

Less than a week earlier, the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, had praised the efforts of private security firms, singling out Blackwater for an honourable mention. If this wasn’t embarrassing enough for the State Department, it subsequently turned out that the department’s first comment on the massacre was drafted by a Blackwater employee. And when an FBI team travelled to Iraq to investigate the growing scandal, guess who was responsible for their protection?

In its final report on the incident, Iraq has officially demanded that the US government sever links with Blackwater within six months, that the Sept 16 gunmen be handed over for trial in Iraqi courts, and that $8m be paid in compensation to each bereaved family. It is unlikely that the US will heed this wish list: although it clearly has an interest in sustaining the myth of Iraqi sovereignty, Washington does not regard Maliki as indispensable. Blackwater’s interests are evidently more precious.

A rule promulgated by Bremer in 2004 gives Blackwater employees -- and all other private contractors -- immunity against Iraqi laws. The occupying military forces enjoy the same privilege, but they can at least be court-martialled. In practical terms, this does not mean very much: most of those who face charges for conduct unbecoming get away with a slap on the wrist. It was reported earlier this month, for instance, that the case against marines held responsible for the Haditha massacre is falling apart. However, it could be argued that even compromised legal proceedings are better than none at all. For instance, at least some of the enlisted personnel involved in the Abu Ghraib atrocities were placed in the dock. The private contractors employed at the notorious prison got away scot free.

Immunity, not surprisingly, encourages impunity. The only disciplinary consequence for highly paid mercenaries is that they can be sacked and sent home. That’s what happened last year to Andrew Moonen, a Blackwater guard who, while drunk, killed a bodyguard of Iraqi vice-president Adil Abdul Mahdi. He promptly found employment with Combat Support Associates, another firm with an Iraqi presence. In all, Blackwater has sacked 120 of its employees in Iraq, which equals 12 per cent of its staff in that country. No one outside the company knows what excesses prompted this punishment.

It is widely acknowledged that only around 15 per cent of shooting incidents involving private firms in Iraq ever get reported. Notwithstanding such limitations on transparency, Blackwater employees have developed a reputation for particularly egregious conduct-which may have something to do with the fact that Erik Prince, the company’s co-founder and boss, is a certifiable theo-con: a Christian fundamentalist who contributes generously to the Republican Party’s coffers. That’s a sensible investment from his point of view, given that federal contracts account for 90 per cent of the revenue earned by Prince Group holdings, the parent company of Blackwater, and the latter’s earnings from such contracts have grown hundred-fold since 2001.

Recent congressional hearings suggest that some US legislators are seriously concerned about the conduct of private contractors in Iraq. A United Nations human rights officer, meanwhile, has hinted that Blackwater could be investigated for war crimes. A more standard legal test also looms, after a man injured in the Nisour Square mayhem and the families of three other victims last week filed a suit against Blackwater in a US federal court.

The outsourcing of military operations by the US, which seriously got under way when Dick Cheney was defence secretary under the first President Bush, illuminates a particularly ugly facet of free enterprise, with American taxpayers footing the bill for the excesses of firms such as Blackwater and Halliburton. The employees of security firms invariably earn far more than US military personnel. It is argued that the level of risk justifies unusually high remuneration for the soldiers of fortune. However, the prospect of being able to live out their violent fantasies inevitably attracts sadists and psychopaths. All too often they turn out to be killers trained either by the US military, or by the armies that thrived under apartheid in South Africa or Pinochet in Chile.

The Nisour Square massacre is a reminder of the dangers inherent in the privatisation of war. Yet it’s vital not to lose sight of the fact that the Blackwater scandal is a side show, one of the innumerable avoidable consequences of the aggression against Iraq, which has led to what retired lieutenant-general Ricardo Sanchez described last week as ‘a nightmare with no end in sight’.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com

Fight for equality

Seattle Times

A COMMEMORATIVE stamp released by the United States Postal Service highlights a quiet, defining moment when American public schools shifted toward racial equality.

The moment was Mendez v. Westminster, a 1947 federal court case challenging segregated schools. Taking place seven years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated the nation’s classrooms, it is considered by legal scholars an important landmark. The United States Postal Service’s stamp acknowledges the 60th anniversary of the case. The multihued imprint, evocative of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera’s work, offers a visual and historical lesson on civil rights.

The story behind the Mendez case intersects with famous names and events in civil-rights history. The Mendez family took over the farm of a family of Japanese ancestry being shipped to a World War II internment camp in Arizona. One of the biggest advocates for internment at that time was then-California Attorney General Earl Warren. He would later have a change of heart.

As a three-term California governor, Warren is credited with overturning laws segregating Asian and Native American students. Later still, as chief justice of the United States, Warren garnered the unanimous vote in the Brown case.

A federal court handed the Mendezes a victory, declaring: “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality.”

The Mendez case and its impact on history are less well-known than the Brown decision. (Oct 13)

Close the gap

Hartford Courant

CONNECTICUT educators can pat themselves on the back again. The state’s school children remain among the top in the nation in reading and mathematics, based on test results posted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Those same results, however, show that Connecticut continues to have one of the nation’s worst achievement gaps between low-income non-white students, who live primarily in urban areas, and their white middle-class counterparts in the suburbs. For example, Connecticut ranked sixth in the nation in fourth-grade reading, but the point spread between the scores of its white and non-white fourth-grade readers was among the widest. The average gap nationwide was 27 points. Connecticut’s gap was 34.

When the two-year NAEP survey, also known as the nation’s report card, was released, state education officials emphasised the positive news and downplayed the achievement gap. That’s unfortunate. Instead of only priding themselves on how high the state ranks in the overall test scores, residents and educators should also measure themselves by how well they close the gap.

Without a labour pool that can read, write and count properly, employers will likely flee Connecticut, and the state’s economy will suffer. Upon his appointment earlier this year, State Education Commissioner Mark K. McQuillan said that closing the achievement gap would be one of his priorities. His office is said to be preparing a number of initiatives to reach this essential goal. (Oct 16)