Indian PM’s vision

THE Foreign Office’s reaction to the Indian prime minister’s reiteration of his proposal for a treaty of peace and friendship between the two countries is in keeping with Pakistan’s emphasis on the need for a solution of the Kashmir issue for peace to be durable. On Monday, speaking to a meeting of Indian businessmen in New Delhi, Dr Manmohan Singh repeated his hope for a treaty of peace and friendship with Pakistan and emphasised the linkage among the South Asian states’ economic development. This is the second time Dr Singh has spoken of such a treaty in less than a month. Last month, he had initiated his idea of a treaty of peace and friendship at a public rally in Amritsar. Reacting to the Monday speech, the Pakistan foreign office spokesperson said that the Indian prime minister’s views were something that related to the future. Pakistan, she said, was trying to normalise relations with India, and for that it was important that outstanding issues between them, including Kashmir, were first solved.

Basically, the speech should be seen in the context of some positive signals coming from the Indian side. In his Dec 20 Amritsar speech, the Indian prime minister had welcomed President Pervez Musharraf’s suggestions, made in a TV interview, with regard to the Kashmir issue, and said that he was open to all ideas that contributed to the “on-going thought process” and spoke of “a vision” he had about South Asia. On Monday he seemed to have gone a bit into the details of his vision with a reference to lunch and dinner in Lahore and Kabul the same day. With fencing and mining in progress along the Durand Line, Dr Singh seems to be quite optimistic about the shape of things to come. Nevertheless, his vision deserves to be applauded for the sentiments it represents with regard to all South Asian nations. The economic development of one neighbour, he said, would not be possible if there was poverty in its neighbourhood.

This reality brings us to two important questions. One is the need for turning the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation into a dynamic grouping. Here one is saddened by Saarc’s utter failure to click. Founded in Dhaka in 1985, Saarc has nothing to show by way of concrete achievements in matters of cooperation in the economic and cultural spheres. Innumerable agreements for realising Saarc objectives exist on paper, but not much has been done practically to make Saarc a going concern and enable South Asia’s 1.4 billion people to enjoy the benefits of progress through cooperation. This is in sharp contrast to what other regional groupings, like Asean and the European Union, have achieved. While EU is in a class by itself, we can see how active and fruitful cooperation among Asean nations has fostered economic growth and helped raise the living standards of their peoples. If, therefore, South Asia is to achieve the kind of regional cooperation Dr Singh has in mind, all South Asian nations must become serious about it instead of using Saarc merely as a debating forum. Two, what stands in the way of Saarc’s success is the state of Indo-Pakistan relations. Tensions between Saarc’s two major powers have not been the best way of leading the other six nations towards regional cooperation, and it goes without saying that Kashmir stands in the way of normal relations between Pakistan and India.

Privatisation of PSO

PRIME MINISTER Shaukat Aziz is convinced that Pakistan State Oil is a “prime asset ready for privatisation”. He also stressed last week that the government’s role must be limited to policy-making as commercial activity is the “exclusive domain” of the private sector. Even if this definition were desirable in the context of a developing country, the PM’s position does not account for the reality vis-à-vis the armed forces, which command a host of commercial interests ranging from banking to real estate. That said, the prime minister is correct in emphasising the need for a strong regulatory framework, for only with proper supervision can the interests of consumers be protected. As such, it is important that regulatory bodies be free from the influence of private and official vested interests.

The wisdom of selling profitable state assets, especially those in strategic sectors, is as questionable today as it was when the privatisation ministry was created in 2000. It is also debatable whether the sale of state assets benefits the economy as a whole — instead of creating new capacity, the private sector simply buys a running concern. PSO’s proposed sale is troubling. For one thing, it is a hugely profitable company with a 65 per cent share of the market. Ogra already stands accused of being hostage to the demands of the oil companies; with PSO also in private hands, the pressure will grow. It would also make economic sense to keep PSO under state control at a time when the government is looking at ways to increase the country’s strategic oil reserves. Then there is the question of whether the government can obtain the right price for it. The share price for privatisation purposes will be determined, among other factors, by the company’s cash-flow situation, which is bound to fluctuate. Also, there is no knowing whether PSO’s huge land and infrastructure assets will be accurately reflected in the selling price. On a wider policy level, it is important that the proceeds of privatisation be duly accounted for by the government. According to the Privatisation Commission Ordinance 2000, 90 per cent of receipts must be earmarked for debt retirement, with the rest going to poverty alleviation. Is this formula being followed, or is the privatisation cash cow being used to meet running expenses?

Akhtar Mengal’s trial

A REPRESENTATIVE of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who on Monday was reluctantly allowed to witness the trial of Sardar Akhtar Khan Mengal at Karachi’s Central Prison, has revealed that the dissident Baloch leader is being kept in an iron cage. This is deplorable. At the same time, it is symptomatic of a shaky regime having little confidence in itself, and one that would break all rules and norms of decency to please the powers that be to stay in office. The former Balochistan chief minister is under trial at an anti-terrorism court, facing charges of abduction of Pakistan Army personnel and of instigating attacks on strategic installations in his home province in the aftermath of Nawab Akbar Bugti’s killing by security forces in August last year. According to the HRCP, the under-trial Baloch nationalist has been given no beddings or provided any other basic amenities when he should have been treated as a political prisoner entitled to all these facilities. The shame of it all is that the trial is being conducted behind closed doors, with the accused being denied the presence of even his family members; he has, reportedly, only restricted access to his counsel.

It is the conducting of such closed-door trials of political prisoners, including that of the PML-N leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, which, throughout our chequered past, have cast a shadow of doubt over the judicial process and the sentences handed out — that is when dissidents have been given the ‘privilege’ of a trial. The practice detracts from the credibility of such a judicial process. In the case of nationalist leaders in particular, such conduct will further fan the sentiment of misgivings found among already marginalised minority nationalities. Sardar Mengal, like every other citizen of the state, deserves an open and fair trial.

Somalia: hold the applause

THERE are a number of reasons why it would be imprudent for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to bask too contentedly in the glow of his army’s rapid success in neighbouring Somalia. He may find cause, in the short run, for self-congratulation: after all, the military campaign is bound to have distracted attention from the problems he faces at home.

And a strategic alliance with the sole superpower presumably also counts as a plus point: as an eager participant in the so-called war on terror, he can count on preferential treatment.

However, it may serve him well to ruminate for a moment or two on the fate of another Third World strongman who, not much more than two decades ago, was encouraged by the United States to tackle a growing Islamist threat in his neighbourhood. He was surreptitiously provided with the means of wreaking damage, including satellite surveillance maps, which is one of the means whereby the alliance with Washington has bolstered Addis Ababa’s forces. US warships were never too far from the Strait of Hormuz, just as they have lately been patrolling the east coast of Africa and conducting air strikes at suspected militant positions inside Somalia.

There are, of course, significant differences between the two scenarios, but it’s worth remembering that Saddam Hussein’s assault against Iran was just as illegal as Zenawi’s foray into Somalia. It is hard to say whether greater military success would have stood Saddam in better stead vis-a-vis the US, but it is not altogether outrageous to suggest that his eventual fate should give Zenawi pause (especially if he has designs on Eritrea or Djibouti).

Back in Ethiopia, Zenawi is not on particularly solid ground. For instance, it was reported last October that his government had tried to suppress the report of an official inquiry into the killing of 193 protesters during the May 2005 elections, which are alleged to have been rigged. According to the inquiry’s vice-chairman, “This was a massacre. The demonstrators were unarmed, yet the majority died from shots to the head.”

Zenawi has been in power since 1991, when rebel forces overthrew the regime of Haile Mengistu Mariam, around the same time that Somalia’s Mohammed Siad Barre was sent packing. Mengistu was last month found guilty in absentia of genocide after a 12-year trial. Somalia and Ethiopia fought a war in the Siad Barre/Mengistu era, although that time around Ethiopia was not the obvious aggressor, and it fought back with Soviet and Cuban support. The Ogaden region has long been the source of a territorial dispute between the two countries: as in so many other parts of the world, the borders left behind by colonial powers were not entirely logical and, as a consequence, roughly six per cent of Ethiopia’s population consists of Somalis.

What is perhaps of greater significance is that Muslims today constitute the largest single religious group in Ethiopia: according to the CIA’s World Factbook, they make up 45 to 50 per cent of the population. This fact potentially adds some substance to Zenawi’s fear of Islamism, although it is far from clear whether extremist variants of the religion exercise any appeal in Ethiopia.

The Zenawi government has in the past waged war against Eritrea, and there have been suggestions that the breakaway republic was providing support, including troops, to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that held sway in Mogadishu and southern Somalia for about six months last year. It was also suspected that the UIC was attracting material support and personnel from parts of the Arab world.

An effort has been made to create the impression that Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia — with US encouragement and logistical support, purportedly to prop up a United Nations-approved (albeit essentially powerless) interim government — has served as a decisive blow against militant Islam. The UIC had picked as its chief Hassan Dahir Aweys, whose name appears on US and UN lists of terrorists, and was said to be harbouring three men suspected of involvement in the 1998 bomb blasts at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam. Aweys is earlier believed to have headed Al Itihaad Al Islami, a militant organisation with possible Al Qaeda links.

Ayman Al Zawahiri’s statement last week calling for a jihad against the “crusader invader” nation of Ethiopia serves to bolster the preferred US-Ethiopian narrative, not least because the initial emergence of the Islamic Courts was reminiscent of the early Taliban phase But there are alternative narratives, and the most intriguing of the lot was summed up last Friday by The Washington Post’s Stephanie McCrummen in a report from the Somali capital: “In a way, people here said, Mogadishu was liberated by the Islamic Courts movement, which managed to rid the city of the militias and roadblocks that had functioned like a hundred Berlin Walls,” she wrote.

“Movement was so restricted that some residents had not seen friends and relatives in years, and children living only minutes from the crashing Indian Ocean had never laid eyes on the turquoise water.” McCrummen quoted one Mogadishu resident as saying he carried a weapon to protect himself when the warlords were in power; he put it away when the UIC took power, but began carrying it again following the ouster of the Islamists.

Numerous reports of a similar nature bear testimony to the fact that the semblance of law and order established by the UIC was regarded as a blessing by many Somalis, including those who bristled at the strictures introduced by the Islamists. The restrictions were stupid and unnecessary, but not exactly draconian: Somalis were evidently willing to do without movies, western music and the narcotic qat leaf, as long as their lives were protected. In isolation, the concept of order often has dark connotations, but in the Somalian context of 15 years of relentless anarchy, it was considered quite an achievement.

It is possible that Aweys and his cohorts would have sought to Talibanise Somalia to a far greater extent — which would inevitably have produced a disaster in due course. However, the UIC in the beginning evidently represented more than one strand of opinion, and had the interim government extended feelers in the direction of moderate elements in Mogadishu instead of tightening its embrace of Ethiopia, the gesture may well have helped to establish a conciliatory national mood.

What Somalia desperately needs is some sort of government of national unity in the run-up to elections scheduled for 2009. It may make sense to bring them forward by at least a year — which is something the Islamists, buoyed by their popularity, were apparently happy to contemplate. What may happen in the interim is far from clear. The worst outcome would be a return to clan-based fiefs effectively governed by the same warlords who terrorised Somalis for a decade and a half.

Some of them are members of the transitional administrational, and quite a few joined the farcical US-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, but there are others who have little faith that their interests will be looked after by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi.

An attempt by Ghedi to disarm civilians and militias in Mogadishu was abandoned at the weekend, after it became clear that it wasn’t working. There have, meanwhile, been sporadic demonstrations against the presence of Ethiopian troops. Official sources say such protests are being instigated or organised by the Islamists, and fears have been expressed that remnants of the UIC could organise a resistance movement along Afghan and Iraqi lines, offering one more battlefield to the international brigades of aspiring Muslim martyrs. That’s a ghastly prospect: hopefully, the likelihood of such a scenario is exaggerated.

The UIC’s rank and file melted into the general population without putting up a fight and the rest of them are besieged near the Kenyan border: most of the 1,000-plus fighters killed by the advancing Ethiopians were reportedly raw teenage recruits plucked from schools by the Islamists.

Although the probability of guerilla warfare doesn’t seem particularly high, a peace-keeping force of some sort will be required anyhow. The Ethiopians don’t qualify for the task even on the basis of the UN Security Council resolution pushed through by the US late last year, and at the time of writing only Uganda had volunteered a contingent as part of an African Union (AU) operation. The US has been unbelievably generous: it has offered $10 million towards funding an 8,000-strong AU force, out of a total of $40 million pledged to help restore stability in an impecunious failed state. (Contrast that with the cost of waging war in Iraq, which is expected to cross $500 billion this year.)

Zenawi has hinted at withdrawing his troops within weeks, but the AU appears incapable of rapid deployment. The consequence could be a return to the free-for-all that US and UN forces were unable to cope with back in 1993-94. (The US was determined at the time to hunt down Mohammed Farah Aideed: his son Hussein Aideed is now a member of Ghedi’s government. No surprise there, but there is a stranger-than-fiction aspect to this story: according to the BBC’s Peter Biles, the younger Aideed became a warlord after he landed in Somalia in 1993 as a US marine, and decided to modify his profession.)

There are thus far no grounds for complacency: the Horn of Africa remains shorn of hope. And there won’t be any for as long as it remains pertinent to ask: why must the region that’s home to the world’s poorest 100 million people devote its meagre resources and depleted energies to an aimless and unending cycle of violence?

mahir.worldview@gmail.com