OIC restructuring

THE presidents of two leading Muslim countries have called for a restructuring of the Organization of Islamic Conference to make it a more meaningful forum. In a speech to OIC leaders in New York, President Pervez Musharraf said a restructuring of the OIC was necessary to “evolve a strategy to secure justice” for Muslim nations. The idea was supported by Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who told Dawn that the Islamic world needed to reassess its priorities and embark on “concrete action.” The remarks by the two leaders should be seen against the tragedies faced by the Muslim world. These include the Anglo-American attack on Iraq without UN authorization and the continued persecution of Muslim peoples in Kashmir and Palestine. Going back a bit further, one can recall such horrors as the anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and last year’s officially inspired pogrom in India’s Gujarat state. To these tragedies the OIC’s response has been conspicuous by its absence. In the case of Gujarat, several European diplomats visited the riot-hit areas, and their governments later released reports highly critical of the Gujarat government. As against this, not a single Muslim diplomat visited Gujarat. This is not so much for lack of what President Musharraf called “fundamentals of state power” as for want of concern on the part of OIC members and the absence of unity in their ranks.

That Muslim countries lack economic and military strength is widely known and recognized. But even without that the OIC can do much more than its 34-year record shows. No Muslim country is a G-8 member, but there are other assets to which the OIC does not seem to attach much importance. These include oil wealth and other natural resources, a strategically-located land mass, and a billion plus population that is not without scientific talents. Yet the OIC has made no effort to harness these potential sources of power and influence, the main reason being a distressing lack of political will.

What form a restructuring should take has not been spelled out. But it is obvious that the OIC states are acutely aware of the organization’s failure to take a united stand on Iraq, Palestine and Kashmir. It should be noted, however, that every issue facing the Muslim world does not necessarily need a military or even a diplomatic response. Most Muslim countries have low literacy rates and are backward technologically. These problems can be tackled by pooling resources so that states better endowed in terms of education and scientific knowhow can help those which are not. With their common efforts, they could set up centres of higher learning and research to spread education and modern technology in the Muslim world and thus improve educational, health and social standards. Special commissions could be set up to focus on the condition of women, especially their subjugation to anachronistic and brutal customs that have no sanction in Islam. There are very few joint industrial projects among Muslim countries, and the exchange of businessmen, teachers, students, and women’s delegation is minimal. The fundamentals of power cannot be achieved overnight, but the OIC restructuring that is being talked about should focus on realizable aims and help the Muslim world equip itself with means that could enable it to come to grips with the challenges it is facing.

Edward Said

EDWARD Said’s tragic death has robbed the world of an outstanding intellectual committed to speaking out for the rights of the politically dispossessed. An outspoken critic of American foreign policy, Mr Said was an unflinching defender of the Palestinian cause. He was also one of the current era’s foremost literary critics (identified with the post-structuralists), the author of several acclaimed books, and he wrote frequently on classical music. His seminal work, ‘Orientalism’, and his writings on western perceptions of the Islamic world revolutionized the teaching of historiography and had an impact on several other academic disciplines. People in developing countries can now better understand the way in which the West sees the East and the political, social and cultural depredations of colonialism. Mr Said exposed modern imperialism, and once said, with great perspicacity, that America’s “blind imperial arrogance” meant that its foreign policy had a fundamentally flawed worldview.

His tireless advocacy of the cause of the Palestinians, both in and outside America, won him many admirers, particularly among younger people and those living abroad (his column in this newspaper being one example). His position at a venerable institution of learning allowed him to manage his roles of professor, literary critic and political activist with relative ease, but he constantly faced attacks from right-wingers in the academia, the media and politics. A Palestinian Christian, he symbolized the secular character of the Palestinian movement before its domination by religious groups. His deep involvement with the Palestinian cause led him to become a member for 14 years of the Palestinian National Conference. However, as time passed his disillusionment grew, especially after the Oslo Accord in 1993 when he accused Yasser Arafat of accepting a poor bargain that compromised Palestinian rights. He believed that it was because of the Holocaust that Israel found itself being exempted from the judgmental yardsticks applied to other nations. This exemption, he argued, was used by the Zionist state to exploit and persecute the Palestinians who had played no role whatsoever in the Holocaust. It was this great injustice of history that Mr Said tried to fight throughout his life. He personified a unique blend of scholarship and activism, and the Palestinians and all those who stand by them have lost a powerful voice that continually challenged, from within America, the US establishment’s warped view of the Middle East.

Groundwater management

A RECENT report released by UN agencies operating in Pakistan has some shocking facts to reveal about the depletion of groundwater resources in three of the country’s four provinces. According to the report, groundwater has reached dangerously low levels in many areas of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan owing to excessive pumping by big landlords who are taking undue advantage of the subsidy on power rates for tubewells. The report alleges that many big landowners are either wasting huge amounts of the pumped out water or selling it to areas that do not have a sweet aquifer. The situation in Balochistan’s Quetta valley is said to be the worst where the aquifer has shown a steady decline of two to four metres per annum in groundwater resources over the past five years. This has gravely affected the functioning of traditional extraction methods — karezes and dug-up wells have started going dry — and is threatening orchards and perennial plantations in the already vastly arid province.

Unesco, UNDP and a couple of other concerned UN agencies in Pakistan have urged the government to take corrective action by formulating and enforcing rules aimed at ensuring sustainable groundwater management in the years to come. This is particularly important because the number of tubewells in the country is estimated to grow to nearly 700,000 by 2010 as compared to the existing 500,000. If the long dry spell of the early 1990s, causing a significant reduction in annual rainfall, recurs and is coupled with continued depletion of groundwater resources at its current rate, it can result in a crisis situation. The government would do well to pay heed to the timely warning contained in the UN report and come up with a long-term groundwater management strategy to avoid a possible disaster.