Waziristan: a new strategy
THE news from Waziristan has in recent times been quite disturbing, given the fact that it has been the theatre of the war on terror since 2003. Now that Pakistan’s military strategy — backed by the American forces in Afghanistan — appears to be failing, the government is changing tack. This is something it should have done earlier. The NWFP governor has now announced that a grand jirga of the tribal leaders of Waziristan is being formed to resolve the crisis. Coming at a time when the security forces in the agency and militant leaders are negotiating a truce, the move for an assembly to promote conciliation gives rise to hope that peace may be in the offing. It is unrealistic of course to believe that the problems will be resolved in a matter of days after the jirga comes into being, as Governor Aurakzai has warned.
The foremost issue which the government and the jirga will be expected to address is the war itself. The use of force simply has worked and the sufferers have mainly been the innocent civilians who have become the collateral victims for no fault of theirs. Many civilians whose sympathies are not with the militants have been forced into silence and cannot cooperate with the government because of the large number of people who have been killed by militant fighters as a punishment for being ‘informers’. Hence, the first priority should be to work out a truce and both sides should make concerted efforts to honour it. This is possible if good faith is there. This can be ensured by including in the dialogue maliks and political agents who enjoy the confidence of the people and do not act as spokesmen for Islamabad. Additionally, Pakistan must ensure that the American forces do not enter its territory in FATA. The US needs to be told that it will have to allow Pakistan enough leeway to work out its own strategy without pressure or dictation.
Resolving the long-term issues may not be easy. There are two questions on which agreement is important if headway is to be made. One is the presence of foreigners in the region. True, the foreign fighters — five of whom were held near the Sambaza checkpost in Balochistan on Thursday — have been entering Pakistan with the government’s connivance since the time when Islamabad was backing the mujahideen against the Russians in Afghanistan. But this influx must be halted. The Al Qaeda militants who have been arrested in Pakistan or are still here are mostly foreigners and they have only brought misery to this country. They have overstayed their welcome and the time for them to go has come. The tribal chiefs will have to agree to stop protecting the foreigners in their midst.
The other major contentious issue is the use of Pakistani territory by the Taliban to launch attacks on Afghanistan. This has created tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan while provoking American missile attacks on Waziristan. The tribal leaders must realise that their policy of playing a double game on both sides of the Durand Line has seen its day. If they ensure that the indigenous Taliban in their midst will be tamed and their militancy curbed, a political dialogue can be started. The Pakistan government must also address the issue of economic and social development of these regions which are extremely underdeveloped because of decades of neglect.
Karachi budget
THE record Rs44.21 billion tax-free budget presented by Karachi’s City District Government represents a 0.9 per cent increase over the original outlay for fiscal 2005-06 and includes a surplus of over Rs121 million. According to the city nazim, roughly 50 per cent of the budget is earmarked for development-related expenditure. In a welcome move, the education and health budgets have both risen significantly — by 20 and 18 per cent respectively. Expenditure on the development and maintenance of parks and gardens also stands at a healthy Rs151 million as against the previous year’s Rs21 million for the upkeep of such recreational facilities. In a first for Karachi, the city government has also set aside Rs20 million for a community policing system. It is important though that these jobs, as and when they materialise, are not usurped by local toughs and political operators. Otherwise, community policing may prove to be nothing more than organised harassment.
As promising as the budget may look on paper, the proof of the proposition will be in its implementation. The ill-advised practice of digging up large sections of the city in the name of development must come to an end, no matter how pressing the need for infrastructure expansion. Given that timely completion of projects has not been the strong point of this or the previous city administration, modesty ought to be the obvious choice when it comes to goals. Moreover, quality has been known to take a back seat in the execution of vital projects and a frenzied dash to the finishing line can only make matters worse. The focus also needs to shift from trying to tackle the rising flood of vehicular traffic with new flyovers, underpasses and elevated expressways. Some of these are clearly necessary but construction on the present scale cannot go on indefinitely in a heavily-built-up city like Karachi. The root causes of traffic congestion must be addressed. The answer lies in stabilising the number of cars and mini-buses on the city streets, and this can only be done through an efficient mass transit system. The project will take some years to develop and a beginning must be made in that direction soon.
Curbing the organ trade
THE news that 30 cases of kidney sale have been reported in the village of Yazman in Bahawalpur district should come as no surprise considering that the illegal organ trade is booming in the country. The names of places like Mominpura and Sultanpur Mela, too, come to mind as villages where widespread poverty and inability to pay off debts have led scores of people to sell their kidneys. In the absence of a cadaver organ law, the internal demand for approximately 10,000 kidney transplants each year goes largely unmet, fuelling illegal sales. But more alarming is the international dimension of the problem. An increasing number of renal patients abroad are turning to the services of unscrupulous middlemen and doctors in Pakistan who, exploiting poverty and the absence of a cadaver donation law, make huge profits on kidney sales. The ‘donor’ is the loser. Not only does he get a meagre sum for the sale of his organ, he is also at risk of suffering from health complications as there is no adequate follow-up care. Several private hospitals too are connected with the racket. Although legislators have, time and again, talked about passing a 1992 draft bill on cadaver donation into law, no steps have been taken to contain the illegal sale of kidneys.
This creates misgivings about the prospect of curbing the practice. On the other hand, if it is the likely reaction of the religious lobby that is keeping the legislators from enacting a law allowing kidney donation, they should know that orthodox Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia have legalised cadaver donation. This is also an issue that should be taken up more forcefully by the media before the racket spins out of control, especially as there are allegations that law enforcement agencies too have a stake in allowing the illegal trade to continue.
Muslim world stuck in backwardness
ANTI-AMERICANISM is today a universal phenomenon reflecting the general reaction to US might and power, to its self-righteousness, and current international conduct including the blatant use of force in Iraq and elsewhere, and to its role in the growth of anti-Islam sentiment in the West. Ironically, most of these policies have brought no dividends to the US itself. It stands totally isolated in the comity of nations.
There is also a feeling all over the world that the US is not a steadfast and reliable friend and that over the decades, US neglect and self-serving exploitation of its friends and allies had contributed to most current problems in different pats of the world, including our own region.
Washington’s overbearing global conduct has for years been the subject of debate and discussion in academic and diplomatic circles. The world at large, foes and friends alike, including a very large number of Americans and Europeans, see very little consistency between America’s values and ideals and its actual practices in the world.
At a Harvard conference in 1997, scholars from all over the world agreed that “the elites of countries comprising at least two-thirds of the world’s people, Chinese, Russians, Indians, Muslims and Africans, see the United States as the single greatest threat to their societies.” They look at America not only as a “unilateralist superpower” but also as a menace to their integrity, autonomy, prosperity, and freedom of action.
This perception, articulated by a prominent American columnist David E. Sanger in his article “All Pumped Up and Nowhere to Go” in the New York Times (July 2000), viewed the US as an arrogant superpower which is “intrusive, interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical, and applying double standards,” engaging in what is now labelled as “financial imperialism” and “intellectual colonialism” with a foreign policy driven overwhelmingly by domestic politics.
But let us be fair. America has been doing only what it thought was in its interest. Instead of blaming America for all our problems and for everything that goes wrong in the world, we in the Muslim world need to do some soul-searching. We will not be fair to ourselves unless we accept that the ultimate responsibility for our problems rests with us alone. We have become addicted to living on others’ largesse and surviving on the crutches of external military, political and economic support.
No one can dispute that the Muslim world today is in a crisis. Representing one-fifth of humanity as well as of the global landmass and spread over 57 countries, possessing 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 40 per cent of the world’s raw materials, the Muslim community should have been a global giant, economically as well as politically. Rich in everything, but weak in all respects, it represents only five per cent of the world’s GDP, and is a non-consequential entity with no role in global decision-making.
Though some Muslim countries are sitting on the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, the majority of Muslim countries are among the poorest and most backward in the world. With the exception of very few, they are all bankrupt politically with no institutions other than authoritarian rule. They are averse to pluralistic democracy and are without an established tradition of systemic governance or institutional approach in their policies and priorities.
Whatever wealth they possess is being exploited by the West. The rulers of today’s Muslim world virtually without exception are at the mercy of the US for their political strength and survival, and are responsible for the current political, economic and military subservience of their countries to the West.
Poor and dispossessed Muslim nations emerging from the long colonial rule may have become sovereign states but are today without genuine political and economic independence. Their lands and resources remain under “protective military” control of their “masters” who are also the direct beneficiaries of their oil proceeds which are in western banks and fiduciaries.
The fact that the Muslim world is in disarray was acknowledged even by its heads of state and government in their declaration at the last OIC summit in Makkah. They stated that “we were today at an age of muddled concepts, misguided values, and pervasive ignorance.” Our own president, speaking on that occasion, was forthright enough to accept that the Muslim world’s literacy levels were “shamefully low” and its socio-economic development indicators were “dismal and distressing.”
Peace is the essence of Islam but woefully the Muslim nations have seen very little of it, especially after the Second World War. Conflict and violence are pervasive in the Muslim world. Some states have enthusiastically been engaged in proxy wars on behalf of others. Their territories are home to foreign military bases and their borders are “soft” with foreign forces moving in and out freely and carrying out their “operations” at will.
The tragedies in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan represent the helplessness of the world’s Muslims. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo and Haditha are examples of this pathetic situation. Ironically, there are more conscientious people in the West than in our own Muslim kingdoms, emirates, sultanates, sheikhdoms and one-man political dispensations.
Since 9/11, Islam itself is being demonised by its detractors with obsessive focus on the religion of individuals and groups accused of complicity or involvement in terrorist activities. Islam is being blamed for everything that goes wrong in any part of the world. With violence and extremism becoming anathema the Muslim freedom struggles of yesterday are now seen as the primary source of “militancy and terrorism.”
Global terrorism is being used to justify military occupations and to curb the legitimate freedom struggles of Muslim peoples. There is no prospect of long-festering Muslim issues coming to their just and final end. Palestine is tired and has almost given up. Iraq is still burning and suffering daily massacres that come to light only when the media uncovers them. Afghanistan has yet to breathe peace and is fighting what it sees as yet another “foreign occupation.” Kashmir is devastated and stands disillusioned with no hope of freedom with dignity.
The pillars of Muslim strength are being dismantled brick by brick. Pakistan, the major power of the Muslim world, is being weakened methodically by being kept engaged on multiple external as well as domestic fronts. It is the only Muslim country with an ongoing military operation against its own people in the name of the war on terror, and has been reduced to the “ground zero” in this global campaign.
Extremism, sectarianism and violence are not only weakening its roots but have also become its new identity in the comity of nations. Politically, Pakistan has never been in a more precarious situation. Even our close friends and allies are worried about our future.
Turkey, another Muslim country with reckonable military clout and strength, is living in an ivory tower pursuing the dream of EU membership. The last “pillar of strength” of the Muslim world, Iran, is next in line, and because of its fresh “revolutionary” zeal in pursuit of its nuclear goals is in the firing range. The Muslim world could not be more vulnerable and more complacent.
Their main vulnerability lies in their “worldview” circumscribed by their self-limiting notions and “doomsday” predictions, and their inability to reshape their destiny as genuinely independent, moderate, progressive and forward-looking societies. Some of them have even allowed themselves to become the “hotbed” of religious extremism and militancy, and are paying a heavy a price in terms of violence and social disarray.
The Muslim world’s socio-economic backwardness, its institutional bankruptcy, its political and intellectual aridity, its deficiency in knowledge, education and science and technology, its aversion to modernity and modernisation, and its growing servility to the West are all dreary phenomena that cannot be blamed on the people who play no role whatsoever in the decision-making process. Nor should we blame the West or the US for our crises and failures.
Woefully, the situation today can be likened to the tragic story of Medusa, an ill-piloted French naval ship in the 19th century that ran aground because of its captain’s blunders and his dependence on others for navigational guidance, leaving behind a sordid tale of helplessness, death and desperation. The Medusa wreck is still out there, lying stuck on the Arguin bank of the West African coast, and isn’t going anywhere. The Muslim world today is in no better shape.
Things will not change unless the Muslim world fixes its fundamentals and puts its house in order. It must take control of its own destiny through unity and cohesion within its ranks. Its wealth and resources should be used to build its own strength and for its own well-being. The key to reshaping the destiny of the Muslim world lies in revamping the existing governmental mind-sets and rationalisation of national priorities, and in opting for peace and democracy, and for “good and accountable” governance rooted in the will of the people.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.