| October 14, 2008 | Tuesday | Shawwal 14, 1429 |
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Abomination or Obama for Pakistan
Pakistan comes first
Fall of capitalism
Economic crisis
Appeal for clean water
Let them default
Selling off to foreigners
Way out of FATA insurgency
Causes of Muslim militancy
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
IN his interview with the ‘Wall Street Journal’, Asif Ali Zardari has made some observations regarding India and the Kashmiri mujahideen (Dawn, Oct 5).
First, that “India has never been a threat to Pakistan”. This is shocking. Has he forgotten who helped dismember Pakistan in 1971? Also, that after the fall of Dhaka, Mrs Indira Gandhi had triumphantly declared that the two-nation theory had been sunk in the Bay of Bengal. Not only that, her grandson Rahul Gandhi left no doubts about the intentions of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which had led the Congress and ruled India for several decades after 1947, when he stated last year that it had been the family’s longstanding plan to break up Pakistan.
What is Mr Zardari talking about? Perhaps his memory has failed him or, his view of reality is poles apart from that of the Pakistanis. And, how about India’s occupation of Siachen Glacier in 1984, which has put so much burden on the Pakistan Army and the national exchequer? Or, its annexation of a large portion of Kashmir, all of Hyderabad state, Junagadh and Manavadar?
India’s ruling elite had been working against this country right after its creation. Mr Zardari appears not even to know that the Quaid-i-Azam had complained in writing to the British prime minister a few months after independence that India’s leaders were trying to sabotage Pakistan. And, was New Delhi’s refusal to hand over to Pakistan its share of the financial and military assets after partition an act of friendship? No sir, I am afraid Mr Zardari is out of touch with the country’s reality as related to India.
His second observation was that the militant groups operating in Kashmir are ‘terrorists’. He should know that even former Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee had referred to the Kashmiri militants as ‘our people’ (rather than outsiders) and offered to hold talks with them. It is ironic that instead of trying to boost the morale of the brutalised Kashmiris, in whose defence some Indian intellectuals, too, are speaking out, our president is making things yet more difficult for them.
It is important to remember that until about a decade ago even the US and other western countries weren’t calling the freedom fighters in Chechnya and Kashmir as terrorists. On the other hand, there was covert support for the Chechens and overt one for the Kosovar guerillas. However, it was only after 9/11 that the US started viewing all Muslim mujahideen as a potential threat to it and began using this appellation for them to pave the way for military action if it became necessary. But, why must we do that?
Besides, I am not able to understand what he had meant when he said a few weeks ago that the nation would soon hear some good news about the Kashmir issue? Before that, some time after the Feb 18 election, during an interview with an Indian TV channel, he had suggested that the Kashmir issue must be put on the back burner and left to the future generations to solve.
Most certainly we must strive for good relations with India but as equals, without grovelling and the truth should not be turned upside down, principles abandoned or our position undermined, to do that.
AHSANULLAH
Karachi
Is Obama an abomination for Pakistan or is he for our nation? Referring to the recent article on Pakistan being the main issue in US election debate, I would like to point out some discrepancies and some grave mistakes that we would be committing if we don’t stop and look at our present and future policy regarding US presidential candidates.
US Elections ‘08 are still almost a month away. In the world of politics, anything can happen between now and when votes are finally cast. But it looks like the future President of the USA has been decided in many constituencies and cemented in the minds of people. Senator Barack Obama is leading his opponent Senator McCain by many percentage points and it does not look like his lead to the finish line will be impeded. The Obama campaign is already buying up pre-election national television time, so sure are they of their success. The McCain campaign has drawn back, pulling out of a key state like Michigan where it faces a sure defeat. Shouldn’t this be enough of a signal to Pakistani leaders that the Republican administration is not bound to last?
Yes, Pakistanis are wary about Obama’s rhetoric concerning our northern areas. The fact that even at this early stage, he is threatening to impeach our sovereignty and “crush Al-Qaeda” members if found in Pakistan have left me, a staunch Pakistani, wishing he would tone it down. But at least Obama is making his stance clear.
The Bush administration continues to let US drones venture into our airspace and if McCain was elected, it is more than likely that he would continue the policies of his predecessor. Republican governments have been more favorable towards Pakistan but only when dictators govern us. A Democratic administration would put Biden and his democracy dividend into the driving seat which seems favorable for our newly elected democratic system.
So I think it is time now that the government of Pakistan recognizes that things have changed, accept new realities and try their best and work with a Democratic White House.
YAWAR HEREKAR
USA
The present government in Pakistan prompts citizens to compare the previous and present situations, whether former President Musharraf was a better leader or the present one. I would like ask all the political parties who chanted slogans against the wrong policies of the previous government: are the policies of the current government in line with the aspirations of the people of Pakistan? If not so, then what is being done to address them?
The recent unjustified hike in food and electricity prices has gone beyond the reach of the common man and there is certainly no one raising their voices. The PPP has emerged as one sucking each and every penny from the hardworking common citizens with no hopes of relief.
I agree that the whole world is going through a financial crisis but it is unfair on the part of the government to shift its entire load on to the common man. President Zardari did not hesitate in traveling with 30 officials during his visit to the United States on tax payers’ money. Is this act justified? What do we get for the hard work we put in?
The load of the financial crisis, the bills of official visits of the president and his fellowman, unjustified increase in electricity and a disorganized system with no clear polices, and above all an unclear stand of the government on the protection and safety of the innocent people in FATA and Balochistan, due to which our integrity and sovereignty has been compromised; are some of the issue that have landed the people of Pakistan in a much precarious situation.
Sadly no one would take up the trouble to raise such questions because it is a very bitter truth, but the real truth that our current leaders should learn is that, “Pakistan comes first”.
FAIZA AHMED
Karachi
At last, the era of ‘capitalism’ has come to its corollary. The vanishing of more than a trillion dollars in a day from the stock-market, and the 700 billion bailout plan shock for a lavish Americans is a sign of the fall of capitalism.
Indeed, capitalism is a culprit system which has failed to adequately regulate the giant financial institutions. Simply, the Reagan-Thatcher age is finally over. Since then, hiring and firing workers process caused much pain to the poor world. Moreover, the emergence of technology and biotech drowned the traditional social system of love and cooperation. Unholy alliance of international economists gradually controlled the wealth distribution and deprived the majority from their right of survival.
Impoverishment of a major part of the world has been a brutal game of deregulated private sectors for the greed and luxuries. Countries like Japan, Thailand, and South Korea, following the capitalist model of US are suffering. However, countries like Malaysia and China did not follow Uncle Sam and strictly regulated institutions and remained less vulnerable.
However, in any form, capitalism is not at all in the interest of humanity because inherent injustice in the nature of capitalism results in the total violation of human rights and values. In fact, no mere mechanical system ensures the welfare of humanity unless belief established in the equality of humanity. No human made system can be completely regulated. Faithful approach to regularize financial sectors and wealth distribution around the world is ultimately needed.
The entire world needs to understand the tricks of the international looters and to build the comprehensive sense of equality. Indeed, G-8, WTO, IMF, and WB are going to do nothing for the rest. Therefore the rest must come forward to claim its rights through every possible practice to demolish the capitalist model and break the wall between haves and haves-not.
NASIR FAROOQ
Karachi
THIS is apropos of Affan Rasheed Siddiqui’s letter, ‘Economic crisis’ (October 04), in which he very generously offers a reason and a solution to the economic crisis that has hit the United States and other parts of the world.
The reason he gives for this crisis ‘is their (US) so-called war on terror’ and the solution he offers to this mess ‘is to get back their soldiers to their homeland’.
The inane notion that the war on terror led to the financial crisis is wrong. The financial crisis stems from those mavericks on Wall Street who could care less about US regulations and even less about risk which was magically removed with the help of derivatives like the credit-default swaps.
The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, termed these derivatives as “weapons of financial mass destruction” back in 2003 but no one paid heed to his premonition.
People started purchasing houses on mortgage assuming that real estate only appreciates.
The idea that there existed something such as depreciation of a house was never even considered until the sub prime mortgage bubble erupted like a pandora’s box creating havoc on the infamous Wall Street. Those who predicted that this housing slump wouldn’t be a big deal were proved wrong.
The increasing percentages of delinquent loans forced banks to sell their new stocks to raise capital and eventually the write-downs dealt the death blow. First Bear Stearns collapsed, then Lehman Brothers and finally AIG leaving Merrill Lynch to seek refuge with Bank of America.
The financial crisis is not the outcome of the War on Terror and getting the US troops out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan is definitely not the solution to this crisis.
The decision and timeline to bring back the troops should therefore be left to the two US presidential candidates to debate in their next faceoff.
After all, one of them, apart from taking on the presidency of one of the strongest nations in the world will also inherit among other things these two issues: War on Terror and the Financial Crisis.
JASON PEREIRA
Karachi
Access to drinking water is the fundamental right of every human being. This assertion, however, does not hold true in the case of people of Nari (a village located in Khushab district).
The people of the village have no access to clean drinking water for the last forty years. The main reason behind the water crisis in the village was shortage of underground water, which compels poor residents of the village to bring water from a far-flung brook situated near a small village Katha Masral.
The underground water in the village is not usable too as it is saltish, thus forcing the villagers to purchase costly tank-water, which is brought through tanks from hand-pumps located in the suburbs of the village. The water supplied through the tanks is not always free from contamination. As a result, epidemic diseases like hepatitis A, B, and C have broken out in the village and had affected many people.
A project of drinking (potable) water for the village was launched in 2004. Under the said scheme, water was to be fetched from a canal located a few kilometres away from the village with a water purification plant to be constructed to channel drinking water to the villagers.
But it has hit snags due to vested interests of politicians and the district administration for many years. The residents of Nari still bring water through a small canal after an interval of every fifteen days. In this regard the villagers had protested many times but all in vain as the residents of Katha Masral consider the said brook situated near their village their private property.
Furthermore, the Lahore High Court had made a final ruling on the water issue case some six years back in favour of the residents of Nari village but the concerned authorities could not implement the court decision.
Regrettably, the villagers had attacked district courts building (Jauharabad), as a last resort, some two years back in a violent protest and consequently a number of villagers were sent to jail because of aggression. But all this also could not solve the problems faced by the inhabitants.
I invite attention of the concerned authorities, especially the honourable President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, to resolve this chronic problem of the people of Nari, which they have been facing for the last 40 years.
M. ARSHAD GONDAL
Tehsil and District Khushab
Markets all over the world go through bull and bear runs periodically, maintaining nature’s normal distribution of returns. Every now and then heavily leveraged positions either buy a punter, a Malibu beach house or spit out a trader onto the streets to look for a minimum wage job. But the sanctity of the market is maintained.
If the price of a good has been determined by the buyers and sellers to be five rupees when the last trade was at a hundred rupees, you can freeze the market all you want the trade will still happen at five rupees. The only difference between our country and other developed countries is that they get it over with in one day and move on with their lives. We on the other hand love to prolong our misery because the brokers need to maintain their thirty servants, luxury cars, and an ostentatious lifestyle even if it involves a humble retiree’s pension savings to be injected into the market to buy them that penthouse in Dubai.
Why does the government insist on getting poor old NIT to pump liquidity into the market? What has my father done to deserve his gratuity being used to stop a powerful broker from defaulting?
Your market freeze has caused a run on mutual funds. You’re only encouraging off-exchange transactions with your market freeze all of which can be done in your own market. You have scared foreigners in such a manner that they will never come back. I say rip the band aid off before it’s too late and stop the brokers from giving you that standard excuse of the little investor they’re protecting.
The only thing they’re protecting perhaps is their precious seven series BMWs. My suggestion to is to unfreeze the index, broaden the circuit breakers and let them default.
JAMSHID KALAM
Karachi
For filling the almost empty exchequer, the government is now selling Pakistan’s national assets that are to serve Pakistan for the next many years. The assets that belong to Pakistanis are being traded off to foreigners and the protest of Pakistanis against this atrocity is not being publicised at all.
The employees of OGDCL (Oil and Gas Development Company Limited) staged protest on October 9 against the selling of this national asset and marched from the headquarters of OGDCL to the parade ground and eminent people including senior officials of the organization and columnist, Ayaz Amir also addressed the gathering.
But the crowd of almost two thousand people was ignored by private TV channels that seem busy spreading negativism and anti-Pakistan sentiments while ignoring the efforts being launched to bring about anything positive and constructive.
ZUNERA RAIS
Islamabad
One possible solution to the current situation in FATA could be for the army to disengage from the ‘active’ combat area and allow for a strong civilian combat force to replace them. This force should pursue the militants with a ‘fight against crime’ methodology just like a regular police force.
Criminal cases should be registered against all elements that break the law. The army should not totally withdraw but move to a secondary cordon with the promise of complete withdrawal if peace prevails. The Army should remain a force that deals with external threats and with a strong intelligence wing that ensures internal disturbances don’t have foreign sourcing.
One can understand that in a government that has military links, the army gets pulled into civilian matters. That’s not the case for us anymore. Why is the biggest advantage of a civilian government not being utilized in the situation we find ourselves in? Not too long ago, a similar move worked for us, for the better, in Karachi. One must not forget the lesson of history that wars were, in the long run, judged in favor of those who gave peace a chance to work. Perhaps the general mind-set should center on the thought that the best outcome of this war is not for there to be a winner, but for better sense to have prevailed over foolishness.
ROHAIL HYATT
Karachi
WHEN we visit a doctor, he first establishes a diagnosis before prescribing a remedy. However, the world is faced by a malady where lots of Muslims are suffering from a disease, caused by factors, which instead of being diagnosed, are overlooked and massive surgery has been undertaken by western experts and their local supporters in many places.
Isn’t it only fair that a proper evaluation be made, before picking up a knife and slitting the patients’ throats, bombing them out of existence?
Let’s see what the US, the UK, Russia, India, Israel and the Philippines have been doing to the Muslims. The western countries antagonised the entire Muslim world by first helping to create Israel illegally in Palestine and then supporting it massively to terrorise Palestinians and dominate Arab neighbours. The US has been the biggest culprit after Israel. Unsurprisingly, armed hijackings and then suicide bombings first appeared there, with the anger spreading to other Muslim states.
Russia had occupied many Muslim republics in Central Asia, tried to wipe out Islam and killed as well as imprisoned millions of citizens. The other states became independent after the demise of the USSR but Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia remained in Moscow’s iron grip. When the brave Chechens wrested partial freedom for a few years, Putin indulged in a clever game and reconquered Chechnya. Worse still, Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan has led to unending militancy.
Britain acted unfairly in 1947 and officials like Mountbatten colluded with India’s leaders to help New Delhi occupy Kashmir. When the UN demanded a plebiscite, India refused to honour the resolutions, which were fully backed by many western powers. In addition, its perpetual hostility towards Pakistan promoted militarism in both countries.
The consequences have been equally bad for India, so much so that fair-minded Indian intellectuals like Arundhati Roy are seeking independence for Kashmir. If New Delhi had acted wisely and humanely, rather than covetously and chauvinistically, there would have been no militancy in the region.
France and the US thwarted Islamists in Algeria from coming into power after winning elections in the 90s, causing frustrated Muslims to resort to violence. In Somalia, the Islamists had quickly brought peace to nearly half of the country after 16 years of lawlessness. However, they were unacceptable to the US and its allies, especially Ethiopia, who ousted the Islamists in 2006, turning Somalia into another Iraq.
A somewhat detailed look at the Philippines is advisable, especially due to Washington’s role. Historically, Muslims had dominated the Islands of Sulu archipelago, western and central Mindanao and the Island of Palawan well before the Spanish colonisers arrived in the mid-1500s. Despite 350 years of Spanish occupation, the Muslims were left alone where the local sultanates dominated Southeast Asia (Dawn, Sept 17).
After occupying Philippine islands following its war with Spain in 1898, the US fought a series of brutal wars with the Muslims to bring them into what was then the Philippine Commonwealth.
For most of the 20th century large-scale emigration was encouraged, first by the US and the Filipions themselves, urging Christians to populate Mindanao. In under 60 years, Muslims were pushed into becoming a minority, like Palestinians, in what was once their own homeland.
The latest attempt to bring peace to Mindanao and give the minority Muslims a homeland was officially scrapped recently after loss of 120,000 lives in 40 years of fighting and 11 years of negotiations. The plea was that their supreme court had upheld the Catholics’ case about not giving areas to Muslims since it would violate the former’s rights. Malaysia had been brokering the peace talks between the militants and Manila, but it now seems this was just a ploy by the latter to buy time.
It is clear that Muslims have been subjected to occupation, genocide, oppression and injustice for a long time, followed by conquest of some countries by the US-led coalition.
These are the causes of violence. Unless they’re removed, expecting a cure would be unrealistic. Prescribing military action to secure tranquillity is like seeking the removal of vocal cords of a man who is yelling with pain. Instead of ending their own crimes, the offending countries are demonising all Muslims, to shift blame from themselves.
M. P. CHISHTI
Karachi
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