Forward bloc politics

DISSIDENCE within political parties is not a phenomenon peculiar to Pakistan. It is more common here and based more on personal grievances than principles because of the unrepresentative and undemocratic way in which the country has been governed for long periods or indeed most of the time by rulers accountable to no one except themselves or the GHQ. The one surprise about the current revolt in the ruling PML-Q and the formation of a so-called forward bloc is that it should have taken so long to surface. The dissidents claim support of 22 members of parliament, besides some from non-PML parties, and their main grievance appears to be centred on the person of the party president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, and his cousin, Pervaiz Elahi, the Punjab chief minister. The two are accused of running the party in an arbitrary fashion. The supreme irony is that the dissidents have appealed to Gen Pervez Musharraf to intervene and for the prime minister to take over the helm of the party. It is thus futile to look for any serious altruistic motive for the move, which is just another indication of the political culture that has been fostered in the country and which so many of us now unquestioningly accept.

On a recent visit to Lahore, President Musharraf had advised the PML members to talk to the party president to sort out their differences and expressed his opposition to groupism. That should have quietened the dissidents, but that they have persisted in their campaign shows at least a certain depth of feeling that the party can ill afford to ignore. A ‘forward bloc’ has also come into being in the MMA in the Frontier, but there one perception is that the centre may not be entirely unhappy to see the ruling maulvis under pressure. If it is true, as reported, that the bloc comprises 17 MPAs, then that is proportionally a higher figure in the context of the Frontier assembly than the PML cracks in the National Assembly.

Even in the early years of Pakistan before military intervention and rule became an entrenched feature of our system, political engineering was rampant, with the ruling groups encouraging turncoats from other parties through the allure of power and pelf. With the suspension of constitutional government by Ayub Khan, the practice gained momentum. The present ruling party is hardly different from Ayub’s Convention League — and suffers from the same weaknesses. The pattern is depressingly familiar: a dictator assumes control, then he wants legitimacy and floats a political party. This party is not rooted in any ideology but is formed by attracting people from other parties, and there is never a shortage of them. Then after a while unrest begins to simmer because some may not have been given ministerships or may have a feeling of being sidelined by the party bosses. Blocs and groups then emerge. Such artificially created parties carry the seeds of dissidence within themselves. This does not mean that parties other than those created by military rulers have been run any more democratically. It’s a sorry spectacle to see politicians trooping to Dubai, Jeddah or London to seek sanction for even minor decisions (incidentally, does the PML ‘forward bloc’ have anything to do with the likely return to political activity of Mian Nawaz Sharif?). We have played havoc with democracy and our political institutions. What we are witnessing are but symptoms of a deeper malaise.

ElBaradei’s warning

WHILE in Oslo to receive the Nobel prize, Mr ElBaradei warned Iran that the international community was losing patience over its nuclear programme. The IAEA chief also cautioned that there was no military solution to the problem. This statement is pretty instructive because it points to the dilemma the world faces today vis-à-vis nuclear arms. Iran is on the right side of the law (as stipulated by the NPT) as far as its nuclear programme goes. As the IAEA’s inspectors have confirmed, Tehran has not produced any nuclear weapons so far. But it can in the future if it acquires uranium enrichment ability. And the NPT does not forbid uranium enrichment. To preempt the bomb, the IAEA has been monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities and the EU-3, who have been negotiating with the Iranians, have been trying to persuade them not to go in for uranium enrichment, but so far without any success. The dialogue, which has been put on hold since August, is expected to be resumed soon.

It is now plain that Iran will come under pressure to submit to the West’s demands even though it is not legally obliged to do so. Israel has already threatened to launch strikes against the Iranian facilities and the EU-3 have warned that they would insist on the case being referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions if Tehran does not soften its stance. In a world where international relations are marked by realpolitik and the balance of power tilts heavily towards the West, the foremost goal of Third World countries should be to avert a nuclear confrontation with the West that would seriously harm them. Regrettably, Iran is heading towards just that scenario. Although it insists that it will not use its nuclear programme for military purposes, Tehran has lost credibility by compromising its transparency before the IAEA inspectors who have been monitoring its nuclear facilities. The nuclear powers are not on moral high ground when they focus only on non-proliferation as they themselves have not even taken the first step towards nuclear disarmament as the NPT obliges them to do. Yet in the present circumstances it appears to be politically irrational for Iran to insist on acquiring uranium enrichment capacity just to meet a contingency that may not arise at all.

Protection against bird flu

AS THE global community braces itself for a possible avian (bird) flu epidemic, thankfully the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization have issued guidelines aimed at assuaging people’s fears about the consumption of poultry and birds. This was particularly necessary as misconceptions about eating poultry have caused such alarm that frightened people have either given up eating chicken altogether or have stopped eating out fearing that poultry cooked at restaurants may be infected with the bird flu virus. According to the WHO and FAO guidelines, as long as a bird is cooked to 70 degrees Celsius to ensure that no portion of the meat remains raw, there is no chance that the virus — if any — will survive. The same advisory has been issued for eggs, that they should not be consumed raw or even partially cooked. These guidelines will go a long way in calming nerves and need to be widely publicized so that people are made aware of the real risks.

However, this does not absolve the government of easing up on preventive measures that need to be put in place in case of a potential bird flu outbreak. So far, it has banned the import of poultry from a large number of countries where the virus has been detected and is reported to have devised a health strategy should an outbreak of bird flu occur. Last year, the poultry industry was badly affected when a detection of the bird flu strain resulted in the culling of over three million birds. As a result, demand for chicken and eggs along with the export of poultry fell drastically. It would be a pity if one were to witness something similar because preventive measures were not taken well in time.

Growing concern for the environment

ABOUT a week ago the world witnessed a sudden surge in concern for the environment. Environmentalists occupied centre stage in 30 countries as they staged vociferous marches from Sydney to London to urge governments to lower emissions of heat- trapping gases.

Banging drums and dressed as polar bears, demonstrators in Montreal, where a UN conference on pollution brought the world’s leading environmental groups together, pressed for restricting the burning of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars.

“The ice is melting, we’re suffering the most, we can’t get food,” said Gordon Shepherd, a Scottish activist dressed as a polar bear.

“We will move the world ahead,” Elizabeth May of the Sierra Club environmental group spiritedly told the charged crowd, estimated at about 6,000 people. “Together we can save the climate. Together we will stop fossil fuel from destroying our future,” she resolved outside the conference centre, where representatives of 189 nations met from November 28-December 9 to reverse the progressive rise in the burning of fossil fuel.

Similar sentiments were echoed in London. Blowing whistles and carrying banners thousands of protesters accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of going back on pledges to contain carbon dioxide production. “No Blair betrayal on climate” one banner demanded. “We’re seeing greenhouse gas emissions rise under this government. We’re seeing this government now not talking about targets, talking about technology instead,” said Caroline Lucas, a prominent member of Britain’s Green party.

Are environmentalists justified in branding fossil fuel the villain as the world feels the catastrophic effects of the worsening environmental scene? The answer is simple and convincing.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution was demonstrated in the use of energy, with steam taking the place of animal, wind, and hydropower. However Fossil fuels — coal, gas, and oil — which catalyzed the use of energy, polluted the air and their harmful residues found their way into rivers and oceans.

As technology proliferated and factories crisscrossed the landscape, fossil fuel was burned in stupendous quantities. During the first 83 years of the Industrial Revolution, the world burned the first 50 billion metric tons of fossil fuel. It took only 23 years to burn the next 50, and barely 11 to burn the next, equivalent amount which brings us to almost the present time.

If the current trend is any indication the next 50 billion metric tons will be extracted and consumed in only eight years. By the year 2032 AD, such an amount will be extracted and consumed in one year alone! The trend is disconcerting and unless a clean substitute — one which does not pollute the air or water — appears on the global scene the world will continue to burn fossil fuel in large quantities to sustain its industrial march and thus remain precariously exposed to increasing levels of pollution.

Nuclear power, a clean, nonpolluting form of energy, raised the hopes of many optimists that the atom would free man of his unwholesome reliance on fossil fuel. The promise was stupendous. It still remains so, despite the setback following the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. Nuclear power reactors have been described, and rightly so, as inexhaustible sources of energy. Perhaps fissile fuel will succeed where fossil fuel has failed.

But it was not the burning of fossil fuel at the advent of the Industrial Revolution that singly contributed to pollution. Industrialization led to urbanization and its attendant problems of pollution. In England, where the Industrial Revolution made its first appearance, by 1900, only 10 per cent of the country’s population was tilling the soil. The remaining was employed in factories!

The growth of new industrial cities, particularly in Britain, denoted a major failure of imagination — a dreary look, lack of playgrounds, little effort to plan streets according to the sun and wind, poor public services, polluted air, etc. No wonder, William Blake called factories ‘black Satanic mills.’

Yet the early industrial cities grew faster than others. In the United States, cities of over 8,000 inhabitants grew five times faster than the country as a whole in the 19th century. Big cities in particular grew at an astounding pace: London reached the one million mark in 1800, Paris in 1850, Berlin and Vienna in 1880, and St. Petersburg in 1870.

Today, there are a hundred cities with population equalling or exceeding the one million mark, a hundred cities which are the size of Rome at its height, and many much larger. The trend continues. Tokyo’s population today approximates 26 million while Cairo houses 16 million and Mexico City 31.6 million. Indications are manifest that the world of the future will be a world of cities.

The demographic pattern in the last 2,000 years also makes interesting reading. A phenomenal growth in world population has taken place since man took to industry. The accelerated growth is in no way attributable to the advent of technology, but in the years to come, it may cast its shadow on the pollution problem. The world population stood at 250 million in 1 AD, 500 million 1,500 AD, 1,000 million 1,825 AD, 2,000 million in 1,925 AD, 4,000 million in 1975, and 6,000 million in the year 2000. Thus the doubling period has been drastically reduced — from the first 1,500 to 325, 100 and 50 years. ‘Global 2000’ rightly predicts that the astronomical demographic explosion would severely test the carrying capacity of planet Earth.

It is thus not difficult to envision the future — an overly populated world and the accompanying spectre of pollution. “Shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?” asked Richard Nixon in 1970.

Both the developed and the developing world have to contemplate the answer to conserve a livable world. The environmentalists’ anguish in the 30 cities of the world a week ago was more than justified.

E-mail: afaruqui@pakistanlink.com