Is the enemy within or without?

A special report by an American online source for unclassified worldwide military/defence information, dated October 8, has predicted that a new wave of sectarian violence may hit Pakistan.

The report, available on the internet, follows the assassination of Maulana Azam Tariq and his four bodyguards in Islamabad on October 6, and the massacre of six Suparco employees in Karachi on October 3. Both incidents were accompanied by mob violence on the streets of the respective cities during the funeral processions the following day.

Both incidents had also prompted a series of articles in the print media on the causes of sectarianism and the failure of the government in curbing the violence arising thereof. One theory is that the extremist sectarian groups have been nurtured and promoted by the Establishment since the Gen Zia era. The purpose, according to this theory, is two-pronged: on the one hand, it serves the Establishment’s policy in neighbouring Afghanistan (and in Kashmir), and on the other hand, it helps the Establishment to rule Pakistan by the formula of “divide and rule”.

The other theory, often propounded by government officials after every such incident, is that the foreign hand, notably India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is responsible for fanning sectarianism and carrying out blasts and sectarian murders in Pakistan.

This foreign hand was blamed for the sectarian killings at an Imambargah in Quetta on July 4 in which over 50 people were massacred. Similarly now, a key government official has once again blamed the neighbouring country, saying that there are at least six known RAW training camps in Afghanistan which are churning out sectarian terrorists to carry out mischief in Pakistan.

Regardless of which of the above theories about sectarian violence is true, there is no doubt that political events in Pakistan’s western neighbours in the past quarter of a century have reignited the quiescent sectarian rivalry. These events include the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979, the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and its clashes on the border with Iran, and the subsequent civil strife in Afghanistan along ethnic/sectarian lines.

All these events were bound to have negative repercussions in Pakistan, particularly since the latter was being ruled by weak governments which could not effectively shield the nation from the fallout of the sectarian rivalry taking place on its western borders. For one thing, the government seemed to have taken a long time to decide to act tougher against sectarian violence. An Anti-Terrorism Act against sectarian violence was not passed until 1997, and extremist sectarian groups were not banned in the country until 2002.

Besides, certain policies of the government also gave the impression that it was not quite serious about clamping down on the sectarian groups which preached hatred against each another.

Since October 1999, the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act has been amended at least thrice, first in 2001, then in early 2002 and again in November 2002 — ostensibly to give the authorities greater powers to curb sectarian terrorism. In the beginning of 2002, controversial new anti-terrorism courts were even established in which an army officer (not below the rank of lieutenant-colonel) was included as a member, in addition to a serving or retired sessions judge and a judicial magistrate.

Yet the persistent sectarian terrorism incidents since then all over the country — in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Quetta and now Islamabad — have raised serious doubts about the ATA being an effective tool in curbing the menace. As one writer has pointed out, more emphasis seems to have been put on catching the culprits who actually carried out the attacks rather than on catching the masterminds behind them or squashing the infrastructure that breeds, trains, funds and protects the terrorists.

Although thousands of people are known to have been hauled up and detained under the ATA during the past several years, the majority are known to have been released within days or weeks. According to a report in July 2002, many of the cases which were actually brought before the ATC have been acquitted: the ATCs in the Punjab acquitted 91 people and convicted only 56 between April and June 2002 in sectarian violence cases. It was also reported in June 2002 that there was reluctance on the part of the authorities (who cited security reasons) to initiate cases against many detainees, especially activists of the banned extremist religious groups in the Punjab.

The effectiveness of the ATA also came under suspect when the authorities chose instead to kill sectarian terrorists in staged shootouts rather than conducting trials against them. This method was used by the Nawaz Sharif government and it continued thereafter, the most sensational killing in such a police encounter was that of Riaz Basra in May 2002.

That the authorities were keen to wrap up the ATCs became openly evident in February 2003, when it was reported that the monitoring cell proposed abolition of all 13 ATCs in the Punjab, citing the fact that these courts did not have enough workload to justify their existence. But since abolishing the courts would mean that the ATA itself would have to be revoked, the provincial home department was asked instead to reduce the number of ATCs.

Besides, the overall impression that emerged was that the government resorted to banning extremist religious groups on the pressure from the US and India to deal more harshly with cross-border terrorism, and not so much because it felt the need to control and stamp out sectarianism within Pakistan itself. The fact that banned groups were not rounded up and were left free to go underground and then re-emerge under different names did not help at all to dispel the impression that the government was moving against sectarianism in a half-hearted manner.

A day after Maulana Azam Tariq was gunned down, it was reported in Dawn that the Sectarian Terrorists Activity Record, a body formed in 1998 to gather data on sectarian groups, monitor their activists and suggest how the law enforcement agencies could resolve their conflicts, had failed to pinpoint the causes of sectarian strife in the country.

However, the continued incidence of sectarian terrorism in the country is proof enough that the tough talk against sectarianism by the government after every ghastly incident has remained at best only tough talk. If this is the state of the law and order situation in the country after so much tough talk against sectarianism, the unprecedented banning of extremist religious groups and countless revisions to the Anti-Terrorism Act, one shudders to imagine the law and order situation had all these measures not been taken.

Once again the government is focusing efforts on tackling the enemy from the outside, notably RAW training camps in Afghanistan and illegal immigrants in Pakistan, particularly those in Karachi. These measures, and that of removing an IGP here and an SSP there, are clearly not the key solution to curbing sectarianism in the country. Arming the law enforcement authorities with the authority to deal definitively with sectarian groups is necessary. Also necessary is madrassah reform to change any sectarian mindset within the local population.

Until this happens, the people can only brace themselves for the next round of sectarian backlash.

Mixing religion with hydrocarbons

IF AN army of devout Afghan mujahideen shored up America’s quest for oil and gas fields in Central Asia, could it be possible that the construction of an economic architecture in India, spurred by the country’s newfound gargantuan appetite for hydrocarbons, is being carried on the shoulders of militant Hindu sadhus?

Last week’s convergence in Lucknow and Ayodhya of militant saffron-clad holy men of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad determined to visit the makeshift temple they had built aloft the rubble of the Babri Mosque in defiance of prohibitory orders, could in a strange way offer some clues to India’s economic journey ahead.

The VHP denies that its revival of the Ayodhya temple campaign was in any way related to a clutch of make or break state polls in December crucial for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

However, Mr Vajpayee did signal his support for the rally by assuring the Uttar Pradesh administration that it would be a peaceful affair. And he wasn’t too wrong since the rally turned out to be a tame affair after hogging the headlines for much of the fortnight.

Was Mr Vajpayee hoping that a Hindu upsurge in Ayodhya would find an echo in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chhattisgarh where his party is pitted against the opposition Congress? Or could there be another seemingly unrelated but equally important purpose behind the attempt at religious upsurge?

Let us not forget that Mr Vajpayee and his cabinet had only a couple of weeks ago mulled ways to persist with the controversial privatization of HPCL and BPCL, two state-owned and profitable petroleum products vendors, after the move was earlier stalled by the Supreme Court.

Apparently miffed by the court judgment, former journalist turned BJP politician, Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie has now proposed that the state-owned giant Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) should be broken up and at least partly privatized.

This move would be a huge victory for newly resurgent corporate India. But it is so laced with questionable implications in an election year that it would almost certainly become a political liability if not handled with care.

Already senior analysts including at least one former finance minister have questioned the motive behind Mr Shourie’s haste to sell off the retail division of IOC.

So the sadhus would come in handy by keeping the political heat and the poll-related discourse away from the realm of economic issues, primarily privatization of lucrative public sector enterprises.

However, the sadhus are destined to play a larger role than merely distracting the voters’ attention from the government’s economic objectives. Their fellow ideologues have already carried out a more than useful mission elsewhere by cleansing the economically pivotal state of Gujarat of any political discourse that could raise embarrassing questions about economic policies or social iniquities.

An equally virulent rightwing ally, the Shiv Sena, has successfully throttled all resistance to free-market economics in Mumbai, India’s financial hub and once the vibrant heart of trade unionism. Both Gujarat and Maharashtra have emerged as key players in India’s energy strategy based on the import of and transmission of gas through a maze of pipelines.

This is where Uttar Pradesh becomes a vital region for politics and business alike. India’s most populous state has been seen as an economic laggard. According to Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, the country cannot grow if Uttar Pradesh does not.

The state is already linked with Gujarat through the massive HBJ gas pipeline, a facility whose value would quadruple once the overseas gas pipeline via Pakistan is approved.

Interestingly, the states through which the HBJ pipeline passes — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and with its proposed extension to geographically India’s largest state of Madhya Pradesh — are all regions where the rightwing politics of the BJP exerts a major influence.

The difficulty for the hydrocarbons strategy arises in the east where the American company, Unocal, has been moving heaven and earth for a green signal from Dhaka to start gas exports to India. Unocal wants to build a 1,363-km pipeline to supply gas from the Bibiyanah gas field in north eastern Bangladesh to the HBJ pipeline near Delhi.

It will run through Marxist-controlled West Bengal and the caste-driven and left-leaning quagmire of Bihar before flowing across Uttar Pradesh to reach Delhi and beyond. There are two options before the hydrocarbon strategists: either to co-opt the leftist establishments in West Bengal and Bihar or to breach their fortresses, using the sadhus as their spearheads.

The first option has been worked out satisfactorily in Uttar Pradesh, where Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, though notionally a socialist, has aligned himself firmly with the hydrocarbons lobby.

Mr Yadav, with his strong support among the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, provides a good counterpoint to the Ayodhya-bound sadhus. For he, like the BJP, has succeeded in stripping his ideology of any economic basis, substituting it with emotional populist palliatives to Muslims and to his own backward caste supporters. In some ways the BJP could not have found a better economic ally — one reason perhaps why the BJP does not want to embarrass Mr Yadav with anything more than a peaceful assembly of sadhus. Perhaps also the reason that Mr Yadav was full of praise for Mr Vajpayee for help in overcoming the recent crisis.

RELIANCE Industries, India’s petrochemicals and hydrocarbons behemoth, may have revealed an interesting commonality between US President George W. Bush and Mulayam Singh Yadav. Its vice chairman and managing director Anil Ambani and his wife, former movie actress Tina Munim, were rare Indian invitees to the inauguration of the Bush presidency on January 20, 2001 in Washington. On August 29, this year, the couple attended another political inauguration, that of Mr Yadav in Lucknow. Not without good reason. Mr Yadav, who has inducted a jumbo cabinet of nearly 100 ministers is keeping the energy portfolio with himself.

Impervious to the obvious

AMONG the several scandals that have come to be integral to life in this gargantuan city, water heads the list. We have the perennial lament of scarcity of this vital fluid. What makes it an irredeemable shame is that this city is sitting by the Arabian Sea, quite like the desert sheikhdoms of the nearby Gulf. But quite unlike us, these states have turned their sands into endless greenery in a matter of a few years. Today they can boast of some of the world’s more notable golf and horse-race courses.

Ours is the same story, but in reverse. Talking of greenery and gardens? We are without a central city public park. It took an age to decide that we do need some such amenity. Another age went by while we wondered where to put it. Yet another age went past us before we decided that the huge vegetable market right at the centre of the city should be shifted a little towards the suburbs and the land thus vacated by the Sabzimandi be developed as the city’s central park.

The new Sabzimandi was built in quick time. Then everybody forgot all about shifting the vegetable market to its new home and make room for the park. We do not waste time in building because there is money to be made by so many in the public works syndicate. So everybody in the syndicate gets cracking, and money changes hands. Once this merry-go-round is over, who cares for the follow-up, unless something is coming along over which more money can be made.

As it happens, no genius has, so far, discovered how money can be made out of Karachi’s water supply system. So, this city’s water supply network has been going to seed. Hardly a day passes without some protest demonstration by the millions of who have not received a drop of water for days. The thirsty take out processions, make appeals, occasionally block traffic, run into a slight clashes or scuffles with the police. All of this is taken as normal.

There is absolutely no doubt that, even if the city received the entire quantity of water theoretically available, there would still be a shortage of some hundreds of millions of gallons per day, calculated by normal world standards of water per citizen, per day. Let us now climb down from the ideal to the reality on the ground.

According to those who are in the water supply administration (or mess?), something like 35 per cent of whatever quantity of water is somehow available, and does get into the transmission network, is lost. Period.

How lost? There are indeed many ways in which Karachi allows itself to be deprived, if not exactly robbed, of water. First, water continuously leaks out of defective pipes. There is an element of inevitability in this because you cannot accuse individual for this leakage. There is no great point in accusing pipes. This is taken as if it is in our stars to be robbed of what we need so badly and would be available if only there were no leakage.

Then you are dead on the bull’s eye if guessed that round the next bend you will encounter theft, that is, those who are stealing water. Who would be surprised that the thieving begins at the beginning, that is at the source of bulk supply. These sources are of course outside the city. In those spots you have some “influentials” that have gardens. They need water and need nobody’s permission to take it from wherever they can find it. They are answerable to no one because no one is bothered to question.

This is exactly the repeat of the story of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation. There is tremendous leakage of power in the transmission process. This is duly supplemented by theft of power. Whether it is the story of theft of water, or of power, it is, in fact, the two sides of our huge corruption syndrome coin. We usually blame this kind of thieving on the field staff that are supposed to look the other way, for a consideration, no doubt.

Granted that it is the field staff of the water and power systems that are playing havoc on such a massive scale. Are these field workers sovereigns in their own right? Are there no superiors supervising the working of the field staff? If it is accepted that there is no way to hold the hands of the field staff that are presiding over robbery on such a scale, we enter the benighted regions where there is no hope. The water and power thieves will have their own way and the city may go to blazes, or wherever else it might chose to seek refuge from daylight robbers.

The next stage in this horror drama is the state of the pipelines. It is said that most of the pipes in the network have long since outlived their natural life expectancy that is set at 25 years — at its longest. That is not the end of the story. These RCC pipes are no good for water supply, anyway. The world is now using steel pipes that would not rust.

So, what do we have? First, not enough water available even if every available drop is protected against leakage and theft. Second, out of what we do manage to get, more than a third is lost to water leaks and water thieves. Third, given ideal administration (a pipe dream!) water would still be lost to the defects in the transmission process. This is exact re-play of the power scandal. Chips of the same block, isn’t it?

To conclude what is needed is: First, stop leakage, which is saying that we shall have to do something to improve the transmission system. This means start replacing RCC pipes with steel pipes. Second, devise proper disciplines to prevent/punish water theft. Where evidence of dereliction of duty is available, punishment ought to be instant and effective. Third, for heavens sake, move into the 21st century. Think of desalination of water from the Arabian Sea. This water doesn’t cost a great deal.

That’s the obvious answer. But to the obvious we are ever so impervious.

No respect for life

Medical emergencies are always frightening. They can turn into nightmarish experiences, thanks to the attitude of some hospitals.

A person fell unconscious after suffering a severe brain haemorrhage. He was rushed to the emergency ward of a private hospital on Stadium Road. The staff demanded a deposit of Rs10,000 before treatment could be started. Since it was 9pm and the banks were closed, the family had to borrow the money from relatives.

On examining the patient, the doctors said that his condition was serious enough for him to be put on a ventilator. But they also said there was no room in the intensive care unit and the patient be taken to another hospital.

The patient’s family now went to a neighbouring teaching hospital where the staff refused to admit him. It came out that owing to rivalry between the two institutions, they did not admit patients referred by one to the other.

It was midnight when the family returned to the first hospital with the patient’s condition deteriorating with each passing minute. This time they were referred to a large private hospital in North Nazimabad. Here too the management demanded a deposit of Rs20,000 before treatment could commence. The family had been unable to recover the deposit from the first hospital where the management said that it would first have to deduct the costs already incurred before returning the rest of the money.

The family now had to borrow an additional Rs20,000. It was only after this amount was deposited that the friend was admitted to the North Nazimabad hospital. Treatment commenced at 3am, a full seven hours after had become unconscious.

Tests confirmed brain haemorrhage after which the first 72 hours are crucial. He was declared out of danger but was partially paralyzed and remained unconscious. Doctors have warned his family that he may lose his memory and the power of speech. His family will now always have to live with the question whether the seven-hour delay caused by hospital cussedness is to blame.

Be prepared for a long wait when you decide to avail yourself of the services of the Nadra Swift Registration Centres. A colleague narrated his ordeal after he had applied for new computerized identity cards for his family.

He said that before going to the Nazimabad centre he had dialled Nadra’s helpline at 111-786-100 to find out the status of his family’s applications. When he punched in his old NIC number, the phone service relayed the particulars of his computerized national identity card (CNIC) and the correct number of family members. He took this to mean that all the cards were ready. However, since he had submitted seven applications and had received only three CNICs, he talked to the customer services department where the person on the line insisted that all the cards had been sent by post according to the computerized data available with him. But the colleague argued that he had submitted all the application forms together in October 2001 and that he had received only three cards. He still had four receipts with him. The postman had taken three receipts for the cards that he had received. He was then given the number for the four missing CNICs and told to visit the Swift Registration Centre.

Once at the centre, he had to stand for an hour and a half in a queue before he could talk to the man at the counter. He explained his problem and showed the Nadra official the four receipts and the new CNIC numbers. Here too the official checked his records on the computer and informed him that the cards had been dispatched. Reaching the point of desperation, the colleague said that he had already checked with the post office concerned but without luck. He was now advised to go to the Awami Markaz Swift Registration Centre.

The colleague found a very cooperative official at the Awami Markaz Centre but even he was not able to solve the mystery of the missing cards. In the end, the official checked the computerized data, stamped and signed the receipts and told the colleague that the four family members who had not received their CNICs could visit any of Nadra’s Swift Centres and get their CNICs made without paying anything. When the colleague asked him to send a request to the Nadra head office to reprint the CNICs, because Nadra already had the requisite information regarding his family, the man at the counter said that such a procedure had yet to be approved.

Well done, but wait a minute

The beautification projects lately carried out by the city government in what used to be the Central district of Karachi may not satisfy the aesthetic sense of a large number of people. Located as they are either on roundabouts or on traffic islands, these projects cause a great deal of inconvenience to traffic moving along the main road in North Nazimabad.

An old Pakistan Air Force fighter plane borne aloft on pillars at the Board Office roundabout is hardly a sight for sore eyes. The plane stands near three large-sized candles. Water flows from three huge ornamental vases at the KDA roundabout. This artistic arrangement has been called Zuroof Aab-i-Rawan. Near the Haidery market, the city government has set up an amusement park on the traffic island. Besides patches of beautifully arranged colour stones, one finds a pond, a small waterfall, swings and slides in the park. Another park has been set up at the traffic island near the Sakhi Hassan roundabout. The park has a tower, a pond and a fountain.

These projects do brighten the city, especially at night when they are properly illuminated, but they should have been set up at safer places. Women and children visiting the parks on traffic islands not only put their lives in danger but also obstruct the flow of traffic. Furthermore, a well-lit amusement park on a traffic island next to a pot-holed road hardly makes for a pleasant juxtaposition.

Mobile mechanics

Though a reasonably skilful driver, a friend knows next to nothing about a car engine. He cannot tell a carburettor from a radiator. He has to walk to the nearest automobile workshop every time his car breaks down.

The other day he heard something snap in the engine of his car when he pulled up at the traffic-lights on Sharea Faisal. His heart sank as the engine stopped. Late for work, he had no clue about what to do with his car which was obstructing the flow of traffic during the morning rush hour. With the help of a few good Samaritans, he pushed the car over to the service road.

As he stood there scratching his head in distress, he saw a man, with a shabby tool bag slung over his shoulder, cycle towards him. To the friend, the man, who introduced himself as a car mechanic, looked like an angel. The man opened the bonnet of the car, and set to work. Meanwhile, the friend lit a cigarette and began to wonder why the car always broke down whenever he had an important meeting in the morning. After a while, the mechanic announced that the car engine had been repaired. As he turned on the ignition, the car engine spluttered into life.

The friend remarked that it was his good luck that the mechanic happened to pass by. The mechanic told him that he, as well as many car mechanics, cycled along Sharea Faisal in the hope of finding people whose cars had broken down. He explained that there was no automobile workshop on Sharea Faisal and a lot of people were willing to pay more for the repair of even minor faults. So, don’t despair. Help may be at hand.

— By Karachian

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