Dr Khan’s new mission?

DR A.Q. KHAN, who is a hero to many as the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb, was declared a free citizen by the Islamabad High Court last week. The government has said it will appeal against the ruling.

Yet many rejoiced at Dr Khan’s winning his freedom that was said to be limited by mutually agreed conditions imposed on him by the government. The scientist has promised to spend his days “spreading education” though it is not clear what his message will be.

Pakistanis could certainly benefit from some knowledge about the hazards and dangers of nuclear weapons. It is a pity that when Pakistan embarked on the road to nuclearisation, the hawks in the establishment who controlled policymaking did not deem it necessary to inform the public honestly about the destructiveness of the atom bomb. Most people believe it to be a bigger bum with greater explosive power.

There are issues that need to be articulated comprehensively before one can really expect Pakistanis to formulate an informed opinion on nuclear weapons. Policymakers have waxed eloquent about the compulsions of national security and the need for building bulwarks to protect the country from our enemies without informing us that foreign policy is the other side of the coin that can reinforce defence if executed judiciously.

It is only fair that the cards are laid squarely on the table so that our people understand the balance of power that exists between Pakistan and India (which has been officially projected as our enemy). They will not fail to recognise the disparity between the elements that go into the making of national power, such as geopolitical/strategic strength, economic resources, population, social capital, strength of government and size of territory.

The reality of the imbalance between the two countries has not deterred our hawks from indulging in jingoism. Since barely one in five people in Pakistan is old enough to have vivid memories of the last war we fought with India in 1971 when we lost half the country, the population is easily deceived into believing that our disputes can only be resolved on the battlefield. But this time the devastation would be worse. We have to factor in the insurgency in Fata and Swat and its spillover in other regions of Pakistan and also consider the nuclear bomb when calculating the prospects of winning or losing. But who wants a Pyrrhic victory?

A wealth of material has been published on the impact of an Indo-Pakistan nuclear war but few would have read it. In Out of the Nuclear Shadow, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian give rough estimates of the casualties that can be expected. They are mind-boggling. Calculating on the basis of the data available for Hiroshima, they say that similar attacks on 10 Indian and Pakistani cities would lead to the death of 2.9 million people with another 1.5 million severely injured and 3.5 million slightly injured (by which the writers probably mean the victims would suffer from the side effects of radiation that caused deformities in unborn children of victims for years in Japan).

Hoodbhoy and Mian add, “There is also the loss of key social and physical networks that make daily life possible: families and neighbourhoods would be devastated, factories, shops, electricity and water systems demolished, hospitals and schools and government offices destroyed.”

But that is not all. It needed the creative brilliance of Kamila Shamsie, the young author of Burnt Shadows, to capture in vivid passages the pain and trauma of this destruction. It is ironical that her book was launched a day before Dr A.Q. Khan won his freedom.

Describing the few moments after the atom bomb hit Nagasaki, Shamsie writes, “The light is physical. It throws Hiroko forward, sprawling. Dust enters her mouth, her nose, as she hits the ground, and it burns…. She stands up. The air is suddenly hot and she can feel it on her skin. She can feel it on her back. She glides her hand over her shoulder, touches flesh where there should be silk. Moves her hand further down her back, touches what is neither flesh nor silk but both…. Now there is no feeling. She taps the place that is neither flesh nor silk but both. There is no feeling at all.”

This is fiction, but based on painstaking research by Shamsie. However, what Emiko Okada, a hibakusha (survivor of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima), had to say was not fiction. Visiting Pakistan as a member of the Hiroshima World Peace Mission on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear attack, Okada described graphically the destruction she herself witnessed and experienced as an eight-year-old on that fateful day. “My sister Mieko was 12 when the bomb was dropped. She had stepped out of the house and was hit by the blast. She vaporised never to be seen again.” Those researching the devastation of Hiroshima have confirmed that shadows on the ground were the remnants of vaporised bodies.

It is time people were educated about this devastation — about The Day After (a 1983 film depicting the horrific aftermath of a nuclear attack). A recent Time magazine interview with Alan Robock, an environmentalist who had been a member of a team researching a “nuclear winter” scenario that could follow a nuclear war, is quite revealing.

Talking about a nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each country uses 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons, Robock says, “That’s enough firepower to kill around 20 million people on the ground. We were surprised that the amount of smoke produced by these explosions would block out sunlight, cool the planet, and produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history.”He also pointed out that there would be a shortening of the growing season by a couple of weeks affecting some crop yield and causing a severe food crisis.

The aftermath of a nuclear war needs to be discussed coolly. It would also help if a similar exercise were to be carried out on the other side of the border. Dr A.Q. Khan could invite the former president of India, A.P.J. Abul Kalam, the father of the Indian bomb, to join hands with him in this mission.

zubeidam@gmail.com

Police Order revisited

POLICE Order 2002 was introduced with much gusto. Its avowed purpose was to reinvent the police so it could prevent and detect crime more efficiently and maintain public order. The central idea was to transform the police department into a professional, service-oriented force that would be accountable to the people.

After six years of half-hearted implementation, the future of Police Order 2002 has become uncertain. Certain circles are arguing that the order should be repealed and the system made to revert to its original status. Interestingly, the move to rescind the law is not supported by insightful debate or deliberation on its efficacy or flaws. Instead, the focus appears to be on backdoor manipulation.

Politics is the root cause behind the move to repeal Police Order 2002 and we would be well advised not to fall for this deliberate diversion. Any decision on retaining or abolishing the Police Order in part or in toto has to be made keeping in view administrative considerations and the usefulness of its provisions. The sensible course would be to identify existing problems and address those issues through legal channels in accordance with the law of the land.

It may be helpful to look at the salient features of Police Order 2002. Under the order, the police establishment was reorganised separating investigation from the operations branch, which may not have been the ideal option. It laid down procedures for the appointment and removal of a provincial police officer on merit and gave him financial powers as an ex officio secretary to the provincial government, enabling him to decide matters expeditiously without stumbling over bureaucratic bottlenecks.

It gave security of tenure to the chiefs of police in districts, capital cities and provinces so they could not be removed arbitrarily. Public safety commissions and police complaints authorities were set up to ensure public participation in policing. It is a pity that these provisions were not implemented in their entirety. However, the district police officer was effectively freed from the general direction and control of the meddlesome district magistrate.

It would be appropriate to objectively evaluate the working of the new police system. To what extent has it achieved its declared objectives and what are the pitfalls in the system? This assessment must be carried out in a fair and impartial manner if the aim is to create a professional police organisation that can successfully meet the challenge of controlling law and order. Changes should not be suggested merely to serve the vested interests of a particular group.

It is argued by proponents of the old system that the force under the new Police Order has become too autonomous and there is no institution to check its unbridled authority. The fact is that the new law puts more stringent checks on the police. They are accountable within their own hierarchy, to the elected nazim, the judiciary, the public safety commissions and the Public Complaints Authority. Furthermore, there are penal provisions for misconduct.

The bureaucracy and the politicians want to assume control of the police. Much of the clamour for rolling back the new police laws is motivated by this consideration. The question we need to ask is this: is the driving force a desire to check police excesses and make the force accountable for its conduct, or do the critics simply want to gain control over the police for ulterior motives?

Under the Police Act 1861, the district superintendent worked under the general direction and control of the district magistrate (DM). The bureaucracy exercised immense influence because of this provision. A district magistrate or his subordinate executive magistrates never succeeded in checking the reprehensible behaviour of the police. On the contrary, they provided legal cover to police excesses. Ordinary people suffered immensely because of this complicity between the local police officer and local executive magistrate.

Subordination of the police to the DM is against the universally accepted principle of separation of powers. Under the previous system, the police, magistracy and prosecution were controlled by a DM. This resulted in lack of transparency and objectivity.When the government of the day wanted to arm-twist a certain political group, the police would round up its members on the DM’s orders. The Sub-divisional District Magistrate (SDM), acting on the policy laid down by the DM, would grant physical remand and refuse bail. The prosecutor would push the case in compliance with the directions of the same officer and an amenable magistrate would award punishment. This made for a travesty of justice.

In all fairness it has to be acknowledged that all is not well with the current police system either. The public has not experienced discernible change with the enforcement of Police Order 2002. There has been no decrease in crime and police behaviour has not changed. Still, a failure to deliver the goods does not mean that the new police system was inherently flawed.

The failures we see can be attributed primarily to hasty and incomplete implementation. The system was changed overnight without preparing the ground for a drastic overhaul. It should have been done in phases and supplemented with training and other initiatives. Secondly, not all the provisions were implemented. For instance, the new law gave the provincial and district police chiefs security of tenure. This was never put in place. Citizens’ bodies including the public safety commissions were not made functional in most cases. The Public Complaints Authority could never take off.No system is perfect and what we have at present is not without its flaws. Nor was the previous system unblemished. But this does not mean that the solution lies in blindly reverting to the old set-up. Instead of placing the police under the control of the bureaucracy, police reforms should try to make the force accountable to the public, rid it of political interference, introduce meritocracy, modernise policing methods and introduce operational independence.

Provisions of law that have hampered police working, like the watertight compartmentalisation of the operations and investigation branches, need to be done away with to ensure smooth working, coordination and interdependence of the two branches of police.The focus of the reforms should be the police station which is the basic unit of the organisation. The public perception about the police is shaped by the treatment citizens receive at the police-station level. Respect for human rights, crime prevention and detection, overall service delivery and better police-community relations can only be achieved if the police stations are effectively reformed. Bureaucratic control is not likely to achieve this.

The writer is a barrister and a senior superintendent of police in Sindh.

shaikhsp@yahoo.com

The comment threads

UNTIL a few years ago, journalists were well-insulated from their readers. Aside from letters in the spidery scrawl of the “green ink brigade” or those sent to the editor for publication, feedback from the public was rare.

Today, it is instant, ubiquitous, and sometimes downright unpleasant — with some comment threads on the web quickly turning into a feeding frenzy. The growth of flaming — where hostile messages about writers are posted on forums or blogs — is changing the relationship between journalist and reader.

In a cover story last year for the New York Times Magazine, the ex-Gawker blogger Emily Gould wrote about her compulsion to “over-share” with readers on her blog — the 27-year-old revealed that she had had panic attacks after she was bombarded with vitriolic messages sent by viewers who had just seen her on a CNN discussion show about celebrities and the media.

When the NY Times article was published, Gould was flamed again — readers posted 1,216 comments on the paper’s website before the thread was closed. “The article seemed to bring out the worst in everyone who commented,” says Gould. Milder posts accused her of being “a stupid little girl”, while one sneered: “At first, I thought I was reading the sophomore page of the student newspaper at Harding High, Yokelville, Ohio. But then I realised it was the New York Times. Just awful.” That post was “recommended” by 460 NY Times readers.

“There’s this thing where the posts in these threads will try to outdo each other in saying the most horrible, shocking things,” says Gould. “It’s amazing, really. I feel like there’s almost no historical precedent for this. People used to just think this stuff, now they can actually get to write it, or email you.”

There are two main reasons why some comment “communities” turn on journalists with the gusto exhibited by Gould’s detractors, according to the London Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle. The first is simply that many first-person writers are widely disliked and the public now has the means to express that. “There’s a genuine and justifiable annoyance at the sheer whining narcissism of columnists, including me,” he says.

“Some readers always thought we were a pack of self-obsessed people. Now they have both the confidence and the platform to tell us what they think. And seeing their words ‘published’ on the Internet, next to lots of other comments, seems to legitimise what they say and spur them on.”

The second reason, he continues, is the writer’s choice of subject matter. “Certain subjects set off a feeding frenzy — anything to do with race, immigration and Israel. Those are some of the touchstone issues and, crucially, they’re also the issues politicians won’t touch.”

Certainly, such topics seem to hit a nerve. When Yasmin Alibhai-Brown recently wrote a column in the London-based Independent headlined “Spare me the tears over the white working class”, she braced herself for the response: “I knew there would be a reaction.” The writer considers herself “very robust” — but nothing prepared her for the 915 posts that followed.

Many amounted to hate mail, peppered with profanities. “Firozali A. Mulla”, for example, urged her to “choose the cheapest fare” to Iraq or Afghanistan. “For three or four days I was a wreck after that column appeared,” says Alibhai-Brown. “It was horrible. I really don’t mind good, argumentative letters ... But people do not have the right to abuse or threaten me. And these [comment threads] have become an invitation to abuse.”

Close moderation of comment threads could solve the problem. But ideas of how, and to what extent, vary widely between publications.

—The Guardian, London