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| June 15, 2008 | Sunday | Jamadi-us-Sani 10, 1429 |
Two more bodies from India
Yet another attack
Middle East never tires of threats
Think global, act local!
OTHER VOICES – Indian Press
WHAT is it about threats? What possesses half the Middle East to shout abuse all the time? First we have Ahmadinejad, one of the most … presidents in the world, raving away about annihilating Israel. Then we have Shaul Mofaz, the deputy Israeli Prime Minister, telling the world that there would have to be attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“ACCORDING to the Wall Street Journal, agriculture has room to run and can give investors solid returns…. How to invest? These four stocks could bring you the biggest gains of your investment career!” pops up an advert when I open my Yahoo mail.
FRIDAY’S rally in Islamabad by lawyers and their political allies was a significant event by all accounts and one that fairly reflected the public mood. Credit must equally be given to the organisers and the capital’s administration for seeing the event through in a peaceful manner given the numbers that had converged on Islamabad from across the country. Both sides kept their promises: the lawyers and the participating political parties ensured that the crowd did not become unruly or go beyond the designated area; the Islamabad administration facilitated rather than obstructed the event. The decision by the organisers not to stage an indefinite sit-in in front of parliament and instead disperse after they had made their point was a prudent one. This should give the federal government the face-saving it so desperately sought as the crowds swelled through Friday and into Saturday morning. The time for parliament to take up the issue of the judges’ reinstatement is now. Stretching it any further will not benefit anyone, least of all the PPP which is increasingly seen as dragging its feet on the issue despite having made commitments to the contrary.
As for the participants in the long march, their disparate rhetoric made it clear who took part and for what cause. The lawyers want the restoration of the judges first and foremost; the PML-N, the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf want President Musharraf impeached and brought to book for his extra-constitutional actions; the nationalist and Islamist groups want compensation for the wrongs committed against them and guarantees that they would not be uprooted and their leaders imprisoned or killed; families of the missing persons demand their loved ones back. That’s quite a list, and one that the government cannot easily ignore if it does not wish to see a repeat of Friday’s protest against its policies; the next one may not pass as peacefully.
Mercifully, the stage has not come just yet when ordinary people regardless of whichever party they voted for but reeling as they do under the burden of economic hardship, the energy crisis and so many other issues that affect them everyday, will join anyone out to rock the boat of democracy. The overabundance of piled up issues, many of which the current rulers have inherited as a legacy of bad governance that preceded them, is waiting to be addressed. As parliament takes its time debating the judges’ issue or the president’s impeachment, if at all, there is little justification for not taking on menaces like load shedding, the flour shortage, spiralling crime rate and food price inflation, for instance. Also, the making and breaking of peace deals with extremist elements the US-led Nato forces are chasing inside Pakistan calls for a clearer policy the lack of which has added to the government’s predicament in Fata and elsewhere.
IT is ironical that only a few days after the Pakistan-India Judicial Committee on Prisoners visited jails in Karachi to ascertain the condition of Indian inmates, the bodies of two Pakistani prisoners were sent home by Indian authorities. The cause of the deaths of Abdul Aleem and Rashidan Bibi will remain unclear until doctors carry out planned autopsies on their bodies. But Indian jails, like their counterparts in Pakistan, are notorious for the use of torture and the families of both victims have said that the latter were not spared in this regard. Indeed, when one recalls the mysterious case of under-trial prisoner Khalid Mehmood, who died in an Indian jail earlier this year and whose family alleged torture, one cannot rule out the possibility — especially when he, like Abdul Aleem, was suspected of spying. As the prisoner issue is being highlighted frequently by the media, there is more public awareness about it now than before. This means that the maltreatment of prisoners by either country can result in a surge of public anger — even as the two governments employ standard rhetoric — as it did in the case of Khalid Mehmood, and create misgivings about the peace process.
Moreover, an agreement between Islamabad and New Delhi last month, providing for, amongst other things, the humane treatment of Indian and Pakistani prisoners in each other’s country, should leave no room for the torture of inmates. The agreement that is primarily meant to give consular access to the prisoners is an important confidence-building measure and its violation will only denigrate other components of the peace process. Provisions like immediately notifying each other’s diplomatic mission about the arrest of one of its nationals and repatriating within a month those who have served their sentences look good on paper. But given the deep distrust that still governs India-Pakistan ties, it will take more than words and signed agreements to ensure the welfare and rights of prisoners. At the moment, there is not even agreement on the number of prisoners in each other’s jails. It is hoped that Indian and Pakistani human rights activists will exert pressure on their respective governments to ensure that the accord is implemented. Until they do, hundreds of innocent people, who inadvertently crossed the border, will continue to languish behind bars in deplorable conditions. With no access to consular help or their families who are often not notified about their whereabouts, their imprisonment may be unending.
GIRLS’ schools are being bombed and burnt down with such regularity in the northern parts of the country that the news of another institution being torched will hardly cause shockwaves. The latest attack came recently when a girls’ school in Upper Dir was set alight by some individuals, leading to considerable damage to the building and causing disruption in the exam schedule. The local nazim, Sahibzada Tariqullah, has rightly observed that such attacks ‘will not serve Islam or the region’ and has said that he cannot remain ‘a silent spectator’ while such destruction ensues. Unfortunately, his seems to be the lone voice of condemnation. This is indeed a great pity. The PPP-led coalition was elected for its promise to rid society of injustice and to ensure the fundamental rights of each citizen. The government’s silence on incidents such as the one in Upper Dir is hardly a good beginning in this respect. By not coming down strongly on religious zealots who cause destruction, and by allowing the recurrence of such incidents, it is failing to deliver on two issues of equal import: education and the rights of the girl child which have been neglected by all rulers.
Anti-women attitudes will only be reinforced as Talibanisation spreads. This can seriously damage the whole fabric of society as women constitute half the population and the denial of quality education to them would impair their positive contribution to national life. Without education, their role — whether as mothers, wives or workers — would be incomplete and negatively affect the country’s economy, polity and its image abroad. The result would be successive generations of conservative-minded individuals and communities, unable to keep pace with a world that no longer looks upon women as liabilities but understands their worth as human assets. It is keeping this long-term view in mind that the government should give as much attention to female education as it does, say, to matters relating to the judiciary or to the price of wheat flour. It has a responsibility to ensure that girls’ schools are protected, that threats are not issued against those going to school in militancy-infested areas and that those inclined to demolish such institutions of learning are given exemplary punishment.
Mofaz was maybe trying to walk tall beside the increasingly powerless Ehud Olmert, or maybe he was just trying to make up for having been a spectacularly unsuccessful chief of staff in his previous incarnation. But why do we have to listen to all this? In fact, why must we take it seriously at all? “Israel warns” has become one of the great cliches of ourjournalism — along, of course, with “Arabs threaten”.
But here we go again, Mofaz talks up war and up again goes the price of oil. It’s not that long ago — 2006, to be precise — when we had another Israeli chief of staff, Dan Halutz, warning that he would destroy 10-storey buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs for every rocket fired at Haifa — quite a threat, except that Danny Boy’s lads had already destroyed all the 10-storey buildings in the Beirut suburbs.
And it was only 26 years ago, I recall, that Menachem Begin, then the Israeli prime minister, announced that he was going to “root out the evil weed of terror” from Lebanon.
One night, sitting by the empty pool of the Commodore Hotel, I listened on my transistor — yes, those were the days, weren’t they — as a newsreader announced that Yasser Arafat was metaphorically promising to chop off Mr Begin’s left arm. Within hours, Begin was rabbiting away about chopping off part of Mr Arafat’s anatomy. I laughed so much I could have fallen into the empty pool.
And where, pray, today is the “evil weed of terror”? Well, according to the Bush boys, it’s now all over south-west Asia, in Gaza, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Lebanon. So much for the “evil weed”, which seems to have grown deeper roots than the late Mr Begin thought. Besieging west Beirut in 1982, the Israelis warned that every civilian should leave the city if he or she valued the lives of their families. I’ve still got the little air-dropped threats which said this (admittedly in execrable Arabic). But most Beirutis just ignored it.
Then the Israelis warned that journalists were going to be kidnapped during the siege if they did not leave west Beirut — another good try to cut down on our reporting. But we ignored the threats and stayed and were not kidnapped, but we were there to record the war crimes of Sabra and Chatila on September 18, 1982.
The Arabs used to have quite a monopoly on threats. I remember one spring day in 1978 when a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general command (itself a preposterous title) stormed up to me after an Israeli raid in southern Lebanon. He shook his hand at the sky.
”We shall stand in the last ditch against the Zionist death wagon,” he roared. The what, I asked? The what? Well, I bet he had them shaking in their boots in Tel Aviv with that one. Anyway, back came the planes and the last I saw of this preposterous warrior, he was hurling himself into a very real ditch to avoid the death wagon.
The problem about threats, of course, is that once you’ve made them, you’ve either got to carry them out or pretend you were misunderstood. I never believed George Bush would invade Iraq; not, that is, until I turned up at UN headquarters in New York and actually heard him ranting on about the powerlessness of the UN. And then he actually did invade Iraq. And I still have my notes of an interview with a certain Osama bin Laden, and his last words to me were: “I pray that God permits us to turn America into a shadow of itself.” And I wrote in the margin the one word “rhetoric?”. September 11 cleared that one up.
I fear very much that we indulge ourselves in threats. Newspapers love threats — or warnings — because they ramp up the fear factor. And governments love threats. Hence all those orange alerts and purple warnings and endless waffle from the Ministry of Fear about the “terrorist” threat lasting a lifetime, a generation or — this was Bush, I seem to remember — that the “war on terror” might have to go on for ever. For ever? Even the Thousand Year Reich wasn’t supposed to go on for that long.
But there was one dark soul who did use threats to induce fear more frequently than anyone else. Yes, I am talking about Hitler, who would scream and rage at nations and empires and generals and — by and large, between 1933 and autumn 1939 — he pretty much got what he wanted.
That, I suspect, is why we all still fear threats so much. Because Hitler had a habit of carrying out his threats, and all across the dark continent, men shook with fear that he would smash them — and he did. The entire Gestapo was threat — which was why Churchill always pronounced it as “the Nazi Jest-a-po” in an attempt to take its fear quotient away, even as he was talking of Europe under the Germans’ “cruel heel”.
And when Ahmadinejad talks of annihilating Israel, he cowers, of course, under the shadow of Hitler. And he intends, I think, to make us fear him —although no Iranian military force would let him get his hands on anything nuclear. “Annihilating” Israel –– always supposing anyone would truly contemplate it –– also means annihilating the West Bank and Gaza and much of Lebanon and Jordan and probably the whole Middle East.
But Hitler is dead and we need to escape from the world of threats. Was it not King Lear who once shouted: “I shall do such things, what they are yet I know not –– but they shall be the terrors of the earth.” Poor old Lear.
—© The Independent
So tighten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen. Since gold, oil and real estate are things of the past — in this space age, life and death matters less and profits dominate our global free markets — this could be your last chance to strike gold. So pick up the phone and make your fortune!
As we hear about prospective global famine and millions starving to death for want of essential food grains the hyper power nation gears up to make yet another speculative dash to make a fortune in dollars! Faulty economic policies, subverting essential food grains to cash crops (market forces for windfall dollar profits), mismanagement of existing supplies and diverting essential corns to biofuel production to meet the unsustainable lifestyle of the consumerist nations led by the worst offender of environment and human rights — the USA!
Kyoto Protocol in 1996 held great promise for conservation of the fragile planet earth, but George Bush’s contentious election in 2000 reversed these efforts as his administration stubbornly refused to sign this landmark protocol to reduce global warming and greenhouse gases. His ill-conceived ‘war on terror’ has held the world in its deadly embrace ever since! The devouring of depleting resources and finding new killing fields by the armament industry across the world has also dimmed the hope for a peaceful and prosperous future — as the world slides into anarchy — and now famine!
The World Environment Day on June 5 was a gloomy reminder of the sad facts and figures on decline in biodiversity and increase in carbon emissions and green house gases, depleting Arctic and polar icecaps, rising oceans and hurricanes, climatic upheavals and temperatures and shrinking food stocks. More and more agricultural farmlands and forests fall to acquisitive, consumption patterns, resulting in less productivity and food for the increasing population. If we continue depleting the ‘lungs of the earth’ at this rate how do we expect to live without oxygen and clean fresh air? After all our fragile biodiversity acts as carbon sinks. The global phenomenon seems to have lost its biological control in its race for an unsustainable lifestyle — or greed!
This warped western model of ‘development’ needs a paradigm shift towards the ‘quality of life’ model. Public health, education, and basic social services need to be restored for sustainable results. Our blind aping of the western model in the race for more has further eroded our traditional lifestyles that stressed conservation and frugality. Without proper checks and balances we will surely dig our own grave with diminishing resources and ravaging greed. Slogans like ‘dil mange aur’ and ‘piyo aur jiyo’ are geared to seduce the gullible youth to a mirage of glory while there is depletion and despoliation staring at us.
Strategic Country Environment Assessment by the World Bank (WB) on Pakistan estimates that the environmental degradation costs Pakistan at least six per cent of GDP or about Rs365bn per year. The burden of these costs falls disproportionately upon the poor. The report states “the most significant causes of environmental damage identified and estimated are: (i) illness and premature mortality caused by air pollution (50 per cent); (ii) diarrhoeal diseases and typhoid due to inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene (30 per cent), and (iii) reduced agricultural productivity due to soil degradation (20 per cent). The health costs associated with waterborne diseases amount to 1.8 per cent of GDP, caused by unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene.”
The WB report further states, “Vertically, the challenges relate to the division of responsibilities between national, provincial and local governments, while horizontal challenges arise as a result of the division of responsibilities between environmental, planning and sectoral agencies. Effective environmental management also requires the active participation of key institutions outside government, in particular the judiciary, civil society advocates, and the media.”
The sad fact is that although the Pakistan Environmental Act was ratified in 1997 and provincial departments have been established, they are almost non-functional. Capacity building and fully equipped provincial EPAs can go a long way in mandatory implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on all development projects. The provincial environmental tribunals should be made functional to hear environmental petitions by the general public. For this we need political will and support.
Another challenge facing Pakistan is the alarming deforestation and loss of biodiversity. About 25 per cent at independence, covered forest area has come down to a staggering rate of four per cent (official) and three per cent (unofficial) which seriously threatens our livelihood if it is not reversed. The powerful timber mafia at all levels of government and private sector will not permit this unless export of timber products is totally banned and alternatives to timber are introduced in the local market.
Mr Hussainzada, provincial secretary of environment informed me, “Our forests are seriously imperilled by unregulated development mafias. Every moneyed Pakistani wants a piece of land in the hills of Nathiagali. This is destructive, but despite the ban the activity goes on!” This must stop. Murree and Abbottabad are threatened by unauthorised development schemes that go on unabated despite warnings by the environmental lobbies and adverse EIA reports. Swat has been ravaged by religious warlords who are mostly funded by the powerful timber and drug mafias in defiance of opposition from the public. The idyllic Chitral will soon be despoiled once the Lowari tunnel becomes functional for public. Without adequate safeguards all the pristine forests and hills will become extinct.
During the WED commemoration activity Sarhad Conservation Network tabled the following recommendations to the provincial government:
*Mandatory EIA on all development projects including widening of roads, buildings, development schemes, etc.
* Ban on all development schemes in agricultural farmlands, forests, etc.
* Immediate investment on developing Mass Transit Systems in the provincial metropolis and other districts to contain the growing traffic and pollution.
* Adopt a tree plantation campaign.
* Conserve each drop water conservation campaign.
* A cleaner world garbage collection/recycling campaign.
* Healthy lifestyle sanitation campaign.
* Immediate ban on all timber exports and products.
* Establishment of grassroots environment committees at tehsil, district and provincial levels.
* Practice piety, simplicity and efficiency.
Without political intervention and grassroots activism amongst all stakeholders these goals would be hard to achieve. n
The writer is a member of Sarhad Conservation Network
scn_pk@yahoo.com
Children’s mood
PSYCHOLOGISTS have drawn attention to a commonly observed phenomenon in children.... They have described the phenomenon as ‘mood disorder’. Children living in metros like New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore are said to be victims of this disorder more than their counterparts in less populous cities and the rural areas.
…It has been found that the disorder leads to loss of concentration in studies, disturbed sleep and depression. The unfortunate part … is that parents become aware of the disorder after these consequences reach unmanageable levels.
…Children of parents of economically weaker sections, particularly daily wagers, construction workers, petty traders, vendors and the like are more vulnerable to … mood disorder. Their population is also larger than that of the haves. Social psychologists should help save this mass from the brink of disaster.
A major part of the population of children vulnerable to ‘mood disorder’ can be found in the nearly 60,000 government schools across the state [Karnataka]. To expect … 250,000 primary school teachers and about 90,000 high school teachers, themselves victims of the disorder, to perform as ideal pedagogues is … extreme optimism….
Psychologists have warned of criminal tendencies as well as hyper-sexuality in children suffering from mood disorder. Their prescription of family therapy to put the children on track is the best option…. — (June 12)
Star of Mysore
Hills are alive
BENGAL never solved the ‘Gorkhaland’ problem…. To the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha’s … indefinite bandh [strike], the Amra Bangali and Jana Jagaran have responded with indefinite counter-bandhs. Trucks carrying provisions have been ransacked, tourists and residents attacked and asked to leave. On Thursday, clashes between Gorkhas and non-Gorkhas in and around Siliguri necessitated alerting the army. The demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland was lying dormant even as Subhas Ghising made a mockery of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and the Bengal government used him to neutralise the popular mood…. The centre’s attempt to include Darjeeling in the Sixth Schedule late last year … triggered the present crisis.
As the division of a few big states in the last decade has shown … smaller states are easier to administer. The problem with the demand for Gorkhaland is that such division of territory on ethnic grounds is dangerous. The danger arises from the misuse of identity for political ends. The Gorkha National Liberation Front … and the GJM have already done this. Now the quasi-militant Bengali splinter groups are doing the same….
The all-party talks on June 17 between the centre, the state and the Gorkha representatives are the only means to pursue. Dialogue and development, complemented by a separation of identity from local politics, is the difficult but only positive option. — (June 14)
The Indian Express
