Who should ‘do more’?

IT is amazing that it is the US that should tell Pakistan to ‘do more’ in the war on terror. If Washington had not been guilty of what can be called a virtual abandonment of Afghanistan and opened a new front in Iraq, things to the west of Pakistan and in the tribal belt itself would have been vastly different. There is now a “surge” in American troops in Iraq, and having already ploughed 300 billion dollars into that country, the Bush administration has asked for a similar amount for a war that most observers consider unwinnable. If the US had spent a fraction of that amount on Afghanistan and made serious efforts to win the Afghan people over, the allies would not be bracing themselves today for a spring offensive by the Taliban. These are the obvious thoughts that come to one’s mind when one finds Mr Dick Cheney making a sudden appearance in Islamabad on the heels of press reports that Washington was going to “talk tough” to President Pervez Musharraf and warn Islamabad of an aid cut if it did not “do more”. The White House later denied the press reports, though the denial itself was nebulous, lacked substance and equivocated in a manner that only tended to confirm the reports.

A pattern now seems to have emerged: the administration leaks reports to sections of the American media about the “tough talk” and America’s unhappiness with Pakistan’s purported unwillingness to do all it could to crush the Taliban and check the cross-border movement which is supposed to be only in one direction. This is followed the next day by a White House or State Department cliché-ridden denial, which also contains a bit of plaudits for Islamabad’s role in the war on terror. President Musharraf’s meeting with the US vice-president on Monday was not followed by a joint press conference, and it was only an official handout that let the world know what had happened during the meeting. However, the American press said that Pakistan had “lashed out” and made

it clear that it “does not accept dictation from any side or any source”. President Musharraf also said, according to the handout, that the international community was collectively responsible for the war on terror. The truth of this assertion must be seen in the context of the president’s earlier remark that guarding the Durand Line was not Pakistan’s sole responsibility.

What the Americans fail to realise is that the war on terror is in Pakistan’s own interest. It is not that Pakistan is a front-line state because it borders Afghanistan; it is a front-line state because, if unchecked, the wave of religious obscurantism could overwhelm Pakistan and tear apart the very fabric of civil society. Zille Huma was not an American; she was a Pakistani killed by a fanatic who believed that women could not be “rulers” and must wear the hijab. It is insane obscurantism of this kind that is Pakistan’s problem, in addition to the militants who continue to move across the Durand Line. Irrespective of what the allies on the other side of the border do, Pakistan must

not waver. It has to fight the war on two fronts: the Afghanistan-based Taliban and the obscurantist elements within the country. Those who want Pakistan to ‘do more’ should have an appraising look at their own performance.

Chaukandi under threat

THE allocation of state land by the Sindh government for setting up a private industrial estate adjacent to the 15th-century Chaukandi tombs near Karachi is the latest act of vandalism of national heritage sites. Unique in their structure and relief motifs carved out of yellow Gizri sandstone, the Chaukandi tombs have long epitomised the general neglect with which the authorities treat historical monuments. Many tombs at Chaukandi have simply disappeared over the years; the remaining cluster of the decorated gravestones has been under threat of depredation by the high and mighty, who like to have a piece of the carved sandstone to decorate their landscaped gardens or adorn their drawing room mantelpieces. The proposed setting up of an industrial estate next to the tombs, if allowed to proceed, will sound the final death knell for the heritage site. The only silver lining in the clouds of uncertainty hovering over Chaukandi and one that could perhaps save the site from further destruction is the reported public protest launched at the union council level to press the authorities to spare the historical remains. The sorry fate of the 14th-century Makli necropolis in Thatta, one of the largest historical burial grounds in the world and adorned with similar graves as those at Chaukandi, is before us. Industrial emissions from nearby factories, vibration caused by heavy traffic plying on the national highway and vandalism have combined to take a heavy toll on the heritage site. Together, the Chaukandi and Makli tombs are arguably two of the most endangered historical remains in the country.

In an unrelated positive development, the federal archaeology department has done well to cancel its earlier decision to hand over 150 historical monuments to the Punjab government. The latter does not have the expertise or the means to manage and help conserve important national heritage sites and monuments. It is in the fitness of things that the archaeology department also take up with the Sindh government the question of allocating land next to the Chaukandi graves for industrial use. As the custodian of national heritage sites and monuments, this is the least the department must do.

This wanton violence

AFTER the killing of a doctor who was promoting polio vaccination in Bajaur last week, those opposed to any ‘western’ concepts or practices struck again by burning down a family planning clinic in Upper Dir on Sunday. Irrespective of what religious or political affiliations they bear, these men must be held answerable for the crime committed. The police have registered a case but it is safe to assume that unless they are prodded by the higher authorities, nothing will come of the investigation and the matter will soon be hushed up. This must not be allowed to happen for the consequences of such actions will be grave. Religious hardliners are setting up their own laws in various parts of the NWFP and pass edicts ranging from the ludicrous — men being fined for shaving — to the severe — ordering public executions — while the government looks the other way. By ignoring incidents like the killing of the doctor, the government is allowing these elements to spread their brand of ‘Islamic rule’. They simply must not be allowed to think that they have a licence to do whatever they like. To begin with, a new clinic must be built on the same site and made functional as soon as possible, with full security around its premises to prevent further attacks.

Those opposed to ideas like women having reproductive choices are desperately holding on to traditional notions and ideas that have no place in today’s world. The government has all but abandoned its responsibility to enforce rule of law and provide educational and employment opportunities. All these issues need to be addressed and this kind of senseless violence put to a stop so that persons and institutions doing public good remain unharmed.

Bofors again in the focus

DO you know what Quattrocchi means in Italian? Four eyes. I have this from an extremely reliable source. Actually, the source isn't that exciting, but the information is correct. And what does Ottavio indicate? The eighth. The Eighth Man with Four Eyes.

This sounds as mysterious as something out of The Da Vinci Code, but let us just agree that even if Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman accused in Bofors payoffs, had eight eyes instead of four he could not possibly have foreseen that he would be picked up in February 2007 by the Argentinean police in a barely-known province called Misones in pursuit of an Interpol “red corner notice number A-44/2/1997”.

He could be forgiven if he had begun to believe that he was now safe from the arm of Indian law, his money out of the freeze of British bank accounts. He has been sitting for years in his comfortable home in Milan, talking to media when he chose to do so, and no one from the Italian police ever interfered with his peace.

Doesn't Italy come under the jurisdiction of Interpol, or does Italy make an exception for specially favoured sons? If the warrant could lead to detention in Latin America, then what was Scotland Yard doing when the ageing Quattrocchi withdrew funds that had been frozen in his British bank accounts? Why did the Argentineans, who must be as indifferent to Indian politics as we are to the shenanigans in Buenos Aires, break the silent code that protected Quattrocchi from Interpol for so long? Was there someone in Delhi who tipped the Argentineans off?

These are grave matters, and let someone more competent than myself search for answers. There is always something amusing in the gravest of events, and I am not talking about the "Four Eyes" name.

My sympathies are with the police officer in the Central Bureau of Investigation who was told to cook up a reason for the mysterious 17-day delay between Quattrocchi's arrest and the release of the news by the CBI. We know now that the matter went up, but obviously, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where it lay for 17 days before a decision could be taken on what to do. One option that was surely considered was whether the arrest could remain a secret, and the 30-day period, during which a demand for extradition had to be made, be permitted to lapse. The vibrant Indian media had been fooled for 17 days; why not another 13?

The risk of course was that if the story broke while parliament was in session, and the government was found culpable of protecting as highly wanted a man as Quattrocchi, the session would have come to a halt. Dr Singh also surely knew that his personal credibility was on the line. He opted for transparency. But how then to explain those 17 non-transparent days? I can see a CBI officer scratching his head very hard as he came up with two reasons. The first was that it took time to identify Quattrocchi. But these are days of a telephone and the Internet. A photograph can be transmitted instantly. Try again. The second round of head-scratching must have removed all traces of dandruff. Ah: the CBI could not find anyone to translate from the Spanish.

Narasimha Raoji! Where are you when we need you? There was a time when an Indian prime minister used to be fluent in Spanish, and now we cannot find someone competent to do a simple translation — not in Delhi, not in our mission in Argentina, not in the foreign office, not even in the language departments of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Questions, of course, will be raised in parliament; and decibel levels could hit the ceiling. The government has surely formulated all the answers. The home minister, Shivraj Patil, or even the prime minister, will certainly assure the House that every effort will be made to bring Quattrocchi to trial in Delhi. The opposition will milk Bofors again, as it has done often enough in the past. Somnath Chatterjee, now in the speaker's chair, might even suffer from a twinge of nostalgia for the good old days when he used to thunder with increasing levels of moral indignation at Rajiv Gandhi. This will be the ninth parliament session to echo with the Bofors boom.

Unavoidable, I suppose, but I hope that Bofors does not obscure or even drive away a far more important issue, particularly since this is a budget session. The country is angry about economic policy, and in particular about prices. Economic reform was launched by Narasimha Rao, continued by Atal Behari Vajpayee and pursued by Dr Manmohan Singh. The policy itself has acquired support across party lines, but there is a fundamental problem with its consequences that no one has had either the will or the time to address.

All change, or progress, tends to displace some section of the economic chain. Cotton factories, for instance, made the weaver either irrelevant or marginal. This is inevitable. The answer is not to stop new machinery in cotton mills, but to create a new economy around the displaced so that reasonably prosperous communities do not sink into impoverishment and despair.

Democracy, as well as humanity, demands concern for the dispossessed. There is no trace of such concern in the much-vaunted economic reform. Voices are beginning to rise, as the poor begin to understand that the haves are driven by profits and share prices, not by notions of social justice.

Anger from the forests is taking the form of Naxalite violence; anxiety from farmlands is turning into angry demonstrations against Special Economic Zones; the threat to food-sellers from the capital-driven malls is driving an agitation in Chennai. The fires are burning separately, but if Delhi continues to show an obstinate indifference, flame could touch flame to create a conflagration.

After more than half a decade of stability, the prices of basic products have risen sharply. In such a climate, traders are happily raising prices of even those commodities that are not propelled upwards by forces out of their control. Elections have just taken place in Punjab and Uttaranchal; and prices were a deciding factor in the mood of the vote. There is an electoral Bofors waiting to explode in every marketplace in the country.

Prices do not rise because someone orders them to, but they do rise as a consequence of either policy decisions or the lack of control measures. For the present central government, there is only one definition of success: the growth rate. It is a statistic that wins applause from those who do not have to worry about the price of onions.

Monetary policy is now tied to just the growth objective. An overheated economy needs a harness, but a harness interferes with the high of a gallop. Our ruling class is in gallop mode, even if in the process it leaves the people behind. You might get away with this if India were not a democracy. But those who are being ignored have a vote, and fortunately for them, elections are now a continuous excitement.

There is accountability around every corner.

This is going to be a high energy year, politically. Bofors has returned, literally from the blue. But this will be only the beginning. Election results from Punjab and Uttaranchal will come this week, and Uttar Pradesh has been set alight by Congress ham-handedness in its effort to subvert the law for political gain. It doesn't work. It did not work in Bihar, and will not work in Uttar Pradesh.At the best of times you need an extra pair of eyes to survive in Delhi: this year, you might need eight. 2007 is an Ottavio year.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi

A welcome opening

IT was an invitation he couldn't refuse. Last week, North Korea asked Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to Pyongyang to discuss dismantling its nuclear facilities. The invitation arrived a day after the IAEA announced that Iran is moving faster than expected to enrich uranium, in defiance of the United Nations.

The IAEA, the imperfect yet indispensable nuclear watchdog agency, is imperfect in the way that all bureaucracies are imperfect; it can be slow, legalistic and equivocal. But as a keeper of the international nuclear order, it is better than the alternatives — a conclusion even the Bush administration appears to have accepted.

The IAEA has not always enjoyed such access, or such a reputation. North Korea kicked out IAEA inspectors in December 2002, then fired up its plutonium plant and, less than five years later, claimed a successful test of a nuclear bomb. Two weeks ago, North Korea signed the precursor to what could, if all goes much better than expected, eventually turn into a nuclear disarmament deal.

Under the pact, Pyongyang must shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, allow IAEA inspectors back into the country and, within 60 days, disclose all its nuclear materiel and operations. In return, Pyongyang will get a dribble of heavy fuel oil, to be followed by more oil and aid if and when it begins to dismantle its nuclear facilities.

Although it's encouraging that Pyongyang has invited ElBaradei, the key test will be whether it discloses anything meaningful about its nuclear operations — which U.S. officials believe include stockpiles of bomb-ready plutonium and a program to enrich uranium. More critical still will be whether the famously secretive North Koreans will allow IAEA inspectors the access that will be required to verify their claims.

ElBaradei infuriated the Bush administration before its 2003 invasion of Iraq by refusing to endorse the U.S. view that Saddam Hussein had a functioning nuclear weapons program.

—Los Angeles Times