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| July 28, 2008 | Monday | Rajab 24, 1429 |
Not in a hurry
Islamabad’s interchange
OTHER VOICES - Sri Lankan Press
The time for peace is now
Reunification talks
THE coalition partners in Islamabad recently decided to oppose the use of force in Fata. Was this in response to the ultimatum issued by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or is the government now exercising its political mandate?
THE leaders of Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish communities agreed on Friday to hold face-to-face peace talks to reunite the western world’s last divided country.
SOME encouraging but feeble signals are emanating from the resumed Doha Round of WTO trade talks in Geneva. The aim of some 40 trade ministers who have gathered at the WTO headquarters is to agree on a plan for liberalising trade in farm products and industrial goods, and to work out a compromise on services. For a change, the United States is said to have offered to cut its official aid ceiling for its farmers to $15bn a year, $2bn more than a previous offer, in a bid to facilitate progress at the WTO talks. India, the country which talks for the developing world at the Doha Round, had initially called the US offer ‘wholly inadequate’ before praising the ‘move’ later. The Geneva talks are supposed to be a crunch meeting, with hundreds of billions of dollars in business at stake. The round has almost come full circle. Launching it in Doha, Qatar’s capital, in November 2001, the trade ministers declared their determination to liberalise trade so that “the system plays its full part in promoting recovery, growth and development”.
In 2003, when the round met next at Cancun, it broke up even before coming to grips with the real issues. In 2005, progress was so insignificant that Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, suspended negotiations. Many thought it to be the end of the globalisation process. Trade experts believe that even if the Geneva talks failed, it would not mean the end of the world. They point out that, despite all the difficulties, world trade has been growing. Developed countries’ tariffs on industrial goods, at least, are already low, and they have been opening up too, cutting tariffs to levels well below the ceilings negotiated at the WTO. Trade in services has been getting freer, although the WTO commitments of a number of members are still patchy. Many countries are eager to welcome foreign investment, but the Doha Round does not address this issue. Still, a failure of the round would give politicians the world over the clout with which to push protection through. On the other hand, success will yield immense benefits to both the developed and developing countries.
The WTO’s staff has estimated that consumers and firms will pay around $125bn less in tariffs if a deal is struck. A French economic research institute has estimated that the world economy would eventually be better off by $73bn a year. Seen against the scale of the world economy, these are not said to be vast gains — around 0.1 per cent of global GDP. But they are gains nonetheless. Cuts in some bound tariffs will reduce applied tariffs as well. Consumers in developing countries would get quality imported items at highly reduced prices. With the reduction in subsidies on farm products in the rich countries, farmers in the developing countries would find it profitable to increase acreage and yield and produce exportable surpluses.
THE debate about the efficacy of the local body system that started since the democratic government stepped into office, and the decision the other day, pending parliamentary approval, to roll it back are the latest manifestation of our penchant for discarding whatever is in place and devising ever new mechanisms. Unfortunately, inconsistency is just about the only thing we have been consistent about. The system, indeed, had its shortcomings which were exposed during the massive earthquake of 2005, the floods and even the riots in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. With no background in public administration and devoid of the undisputed powers that were enjoyed by the commissioners, deputy commissioners and magistrates of yore, the nazims and their deputies — elected, no doubt — could do next to nothing, and it was left to the bureaucracy to fill the vacuum. But there were reasons behind such inadequacies.
The devolution was never executed with the sincerity it demanded. Financial autonomy never came its way. Administrative autonomy was only partially granted, though there was enough of it to make waves during the last general election when allegations of partiality kept flying about in all possible directions. Besides, the system was put in place in such a confused and uncertain manner that even after six years nobody has been able to sort out a number of jurisdictional overlaps. The recent row over who owns the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and the controversial introduction of community police and surveillance cameras in Karachi are just a few cases in point. Elsewhere, the Rawalpindi administration has had a tussle with Rawal Town about controlling the sanitation staff and, hold your breath, collecting the birth certificate fee! These are not isolated incidents; such anomalies abound across the land.
The fault does not lie directly with the system, but in the manner in which it has been executed, reflecting a lack of sincerity on the part of those who did it. The decision to fold it up, therefore, must be seriously revisited by parliament. The tendency to discard ‘relics of the past’ must have the good of the nation as its lodestar rather than politics. It is time to focus on what is already breaking our backs instead of opening fronts that can only cause further confusion.
PROJECT delay, for whatever reason, is as much a bane of development as poor planning. Not only does such time overrun prevent infrastructures from being built when they are deemed to be needed, it also causes colossal loss of public money in the form of cost overruns. An example of such a costly delay in development is Islamabad’s Zero Point Interchange project. After more than a decade since the project was first conceived in the mid-1990s and after millions of rupees had been wasted on three earlier designs and PC-1s that were revoked one after another without any substantial reason, contract for the construction of the ZPI was finally assigned recently to a Karachi-based construction firm experienced in the building of similar infrastructures in the southern metropolis. The prolonged delay in implementing the ZPI project has escalated construction costs from Rs400m estimated in the second half of the 1990s to the current Rs2.33bn.
Hopefully, finishing or completing the ZPI project will not be as difficult and time-consuming as getting it started has been. As several other new road development and improvement projects in the capital city — provided for under the city authorities’ 2008-09 budget — have already started or are likely to start soon simultaneously, the patience of Islamabad road users is likely to be tested to the limits once again by seemingly unending months of digging, dust and frustrating route disruptions all over the city. It is hoped that the civic authorities will implement efficient measures to reduce the impact of such construction work on road users, as well as adopt innovative road construction strategies such as full road closures, night work and accelerated construction techniques to help reduce the duration of construction and hence hassle for road users. Unless the city authorities are seen to be taking all possible steps to negate the woes of road users while disruptive road projects are underway, the public is unlikely to take kindly to similar infrastructure development projects in future no matter how necessary they may be. Needless to say, ensuring the timely completion of the ZPI, as with other road development and interchange projects in Islamabad, is also important in curbing further cost overruns.
He flew too close to the sun
The Island
WHY Prabhakaran became so concerned about Saarc all of a sudden and declared a unilateral ceasefire must now be clear to one and all, given the damage the LTTE has suffered during the past few days. That he could have avoided that, had the government agreed to his truce, is clear. In the past, he had managed to lure governments into truce traps and make them fight wars according to his timetable. When he wanted war, he waged it and when he wanted time to regroup and rearm, he sued for peace. Thus, the conflict came to be punctuated by ceasefires at almost regular intervals, as we argued the other day.
By 2006, Prabhakaran had taken delivery of nearly a dozen shiploads of arms under the cover of a ceasefire, according to his erstwhile commander Karuna. Confident that he had enough firepower and cadres, a ceasefire-weary Prabhakaran threw down the gauntlet at Mavil Aru.
… Today, the LTTE is doing exactly what the army did in 1999 and 2000 in the North — running for dear life. In 1999, a series of LTTE offensives launched with the help of newly acquired small MBRLs, among other things, were so intense that the army vacated places like Oddusudan, Nedunkerni, etc in no time. Camps were crumbling like a pack of cards and the PA government did not know how to put the brakes on the LTTE’s military onslaught. The biggest debacle came in 2000, when the army lost its sprawling military complex at Elephant Pass with its big guns. The march of the LTTE had all the trappings of a cakewalk. Prabhakaran’s boys and girls reached the outskirts of Jaffna, where the army was trapped….
Today, the Tigers are in a far worse predicament than the army was in 1999/2000…. Encirclement has a devastating impact on the morale of any military outfit. Although the LTTE still has some room left … [to] manoeuvre, its defences are being demolished and supply routes severed….
The LTTE is getting beaten at its own game. The army is using its deep penetration units very effectively and the navy deploying a large number of small craft in raids like the one on Thursday….
The biggest worry of the LTTE, however, is the prospect of Kilinochchi ‘exploding’. In 1995, when the army closed in on Jaffna, the LTTE engineered an exodus from that township so that they could flee, taking cover behind a human shield….
When the Tigers find it difficult to defend Kilinochchi, they are sure to try their old tactics. But, this time around, the LTTE will have to face a very hostile populace. Prabhakaran has no one to blame for his woes but himself. He, blinded by hubris, caused the 2002 ceasefire to be abrogated. Like Icarus, he chose to fly too close to the sun which melted his waxen wings. He keeps flapping his bare arms, thinking he is still winged! — (July 26)
With Nato and US officials coming down hard on Pakistan on the issue of cross-border attacks by militants, the time has come to rethink the ‘strategic depth’ doctrine that our policymakers uphold so faithfully.
Images of mindless brutality and wanton savagery have numbed our collective consciousness. On the western border, the suicide attacks and bomb blasts in Afghanistan have ignited another exchange of acrimonious allegations between the Indians, Afghans and Pakistanis.
Although the ANP government rejected the TTP ultimatum to quit in five days or face the “consequences”, a tenuous peace holds in Swat, Hangu and Waziristan. According to the ANP, “outside forces” are bent on sabotaging any progress towards peace. Will the ANP be able to play its historical role of a peacemaker or will it be swept away by the forces of politics?
The three warring nations vented their ire through the media and the clouds of war gathered on the horizon. Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the JI, the JUI’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman and, later, PML-Q and PPP spokespersons converged on Peshawar to accuse the Karzai government of fomenting lies by “accusing the Pakistan Army and ISI of masterminding the Indian embassy attacks as a prelude to an invasion of Afghanistan”. The ANP, however, chose to remain silent at this point. A TTP statement defending the “sovereignty of Pakistan to the last man” was typical of the Pakistani establishment’s harangue.
The conflict zone may have shifted to the west but bigotry and intolerance is everywhere. The sweeping and ruthless Taliban violence in the borderlands has destroyed traditional tribal structures and the Salafi brand of the Wahabi doctrine is now threatening the very existence of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The main question to be asked now is whether Pakistan is ready to embrace the extremist jahilia that the obscurantists call Islam. The moment we make this distinction clear we will be able to make an objective appraisal of events. It is imperative that the political parties, academics, policy experts and scholars for once see the way things are without their ideological blinkers. Nothing can emerge from the ashes of destruction.
A reading of history would help rediscover the causes of the Pakistan-Afghanistan animosity and throw light on what shapes the Indian perception. It was in the aftermath of the Second Afghan War (1878-88) that imperial Great Britain drew an arbitrary Durand Line in 1893 between the fellow Pakhtuns of Afghanistan (making Fata a buffer zone between Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent). Ever since it has been a no-go area, ruled by the draconian FCR with an iron hand.
When confronted by the communist threat, the US and Pakistan incited the worst form of religious extremism to check the Soviet advance. They could have thwarted the advancing forces by mobilising and empowering the entire Pakhtun nation. The nationalists opposed the militants’ geopolitical strategic ambitions which were cloaked in the guise of jihad. Ghaffar Khan even predicted a bloodbath in Pakhtun areas as well as the entire subcontinent. Once again religion came to be used for political purposes, as had happened decades ago when the subcontinent was partitioned amidst blood and tears.
Three factors have shaped Pakistan’s distorted policy on Afghanistan. One, King Zahir Shah’s refusal to accept Pakistan until the Durand Line dispute had been resolved. This irked the emerging nation state. Second, India’s tacit support for Afghanistan ever since has added to Pakistan’s sense of insecurity, prompting it to counter the situation by exploiting religious lobbies as a bulwark against perceived ‘Indian hegemony’. Third, the nationalist forces demanding more provincial autonomy have been put on the back foot by those who have used the religious card to devastating effect.
In this crisis of confidence between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Afghan territory has provided a training ground for Pakistani surrogates preparing for their war in Kashmir. The Pakhtunistan issue has been neutralised by the Islamists’ explicitly anti-tribal appeal. The Government of Pakistan until 2001, and even afterwards, had conveniently ignored the presence of foreign jihadis in the tribal areas as well as the settled districts of the NWFP.
Ironically, in 1948, the Waziris formed the bulk of the Islamic warriors that enabled Pakistan to wrest Azad Kashmir from Indian hands. As was the case in the past in British military campaigns, Pakhtuns served as cannon fodder for the Pakistan military on the front lines. Now they are being mowed down on both sides of the dividing line, as security personnel and as combatants. The populace at large, meanwhile, is staring death in the face for no fault of its own.
Is it not an irony of fate that as India and Pakistan mend fences with cross-border cultural exchanges, Pakhtun youth are being indoctrinated into blind hatred for the Indians on the western front? Dr Minhajul Hasan, a professor of history at the University of Peshawar, recounted how a “trained jihadi” youth explained while appearing in his Master of Arts oral examination that he and his ilk were supposed to damn both Ghaffar Khan and Wali Khan as apostates and enemies of Pakistan. Later, to his surprise, he discovered they were visionary men of peace and not the demons he had been led to believe.
Thousands of impoverished and desperate Pakhtun boys — some as young as eight-year old — from distant places like Chitral, Dir and Swat are still being transported to Taliban-controlled madressahs for training as suicide bombers and mercenaries. Is it not time to revisit history and reorient our policies? An Afghan scholar once commented, “while the world is exporting technology, Pakistan is still bent on exporting the Taliban.” Instead of fighting imagined enemies around the world is it not time to reverse the trend of violence and turn to mutual coexistence as friendly neighbours?
Is it not time for the Karzai government to tame the warlords and drug barons that rule his ungovernable country? It is finally time for the US to allow a UN peace mission to pinpoint the underlying causes behind the rise of Al Qaeda, extremism and terrorism. It is also time to invest in human development and not in bombs that destroy lives and the future of this unfortunate land.
adilzareef@yahoo.com
Demetris Christofias, who heads the island’s majority Greek population, said he and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, would start direct negotiations on September 3. The announcement came days after the 34th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that split the island, leaving Greeks and Turks entrenched behind a UN-patrolled ceasefire line.
“I think this is a step forward, a positive development,” said President Christofias after the meeting. “There is a lot we agree on, a lot we disagree on, it’s all a matter of a constructive stance.”
Five months ago the prospect of the two sides launching fully fledged talks seemed a world away. Peace negotiations collapsed in 2004 when Greek Cypriots, encouraged by their former president Tassos Papadopoulos, roundly rejected what was widely seen as the most sophisticated reunification plan. Turkish Cypriots, whose state is only recognised by Turkey, almost overwhelmingly accepted the blueprint.
But the election to the presidency in February this year of the moderate Christofias after five years of uncompromising rule under the nationalist Papadopoulos immediately injected new momentum into the search for a solution.
Encouraged by the veteran leftwinger, bi-communal working groups began laying the ground for talks and confronting some of the thornier issues — such as security and the presence in the north of about 40,000 Turkish troops — that divide the two communities. According to analysts, Talat and Christofias share a world view that is inspired by leftwing ideology, a background in trade unions and a firm conviction that Cyprus is simply too small to remain divided. On both sides aides insist that with much of the groundwork already covered, they hope the basis of a solution will be reached by next year.
To show that they mean business, both men agreed on Friday to establish a hotline between their two offices “as a reflection of their heightened engagement”.
For the first time ever the two sides also agreed to cooperate on issues of environment, cultural heritage, crisis management and crime fighting. “They may sound like small things but in Cyprus they are big news,” said one diplomat in Nicosia, the divided capital.
—The Guardian, London
