India-APHC talks

THE positive note on which the talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) were held in New Delhi on Monday makes one hopeful that a peaceful solution to the Kashmir dispute may after all be found. Coming after a gap of 17 months, the meeting between the APHC and the Indian government sends a positive message to all the interested parties. New Delhi has decided to negotiate with the Kashmiris rather than suppress them with the force of arms. Mr Singh’s meeting with the APHC delegation was the first an Indian prime minister has had with the section of the Kashmiri leadership that demands self-determination for its people. True, the BJP government, which started the peace process with Pakistan, had also met Hurriyat leaders. But that was one ad hoc meeting between the APHC representatives and the deputy prime minister, Mr Advani. Nothing came out of it. This time one can hope for a more substantive outcome, in view of the climate of detente that marks the South Asian scene today — in the wake of the progress made in the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan. Moreover, a strong section of Kashmiri public opinion is inclined to negotiate a settlement with India and Pakistan, rather than wage an armed struggle. Its voice now carries weight as compared to those who would like to fight till the end and wrest their independence from New Delhi. India has done well to reciprocate this feeling.

It is still too early to say what the long-term settlement of the Kashmir dispute — a legacy of partition — would be like. But there are some immediate and short-term issues that need to be addressed first. One is the overwhelming Indian military presence in the valley. This is not only intimidating for the Kashmiris, inevitably it also provokes clashes and use of force that militates against the human rights and civil liberties of the people of Kashmir. Hence it has for long been felt that India should withdraw its forces from the occupied territory to initiate the pacification process. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised to pull back the Indian forces if the infiltration level across the LoC declines. Needless to say, the incidence of militant-backed violence in Kashmir is not as high as it used to be. Mr Singh has also assured the Kashmiris that trust will be created in the state and the sufferings of the people will be alleviated.

The other important issue that needs to be addressed is a framework for holding negotiations on the Kashmir conflict. It has been hinted that a Kashmir committee might be set up to provide a permanent mechanism for discussions and back-channel diplomacy. This is an excellent idea and one hopes that it will be implemented in the near future since it will facilitate informal and behind-the-scenes talks on sensitive issues. The question of a negotiating mechanism is also linked to another vital question — Pakistan’s role in the final settlement of Kashmir. The fact is that no solution would be feasible and durable without the consensus of all the three parties — the Kashmiris, Pakistan and India. The APHC has also confirmed that it wanted Pakistan’s participation in the peace process. A Hurriyat delegation visited Pakistan in June and met the government leaders here. Now they have held talks with Mr Singh who met President Musharraf earlier this year and will be seeing him again next week. Meanwhile, their negotiators have been talking to each other in the course of the ongoing composite dialogue. This has made the dialogue triangular with each side being in touch with the other two. For this process to be complete it was essential that the Hurriyat leadership met the Indian government which it has done now. When the time is appropriate, all three of them could sit together at the same table.

Zakat distribution flaws

THE Sindh government has denied that it has failed to distribute two billion rupees in the Zakat fund to the poor. It said the amount was far less — only Rs 258.16 million. There are reports of a similar nature from Punjab saying that in Bahawalpur alone, Rs 58.6 million meant for the poor have not been given to them. Giving zakat — alms money — is one of the five basic principles of Islam: the rich must share a prescribed part of their money with the poor, the percentage of zakat in one’s income varying from sect to sect. Traditionally, Muslims have utilized the zakat money to help the needy, with charity beginning at home. Which means that one must first look after one’s relatives and neighbours before helping others. In 1980, Gen Ziaul Haq promulgated the Zakat and Ushr Ordinance, which provided for compulsory deduction of zakat from people’s bank accounts.

As he was wont to, Ziaul Haq did not bother to consult the people or religious scholars on this issue. He merely consulted a coterie of ulema that had kowtowed to him from the day he seized power. The result was resentment among the people, who felt they had been deprived of the right to spend their zakat the way they preferred to. To evade this compulsory deduction of zakat, people in many cases changed their sect on paper by a declaration, while others withdrew their money from banks before Ramazan (when zakat is deducted) and later put it back in their accounts. Many purchased prize bonds, because zakat is also deductible even on some categories of bonds and savings certificates. Over the decades, many other anomalies too have come to the surface. For instance, it has been alleged that zakat committee members give money to their favourites instead of to the needy. In the NWFP, it was alleged that needy students were not getting zakat, which was being given to the less deserving. Similarly, instead of indigent patients, some relatively well-off ones were getting medicines paid for out of zakat funds because they had managed to influence some zakat committee members. Another problem with distribution is the kind of system that exists. Deducted from banks, the money goes to the federal religious affairs ministry, which then gives it to the provincial zakat committees, which in turn pass it on to district committees and finally to the local councils for distribution. There is nothing wrong with this system, but given the level of efficiency at all tiers of government and zakat committees, one can understand the reason why the money often remains undistributed.

The other day, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq acknowledged the existence of bottlenecks in the distribution system. He said that reforms proposed by the members of the Senate standing committee on zakat would be presented to the Council of Islamic Ideology so that the zakat ordinance could be appropriately amended. The truth is that this nation is stuck with the laws arbitrarily made by Gen Ziaul Haq. This holds good not just for the zakat ordinance but for the Hudood laws, too. While formulating these laws, the military government did not take into consideration the views of all sects and of all sections of opinion. This has made them controversial and in the case of Hudood laws discriminatory to women, especially victims of rape. Instead of amending the zakat ordinance, the government would do well to ask itself whether the zakat ordinance really serves any meaningful purpose. Doing away with the ordinance will mean less work for the bureaucracy, which finds itself unnecessarily burdened with a task that is best left to individual choice.

Weathering all sorts of storms

THE mullahs, as usual, are missing the point. As a matter of principle, there isn’t necessarily any harm in Pakistan and Israel talking to each other, or even in establishing diplomatic relations, de facto or otherwise.

Such relations do not oblige either party to be particularly friendly, let alone to condone everything the other side says or does. Any move towards introducing greater civility into international relations generally deserves to be welcomed.

On the other hand, the timing of the first public contact between senior Israeli and Pakistani officials is certainly intriguing. General Pervez Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz and Khurshid Kasuri have been singing from the same hymn sheet in suggesting that the talks in Turkey between Kasuri and his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, were prompted by Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the implication being that Ariel Sharon’s decision to pull out from two per cent of historical Palestine will somehow pave the way for a viable Palestinian state.

The pullout is certainly not insignificant, but it takes a considerable degree of naivete to perceive it as a decisive step on the road to a settlement. Had Sharon’s intentions been honourable, he would not have deemed it necessary to institute this measure unilaterally. He has avoided negotiations with Palestinians, because that would have entailed discussing the future of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Although there are no clear indications of what, if anything, Sharon intends to do next, he and his colleagues have been at pains to point out that the withdrawal ought not to be viewed as the manifestation of a ‘Gaza First’ strategy. ‘Gaza Only’ would be a less inaccurate tag.

After all, there are no plans to dismantle the larger illegal settlements in the territory many Israelis, including Sharon, refer to by its biblical name of Judea and Samara, known to the rest of the world as the West Bank. Talks with Palestinians remain suspended indefinitely, the official reason being the Palestinian Authority’s alleged unwillingness to tackle terrorism. In fact, as some Israeli analysts have candidly (and disapprovingly) pointed out, nothing short of a civil war between Fatah and Hamas will satisfy the Israeli regime.

Under the circumstances, the best the Palestinians can expect is being asked to make do with Gaza plus some chunks — not necessarily contiguous — of the West Bank. That can hardly be considered an acceptable solution. And even these tactical semi-retreats will cease if Binyamin Netanyahu succeeds in forming a government after ousting Sharon as Likud leader, which he plans to do later this year. In the event, Sharon is expected to form a new party and continue to aspire for power with the backing of the Labour Party. But that is hardly an encouraging scenario.

What exactly does Pakistan hope to contribute under these sorts of conditions? Surely no one in Islamabad could be under the illusion that Israel will be responsive to lectures from Pakistan. After all, this is a country that doesn’t even always heed homilies from its patron-in-chief, the United States of America.

Speaking of which, it is worth noting that US patronage is something Israel and Pakistan enjoy in common. There are also historical parallels: if memory serves, it was General Ziaul Haq who once pointed out that Pakistan and Israel were the only two modern states that were founded on the basis of religion. Zia, incidentally, was fairly keen to establish relations, having correctly identified Israel as an ideological ally. Ultimately, however, he lacked the courage to follow that idea to its logical conclusion. Perhaps the easily distracted Ronald Reagan wasn’t too insistent anyway. But unofficial contacts between the two countries date back to that era: Mossad had as much interest in aiding the motley Mujahideen as the CIA and the ISI.

In an attempt to preempt criticism, the Musharraf administration implied it had cleared the move in advance with Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah. The Palestinian Authority’s reaction appeared to belie the former claim, while the Saudi monarch — as close an ally of Washington as the Israeli and Pakistani leaders — isn’t exactly renowned as a foreign policy consultant. Musharraf conveniently forgot to mention any role the US might have played in forging (or forcing) the rapprochement. Was it just a nudge, or a fullfledged loyalty test? In either case, Pakistan clearly qualifies for higher marks than the puppet regime in occupied Iraq.

The implication of an epiphany about the role Pakistan can play in bringing about peace in the Middle East taxes the imagination. There has got to be a more realistic explanation. Is it the prospect of arms sales?

Perhaps there’s little point in demanding the truth, since it won’t be forthcoming — unless it emerges as the result of a leak in Islamabad or Jerusalem. Or Washington. In the meantime, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Pakistan government has taken a decision (without popular or parliamentary consultations, as is the norm) that is not necessarily reprehensible, but it has done so at an inappropriate juncture and quite possibly for all the wrong reasons.

All the same, chances are that Musharraf will be able to weather the storm, if there is one. It’s harder to make the same claim about his mentor in the White House, whose behaviour in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Katrina has convinced even conservative commentators of his irremediable inadequacies as a commander-in-chief. George W. Bush is not, of course, personally responsible for everything that has gone wrong, although his administration has a lot to answer for. Far more daunting than a pathetic chief executive is the fact that he presides over a system that is rotten to the core.

There are usually a couple of reminders every year that it isn’t easy for humankind to combat or compensate for nature’s shock and awe. It is nonetheless awfully shocking to realize that it takes no more than a hurricane to reduce a Britain-sized slab of the United States to conditions reminiscent of Somalia or Bangladesh.

It needn’t be thus. Just two months ago, Dennis, a category-four hurricane — the same strength as Katrina — ripped through Cuba. With gusts of up to 260km per hour, it caused material damage worth $1.4 billion. Guess how many deaths it caused. Thousands? Hundreds? Scores? No, 16. There are no missing zeroes. And even this was, according to Oxfam, much higher than expected. There’s a simple explanation: when the Cuban government orders an evacuation, it provides the means for people to evacuate. It provides shelter, food, medical attention. Blow me down, it might be a communist conspiracy, but it seems to attach a higher priority to saving human lives than to protecting property.

The home of the brave and land of the free cannot, of course, be expected to learn any lessons from an impoverished little island. Or to accept any assistance, even though Fidel Castro offered more than 1,000 doctors and commensurate medical supplies. Offers of aid from Venezuela, El Salvador (which volunteered a military contingent) and Bangladesh, as well as scores of other countries, were also turned down, although the US didn’t turn down food, water and blankets from NATO, the European Union and Canada. Perhaps the criterion was that the donors had to be white.

New Orleans, the cradle of jazz, sits a couple of feet below sea level, and it has been common knowledge for decades that it could drown. Yet federal funds to reinforce the levees that separate it from the Atlantic Ocean have been dwindling sharply since 2001. The government had better uses for them: tax cuts for the rich, the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq. When the citys mayor ordered an evacuation last week, there were no contingency plans in place for those who had nowhere to go or no means of transport. Close to a third of New Orleans inhabitants lived below the poverty line. Forty per cent were illiterate. Two-thirds were black. Among the officially poor, the proportion of blacks rose to 84 per cent.

Hip-hop performer Kanye West was among the first to publicly voice the suspicion that if Katrinas victims had predominantly been white, a concerted rescue effort would have been mounted much sooner after the calamity.

Now virtually every prominent African-American has chimed in, with the exception of Condoleezza Rice. But then, she isnt the only member of the Bush administration who is in denial.

Thousands who could have been saved were allowed to perish. The first substantial troop deployment came with shoot-to-kill orders vis-a-vis “looters”, the majority of whom were just helping themselves to food, drink and disposable nappies in order to survive. They were under orders to protect abandoned — and well-insured — private property, not human lives. Racism and free-market fundamentalism are a lethal combination. Possibly mistaking Katrina for Osama, the depleted federal emergency agency responded to a request for medicines from a Baton Rouge field hospital with anthrax antidotes.

Substantial proportions of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guards, who could have mounted rescue missions, are deployed in Iraq. Perhaps they should be renamed the International Guards. But the question that all Americans should be asking is: Why is our country determined to bring freedom and democracy to distant lands when so many of its own poor, its huddled masses, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, the wretched refuse of its teeming shore, are yearning to breathe free?

E-mail: mahirali1@gmail.com