What’s holding Saarc back?

IT is not yet confirmed whether the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will meet on the sidelines of the meeting of the standing committee of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation at Kathmandu next month. If they do meet, then this should help quicken the move toward a normalization of Indo-Pakistan relations. Saarc’s last summit meeting could not be held in Islamabad earlier this year because of India’s persistent refusal to confirm its participation. Pakistan was, then, left with no choice but to announce its indefinite postponement. The next month’s meeting in Kathmandu is again to focus on holding a summit. In the given context, it appears as if the holding of a summit will itself be an achievement of sorts.

Any observer of the South Asian scene will be struck by the lack of regional cooperation in an area that has a population of more than a billion and a quarter. The region is endowed with enormous natural resources as well as a huge reservoir of economic, scientific and cultural talents. With a rich civilizational heritage, South Asia is in a position to make a major contribution to mankind’s efforts to make planet earth a better place. The reality, however, is that Saarc is a non-starter. Established at Dhaka in 1985, Saarc had aroused great hopes. There have also been periodic summit conferences, regular meetings of foreign secretaries, and a huge amount of paper work on the pooling of resources for cooperation in a number of fields. The areas of cooperation identified included greater trade, an easing of visa and travel restrictions, greater cultural exchanges, including visits by literary figures, journalists and film personalities, and coordination in combating Aids, smuggling and narcotics. However, all this has remained on paper and little concrete progress has been made. This is in sharp contrast to the phenomenal progress made by some other regional groupings. Leaving aside the European Union, which is a class by itself, the Association of South-East Asian Nations has some spectacular achievements to its credit. Even though inhabited by peoples having different languages, cultures and religions, the Asean states have shown a remarkable ability to come together for the larger good of their peoples and region. In sharp contrast, Saarc has been little more than a talk shop. Of late, even this inane aspect of the ‘functioning’ of Saarc has been put on hold because of the failure of the last summit to materialize.

Any assessment of Saarc’s failure to really take off makes it obvious that it is the state of relations between Pakistan and India that has blocked all progress. As the two leading countries of the region, Pakistan and India should have taken the lead in composing their differences and showing the way to others. Instead, the two seem unable to overcome the psychological backlog of history and solve their problems. India also has problems with Bangladesh and Nepal, and it had also sent troops to Sri Lanka to fight Tamil insurgency. But it is with Pakistan that it has continued to have an antagonistic relationship. This mutual hostility stands in the way of Saarc’s potential and active role as an instrument of regional cooperation. Now with a favourable wind of change blowing through South Asia, one hopes Islamabad and New Delhi will speed up the process of normalization of their relations. Mr Vajpayee’s April 18 speech and the subsequent gesture by Pakistan hold out the promise that the two countries will begin a new chapter in their relations. If they succeed, then a major impediment in the way of Saarc’s activation will have been removed.

Victims of neo-con excesses

A RECENT report released by the US Office of the Inspector-General (OIG) confirms the worst fears expressed by rights groups about the treatment being meted out to Muslim prisoners of foreign origins being held in American jails in the aftermath of 9/11. The OIG report puts the number of such prisoners at 764 although rights groups say there are approximately 1,200 of them detained in American jails whose human rights are being violated with impunity. Most of the imprisoned men are accused of having committed minor visa violations. The US authorities, acting under the draconian Homeland Security Act, have denied them the legal rights enjoyed by foreigners living in America with a legal immigration status. According to the head of Amnesty International in the US, the on-going detention of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims is “a chapter in our history (that) forever will be tainted with racist overtones and the suppression of rights.” Cautiously welcoming the OIG report, AI says that “it does not lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the number and identities of individual detainees.”

Some of the prisoners, who were released and deported from the US in the aftermath of 9/11, have narrated horror stories about the abuse — shackling, beating and torture — in prison by the US authorities. The Justice Department has officially acknowledged that hundreds of men are being held incommunicado with their families, friends or their attorneys, for several months. If this is what is happening to people who have just overstayed their visas, one can well imagine the torture and humiliation the Al Qaeda suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay must be going through. As for the helpless immigrant prisoners, the Justice Department would do well to file and process the cases against these men, most of whom, being economic migrants, are themselves victims of circumstances. The first step should be to grant these prisoners the right to legal aid. This should be followed by conducting a thorough investigation into the alleged abuses that are being committed against them, and by bringing to justice all those officials found guilty of human rights violations.

Zealots on the loose

WHAT happened in Multan on Friday — defacing of billboards and hoardings by a group of self-appointed guardians of morality — in the presence of dozens of policemen is most unfortunate and deplorable. Those who find a woman’s picture in an advertising billboard objectionable or vulgar have perverted minds themselves because they see obscenity where none exists. Besides, it seems they have nothing better to do than to go about destroying public property in pursuit of their narrow notions and interpretations of what Islam allows and what it forbids. Similar acts by a group of religious bigots, led by an MNA of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, in Peshawar a couple of weeks ago, and the failure of the authorities to prevent such vandalism, seem to have emboldened other such fanatics and self-styled redeemers elsewhere. One wonders what kind of message the government is sending to potential investors when it fails to take action against those who indulge in such wilful vandalism and destruction of public property in the name of religion.

The disturbing aspect common to all three acts of vandalism and intolerance has been that the police did not even try to stop the fanatics from going ahead with their wanton acts, what to speak of prosecuting them for their offences. In Multan, police were present in significant numbers because the activists had quite audaciously announced in advance what they planned to do. Despite that, the police failed to act. However, the blame in all cases lies squarely on the provincial governments whose duty it was to act promptly to prevent billboard defacing and such other acts or to prosecute the culprits. In the case of the damage to the billboards in Peshawar, the MMA government took action very late and that too after the NWFP chief minister met the prime minister twice. Such acts of intolerance must be stopped before they snowball into an organized racket.