An attack on the media

THE farce that ‘enlightened moderation’ is fast becoming was once again exposed when the authorities succeeded in shutting down Geo TV and ARY news on midnight Friday. The two channels were being watched by Pakistanis abroad even though they were already off the air in Pakistan because the cable operators had been forced to pull the plug on them. It is even more disappointing, if not embarrassing, that the government had to involve a foreign country in its quest to squash any and all form of dissent. That it went this far in a bid to silence its critics, at a time when all the world’s eyes are on the country, shows that misplaced priorities continue to plague the administration. By turning on the media, the government has done itself — and the public — a great disservice. The two channels were beaming out of Dubai Media City, a tax-free zone which was built by the Dubai government to attract foreign media companies which would be exempt from UAE’s restrictive press laws. The apparent arbitrary manner in which GEO and ARY were told they were being shut down is bound to have disturbing consequences for other international media organisations in the region.

The shutting down of channels — for reasons now widely understood — is the worst form of repression. The president had gained a lot of goodwill when his government liberalised media policies and the growth of independent channels helped create a new and vibrant society that inspired a lot of confidence, especially in investors who were reluctant to come in because of the ‘terrorist sanctuary’ label Pakistan had earned. The liberalisation of the media exposed the world to another side of Pakistan, far removed from the one-sided images of violence associated with the country. This new window into the country aided in attracting foreign investment and renewed confidence in the expatriate community; there has been a record growth in remittances. However, it all came crashing down when Gen Musharraf imposed an emergency and decided to pull the plug on the electronic media. As we have said before, the right to information is not something the government can give or take away at whim; denying people access to information causes more harm than good, as the spreading of false rumours that led to a substantial loss at the Karachi stock market proved. A virtual blackout of the news causes anxiety and only takes Pakistan that much further back into the dark ages. It can, however, still be salvaged if the government immediately puts on air all channels and withdraws any conditions placed upon them. Failure to do this will only contribute to further feelings of civilian unrest.

The journalist community has largely been united in its quest for freedom of speech. This must be commended. The government has shown no signs of restraint and it may target the print media next. This makes it important for all those associated with the media to come together and fight the draconian measures being placed upon it.

Can Sufi help?

MAULANA Sufi Mohammad’s shifting to a Peshawar hospital while in custody has sparked speculations which give an indication of the nation’s anxiety over the

Swat situation. The chief of the banned Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi has been in prison since December 2001 following a disastrous campaign in Afghanistan. The militia he led into Afghanistan suffered heavy casualties, the Taliban regime fell and most of his acolytes were killed, taken prisoner or tortured to death. However, the vacuum left by his incarceration has been filled by his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, more popularly referred to as Maulana Radio because of the illegal FM radio stations he and his followers operate. Fazlullah is ferocious and cold-blooded. The way his followers beheaded some security personnel, and the humiliation he regularly inflicts upon captured soldiers by giving them money before freeing them show he is unlikely to end insurgency by peaceful means.

Can Maulana Sufi Mohammad help? In 1994, Maulana Sufi urged his followers to end the insurgency following successful negotiations with the PPP government. Today, the paramilitary forces have been replaced by the army, but the people do not know precisely what is happening in Swat because the government is embroiled in its own war on the TV channels. Hence there is no way of obtaining authentic and independent information about the war zone. Over the years the TNSM has been infiltrated by the Taliban and militants of many banned outfits. In such a situation one does not know whether Maulana Sufi, if released, can still swing the situation in his favour and help restore peace to what until recently was a tourist’s paradise. A party that negotiates from a position of weakness is unlikely to win peace. This truth was demonstrated in Fata last year, for the deal with the militants helped the Taliban reorganise themselves and mount an offensive. Fata is today relatively quiet because of the firm action taken by the authorities a couple of months ago. If Swat is to be pacified, the government must first put its house in order, wrest the military initiative from Fazlullah’s men and then sit and talk to them.

An encouraging report, but…

NEITHER the US nor Britain appears to be mollified by the latest IAEA report conceding that Iran had cooperated with the nuclear watchdog by allowing its inspectors greater access to information regarding its atomic programme than previously. Both have set their heart upon a third stage of UN sanctions for Iran that is feeling the effects of the earlier punitive measures constraining its international trade ties. While Russia and China, both with energy and other business interests in Iran, may well veto any such resolution if it is put to vote in the Security Council, the atmosphere will continue to sour. The concerns of the US and Britain are partially justified as Iran, despite its newfound openness about past nuclear activities, is still unwilling to provide details on its present level of progress regarding uranium enrichment.

While Iran continues to maintain that its atomic programme is peaceful, the country’s pariah status in the eyes of the western nations and its previous dubious deals in the nuclear underworld have raised suspicions regarding its real intentions. The onus is then on Tehran to prove that it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons. It can only convince the world that it is not violating the rules of the NPT by providing clearer information about its actual activities and by giving IAEA inspectors unhindered access to nuclear sites. At the same time, the West must go slow in isolating Iran even further. Tehran has shown more cooperation than before and this must be acknowledged and appreciated. Other efforts by Iran to chart a moderate course in international affairs should not go unnoticed either. An example of this is Iran’s fulfilment of its promise to check the arms inflow into Iraq. This has been acknowledged by the American military that has registered a sharp decrease in the number of roadside bomb blasts in Iraq. Unfortunately, the West, particularly the US, has not been able to leave the past aside and has not attempted to mend ties with Tehran. Such an attitude will only harden Iran’s position on the nuclear question and will lead to further tensions in the region.

Iran: the irrelevance of evidence

SHAUL Mofaz, the Israeli defence minister, is not a fan of Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In fact, he wants him fired. “The policies followed by ElBaradei endanger world peace. His irresponsible attitude of sticking his head in the sand over Iran’s nuclear programme should lead to his impeachment,” Mofaz said during a visit to Washington in early November.

Mofaz was getting his retaliation in first. As he foresaw, the IAEA director’s report on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, released on Nov 14, said that Tehran was years away from an ability to make nuclear weapons.

Not only that, but he said that Iran is complying with a work plan agreed with the IAEA last August to clear up the remaining questions about a project that the Iranians insist was only about making fuel for civilian nuclear power stations.

How can you bomb a country, or even impose serious sanctions on it, if the head of the IAEA won’t accuse it of seeking nuclear weapons?

Well, you can if you really want to. It was the same Mohammed ElBaradei who reported to the United Nations Security Council on Feb 14, 2003: “We have, to date, found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.”

The United States and Britain insisted that their intelligence said otherwise, Iraq was duly invaded, and nobody even apologised when no “prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities” were found.

ElBaradei must feel a strong sense of deja vu as his reports on Iran four years later get the same treatment in the major Western countries. French Defence Minister Herve Morin responded, “Our information, which is backed up by other countries, is contrary [to Mr. ElBaradei’s comments]” — as if western intelligence agencies had a strong record in this field.

For the simple-minded, White House spokesperson Dana Perino offered an even clearer proof of Iran’s wickedness. Iran, she said, is “enriching and reprocessing uranium and the reason that one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon.” Case closed.

Apart from the eight nuclear weapons powers (the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel), four other countries already have plants on their territory for “enriching and reprocessing uranium” under IAEA safeguards: Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil. Argentina, Australia and South Africa are also building or actively considering uranium enrichment facilities, again under IAEA safeguards.

So there was some rapid back-pedaling at the White House when a journalist inquired if all these countries are also seeking nuclear weapons.

US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe was wheeled out to ‘clarify’ Dana Perino’s statement. “Each country is different, but obviously Dana was asked and was talking about Iran,” he explained. In other words, the real proof that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons lies in the fact that we know in our hearts that it is evil.

It really is as simple as that. Iran’s goal by its own account is precisely the same as that of Argentina, Australia or South Africa: to acquire the ability to enrich uranium for nuclear power generation under full IAEA safeguards.

This is perfectly legal, and indeed is the ‘inalienable right’ of every signatory under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which Iran has signed).

The problem is that this same ability to enrich uranium for nuclear power generation also confers the ability to enrich it much more for use in nuclear weapons. So long as the IAEA safeguards are in place that won’t happen, but if a country later quits the NPT and expels the IAEA (as North Korea did in 2003), it doesn’t take long to start making bombs.

It’s really a question of trust. Nobody thinks Argentina will do that; lots of people fear that Iran would.

Suspicions of Iran are even greater because much of its early work on uranium enrichment was done secretly with equipment bought on the black market.

There is a plausible explanation for this — ever since the revolution of 1979, a US-led boycott has made it almost impossible for Iran to buy nuclear technology legally — but it doesn’t help Tehran’s credibility now.

All ElBaradei can do is to assess whether Iran is obeying international law, but that is of little interest to Israel and the Western governments that are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Iran’s ultimate goal is nuclear weapons.

That is why the issue was taken away from the IAEA two years ago and transferred to the UN Security Council, where the western great powers can simply declare that Iran is a threat to the peace and impose sanctions on it — if they can get the Russians and the Chinese to go along with them.

Moscow and Beijing have complied on two occasions, but they seem unlikely to assent to the harsher sanctions that the US is now seeking.

In which case, the next step for the United States – “all the options are on the table” — may be a unilateral attack on Iran. Most Iranians don’t believe that even the Bush administration could be that foolish, but recent history is not on their side.

— Copyright

OTHER VOICES - Indian Press

BB’s turnaround

…FORMER Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has called on General Pervez Musharraf to quit not only as army chief but also as president. She has claimed she could not work under him in any future government because he had imposed emergency in the country, suspended the Constitution, oppressed the judiciary and muzzled the media. If Ms Bhutto has suddenly discovered these authoritarian traits in Gen Musharraf, then it betrays her political naiveté. Earlier, she had found nothing wrong in engaging in negotiations with him to enter into a power-sharing deal.

Ms Bhutto claimed that now she had realised that Gen Musharraf was using her “as an icing on the cake to make sure no one notices the cake was poisoned”. But she failed to admit that till yesterday she was eager to grab a slice of the same poisoned power cake with the blessings of the United States. She indicated that her PPP would boycott the parliamentary elections that Gen Musharraf has promised to hold…and join other opposition parties to fight for the restoration of democracy. Her zealous resolve to save democracy has surfaced only after she found herself at the receiving end.

She realised that she could not do business with Gen Musharraf only after her party’s ‘long march’ from Lahore to Islamabad was foiled, she was put under house arrest and thousands of PPP workers were arrested. She decided to lash out against Gen Musharraf when she made the painful discovery that he was unwilling to treat her or her supporters with kid gloves. This belligerence is in contrast to her ‘slow and calibrated’ reaction to the November 3 proclamation of emergency. This was rewarded when the PPP workers were left untouched during the crackdown on opposition parties.

Ms Bhutto’s change of heart has been prompted by the strong disapproval that Gen Musharraf’s draconian measures have triggered both inside Pakistan and in the world. Ms Bhutto, who has always projected herself as a fearless champion of democracy, must have realised that a deal with the dictator may do more harm than good to her image. It is also possible that she is merely engaged in shadow boxing with Gen Musharraf and will eventually accept the power-sharing deal which has the ‘Made in US’ stamp on it. — (Nov 15)

Politicising education

THE education department in Kashmir... is…getting highly politicised. …It has been a practice for the past some years that in the rural areas, on the instructions of the zonal educational officers and chief education officers, students are sent to…public rallies of…ministers and ruling parties…

Thousands of teachers from different areas were herded to S.K. Municipal Park on…

Teachers’ Day this year…for the public rally of the chief minister and other ministers.

The teachers…were given an impression that the government was going to announce great bonanzas…

Instead of reorienting the teaching system…the ruling party has been using…educational institutions for…attracting students towards a particular political outlook…Instead of improving the syllabus…in tune with the social and moral ethos of the state, it has been trying to import ideologies…

A sense of belonging can come only by introducing Kashmir history, moral education in schools and bringing them closer to their roots. …Making children sing songs from Bankim Chatterjee’s novel Anand Math in praise of Hindu goddesses on the occasion of Children’s Day was not only uncalled for but unwise. The song is not in consonance with the faith of the majority of people in the state.

It has been a cause of controversy in the past and continues to be so today. It was just a couple of months back when making children of a particular faith sing this song had kicked up a row in some states.

It is high time…the government…put a blanket ban on the singing of all songs on public functions that can infringe on the faith of one or the other community.

There is also need for ending the practice of sending schoolchildren for augmenting the audience at functions of…political parties. Education is an institution that plays and has played a great role in shaping public opinion. People expect a lot from the department.

If they let education remain…without smearing it with politics, they will do a great service to the nation... — (Nov 17)