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| November 22, 2008 | Saturday | Ziqa'ad 23, 1429 |
Abbas’s gesture
Slaughter of trees
EU reviewing its Pakistan policy
Scramble for the Arctic
OTHER VOICES - Sri Lankan Press
US president-elect Barack Obama is not alone in seeking a thorough shake-up of policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan.
THE European Union on Thursday took a step towards joining the scramble for the Arctic’s vast mineral riches that are being opened up by global warming, declaring for the first time that the resources could help stem anxiety about Europe’s energy security.
NO one would dispute the assertions made by speakers at a seminar in Rawalpindi: the literacy rate in Pakistan is dismally low and to be blamed for this malaise is the lack of vision in devising and implementing education policies. In a country where only 50 per cent of the people above 15 years of age can read and write (according to Unesco’s data) one would be hard put to defend its education policy. All the more, when it is admitted that a big chunk of the so called literates are really not functionally literate. Gone are the days when society was held responsible for not recognising the importance of literacy and education in the social, mental and intellectual development of people and thus not providing motivation to many parents to send their children to school. Adults also failed to take advantage of facilities such as literacy classes for their self-improvement. Now the advantages of literacy and education are widely acknowledged.
But the problem is that this awareness has not translated itself into political commitment in the government to reform and expand the school system to meet the fundamental need of educating the youth. In fact over the last decade or so the trend has been for the government to absolve itself of this responsibility. The load has been shifted to the private sector to undertake this task — albeit at a high cost that makes private institutions beyond the reach of the common man. Apart from the cost factor, the government has failed to address the quality of education in its own institutions which are in a shambles. In the absence of a clear cut policy — the authorities still have not decided the language policy for instance — there is no efficient monitoring infrastructure, pedagogic methodology, textbook production programme and curricula planning system in place. This is apart from the teaching sector that calls for a major revamping. There is no denying that the education system in Pakistan is in crisis.
This has not only affected the literacy rate and the economic productivity of the labour force. It has also increased the disparity between the rich and the poor in the country when education is supposed to bridge the gap between the different classes. With high quality education being provided only by private institutions which only the rich can afford and the poor consigned to the rot that the public school system has to offer, can one ever expect the poor to compete on an equal footing with the rich for highly paid jobs and the privileges that come so easily to the rich. It perpetuates inequality and has led to the bifurcation of society into the privileged rich and the disadvantaged poor. This is a dangerous phenomenon that could destroy the country if left unchecked.
BEYOND being a first-ever initiative of its kind — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas going direct to the Israeli people through newspaper ads in Hebrew — it is doubtful if this would lead to a change of heart in the Israeli leadership. Splashed in three Hebrew newspapers, the ad tells the Israeli people that a withdrawal from the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, will lead to the Zionist state’s recognition by 57 Arab and Muslim countries. In other words, Abbas is seeking the Israeli people’s support for the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state. Besides adding revenues to the newspapers concerned, the ad has not convinced the Israeli leadership. There is no doubt Israel now has a vocal peace lobby. The unabashed persecution of the Palestinian people on their own soil, the gross human rights violations, the plight of the civilians, especially children, and the constant encroachment on Arab lands have not failed to stir conscience in liberal Israeli quarters. Peace groups have emerged, a new breed of Jewish writers has focussed attention on Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories, and there have been refuseniks who have defied orders to fire on Palestinian civilians. But peace groups and refuseniks are in no position to bring about a fundamental change in the policy of the Zionist state.
Most Israeli prime ministers have been retired military men and are hawks. Yitzhak Rabin, the man who signed the Declaration of Principles with Yasser Arafat at the White House in September 1993, was a soldier, so were those who subsequently repudiated the DoP — Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. All of them represent Israel’s lust for land. An election is due in February, and Netanyahu, tipped to be the winner, has already indicated that he has no intention of pushing the peace process forward. In any case we have before us the fate of the previous processes and plans. Abbas’s ad only repeats the Fahd plan, which Israel rejected, even though it was offered Muslim recognition if it withdrew. What Abbas forgets is that a Palestine divided against itself can make no progress toward independence. Gaza, ruled by Hamas, is out of his administrative control and subject to Israeli depredations. The Israeli blockade and bombings have killed 117 people, including 33 children. The blockade has led to food shortages causing malnutrition among the children, who constitute 56 per cent of the population. The Fatah-Hamas conflict has added to Israeli brutality.
DISTRESSING as it is, the move to chop down more than 190 mature trees in Peshawar to widen a road doesn’t come as a surprise. The reason why news of this ilk fails to shock is that such massacres are a matter of routine in this country. When a nation can become desensitised to the slaying of human beings, the death of a tree doesn’t register in most minds. But it should. The web of life is intricately linked and the human species cannot survive indefinitely if flora and non-human animals continue to be wiped off the face of the planet. Let’s return to what is happening in Peshawar, a heavily polluted city that needs more, not less, greenery. The justification issued by officialdom goes something like this: the presence of many schools on Warsak Road leads to traffic jams and therefore the avenue needs to be widened, which in turn involves cutting down some 200 trees. Think about this, if only fleetingly. How many times in a day do schools cause traffic jams? And what is more troubling, being caught in a traffic jam in a major city (surprise, surprise) or the loss of nearly 16 dozen decades-old, leafy and life-giving trees? What’s more, it is believed that no summary vis-à-vis this action was approved by the provincial chief minister and that the forestry department simply followed directives issued by the NWFP Assembly speaker. Something doesn’t smell right here.
But then that’s the case across the state of Pakistan. In Swat the Taliban, in cahoots with the timber mafia, are laying low swathes of forest land in that picturesque valley. Deforestation is also rife in other parts of the NWFP and elsewhere in northern Pakistan. Down south, the forests of Badin, Thatta and Tando Mohammad Khan are disappearing fast due to illegal logging under the noses of local administrators. Bundal and Buddo islands, listed as a ‘high-priority area’ by the World Conservation Union, were handed over to a developer by the previous regime without so much as an environmental impact assessment. Mangrove stands are being decimated without a second thought. In major urban centres, trees continue to be cut in the name of development. The madness is unending.
Slowly but surely both Nato and the European Union are also revisiting their strategy towards the two countries whose security challenges and uncertain fortunes are viewed as increasingly interlinked.
The scrutiny is good news for Pakistan, which has long suffered from European neglect. Increased EU attention could mean more aid and trade. The bad news for reluctant reformers in Islamabad is that the new focus is likely to go hand in hand with demands that Pakistan play by the rules as regards its commitment to democracy, rule of law and fighting extremism. A sharper look at Pakistan’s grim financial and economic landscape is also expected.
As in Washington, Europe’s new focus on ties with Pakistan is prompted by concern at the rising violence and extremism in the country and fears that neither the civilian government nor the army has sufficient political will, tools and capacity to control the Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Fears that Pakistan is on the brink of financial and economic collapse have also mobilised European governments into paying more attention to the country. EU member states are key members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Several European countries as well as the European Commission also participated in the Friends of Pakistan meeting held in the UAE recently.
Significantly, NATO, which has identified Afghanistan as its top priority — and has deployed almost 55,000 troops in the country — is determined to ensure that Pakistan abides by its promise to stop fuelling the insurgency in Afghanistan.
Officials at the alliance, including Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer repeatedly insist that Islamabad is “part of the solution, not part of the problem” in Afghanistan. However as illustrated by the decision to invite army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to speak to the Nato military committee on Nov 19, the 26-nation alliance is still worried about Pakistan’s failure to curb extremism within its own borders and suspected continuing support for Taliban attacks in Afghanistan.
Interestingly although the Pakistan army remains mute on the subject, cooperation between Nato troops and the Pakistani army appears to be intensifying. For the first time last week, Nato-led troops in Afghanistan admitted they carried out an attack on an enemy position in Pakistan with the help of Pakistani security forces.
In another incident, alliance officials said Pakistan had fired on militants who attacked a Nato outpost on the Afghan border. Over the past month, Nato and Pakistani forces have also been cooperating in the so-called Operation Lion Heart — a series of complementary operations that involve the Pakistani military, Frontier Corps and Nato on the Afghan side.
Nato secretary general Scheffer is expected to visit Islamabad next month to discuss further political and military cooperation. While Nato makes no secret of its determination to work with Islamabad, fears of rising public outrage and an increase in anti-western sentiments following US military strikes against insurgents mean that Pakistan remains wary of confirming such cooperation.
The reluctance can be counterproductive, however. This correspondent has learned, for instance, that Islamabad turned down a Nato offer of assistance following last month’s earthquake in Balochistan.
This was particularly surprising given the massive humanitarian crisis unfolding in Balochistan and the alliance’s success in flying humanitarian relief into Pakistan’s northern areas after the earthquake in October 2005. Senior Nato officials went out of their way last week to lay out the red carpet for Gen Kayani. While the army chief refused to brief reporters, the head of Nato’s military committee, Adm Giampaolo Di Paola, spoke in detail to correspondents about the Pakistani general’s first-ever visit to the alliance headquarters.
Kayani appears to have done a fairly good job of convincing Nato officials that Pakistan wants peace and stability in Afghanistan — and is doing its best to curb its own growing insurgency. After the meeting, Di Paola said the Pakistani general and Nato agreed that there is “no military solution in Afghanistan” and that the focus should also be on winning hearts and minds or ordinary people on both sides of the border in the fight against militants.
“Pakistan is a very respected and essential player in Southwest Asia,” Adm Di Paola said. While the public praise was probably music to General Kayani’s ears, Nato and the EU intend to keep up the pressure on the Pakistani army.
Behind the public praise lie enduring concerns about the commitment and ability of the Pakistan army and intelligent services’ to stop the cross-border flows of insurgents into Afghanistan.
The EU, for its part, is equally worried about insecurity and instability in Pakistan but also the civilian government’s ability to tackle the country’s massive financial, economic and political challenges. Several EU states participated in the Friends of Pakistan conference held in the UAE, following a $7.6bn IMF emergency loan agreed as part of a broader economic rescue plan.
Significantly also French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has circulated a letter to his EU colleagues highlighting the need to “encourage and support” recent trends in Pakistan, and especially the new rapprochement between Islamabad and Kabul. Kouchner also pointed to the “new determination” of the Pakistani military authorities to “change their approach towards the Taliban and their apparent change of attitude towards India.”
The French foreign minister called for more transatlantic consultation on policy towards Pakistan and said there should be “great reciprocal transparency” as regards the economic and military aid provided to Pakistan by the EU and the US. The priority should be to help the Pakistani government in its fight against extremism whether in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, the letter said, adding: “There will be no stability in Pakistan as long as Afghanistan is at war.”
Meanwhile, the conflict in Afghanistan would also continue as long as Afghan insurgents continued to find help outside the country, Kouchner warned. The French foreign minister’s comments are further proof of the increased ‘hyphenation’ of Pakistan and Afghanistan by policymakers in both the US and the EU.
As such, few should be surprised that Gen Kayani got such an extensive hearing at Nato. However, the new government needs to seriously reflect on whether being attached at the hip to Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s long-term interest.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.
In what it said was “a first step towards an EU Arctic policy”, a European commission paper spelt out Europe’s interests in the Arctic’s energy resources, fisheries, new shipping routes, security concerns and environmental perils. “We can’t remain impassive in the face of the alarming developments affecting the Arctic climate,” said Joe Borg, the commissioner for maritime affairs.
With three member states — Denmark, Sweden, and Finland — bordering the Arctic, the EU said it wanted “observer status” on the Arctic Council, a body made up of northern littoral states, in order to further its interests alongside the US and Canada, Russia, Norway and Iceland.
In the past year the contest for control of the far north has grown more intense as the polar icecap melts and the Greenland ice sheet thins. Last year the Kremlin sent a submarine under the north pole to plant a flag. In May the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway agreed to try to bury territorial disputes over the Arctic, a pact that critics said heralded efforts to carve up the Arctic between them. Denmark, by way of its autonomous territory of Greenland, is involved in territorial scraps with Russia and Canada.
Developments in the Arctic are regulated through the UN’s law of the sea convention, which has been ratified by all the Arctic countries bar the US. The Obama administration is expected to support the treaty, triggering a faster race to develop the Arctic, which is estimated to hold a quarter of untapped oil and gas deposits.
In March an EU study highlighted security threats for Europe as a result of a thawing Arctic. “The rapid melting of the polar ice caps, in particular the Arctic, is opening up new waterways and international trade routes,” the report noted.
— The Guardian, London
Braying of a ‘Puttalam donkey’
The Island
THE real problem with political dregs, especially the government types, is that they make a grand show of their bovine upbringing in public, oftentimes in a violent manner. Hardly a day passes without one of them running berserk and creating a scene somewhere much to the consternation of the public who bear the cost of maintaining them.
On Tuesday, Deputy Minister for Livestock Development Abdul Baiz on his way back home abused a policeman near parliament for the crime of not going out of his way to remove a roadblock. The policeman, as we reported on Wednesday, politely told Baiz that he could not defy orders from on high. Piqued, Baiz ordered his guards to clear his path and vented his spleen on the poor policeman to his heart’s content. Worse, he promised to remove, of all things, the policeman’s trousers. We stop short of attempting a Freudian analysis of the deputy minister’s predilection for removing another man’s pants. Suffice it to say that we consider the livestock, whose development Baiz is in charge of, better behaved than most politicians, including ministers and their deputies….
We usually have nothing kind to say about the police. If Baiz had threatened to remove the trousers of the IGP or at least a senior DIG, we would not have cared to pen this comment; instead we would have gladly looked forward to the threat being carried out! We the public deserve some entertainment once in a way, don’t we? But, since the person who happened to be at the receiving end of Baiz’s menacing hubris was a hapless policeman, we cannot but condemn the incident and urge the champions of human rights to take up the victim’s cause.
Even criminals in this country have their rights better protected than the ordinary police personnel. If a policeman threatens a criminal, scores of human rights activists descend on him and haul him up before court. But, when a policeman is threatened by a politician or political thugs, there is no one to protect his interests. That is the predicament of the guardians of the law. No wonder that the police are highly demoralised.
It is reported that a witch-hunt is being planned against the policeman who refused to give in to Baiz. The bludgeon of parliamentary privileges is likely to be used against him. Should any such attempt be ever made, it would be imperative that the media, civil organisations and the right-thinking politicians, if any, stand up for the policeman. If the police bigwigs commit the shameless act of letting down their man, they will have no need for their trousers in the future.
Finally, it behoves the unruly political nitwits who are all mouth and no trousers to remember that their trousers will be removed by the irate public undergoing untold hardships, given half a chance. — (Nov 21)
