| November 03, 2007 | Saturday | Shawwal 21, 1428 |
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Swat – another base of Taliban
Abdication of social responsibilities
Karachi’s traffic nightmare
Child custody case
UN Council’s motive
Woes of KPT pensioner
Cricket – a farce
Phoney bills
CAA clarifies
City School-PAF Chapter
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
M. SHAHID Alam (Oct 14 and 21) has touched a burning topic as to “Why Pakistan is not being targeted” by the US for developing atomic weapons, nuclear proliferation or for the so-called Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’ in northern tribal areas.
One would concede that the US must have its own plans, its own priorities. In Pakistan at the moment perhaps Washington does not see that much ‘evil’ warranting top priority American action. Moreover, as we know, the midnight calls by Colin Powell or Condy Rice resulted exactly what the Americans asked for from our rulers.
This clearly establishes the complete American hold over Pakistan, which began to take shape during the very first decade of this country’s life, when our ambassador to the US, Mohammad Ali Bogra, was sent back from Washington in 1954 and made the prime minister, replacing Khwaja Nazimuddin. How the US subsequently strengthened its grip over Pakistan is a long story, better left for want of space.
Coming to the present-day situation, there is, however, a limit the rulers here cannot go beyond. Thus in 1998 Pakistan went nuclear even against American wishes and threats. There should be now no illusion that Americans have forgiven us.
They have their own agenda, their own priorities. The Bush administration-sponsored propaganda against the so-called Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’, danger of our nuclear weapons falling in the hands of ‘extremists’, painting Pakistan as a ‘failed’ or ‘rogue’ state and other malignant campaign against Pakistan is gathering momentum in the US.
The talk of military strike within Pakistan’s territory by presidential candidates and ‘think tanks’ is becoming louder and louder. The western media is full of stories about US plans for redrawing state boundaries in the turbulent Middle East, envisaging division of US-occupied Iraq into three sovereign zones, ‘adjustments’ in Iran, Afghanistan frontiers, also touching Pakistan.
At the moment, the US is desperately trying to raise its sinking head from the Iraq, Afghan quagmire. Once out of it, it will not hesitate to openly launch its aggressive long-term designs in the region. One shudders at the very idea, the likely dreadful shape of things, when the powerful American guns, the most destructive in the history of mankind, are pointed directly towards this region. Only divine aid may help save us then!
NASSER BROHI
Thatta
THINGS have been brewing up in another turbulent district of Swat ever since the rule of the MMA was established in the NWFP. One Fazlullah , a local religious extremist, has been working to run a parallel government Taliban-style over the past many years.
With each major turbulence in Waziristan or Tank, there was a sympathetic detonation of fundamentalism in the area of Swat/Bajaur. Swat, a lovable piece of Pakistan, a paradise in the hills, has been slowly converted into a hell where explosions and death traps dominate.
Maulana Fazlullah has mobilised over 4,000 volunteers and has named them as Shaheen Force. He has established his own courts and after controlling five dozen villages is almost running a parallel government. This has happened under the nose of the NWFP’s Durrani regime of the MMA. While being a part of a sovereign state of Pakistan, one man is in the process of taking over the state of Swat which was once ruled by the Wali of Swat, whose son Aurangzeb later became a commissioned officer in the Pakistan Army.
Fifty-nine villages are already under the sway of Fazlullah, who declared that full-fledged attacks will be launched on the security forces which have been sent to re-establish the government’s writ. The militants attacked the convoy of the security force killing, 30 FC men. In other words, Fazlullah had started his war on the legal forces of the state.
Security forces, with air cover available to them, reacted and killed many militants in return. Fazlullah, with his followers, has taken shelter in some safer haven. His deputy has instead asked for a ceasefire. Here lies the snag the way to success of the military force. The firm action taken by the security forces, if continued with the same tempo, is likely to expose the Maulana’s faux pas.
Ceasefires can be broken; they give respite to the weaker party. Ceasefire, at the moment, does not guarantee the removal of the Maulana’s haughty agenda. The security forces have to establish the writ of the state, once and for all.
BRIG ( r) A. Q. ANJUM
Rawalpindi
This is apropos of Muhammad Obaid Ali’s letter, ‘Drug prices and Sindh govt’ (Oct 21). The writer has praised the provincial minister of health and the special secretary of health, Sindh, for their concern, in addition to other things, over high prices of medicines.
I am a practising doctor who has seen the ever-deteriorating conditions of provincial hospitals and the miserable conditions of the patients who come for treatment at government hospitals that the much-praised provincial minister of health manages.
The apathy of the government could be gauged from the fact that poor patients have to pay for even a piece of cotton, what to talk about provision of medicines. Although billions of rupees of taxpayers are spent by the government on the purchase of hospital supplies and medicines, it is estimated that not even one-tenth of these supplies and medicines reach the hospitals.
The success of the surgeries and the condition of hygiene even in surgical operations are horrible. A lot of people acquire infections in the hospitals as the staff is untrained, and they do not have sterilisation equipment and supplies.
Most of all, it is a failure of the management and the vested interest that has brought about this situation. What happens to these medicines and supplies? Can’t the honourable minister of health with all the powers available to him change the situation?
Most of all, the spending by the government of Pakistan on health is one of the lowest in the world. It is estimated that Pakistan spends less than two per cent of GDP on health. In comparison, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Mexico, Jordan, Algeria spend in the range of 10 to 12 per cent of the GDP on health.
To make matters worse, whatever little our government allocates for health is squandered through mismanagement and corruption and the public gets nearly nothing.
The fact is that the government has abdicated all its social responsibilities, including providing primary healthcare to its citizens. The sanitary conditions in big cities are one of the worst in the world and food adulterations are on the rise.
It appears that the writer has his own axe to grind in appeasing the minister and the secretary because the standard of the public health system in Sindh is abysmal, if not completely ruined, which is the very responsibility of the health minister/secretary.
A CONCERNED CITIZEN
Karachi
THE Supreme Court has very timely taken suo motu notice of the traffic nightmare, before it acquires a much bigger dimension, compared to the prolonged shutdown of the city, as happened in 1985, after the Bushra Zaidi tragedy which, according to economists, cost the nation Rs1,500 million for each day the city was paralysed.
This is apart from the loss of human lives, now almost three to four each day, scores maimed for life, millions of dollars of fuel wastage and valuable working time of the city adversely affecting the national economy. If all these factors are realistically calculated, the total economic and financial loss to the nation in one year could be far more than the cost of providing a network of elevated or underground rail network in this largest city of Pakistan of 15 million souls, offering most of its revenue and economic productivity.
Surely the main, two-pronged spine of the 1974 Master Plan, refined by RTS Cell, from Tower to Sohrab Goth and Liaquatabad to N. Karachi, as approved for review by the Council of Common Interests in 1975, headed by the then prime minister Z A Bhutto, deserves to be taken up for implementation, after updating it on top priority. This is most likely to considerably ease the present chaos, as rightly desired by the Supreme Court, offering a permanent solution.
No doubt ensuring traffic discipline can be of some help, as suggested by Sami Mustafa and Dr Irshad Sethi (Oct 22), but cannot offer a lasting solution, as required by the apex court. It is hoped that the authorities concerned, especially the Planning Commission of Pakistan, will take urgent action to implement a lasting viable solution for this traffic nightmare, before it takes the worst turn as happened in 1985.
S.M.H. RIZVI
Karachi
WAF is deeply concerned about a recent case of child custody, which was reported in Dawn (Oct 30).The marriage between Fizza Rizvi and Ghulam Nurie ended in divorce, which stemmed from severe domestic violence. Five months after the birth of her son Abbas, Fizza was able to return to Pakistan to visit her parents.
She remained in Pakistan, and obtained divorce on grounds of extreme physical and mental cruelty. She also obtained custody of her son.
Under a 2006 consent order, Abbas was not to be removed from the jurisdiction of the Sindh High Court. Strict visitation rights were agreed to, under supervision, for the father, only in the lawyer’s office. Fizza ensured that these were regularly followed each week.
Last week, on one such visit, Ghulam Nurie came with three armed men, beat up Fizza, and kidnapped Abbas, right outside the lawyer’s office.
Justice Yasmin Abbasy has already ordered that the names of Abbas and Ghulam Nurie be placed on the Exit Control List. Ghulam Nurie has a history of violence: apart from domestic violence, he has already shot at Fizza in 2005, for which case of attempted murder an FIR was registered in 2005; he also attacked Fizza’s father in the past.
For the last four-and-a-half years, Fizza has brought up her son alone, without any support from his father. She is deeply afraid that this emotional trauma will affect her son.
WAF urges that police urgently locate the whereabouts of Abbas and rescue him; he should not be allowed to leave the country. Under Pakistani law, Fizza, the mother, has custody of her son: her right, and her son’s, must be ensured.
WOMEN’S ACTION FORUM
Karachi
DOES any impartial, politically honest person, who has been watching the United Nations’ performance since its inception, have any doubts in his mind about the fact that the organisation has throughout its life been used by western Christian nations as a tool for furthering their legitimate and illegitimate interests against weaker and, particularly, Muslim countries and nations?
The UNO’s inactions or malicious actions in respect of peace-endangering world problems like Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq are before everybody’s eyes.
The Security Council’s latest action of taking an unusual notice of violence in Benazir’s rally on Oct 18 speaks volumes about the organisation’s ulterior motive in this part of the world.
Keeping for a moment the aforesaid international issues aside, has anyone in Karachi forgotten the arson, looting and massacre of over 250 innocent men, women and children in Aligarh and Qasbah localities in the night between Dec 14 and 15, 1986? Then, on Sept 30, 1988, a similar number of Urdu-speaking people were gunned down and several hundred seriously wounded in only a couple of evening hours in Hyderabad. The planned brutality was followed by another planned brutality.
The next day, before dawn, about 35 poor Sindhi fishermen on their way to fish harbour were attacked and killed in their bus passing through the Malir City. The political party which benefited, or for whose benefit the killings were done, is now thriving as ‘enlightened, moderate’ in the country’s politics. The memories of Pucca Qila in Hyderabad and Khajji Ground in Karachi have not yet been scrapped from our minds.
The tragedy enacted at Nishtar Park in April 2006 (in which over 35 people were killed and hundreds wounded) and the notorious May 12 carnage in the city are the brutal incidents that happened only recently.
May I ask the UN Security Council why it ignored all these incidents of extreme violence and barbaric killings? And what action has it taken on the killing of 23 election candidates in Colombia, South America, a few days ago?
Why does the UN Security Council feel more concerned about Benazir Bhutt’s safety and security in Pakistan and take no notice of violence in other parts of the world? No sensible person on earth will ever support the murder of innocent people in Karachi on Oct 18. But are the American and the allied Christian forces not committing the same crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan every day in the name of the so-called war against terror? How is the UN Security Council reacting to it? By keeping quiet and looking the other way?
SHAMEEM AHMAD
Karachi
THIS refers to S. G. Mohiyuddin’s letter under the above caption (Oct 7). I am another sufferer and my suffering is greater because I am a widow. My husband, Mohammad Abdul Quddus, was employed in the KPT. He died in 1982. Since then the KPT has been giving me family pension.
When the KPT took a virtual ‘divorce’ from the federal government in September 1990 and promulgated its own pay-scales and pension rules, common sense demanded that it should define what it planned to do about such cases as mine, where the employee had retired or died before that cut-off date of September 1990.
But the KPT did not bring my case within the purview of the new rules and went on giving me pension as well as periodical increments as declared by the federal government from time to time. The last increment was given in 1999.
From 2001 onwards, however, the KPT neither paid me any of the increments sanctioned by the federal government, nor did it switch my case over to its own rules as an alternative. Thus I have been left out on a limb at a time when wheat flour sells at Rs30 a kg.
Justice demands that the KPT should take one of the two decisions: either it should continue applying the federal government rates of pension as it did up to 1999 or it should apply its own rates of pension, from 2001, since when it denied me the increment benefit.
ISMAT ARA BANO
Karachi
WHILE millions of cricket fans are deeply disappointed, it is reported Captain Shoaib Malik is upbeat and happy at the loss of ODI series to South Africa. Indeed where Pakistan cricket is concerned, when losing is a more lucrative option, why win?
With the Indian tour starting from Nov 5, greater happiness is in store for Shoaib Malik and his team. Betting will be at its peak with bookies controlling the results of three tests and five one-dayers, causing additional pain, agony and anguish for cricket fans in Pakistan. While millions of fans and the great game of cricket will suffer, all others, including players, the cricket establishments, the umpires, the media, will have a party, including the anti-corruption unit of the ICC. In short, the India-Pakistan cricket series will be a farce and a fraud with the game and the fans.
KHAWAJA FARIDUDDIN
Karachi
MY phone # 2582234 has been out of order for more than 2½ months, yet the PTCL has sent me the bills for phoney calls. During this period my phone never worked even for a single day, how come then it could be possible to make any call from a phone which is not working?
M. QAMAR ALI
Karachi
APROPOS of your editorial, ‘Islamabad’s airport project’ (Oct 28)), the CAA would like to clarify that the New Islamabad International Airport (NIIA) project is not delayed at all, rather its early construction is the topmost priority.
The earthwork on the runway is in full swing and will be completed by the end of this year as per schedule. The construction of the main passenger terminal building and airport infrastructure is likely to begin when the preliminary earthwork is completed.
The estimated time period for the functional completion of the airport project is 33 months. All land acquired for the airport has been done keeping in mind the operational and safety requirements foremost.
The acquisition process has been completed after going through a strict and highly transparent process. After approval by the CAA director-general, the whole process — the land rates, size, etc. — was presented to the CAA board of directors, which approved it.
The defence secretary is the chairman of this board, comprising senior government officials, including vice chief of the Air Staff, finance secretary, planning secretary, PIAC chairman/MD and other representatives from the government and the private sector.
The CAA board, an independent body capable of taking decisions, has appreciated the transparent acquisition of additional land for the airport project.
The CAA also got the acquisition process assessed by an independent private audit firm which ratified the rates and the process followed. The transparency process adopted in this matter, thus, meets the highest standards.
PERVEZ GEORGE
Public Relations
Manager, CAA
Islamabad
I WANT to draw the attention of all relevant government / Karachi city government authorities to an ever increasing difficulty, daily faced by the general public.
The City School, PAF Chapter, located on Shaheed-i-Millat Road (near the Baloch Colony Bridge) has students in the thousands. If you happen to be driving on the expressway at the closing time of this school, be prepared for an agonising wastage of a couple of hours. It’s the ill discipline of students, parents, public and traffic police — all at its worst simultaneously. Traffic is blocked from the Quaid-i-Millat flyover (Baloch Colony Bridge) to the Iqra University. Traffic coming from Korangi on the link road is also stuck.
School authorities must at least take out a fraction of their income to build a pedestrian bridge for the convenience of public and safety of students and create an additional parking lot within the boundary to avoid the parking/waiting on the main expressway.
TARIQ MASOOD
Karachi
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