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| May 15, 2008 | Thursday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 9, 1429 |
Know the enemy
Funds alone are not enough
OTHER VOICES - Middle East Press
What is happening in the country?
El Salvador: exhuming memory
THE PML-N’s primary concern was to get rid of General (retd) Musharraf. That was understandable. To them, revenge appeared necessary.
One of the men comes across a plastic thread and stops digging. He starts to carefully remove the dirt until unearthing a piece of material that he hands to an elderly woman, who is silently observing the exhumation of the remains of victims of El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.
THE terror that has struck India again — this time at Jaipur — is to be condemned in the strongest terms. Eight near-simultaneous blasts claimed 80 lives at the initial count. With a large number of people injured, some of them seriously, the death toll could go up. This is one of the major acts of terrorism in India in recent years, next only perhaps to the bombing of seven Mumbai trains in July 2006. Also to be recalled is the firebombing of the Samjhota Express that took a heavy toll in February last year. Another focus of the terrorists’ attention has been the historic city of Hyderabad, where two blasts — one at a crowded stadium and the other at a mosque — killed a large number of people. In Rajasthan itself, this is the second act of terrorism in seven months, the first one being the explosion within the precincts of the shrine of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti in October last.
The identity of those responsible for killing innocent people has not yet been established, nor has any organisation claimed responsibility for it. Indian press reports quoting security agencies suspect the involvement of several outfits — Harkatul Jihad al-Islami, Students’ Islamic Movement and Lashkar-i-Taiba. However, no Indian government official has blamed Islamabad or any Pakistan-based organisations for the crime, and this should serve to reassure us that New Delhi has refrained from an exercise in finger pointing that could have affected the ongoing composite dialogue. The motives behind the crime could include another bid to sour India-Pakistan relations or perhaps to discourage foreign tourists by targeting one of India’s major tourist attractions.
It is time the two governments redoubled their efforts to tackle the monster of terrorism jointly. Already, the normalisation has slowed down because of Pakistan’s domestic crisis. While Saarc’s 1987 Regional Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism and the Additional Protocol of 2004 exist on paper, there is a bilateral mechanism which came into being after the September 2006 Havana summit between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Its aim was to “identify and counter the sources of terrorism”. At its first meeting in Islamabad in March last year, the India-Pakistan Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism agreed that “specific information” would be exchanged but it did not lay down any procedure for doing so. One hopes the bureaucratic bottlenecks will be removed, and the mechanism will turn itself into an effective tool in the fight against terrorism.
TALKING to the enemy is an option that should never leave the table, for knowing what makes foes tick is half the battle. Military might is fully justified when unleashed against people who grope to decipher the mindset of decent human beings, who share nothing of intrinsic value with the majority of civil society and pose a threat to those so unfortunately placed that they must live by the laws of the lunatic fringe. Or leave, as the exodus from Fata bears witness. But when militants of a misguided religious bent begin to see the light, for whatever reason, the state must lend an ear if it is in a position of strength. There can be no repeat of the capitulation seen in the September 2006 ‘deal’ struck in North Waziristan, where militants dictated terms and the state indulged in abject surrender. If there are people willing to finally talk sense, they ought to be accommodated in the bigger picture. If they wish to impose their medieval views on the rest of us, the outlaws have to be told in no uncertain terms — even if that involves helicopter gunships — that this is not on and will not be tolerated come what may.
The fight against militancy and obscurantism has been boosted since Pakistan gained the benefit of a full-time chief of army staff not distracted by politics and the pressures of the presidency. There is talk now of sensible talk, from a position of strength. The Musharraf bluster, fuelled by what happened to be handy, is thankfully a thing of the past. It can do no harm to win round Baitullah Mehsud and his not so merry men, so long as it is the state that is laying down the ground rules. There is nothing wrong with prisoner swaps and peace deals in Waziristan and Swat. But there is everything wrong, even if it is merely a gesture, with kowtowing to the militants’ line and agreeing to enforce a tailored legal system in Malakand. What about the rights of those in Malakand who might prefer not to live under Sharia regulations? Has a referendum, devoid of loaded terms, been conducted to ascertain how the people of Malakand and not just the mullahs want to live their lives? Is it wise to make concessions that embolden the obscurantist? Consider also the perils inherent in setting up parallel judicial systems. It may work very well in the US but do we really want every province, or district in this case, to set up a separate legal system? The answer, emphatically, is no.
AS budget time draws close, our policymakers appear to be rediscovering the virtues of education. Chairing a meeting of the Higher Education Commission in Islamabad on Monday, the prime minister said that the government’s top priority is the provision of ‘quality education’ to the masses. He also spoke of empowering people with knowledge and utilising their skills for the socio-economic development of the country. The same day as Mr Gilani was extolling the merits of university education, the Hyderabad district nazim was speaking about the city government’s foresight in allocating the lion’s share of its funds to ensure the availability of quality school education to the people. The following day at a seminar on pre-budget dialogue on education, speakers blamed low education spending and its inappropriate use for poor academic performance in the country. A random look at the profusion of statements on education now emanating from various quarters gives the impression that every sub-sector is out to grab the maximum with no well-planned policy guiding and coordinating the different sectors. The conventional myth is still prevalent that the more money is pumped — even indiscriminately — into the education sector the better its standards will become.
True it is a fact that Pakistan has traditionally been tight-fisted when it came to spending on education because our policymakers failed to perceive this as productive investment. It has only been in the last few decades that education has attracted more funds — with a lot of these coming from abroad. Yet many of the problems in education have been attributed to the paucity of financial resources. As the flow of investment in this area improved, no planning went into enhancing its utilisation capacity. Awash with money and lacking a judicious strategy to use it meaningfully, some sub-sectors in education have failed to make the impact they could have given the quantum of funds available to them. It is time our planners concentrated on formulating an education policy — drafts are already available — and putting the funds to wise use. If this is not done, the corruption that has seeped into this sector of late will gnaw into its vitals and undermine public-sector education even further. The decisive factor which will determine the success or failure of the present government in achieving its education goals is the policy it adopts, the strategy it draws up and how effectively this is implemented.
Treasure hunt!
Turkish Daily News
THERE was a story last week in one of the Islamist media outlets of our country. The story was quoting an article published in the April edition of the monthly magazine of the Prime Ministry’s Religious Affairs Directorate.
…Reportedly, in 1930, together with the legendary Marshal Fevzi Çakmak … Atatürk was on a country tour by train. A deputy … whisper[ed] something into Atatürk’s ear. Atatürk was apparently annoyed with what he heard. His eyebrow up in the air in anger, he turned to the marshal and asked him whether he would accompany him to the next compartment of the train, as “my friends have informed me of something important, shall we check it together!” In the next compartment of the train, a senior officer was performing prayers.
Seeing the officer performing prayers, Atatürk turned to the marshal and said, “Sorry I troubled you here, but you saw that a moment ago the deputy whispered something into my ear … This man was informing me that a senior officer belonging to the presidential guard was performing prayers. As he saw it, performing prayers was a crime…” The officer was not punished by Atatürk. On the contrary, the informant deputy was asked to leave the presidential train … and in the following elections his candidacy for parliament was vetoed by Atatürk….
… [T]his anecdote indeed must serve to invalidate the … accusations against Atatürk, that he was a person against Islam, that he was an atheist, that he persecuted Muslim people, that he was an infidel rather than anything else. Of course, Atatürk respected Islam and the religious beliefs of people. All he did was to put an end to the practice of the will of the nation being held hostage by some Islamic brotherhoods, which caused great suffering to him and to the nation because of religious uprisings incited by some zealot sheikhs during the war of liberation.
That was why the principle of secularism was introduced, state and religion were separated, Islamic brotherhoods or religious orders were banned, and a national education campaign was launched to create a modern Turkish Republic giving prominence to reason and science. Atatürk was not against religion, nor was he against practising Muslim people. What he was against was the self-declared men of religion or some sort of a clergy class, as there is no such thing in Islam. There is a difference, of course, between an officer performing prayers on a train — even if it was the official presidential train — and government offices arranging work hours according to prayer time, or allocating special prayer rooms and even buildings within government offices. In a secular country, irrespective of how large a percentage of followers of a religion exist in society, the state must not allow any religion or belief to enter government offices, public schools and of course local administrations. Otherwise, why should the state, or a statesman (be it Atatürk), intervene in the religious belief (or non-belief) of any individual in his own private life? — (May 12)
The route adopted was the soindependence of the judiciary which was equated with the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and also all the other judges who were annihilated by the orders of Nov 3, 2007.
Now the overriding assumption is that anyone antiis supposed to be independent. It is possible that an independent judiciary would strike down what Musharraf did but it would not necessarily belong to the hate-Musharraf camp. Many people are beginning to realise that the lawyers’ movement is not possible without the support of an important political party. This has happened.
On the other hand Gen Musharraf’s lack of foresight, which resulted in the public roughing up of the chief justice, made Iftikhar Chaudhry an icon of judicial independence because he had the courage to take on the military. That he was leading what was in effect a political procession proceeding to the Supreme Court has therefore been ignored. It is understandable.
How is Mr Zardari going to deal with this problem? Our need of an independent judiciary is obvious. As the selection of judges for the higher judiciary has, since Ayub Khan’s time, been based on executive patronage, any independent judge available up to now is simply a matter of luck.
Mr Zardari’s approach has not been entirely misguided that for an independent judiciary in the future the procedure for selecting judges must be changed. This still raises the question of what do we do with the existing judges including those who refused to go along with the Nov 3 PCO. The antiMusharraf movement had gathered a lot of momentum and public support. Hence these judges decided to join it; but that does not mean that they are necessarily independent.
In fact they can be assumed to be pro–PML-N by those holding a different opinion. Although many people have adopted a partisan attitude regarding the restoration of all the judges who were removed on Nov 3, it is nevertheless not a simple matter. Hardly anybody will object to the judiciary being anti-Musharraf, but a lot of people would be apprehensive if they felt that the judges were part of the PML-N.
It is difficult to sympathise with the general. He lacks charisma and has complicated things by being indecisive. What is worse is that instead of collecting a group of intelligent people to advise him, he has relied heavily on second-rate sycophants. He knows little about economic policy and even less about public administration. It also seems to be the case with the present government in the centre and the provinces.
One glaring example is the sudden removal of Riaz Mohammed Khan as secretary of the foreign ministry because he was supposed to have expressed an opinion which was disliked by the foreign minister. What the foreign minister has done is to send a message to the people working in the ministry to never dare say anything he doesn’t like. People forget that it is the duty of senior officials to advise without fear or favour. If they cannot do so, it results in bad governance.
Similar things are happening in the provinces. Balochistan is a special case because the sardari system does not necessarily result in the ordinary Baloch being looked after. Nawab Akbar Bugti, who exploited the Bugti tribe, has suddenly emerged as a great hero because of the hate-Musharraf campaign. Anyway, a compromise has to be reached between the federal government and the sardars about what is needed to improve the lot of the common Baloch.
The British thought Balochistan had nothing much to offer so when Pakistan was formed we entered into an eyewash agreement with the ruler of Kalat.
After Sui, Balochistan became a source of vast natural resources. The Baloch now feel that it is their domain; they would prefer total autonomy to exploit their natural resources. This cannot be entirely ignored in coming to an agreement which will bring peace.
In any negotiation it is important to lay down how these resources will be used for the benefit of the ordinary Baloch and not merely for the sardar as happened in the case of Nawab Bugti.
The NWFP government has decided to negotiate a peace deal with the tribal leaders. Will the Taliban accept this? Tradition-bound societies cannot be changed overnight. Their insistence on Sharia is simply an extreme extension of tradition.
How is the NWFP society going to evolve to deal with today’s world? The starting point could be for them to commence development of infrastructure and the creation of jobs. Development of education and health services would also improve things slowly. But the Taliban had been promoted by the Pakhtun establishment. The issue of dealing with militants attacking Nato and the Afghan military is not that simple.
Sindh’s problem started practically after independence. The province was flooded with Indian Muslims. In the initial years there wasn’t much friction between the settled Sindhis and the newcomers. But it slowly grew over the years when the newcomers became the dominant middle-class in Karachi. The vacuum created by the departure of the professionals from Karachi for India was filled by outsiders.
The first clash occurred in 1972 over the language issue. Facing resistance from the Sindhis, Ziaul Haq launched military action against them and found support from the Mohajir party, the MQM. There were ups and downs in SindhiMohajir relations and the faults were not one-sided. It is paradoxical that Mr Zardari has decided to include the MQM in his government, although he had enough seats in the Sindh Assembly to ignore them.
All this has led young writers to believe that Pakistan is a collection of provinces. They think that this is a recent occurrence. It is not. As a matter of fact, although things have improved a bit over time, it is still difficult to find a committed Pakistani.
Gloria Portillo takes what is left of the garment and crumples it in her hand. ”This belonged to my Carlitos,” she manages to get out, before she begins to sob. Her son, Carlos Vinicio Portillo, and five other people were killed on Jan. 7, 1981 by the army, which accused them of belonging to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerillas.
The local residents and forensic experts are digging in the spot where the remains of five men and one woman are thought to be buried in La Angostura, a rural village in the mountains near the town of Ciudad Barrios, 136 km east of San Salvador.
The Madeleine Lagadec Human Rights Centre’s efforts to uncover the truth have led to around 600 exhumations of common graves since El Salvador began the transition to democracy in the wake of the 1980-1992 armed conflict, which left more than 75,000 civilian victims dead, as well as some 7,000 people “disappeared”, according to official estimates.
Nearly two decades later, the remains of thousands of “desaparecidos”, as the victims of forced disappearance are known in Spanish, are still buried in common graves without ever having been identified.
In La Angostura, the army seized 87-year-old farmer José de la Paz, teenagers José Tomás Villafuerte, José Noé Salmerón and Carlos Vinicio Portillo, who were between the ages of 17 and 19, a young woman only remembered as Gloria, and a high school teacher known as Leopoldo, in 1981.
At that time, the FMLN insurgents were beginning to organise in the northeastern part of the country, and the armed forces were carrying out counterinsurgency operations in villages in the area.
“They captured them and tortured them. They chopped them into pieces with an axe. A soldier told me that, and asked me not to say anything. That’s how I heard it happened,” 70-year-old María Emma del Carmen Salmerón tells IPS.
For 27 years she has waited for the moment when she could recover the remains of her son José Noé. “I’m tired of waiting,” she says.
A local resident, Esaú Pineda, found the bodies after the killings and buried them. He kept the secret all of these years. Now his indications have been crucial to the work of the legal authorities, who did not know where to start looking.
“There was a ditch where the water ran down, and we used it to bury them. Then we made a rock fence so the dirt wouldn’t wash off. The heads are pointing south and the feet are to the north. It’s right here,” says Pineda.
Elí Hernández, an activist with the Madeleine Lagadec Human Rights Centre, says he has taken part in four exhumations so far this year, in different parts of the country.
Discovering the truth about what happened and the whereabouts of the remains of the desaparecidos is not an easy task because judicial authorities continue to look askance at the efforts made by the victims’ families to find out the fate of their loved ones, he says.
Legal action is blocked by a 1993 amnesty law for human rights violators decreed by then president Alfredo Cristiani of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which is still in power, having governed the country since 1989.
Clarifying past human rights abuses is difficult “because these things still touch, in one way or another, a power that is still latent,” Hernández comments to IPS. Some of the military chiefs in power during the civil war are now in the foreign service, others are members of parliament, and others own private companies with contracts to provide public services.
The forensic expert removes the dirt and uncovers a dental plate, and then a skull, which probably belonged to José de la Paz. The local residents looking on make the sign of the cross. A few weeks ago, another forensic team uncovered the bodies of seven peasant farmers on an estate in the northwestern province of San Ana.
The Madeleine Lagadec Human Rights Centre has documented the Nov. 20, 1982 murder of seven members of a cooperative there, by dozens of paramilitaries who seized them and accused them of collaborating with the guerrillas. One of the seven victims was 37-year-old Isaías Landaverde. His widow, Ramona Hércules, 62, explains to IPS that although she fled the area, she never stopped believing that one day she would recover the remains of her husband.
“This proves that life does not end with death. In this case they (the widows) continue to have affection for those bodies,” Hernández reflects. Human Rights Ombudsman Oscar Luna tells IPS that ”regrettably, these issues have not been given priority treatment by the government.” He says, however, that the idea is “to create a unit to follow up on these questions.”
The peace agreement signed in January 1992 in Mexico by the ARENA government and the FMLN established a United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission to clarify crimes against humanity committed during the armed conflict.
The Truth Commission’s 1993 report, “From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador”, contains the results of its investigations into the murders of a number of Catholic priests in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the 1980 assassination of San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the 1981 El Mozote massacre, and other human rights crimes.
After the report was released, an international team of forensic experts discovered the remains of some 900 victims — mainly children, women and elderly people — in El Mozote, a village in eastern El Salvador.
The Legal Aid Office of the Archbishop of San Salvador reports that the El Mozote massacre was one of the most appalling human rights violations committed by the Salvadoran army.
The Catholic Church will publish “Massacre of Innocence”, a new book on what happened in El Mozote, aimed at recovering the memory of the victims and restoring their dignity.
—IPS News
