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| January 04, 2009 | Sunday | Muharram 06, 1430 |
America & Israel
The battle against fog
OTHER VOICES - Indian Press
BD’s return to democracy
Obama brings Chicago to Washington
BANGLADESH has once again overwhelmingly opted for a democratic political system. Bangladesh, which emerged as a consequence of the thwarting of the popular will by a military dictator, has witnessed three military interventions in a turbulent history of 37 years.
BARACK Obama is back in Chicago after a 12-day holiday in Hawaii. But not for long. On Monday he begins his new life in Washington, temporarily housed in the Hay-Adams hotel until the White House becomes available on January 20.
THE Sri Lankan army’s capture of Kilinochchi, the Tamil Tigers’ stronghold, is being widely viewed in official circles in Colombo as a key strategic turning point in the 25-year war against Tamil secessionists. In his televised address, President Mahinda Rajapaksa described Friday’s development as an “unparalleled victory”. But can one be certain that this will not turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory? With the Sri Lankan rulers in a euphoric mood and determined to take the war to its military finish without making political concessions, the prospects of peace on the island are bleak. The war is still not over. With Mullaitivu, another LTTE stronghold in the north-east, as the next target more fighting of a fierce nature with its humanitarian fallout is to be expected in the coming days. President Rajapaksa’s categorical demand that the LTTE should surrender is bound to drive the Tigers to the wall and they can be expected to resort to guerrilla tactics which have earned them their reputation for ferocity. To prove that the rebels will not take defeat lying down, a suicide bomber exploded himself near the Sri Lankan Air Force base in Colombo within an hour of the president’s speech.
One hopes that its past experience with the rebels — in fact ever since 1983 when civil war broke out — will not be lost on the government. On earlier occasions, the Tigers have suffered severe routs only to bounce back after regrouping. They have retaliated by taking the war into new theatres. They did that in 1995 after the fall of Jaffna and again in 1999 when they reversed their defeat to dislodge the army from Elephant Pass. The LTTE has conventionally resorted to hit-and-run tactics when it has found itself cornered. With no face-saving offer of a dialogue on the table this time, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran will be forced to fight on as best he can even though his strategy may prove to be debilitating.
Given the nature of modern warfare and new technology, especially when the fight is between conventional armies and insurgents, the age-old concepts of victory and defeat need to change. In Sri Lanka the battle is basically between the minority Tamils and the majority Sinhalese who rule the country. Since 1972, the Tamils have demanded autonomy in areas dominated by them but to no avail. Sporadic attempts to negotiate a political settlement — the last one involving a six-year Norwegian-brokered ceasefire — have failed mainly because of lack of trust between the two sides and the government’s refusal to revamp the Sri Lankan state. As a result alienation between the two communities has grown over the years giving a fillip to the war that has badly hit the country’s economy and social structure.
IT was inconceivable even a few years ago. Let us not forget that the United States is a country where African-Americans were denied basic civil rights well into the 1960s. Yet the US did itself proud last year when diverse liberal forces banded together in a rare show of unity to opt for change and elect Barack Obama as the country’s 44th president. Some touted his election as the rebirth of America, a nation that has historically been open to new ideas and new beginnings. The US is a country that has produced some of the ablest, most brilliant minds in the world. At the same time, however, America has wilfully chosen blindness over sight where Israel is concerned. Any meaningful discussion on Israel is simply not kosher in the United States and the mass media there consistently portrays only one side of the story. Will the election of the young, idealistic Barack Obama change this reality? Going by his statements so far, it is clear that he adheres to the popular perception in the US which is based largely on misinformation. So what we will get, more likely than not, is continued US patronage of a state that sponsors terrorism as a birthright. What will continue to be forgotten is the basic fact that any nation under foreign occupation has a right to resist.
A person need not be sympathetic to the Hamas cause to shed a tear for the Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombardment. It does not require the wisdom of a sage to realise that Hamas is trying to fight an enemy it cannot possibly defeat. What is required is peace. But peace will never break out so long as America keeps turning a blind eye to Israeli barbarity and refuses to assess the situation on the ground in the capacity of an honest broker. For the US, Israel can do no wrong whereas much of the world thinks otherwise. The distinction between the aggressor and the oppressed is clear even in European minds. What one finds in the European media is, relatively speaking, objective analysis. It is sometimes claimed in America that the European soft spot for Palestinians stems from prejudice rooted in the treatment of Jews in Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are racists everywhere, and America is no exception. It’s just that in some parts of the world an ear is lent to both sides of the story. Not so in America.
AS inevitable as the arrival of winter is the descent of fog upon Punjab around this time of the year, causing severe visibility problems, lengthy transport disruptions, deadly traffic accidents and potential plane crashes. What is worrying is that each passing year has seen the fog becoming denser and more widespread and lasting longer. Parts of Punjab have been hit by zero visibility this time causing the temporary closure of the Lahore-Islamabad and Lahore-Faisalabad motorways. Southern Punjab has also been badly affected this winter with resultant flight cancellations and train delays. The fog has even spread to parts of northern Sindh. Local studies confirm that the fog has increased in intensity as well as duration in recent years due to the increasing emission of pollutants into the atmosphere as a result of a growing population, urbanisation and industrialisation. High levels of pollution, coupled with meteorological conditions favouring the accumulation of pollutants, result in fog formation over the plains in the northern part of the subcontinent.
Unless we deal with the fog by doing everything possible to lessen its impact, there will be no relief for the millions of people affected in Pakistan and the region. Battling the fog at our airports involves upgrading the Instrument Landing System and aircraft from the current Category I or Category II to Category III C which allows landing even in zero visibility. Besides, training pilots in the use of the system and ensuring that the latter is maintained in perfect condition are necessary. On the roads, the installation of fog lights in vehicles and ensuring a lower speed limit than usual are important to fighting poor visibility. Improving our fog management system also entails a better information dissemination and updating system for passengers at airports, railway stations and coach terminals, as well as ensuring that travellers are provided with some measure of comfort in the event of delayed journeys. Since the fog problem is a cross-border one, dealing with it effectively should ideally involve cooperation among the affected countries, both in terms of information-sharing and strictly implementing legislation to control vehicular and industrial emissions.
Kashmir sets a good example
Deccan Chronicle
THE electorate of Jammu and Kashmir in its wisdom did not hand over the reins of power to either a regional party or to a national one. A coalition government between a regional and a national force thus became inevitable.
There was no question, of course, that it will back a national party all the way. With the National Conference once again emerging as the first party in the state, the role of the balancer fell to the Congress. The Congress agreed to be a government partner with the NC provided the new dispensation was led by young Mr Omar Abdullah, rather than his father Mr Farooq Abdullah. This reflects more than a generational change….
The Congress is perhaps keen to turn the page…. Its governmental alliance with NC founder Mr Sheikh Abdullah in the mid-seventies had ended in fiasco, as did its alliance a decade later with the NC … which paved the way for militancy and eventually terrorism. Mr Omar and Mr Rahul [Gandhi] do not carry the negative baggage of the past.
…Omar also cuts a fine figure in the state and the country. It says something that the diehard pro-Pakistan separatist leader Mr Syed Ali Shah Geelani was not negative when Mr Omar Abdullah’s name was cleared for chief minister. He … asked only that the new leader keep his commitments.
Mr Geelani’s response is an indication. But the incoming NC-Congress government should be aware that the previous Congress-PDP regime had set a reasonably high standard of development activity … as well as lowering of corruption and efficiency in administration, except in the last two or three months of its six-year term when it faltered spectacularly in dealing with the Amarnath issue.
There continues to be fairly widespread opinion in the Valley that the Congress should have once again gone with the PDP, especially since the NC is regarded as having traditionally provided poor administration. The Omar Abdullah government would therefore have to work doubly hard to match, if not better, the record of its predecessor. Mr Abdullah’s credibility and energy is the key here. It is good for J&K that it has a truly young chief minister who is clean and may have fresh ideas. However, Mr Abdullah has specific problems to fix: he will need to win over the four southern districts of the Valley in which his party picked up a solitary seat. Fortunately, he starts with a solid mandate in terms of high voter participation. — (Jan 2)
The first by a group of mid-level armed forces personnel saw the massacre of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and virtually all his family. Sheikh Hasina and her sister survived the butchery.
The second incursion occurred in March 1982 when the COAS Lt. Gen. Hussein Mohammad Ershad grabbed power, suspended the constitution and declared martial law. His rule lasted till December 1990 when he was forced to resign in the face of a combined and determined onslaught by two major political parties — Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL).
The departure of Gen Ershad was followed by 16 years of uninterrupted democratic rule from 1991 to 2007. During this period power alternated between Begum Khaleda Zia (1991-96 and 2001-2006) and Sheikh Hasina (1996-2001). Regrettably, these years of representative government were characterised by interminable hostility between the two begums on a personal level and between their parties and supporters. Strikes, parliamentary boycott, venality and incompetence, pathetic law and order, vote-rigging, in short abysmally poor governance marked the political landscape of the country.
In January 2007 an impasse between the BNP and the AL led to the imposition of an emergency and the cancellation of general elections scheduled for late January. The interim government was headed by a former World Bank official Fakhruddin Ahmad. It had the full support of the armed forces of Bangladesh. The government promised to root out corruption, hold elections by the end of 2008 and overhaul the electoral list which contained 14 million ghost voters. The COAS assured the nation that he had no political ambitions. It goes to the abiding credit of the military-backed government that it cleansed the electoral list of fraudulent entries and prepared a fresh list of 81 million voters, held parliamentary elections as promised and removed itself from the political scene. With a view to ridding the body-politic of the cancer of corruption it adopted drastic measures and went after the top leadership of the major parties. Its attempts to have a corruption-free Bangladesh met the same fate as those of the Musharraf government in Pakistan.
Transparency International had declared Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world during the last years of the Awami League government. The people, fed up with a predatory elite, brought in Begum Khaleda Zia’s BNP in 2001 to sort out the mess. Instead of responding to the aspirations of the electorate, the BNP government compounded the situation by desperately and drastically dividing the shrunken pie among its own. Poor governance, deteriorating law and order, a rising tide of extremism and bureaucratic inertia displaced the hope that the people had reposed in the party and led to anger that has caused the BNP membership of parliament to plunge from 217 to just over 30 in the December 2008 elections. The Awami League’s landslide victory has meant that its seats tally has soared from a measly 62 in 2001 to an unbelievable 262.
Bangladesh, like Pakistan, but for an entirely different set of reasons, is not an easy country to govern. Dr Henry Kissinger described it as an international breadbasket. He was proven totally wrong as Bangladeshis tenaciously and successfully grappled with daunting challenges. Successive governments, irrespective of their hue, allocated as much or on occasions even more to health and education than they did to defence. The rate of population growth was dragged down dramatically, so that the country now has a population less than that of Pakistan, which was not the case at the time of Pakistan’s creation. The advances made in educating the people, empowering women and reducing poverty have impressed the international community. The astounding success of Prof Mohammad Yunus’ micro-credit programme, essentially targeting women, has earned him the Nobel Peace prize. The garments industry earning nearly $8bn in foreign exchange and employing in excess of 1.5 million female workers is yet another marvel.
The aforementioned achievements notwithstanding, Bangladesh faces daunting challenges. It is a country the size of Sindh but almost the population of Pakistan. One-third of the land is covered by rivers, so that the population density is amongst the highest in the world. On three sides Bangladesh is bounded by India which since 1971, when it played a crucial role in the country’s independence, has never ceased to extract its pound of flesh.
Sheikh Hasina, elected primarily on account of the anti-incumbency factor, campaigned on the fashionable slogan of change. To the populace, which has handed her this handsome victory, change would mean lowering inflation and providing food and shelter. Bangladesh has had a good harvest, remittances from overseas Bangladeshis are on the rise and fuel prices have fallen. A concerned, effective and reasonably honest government should be able to give hope to the people. It is now up to Sheikh Hasina to use her heavy mandate for democracy and development and not for self-aggrandisement and witch-hunting opponents.
It is not entirely true that Pakistan’s relations with Bangladesh have nosedived under an Awami League administration. Sheikh Hasina last ruled the country from 1996-2001. For the first three years Pakistan managed to have sound and solid ties with the Bangladeshi government and the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif established a good rapport with Sheikh Hasina. It was only with the overthrow of the democratic government in Pakistan and its replacement by a military one, that ties came under a strain.
It is good for the future of Pakistan-Bangladesh relations that we have a democratic government in Islamabad and that too, like the Awami League, based on a party which has challenged military dictators and extremists and is inclined towards secularism and a liberal and tolerant society.
Hopefully, the government will not merely send a routine congratulatory message to the winning party, but dispatch an emissary with a letter spelling out its intention of working assiduously for the broadening and deepening of bilateral ties and for close cooperation and coordination on regional matters. The emissary should also brief Sheikh Hasina on the current Pakistan-India standoff and the measures that the government is taking to root out extremism and terrorism from the country. I would be surprised if India does not send a senior official to Dhaka carrying its prime minister’s message of felicitation. We should not lag behind.
The writer was formerly Pakistan’s high commissioner to Bangladesh.
Even so, Chicago will never be too far away. Just as George Bush brought Texas to Washington and Bill Clinton brought Arkansas, so Obama too brings a blast of his home city.
The inner circle in the White House will be overwhelmingly Chicagoan. His two chief advisers, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, are both long-time associates from the city, and his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is another.
But more than that, Obama brings with him the baggage of Chicago’s political culture — the roughest in the US. The small-scale bribes that older Chicagoans remember from visits to City Hall are a thing of the past but the sharp suits, naked ambition and political trading are much the same.
So too is the large-scale corruption that has seen 50 elected officials from Illinois jailed over the past 30 years.
The origins of Obama’s run for the presidency can be traced to Manny’s Deli, an old-fashioned Jewish delicatessen in a bleak neighbourhood. The clientele is mainly working-class but Obama and Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and political consultant, were regulars, plotting Obama’s run right up to the presidency.
The deli’s owner, Ken Raskin, who has welcomed back Obama and Axelrod since the election on November 4, said there had been euphoria among the shop’s regulars after the victory but that had given way to a shaking of heads over the scandal that has engulfed the Illinois Democrat governor, Rod Blagojevich.
Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum, says Obama is surrounding himself with people who know how to work in an urban environment like Chicago.
— The Guardian, London
