Troop cut in Kashmir?

MIRWAIZ Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has done well to make it clear that what the Kashmiris wanted was the valley’s demilitarisation and not a redeployment or relocation of Indian troops. Contained in an interview, his views have come in the wake of the Indian decision to set up a committee charged with the task of studying the possibilities of a troop cut in the occupied territory. New Delhi would perhaps never have considered a troop cut if pressures had not developed within the ruling coalition in Srinagar. During talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the latter’s visit to the valley, Mufti Mohammad Saeed said his People’s Democratic Party would quit the government if India did not reduce the number of troops in the valley. On his return to New Delhi, Mr Singh chose to announce the setting up of the committee shortly before his meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on the sidelines of the 14th Saarc summit conference. This had a positive impact on their talks. However, the announcement by the Indian prime minister’s office nowhere used the word troop cut, much less demilitarisation. All it did was to ask the committee to undertake an “in-depth assessment of the situation” and recommend whether the government should “reconsider and reconfigure security forces” in the valley. Nevertheless, even though couched in nebulous terms, the announcement has made it clear that the Indian government is actively pursuing what the logic of the situation in the valley and the dictates of the current normalisation process between Pakistan and India demand.

There are two other positive notes in the committee’s terms of reference, one relating to human rights. Like the absence of a direct mention of a troop cut, the excesses committed by the Indian security forces on the civilian population also find no mention in the announcement. But it does charge the panel with the task of undertaking “a review of the application of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to different areas” in the occupied territory. It goes without saying that the Indian security forces have indulged in massive human rights abuses, which have drawn criticism not only from Amnesty International and other rights bodies but also from some of India’s own HR groups. The announcement says that the government will ask the armed forces in the valley to adopt “a humane approach”. The other significant point related to the decision to return to their lawful owners the orchards and buildings occupied by the Indian security personnel.

In keeping with the Indo-Pakistan détente now in progress, one hopes that New Delhi will take up the question of a troop cut seriously. The utility of the Indian security forces in the valley — estimated at between half a million and 700,000 — is being questioned not only by Kashmiri leaders but also by some Indian generals, including Gen J. J. Singh, GoC, who recently said that the Indian troops could be “safely reduced”. In sharp contrast, India’s top civilian in Srinagar, Governor S.K. Sinha, has ruled out any troop reduction, saying that the Indian troops would stay “permanently”. This kind of rigidity does not make sense, especially because it goes against the spirit of the normalisation process. A reduction in the number of Indian troops will help end the stifling atmosphere in the occupied territory and push the peace process forward.

Suppressing the truth

MANY would still remember the day the Ojhri camp, where arms for the Afghan mujahideen were stored, blew up 19 years ago. All hell had broken loose in the capital city as the casualties mounted — over a hundred killed by one count. Even today new victims are reported when one of the buried projectiles surfaces accidentally. One often wonders what had actually happened and who was responsible for it. A wave of speculation prompted the government to set up two committees and one of them — a military one — even prepared a report that would have shed some light on exactly what had happened and why. It would also have helped to pin the blame on the person or persons responsible for the tragedy. But before the report could be released, Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo was summarily dismissed and the truth was hidden away.

This is not something now. Some governments in office in this country are known for hiding their skeletons in the cupboard. They traditionally do not disclose the findings of inquiry committees and investigation commissions that are set up to probe the misdoings of functionaries when a major disaster strikes. Ojhri is not the only case of its kind. We never came to know who was behind the assassination of the first prime minister of Pakistan in 1951. Half the country was lost in 1971 and the report of the Hamoodur Rahman commission that looked into the role played by various army generals in this catastrophe was kept under wraps. No action was taken on its recommendations. The text of the document was partially released nearly two decades later when it was no more than a subject of academic interest.

This lack of transparency is shocking. It may primarily be attributed to the absence of accountability that should be the key feature of a responsible system of governance. When there is no compulsion for those at the helm to pin responsibility for any wrongdoing and take action against the guilty, what need is there to publish the findings of such investigative bodies? They can only prove to be a source of embarrassment and generate public pressure to punish those found guilty. The committees are set up as a knee-jerk response to an event to pacify the public. Nothing more than that is intended.

Bird flu once again

WHILE bird flu remains a serious health concern in many countries, the paranoia that had earlier accompanied its occurrence seems to be lessening. This is a welcome development because so far the grim predictions of a global pandemic have not proved correct. Since 2003, there have been almost 300 human cases of bird flu of the H5N1 virus variety worldwide. Out of these, about 170 people died. Scientists have yet to prove that there have been cases of human-to-human transmission. However, they still fear that the virus could mutate to an extent where such transmission of the infection becomes common. In the absence of any preventive vaccine, this could trigger a global health crisis. This should be a sobering thought for our health and livestock authorities. The H5N1 virus was first detected at a poultry farm in the NWFP in 2006. It reappeared this year in February in Rawalpindi and the NWFP. A few days ago, it was detected at poultry farms in Sindh and the NWFP.

While in all cases, several birds believed to be infected were culled, the government is not doing enough to prevent a situation that could lead to human fatalities, besides incurring huge losses for the poultry industry. Surveillance and detection methods have to be tightened all over the country so that no case of avian flu goes undetected. This is no easy task considering that poultry farms exist even in remote areas where inspection and testing facilities are not available. Also, many poultry farmers are uneducated and poor. Not realising the potentially fatal consequences of harbouring an infected stock, they may be reluctant to report any cases of sickness in their birds for fear of the latter being culled and the resulting financial loss. Any set of preventive measures should include a public campaign that would raise the level of awareness among the farmers.

The confrontation in Islamabad

EVEN those of us who have grown accustomed over the decades to Pakistan’s perennial state of crisis, impending if not actual, have gradually succumbed to a sense of foreboding as this year has unfolded. It was the faceless female seminarians, shrouded from head to toe in a forbidding black, who first exacerbated our unease back in January by occupying a children’s library in Islamabad.

It was literally a walkover for the forces of obscurantism as the self-proclaimed repository of enlightened moderation turned the other cheek.

Then Dick Cheney invited himself to the capital for a censorious stopover on his way to the mini-gulag at Bagram, during which he is believed to have berated Pakistan’s leadership for not pulling its weight in the so-called war on terror. They must be used to it by now, but Democratic control of both chambers of Congress enabled the US vice-president to add a new menacing edge to the customary threat of dire consequences: should the Democrats decide to cut off aid, the White House might not be able to do anything about it.

Cheney’s visitation produced immediate results with the capture of Mullah Obaidullah, and was followed within weeks by the outbreak of clashes in South Waziristan, ostensibly between suddenly unwelcome Uzbek militants and local tribal lashkars. Reports suggest hundreds of lives have been lost on both sides, with Islamabad hailing the success of its much criticised strategy of striking deals with Islamist tribal chiefs. The scale of the carnage is apparently irrelevant.

Last Sunday, a BBC report headlined “Deadly clashes rage in Pakistan” prompted the expectation of further bloodshed in the vicinity of Wana; it came as a bit of a shock to discover that the news item related to Parachinar, where Sunnis and Shias have been at it again, resulting in dozens of deaths.

It would obviously be an exaggeration to say that Pakistan is travelling down the Iraq road without the “benefit” of a foreign occupation. In prospective terms, however, the notion does not seem entirely preposterous. And that is truly frightening.Some of the results of caving in to the Jamia Hafsa horde have been evident in recent weeks. The kidnapping late last month of three women and an infant on the charge of conducting immoral activities was a brazenly unlawful act.

Shamim Akhtar and her daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughter were freed only after “Auntie Shamim” publicly vowed to henceforth lead a pious life. “I could only escape after telling reporters what they (the Lal Masjid brigade) wanted me to say,” she later confessed, adding: “We would prefer to turn to Christianity. At least the Christians would be able to provide us some protection.”

That’s a perfectly understandable reaction to crude intimidation by a mob with indubitably fascist tendencies. Since then, the situation has markedly deteriorated. It may be possible to dismiss the threats against the owners of music and DVD shops as yet another stupid attempt to emulate the Taliban — although even limited success could lead to copycat tactics across the country.

The vow to authorise suicide bombings, however, is tantamount to criminality on an altogether different plane. The plainly advertised attempt to institute a parallel judicial system falls in the same category.

The latter conceit was compounded this week by a purported fatwa against Nilofar Bakhtiar, the federal tourism minister, demanding that she be sacked from the cabinet and punished. Her “crime”? Being photographed hugging a fellow paraglider in Paris, which can be construed as “obscene” only from a pathologically perverted point of view.

The complaint against the minister acquires a particularly menacing aura in view of Punjab provincial minister Zille Huma’s murder by a religious fanatic in February. That particular homicidal misogynist, unpunished for a previous string of murders (perhaps because the victims were alleged to be prostitutes), may have had nothing to do with Lal Masjid and the madressahs associated with it, but women in public life attract a broadly similar hostility across the narrow fundamentalist spectrum.

Suicide bombings have already been taking place in Peshawar and its environs, where Talibanisation has also manifested itself in various other forms. Schoolgirls, for instance, have been warned to veil themselves or stay at home and threats have been made against English-medium schools.

The majority of students at Islamabad’s Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Faridia, which have thus far provided the shock troops for Lal Masjid’s defiance of established authority, hail from the NWFP, and reports suggest that some of them are being retained in the madressahs against their own will and that of their parents. There appears to be no dearth of evidence on the basis of which measures aimed at preventing maulanas Abdul Aziz and Abdur Rashid Ghazi from doing further harm could be instituted.

However, the government has thus far restricted itself to statements, apart from a visit to Lal Masjid by the president of the official Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, for a meeting with the brothers Aziz and Ghazi, which apparently took place in a spirit of bonhomie but produced no results.

General Pervez Musharraf said last week that “stick-wielding activity leads to lawlessness and it will never be allowed to happen in this country”, but his announcement came after the aforementioned activity, reminiscent of scenes from some far-fetched ninja movie, had already occurred more than once.

His advice to the perpetrators to “shun narrow-mindedness and ... open their minds for new ideas” will almost certainly fall on deaf ears. He had previously claimed that Lal Masjid’s management had been known to harbour suicide bombers. That being the case, wherefore the inaction?

At the weekend the religious affairs minister, Ijazul Haq, was quoted as saying that no operation had been launched against Lal Masjid out of the fear that the militants hiding therein would harm the female students and blame the government for it. He appeared to admit his role, however, in obtaining the release of Aziz and Ghazi less than three years ago, after they had been arrested for abetting terrorists.

In some countries, ministers are obliged to resign for much less consequential errors of judgment than this. Ijazul Haq was also instrumental in Islamabad’s effective acceptance of the demands of the Hafsa students after they occupied the children’s library. That show of force was ostensibly a protest against threats to mosques constructed on illegally occupied government land.

Now, there may well have been grounds for sympathising with someone who had utilised a government plot, without appropriate permission, to construct a dispensary, a hospital, a school, or houses for the homeless. But there is surely no dearth of mosques in Islamabad, or for that matter anywhere else in the country.

At the same time, one can understand why Ijazul Haq may have a soft spot for the sort of activities that flourished — to Pakistan’s enduring detriment — during his father’s regime. Whether he should be allowed to do so from the vantage point of a cabinet post is a different matter.

The slow but steady Talibanisation of Islamabad is obviously not a good look for someone whose chief selling point is his supposed efficacy as a bulwark against aggressive obscurantism. Musharraf’s image has also taken a battering in the wake of the spectacular own goal he scored by arbitrarily dismissing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Whatever the merits of the complaints against Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the impression that has been created is that the action was prompted by his legal position on crucial matters such as the disappearance of people taken into custody by the security services, and the constitutionality of the head of state simultaneously holding the position of army chief.

The ongoing agitation by lawyers across the country has helped to reinforce the perception of a contest between an autocrat and a judicial activist. It does not necessarily follow that the charges against Chaudhry are risible, but there can be little question that the entire affair has been appallingly handled from the outset. And the legal fraternity’s protests have coincided with a growing dissatisfaction with the increasingly ineffective status quo.

Whether or not the general’s days are numbered, the absence of a promising post-Musharraf scenario constitutes yet another complication. The choice between a return to civilian democratic rule and full-fledged martial law is a no-brainer: the latter would be disastrous and quite possibly destructive.

At the same time, unfortunately, the available political forces of the non-fundamentalist variety offer few grounds for complacency. The third option is accelerated Talibanisation and, quite conceivably, civil war. It is the worst of the lot and, thankfully, also the unlikeliest. At least so far.

Perhaps the national malaise is best summed up, after a fashion, by the cricketing debacle in the Caribbean that culminated in the death of Bob Woolmer. The team’s media manager, P.J. Mir, confirmed widely held suspicions last week when he attributed the pathetic performance of Inzamam and his men to an inordinate focus on “preaching and praying”. “It was beyond limits, this religious influence,” he was quoted as saying. Pakistan, too, appears to be suffering from the same ailment.

It has persisted in a serious form for three decades; having lately taken a turn for the worse, could prove terminal in the foreseeable future. It seems democracy alone won’t suffice as an antidote. We also require a strong dose of the secularism that Mohammed Al Jinnah so clearly cherished.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com