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| March 03, 2008 | Monday | Safar 24, 1429 |
Torture in police custody
How to treat a swindler
Living up to the billing
OTHER VOICES - North American Press
Whenever and wherever civilian governments have been ousted by the military, the core argument forwarded as justification for this blatantly illegal and unjustified act is that ‘civilian governments’ are inherently corrupt, inefficient, extravagant, domineering, unproductive and clique-ridden. In short they have no redeeming features.
REGARDLESS of whether it was a genuine scientific experiment, or, as some have called it, a publicity stunt, the eco-flight from London to Amsterdam did indicate a major step forward in man’s search for a feasible biofuel to cut down his dependence on fossil fuel. The private British airline’s eco-plane ran only one of its four engines on the experimental fuel which was a calculated concoction of oils derived from coconut and the babassu plant. The other three engines consumed the standard jet fuel. And even the biofuel-powered engine used an 80:20 blend of conventional and novel fuels. In simple terms, not more than five per cent of the plane’s entire fuel load consisted of the innovative elements and that has given ground for the critics to take out their daggers. There are miles to go before one can be sure of biofuel’s potential as an aviation fuel — even if the technicality is taken care of, it would still take more than a dozen acres of crop to fill one plane if it were to rely on coconut oil alone — but, undeniably, the trial means much to activists around the world. Their efforts include experimentation with ethanol derived from palm, corn, molasses and jatropha. Besides, interest has also been shown in farming algae which is likely to throw up a few surprises in the time to come.
Ethanol derived from molasses, however, has shown the biggest potential yet because of its potency and commercial viability. Small wonder then that the developed countries are importing huge quantities of both ethanol and molasses from around the world to continue their march towards the now well-established E-10 and E-85 blends. Pakistan is also exporting over a million tons of molasses and three times as much of ethanol. But this defies all logic. While we are definitely earning a few bucks — around six million dollars from molasses and $150m from ethanol per year — we are surely missing out on a great opportunity to work towards cutting down our own oil import bill. This can be done by encouraging the use of ethanol blends in automobiles. Luckily, there is no technology deficit to hinder our effort in that direction. The country did have a pilot project to try out E-10 gasoline, but it went down the drain solely because of official ambivalence and the vested interest of a few. By reviving the project and keeping a close eye on its progress, Pakistan can also hope to join the global bandwagon. The success of the British eco-flight has been described as the “equivalent of those exciting first few steps of a baby”. In our own context, revival of the E-10 project may have the same connotation.
MYSTERY surrounds the recent death of Khalil Ahmed, an under-trial detainee at Karachi’s Central Prison. His family is hesitant to accept the police version that he died of ‘cardiac and respiratory failure’, as they say that his health appeared fine three days before he passed away. Moreover, he appeared to have bled from his ear and mouth and an autopsy was not carried out — ostensibly in deference to his family’s wishes but in clear violation of jail rules. Unfortunately, considering that cases of custodial torture and death are not uncommon in Pakistan, doubts surrounding the circumstances and manner of Khalil Ahmed’s death will linger on.
Police in the country are notorious for their highhanded treatment of detainees, often to extract bribes or ‘confessions’, safe in the knowledge that few would be held accountable for their excesses. Gruesome methods are employed by police officials resorting to torture. These have ranged from severe beatings, often with the prisoner suspended upside down, to rape and being burned with cigarettes. No constitutional provision or law has deterred the police from perpetrating physical and emotional abuses on prisoners. Even the Police Order 2002 has failed to reform the law-enforcement system. It is not being implemented in letter and spirit, especially with regard to the functioning of public safety commissions or punishing officers involved in the torture of prisoners. Consequently, it is not surprising that human rights bodies estimate the number of cases of custodial torture, both reported and otherwise, to be in the thousands.
Sadly, civil society seems too taken up with day to day living hassles to pay attention to this problem. True, there have been cases where the death of a prisoner in custody has led to grief-stricken relatives and friends of the deceased protesting against the police. But, for the most part, intimidated families prefer to keep silent rather than incur the wrath of police officials by coming forward and registering their complaints. In fact, they should take heart from the cases of those whisked away by the intelligence services and held incommunicado for months. Prior to last year’s Nov 3 emergency, a number of such detainees were traced, and some released, thanks mostly to the efforts of human rights bodies, the Supreme Court — and the relatives of the missing who were persistent in their agitation. Unless the public is galvanised into taking such action, no government, however democratic it claims to be, will be prepared to take up cudgels against the scourge of custodial torture.
THE name says it all. Double Shah claimed he doubled money that anyone was willing to part with to let his magic touch work. Hundreds of early believers did see their money increase twofold in months, drawing in thousands more to suspend disbelief and give away their savings of a lifetime to someone who soon proved to be a swindler. Before his capture in 2006, Double Shah would hire helicopters to fly about in and touted many a political bigwig from central Punjab as his beneficiary as well as benefactor. The total worth of his ‘business’ was rumoured to run into many billion rupees. When finally the National Accountability Bureau had him under its net, the people who claimed to have invested money with him ran in tens of thousands and were spread far and wide in three adjoining districts of Gujrat, Sialkot and Gujranwala.
Double Shah has been under trial for close to two years now but the victims of his clever investment scheme have yet to get any of their money back. Now, after having recovered some money through plea bargains and voluntary returns from him and his accomplices, the authorities have announced that they will pay back Rs102.789m to 36,000 victims in the coming days. Another 2,015 people will get Rs336m back in April and a third batch of 4,138 investors will receive Rs297m in May. All put together Rs735.789m will be disbursed to those who once trusted Double Shah with whatever they had. Getting him to pay back this much is, no doubt, a positive step but it should not allow the curtain to fall on the Double Shah saga. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this sum — certainly quite staggering — is only a fraction of the total money that he robbed people of. The government should ensure that he returns every single penny that he swindled before he is allowed to walk free. Only after swindlers like him are made to account for all their misdeeds can we expect others hoping to get rich quick and following in their footsteps to pause and ponder.
This naturally means that those replacing the stinking lot must be of the most fragrant variety untarnished by corruption, cliques, charlatanism and all other evils of the ousted lot. To decide how the situation stands in reality and whether these self-proclaimed angels live up to their billing, we have to look at the record of the ‘driven snow’ that replaces corrupt ‘civvies’.
The generals too, like politicians, appoint their favourites. These appointments, touted as a prerequisite for increasing efficiency and curbing corruption, have more often than not exacerbated the crisis of ineptitude, willful waste and corruption and, in the process, eroded governance. The scale of appointments has been massive in recent years.
According to a report: “In 2003, as many as 104 serving and retired lieutenant generals, major generals or equivalent ranks from other services are among the 1,027 military officers inducted on civilian posts in different ministries, divisions and Pakistani missions abroad after the Oct 12, 1999 military takeover.
“Of these 1,027 military officers inducted on civilian posts, 27 military officers have been given the prized grade 22 while 62 officers have been adjusted in Grade 21. A whopping figure of 150 officers occupies civilian positions in Grade 20. There are 276 officers between Grade 20 and 22 alone. In the Foreign Office, 13 lieutenants and major generals were appointed as ambassadors to different countries, while one brigadier and a major also got ambassadorial positions.”
Not content with the above, the military bureaucracy in February 2004 sought permission from the defence ministry to directly appoint army officers in the Military Lands and Cantonments (MLC) against vacant posts bypassing the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) recruitment rules.
Now let us take a few shining examples of the supposed efficiency and improvements. According to the Audit Report 2000-01, the Pakistan Post had suffered a loss of Rs14,309.9m under its former director-general, a retired brigadier. The report says that despite this enormous dent, the brigadier is reported to have refused audits whenever teams of the auditor-general approached his department. He had, of his own accord, declared the Post Office an autonomous body and refused to obey any government rules and principles. The retired brigadier’s appointment itself had been against rules and regulations. It is beyond me to give a name to such conduct.
Perhaps one of the worst disasters, other than the frequent Ghotki-like incidents, that struck the Pakistan Railways (PR) was when it was decided by the present executive to burden its already crumbling system with three generals — that definitively and irreparably broke the system’s back.
Not long ago, a report stated that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was informed that the national exchequer suffered a loss of Rs30m per month due to the faulty locomotives imported during the tenure of a lieutenant general. Three generals, one of whom was the federal minister for railways, the other its chairman and the third the general manager, administration, ignored all accepted procedures and bought 69 locomotives from China for $98m in 2002. Not surprisingly a subcommittee of PAC headed by a ruling party MNA, a retired colonel, exonerated them. The report said, “The PAC here on Friday cleared the three retired generals including Federal Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi in the $98m Chinese locomotives scam, saying the officials had struck the deal in good faith.”
It is worth mentioning that the general had received the approval of the entire scheme on Dec 29, 1999 at the meeting of the NSC presided over by President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Apportioning criminal liability would have affected top guns too so they were conveniently cleared.
There has been misuse of position wherever an opportunity has presented itself. Giving one such example, Ayesha Siddiqa wrote, “The transfer of one portion of Karachi’s National Stadium to Karachi Cantonment Board is a prime example of military land-grabbing.” A recent chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), also a lieutenant general, was responsible for transferring the said land during his tenure in the cricket board. “A minimum of Rs600,000 netted a profit of about Rs15m in a quick 60 to 90 days. Such manipulative capacity is only available to the most influential institutions or individuals in the country.” He has of late joined the PPP.
It is interesting to note that Lt Gen Muneer Hafeez, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, had categorically said that the department neither had the capability nor the mandate to investigate corruption in the armed forces. He should have added that this included retired officers too. The exception being former Admiral Mansur-ul-Haq who must have done something particularly nasty to invite such wrath; former and not retired because Pervez Musharraf stripped him of his rank and military awards for receiving kickbacks in multi-billion dollar defence deals. He paid $7.5m (Rs457.5m) under a bargain plea of which 20 per cent went to an American law firm, Broadsheet, for its services. A person who can pay $7.5m in fines must certainly have a lot more in his kitty.
There is a long list of misdoings starting with 80 jaunts in eight years, crushing an independent judiciary, violation and mutilation of the Constitution, rising inflation, food shortages, indefinite power cuts, suicide bombings, military operations in Balochistan, Pemra Ordinances, May 12 incidents, a deteriorating situation in NWFP, bogus referendums, breakdown of law and order, farm-houses in Islamabad, re-election by expired assemblies, creation of a King’s party, and the Kargil disaster.
Additionally the gun and drug culture, a creation of ethnic outfits, local Taliban, Hudood and Blasphemy Ordinances, the Dhaka debacle, Indus Basin Treaty and many others are all gifts of military rulers. It may be pertinent to add that stints of so-called democratic rulers have also contributed towards creating a situation where a ‘doomsday’ scenario seems imminent.
The new COAS Gen Ashfaq Kayani seems to be systematically reversing earlier policies. Kayani has achieved this by issuing two key directives: prohibiting soldiers from meeting with politicians and ordering all active officers who hold posts in civilian agencies to resign from their positions. This is a healthy development but it should be understood that there can be no easy and quick ‘disengagement’ from what has become lifeblood for the institution’s higher echelons. The current year has also been declared ‘The Year of the Soldier’ by him — perhaps because our past years were ‘Years of the Generals’.
mmatalpur@gmail.com
Dangerous neighbourhood
The New York Times
TURKEY’s anger at cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels is understandable. But its decision to send what the Turkish news media said were thousands of troops into Northern Iraq last week was risky, verging on foolhardy. The last thing Iraq, Turkey or the US need is more chaos in the region.
Before the situation gets any worse, the United States must draw the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds — both close Washington allies — into a serious dialogue about how they can jointly deal with the insurgents and avoid a wider conflict. Washington will also need to press Turkey’s leaders to do more to address the legitimate grievances of their country’s Kurdish minority. The US on Thursday insisted that Turkey withdraw its troops as quickly as possible.
What neither man acknowledged is that for months the United States had provided Turkey with vital intelligence for air strikes against guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK. Washington considers the PKK a terrorist group. As rebel attacks mounted in recent months, Turkey’s military and public demanded that the government retaliate.
Turkey’s leaders have been further unnerved by the growing confidence and relative prosperity of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region. If the region were to some day declare independence, they fear Turkey’s own Kurdish population would follow suit…. Prolonged cross-border conflict would only add to Iraq’s chaos. It would also do major damage to Turkey’s international standing, including jeopardising its bid for European Union membership. — (March 1)
Two overtures to N. Korea
The Seattle Times
NORTH Korea was serenaded with beautiful music by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the capital of Pyongyang heard a slightly different tune from South Korea’s new president.
Both performances should have resonated this week with their intended audiences. Cultural diplomacy might not work political miracles, but such exchanges cannot hurt. American jazz phrasing in the Soviet Union and ping-pong players dispatched to China communicated a desire to thaw decades of frosty relations. US audiences were dazzled by Russia’s ballerinas.
The Philharmonic was broadcast on state-run radio and television, so the goodwill concert reached into the countryside. The orchestra’s tour, which began in China, was headed next to Seoul.
For all the grumpy rhetoric and rough course corrections expected from the first conservative South Korean president in a decade, Lee Myung-bak extended a hand to his cousins in the north.
The difference might be a little more stick than carrot. Lee offered to work with the north to expand its economy six-fold in the next decade.
Lee is a businessman who sees opportunities in joint economic zones for both countries. Liberals and conservatives alike recognise that economic progress in the north is not about buttressing a communist government, but seeking stability and security that forestalls a flood of desperate refugees.
Lee wants to bolster South Korea’s economy, and he is astute enough to recognise the value of spreading the gains around.— (Feb 28)