Living on divine intervention
WITH inherent qualities of self-destruction, we Pakistanis are a people whose hallmark is living on the razor’s edge.
Yet we continue to believe that we are Allah’s chosen people and have a role to play until the end of time. In a bizarre fashion, through ‘divine intervention’ we have muddled our way through many crises.
On the international scene Pakistan has oscillated between being loved and hated. Currently, it is more of the latter. With more than half our national life under military rule, the outside world sees us less inclined towards democracy; we are seen as violators of human rights and exporters of drugs, nuclear technology and international terrorism. Our economic condition is in a perpetual state of uncertainty, while politically we remain unstable. The current happenings in Pakistan’s tribal belt accentuate this sense of insecurity. Pakistan’s detractors consider it a prime candidate ‘for failed-state’ status and regard it as the ‘world’s most dangerous place’.
Many Pakistanis esoterically believe that Allah, America and the army determine their destiny. But do the three A’s work in tandem?
Pakistan’s birth was a miracle; the human endeavour dovetailed with the work of the divine. As a new nation in 1947, Pakistan sought US help to overcome its inherited problems. America was the obvious choice as its ideals of freedom and democracies were attractive to all nations wanting to break free from their colonial past. But this ‘leader of the free world’ was reluctant to come to Pakistan’s aid. To Washington, India was the better option.
The unfolding Cold War and the 1950 Korean conflict came to Pakistan’s rescue as ‘divine intervention’. To contain the Soviet threat and spread of communism, the US embarked upon a global policy of building military alliances. Pakistan’s geo-strategic location made it an obvious choice; and we were willing to join in. Thus began the United States’ very special relationship with our armed forces. Washington armed us and provided economic and political support primarily because of our military manpower. As members of Cento, Seato and through bilateral arrangements, we became beneficiaries of American largesse.
The Pakistani military acquired a special position within the Pakistani state structure and became the basis of US-Pakistan relations. Contrary to the wishes of its benefactor, Pakistan cosied up to China in 1963 and fought a major war with India in 1965. Those indiscretions cost Ayub Khan, the most allied of the allies, his power, and Pakistan its eastern half.
However, on the eve of the 1971 tragedy, Pakistan played a pivotal role in one of the biggest diplomatic coups of the 20th century when it acted as a bridge for American overtures to China.
The US forgave Pakistan its mistakes and cultivated a friendly relationship as Z.A. Bhutto picked up the pieces to build a new Pakistan. But Bhutto fell out with the Americans over his policy to build Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. In 1976 Henry Kissinger proclaimed that the United States would make a “horrible example” of Bhutto. That threat was carried out during the Carter presidency and the consequences were not just confined to the man but to the country as well. At the time of Bhutto’s hanging in 1979, the Carter administration imposed severe sanctions against Pakistan for pursuing a nuclear programme. Pakistan became an international pariah.
Divine intervention number two happened when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Almost overnight, Pakistan became the darling of the West. Allah smiled, America wooed and the army ruled Pakistan. Gen Ziaul Haq became America’s blue-eyed boy. Pakistan played a critical role in the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Then, Ziaul Haq’s importance waned and in 1988 he was sent to his heavenly abode.
Eleven years later, another western-trained general took power in Pakistan while the country was placed in the international doghouse. Pakistan had defied the world’s sole superpower by exploding its nuclear device and derailed the US supported peace process with India through an armed conflict in Kargil. Pakistan once again was a sanctioned state, while India was propelled to world power status and wooed by America as a global strategic partner.
The 9/11 attacks in America came to Pakistan’s rescue as the third ‘divine intervention’. The famous American declaration “you are with us or against us” put Pakistan firmly in the forefront of the American-led global war on terrorism. The pattern is ostensibly the same as before: America used the Pakistan military for its global designs and we were willing participants. But the current crisis in Afghanistan is far more complex and, unlike the past, has a direct bearing on Pakistan’s security and integrity. As America demands more from Pakistan in this war on terror, and it postures for possible military action against Iran, the two allies’ goals are on a collision course.
The Taliban resurgence is making Isaf’s task in Afghanistan precarious. And Pakistan is accused not only of not doing enough to contain these forces in its tribal belt, but also of its military having sympathies with these elements. Yet Pakistan itself has become a victim of these very forces.
Over the last two years, scores of suicide bombings have killed thousands of Pakistanis. The Taliban and their supporters have declared war on the state of Pakistan by attacking the settled areas of the Frontier and Balochistan. Karachi, which is considered the largest Pahktun city in the world, is seen as the next prime target. Other heavily armed and organised ethnic groups living in Karachi have vowed to face that threat.
Pakistan’s sense of insecurity has further heightened with a declining law and order situation across the country. Ongoing food and fuel shortages, rapidly depleting reserves, limited exports and increasing imports and inflation suggest that the fragile economy is headed for a meltdown.
Western media and think tanks, which usually reflect the minds of their governments, are projecting all kinds of bizarre scenarios for Pakistan; from Balkanisation to a truncated state to the complete disintegration of the country. All this is a painful reminder of East Pakistan: our own horrible déjà vu. At this juncture of our history we are not even confident of our leadership. Its past shenanigans and self-aggrandisement only exacerbate our fears about the future of this beautiful land. If there was ever a need for divine intervention, it is now. Will we Pakistanis be lucky a fourth time, or has our credit with the divine finally run out?
The presidential Olympics
IS the US ready to take its morning coffee Obama black, or does it still need the WASP whitener of a Joe Biden? Did McCain have to select a female — Sarah Palin — as a running mate simply because Hillary Clinton had dropped out of the presidential race?
The US presidential elections, it seems, continue to be as much about ethnic and gender balance as about strategy and tactics. These races are designed to be both exhaustive and exhausting, stretching over 12 gruelling months, from the first primaries in January to the swearing-in of the president-designate the following January. They are no less than an Olympic marathon. Compared to them, our presidential election was a quick 100-yard sprint.
In the US marathon, candidates carry their logos differently. Democrat hopeful Barack Hussein Obama wears on his vest the logo of his origins — Kenyan father, white mother, and a Muslim middle name. His running mate Joe Biden carries his on his back. He has been faulted twice for plagiarism, once at college where he borrowed from a law review article, and again in 1987 when he pilfered recognisable phrases from a speech by British Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
Republican contender John McCain was born on a US base in the Panama Canal Zone. According to his detractors, that makes him ineligible because he is not a ‘natural-born citizen’. His citizenship was conferred on him by a law passed after his birth. A septuagenarian already, McCain if elected will become the second oldest US president after Ronald Reagan.
McCain’s VP-designate Sarah Palin is an all-American hockey mom, who has a husband with Yup’ik Eskimo ancestry, and a 17-year-old unmarried daughter expecting a child.
Here in Pakistan, the three candidates in the recent race for the presidency were similarly compromised. Mr Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP came with the baggage of a sullied reputation. Justice (retd) Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui fielded by the PML-N had been part of the unseemly intra-Supreme Court squabble with Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1997. Mushahid Hussain Syed nominated by the PML-Q found it impossible to erase incriminating TV footage showing him, Nero-like, watching while the Supreme Court still in session was being stormed by a mob.
The results of our election are already in. Mr Asif Ali Zardari has been sworn in as our 12th president, to hold office until resignation, removal or the year 2013, whichever occurs earlier. The US public meanwhile must wait another two months to know who will be its 44th president.
Should we care at all whether it is McCain or Obama, any more than we did during the Putin/Medvedev crossover in Russia?
Certainly, because even though the US elections take place over 16,000 miles away, the defensible borders of America now touch the Durand Line in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s reliance on the US continues to be clear and consistent, if unstated. The PPP manifesto issued in 2008 for example makes no mention of the US or of foreign policy. Perhaps it did not feel the need to state the obvious. We are still the apple of America’s eye, the rotten apple.
Read what the US presidential hopefuls say about Pakistan. McCain’s policy of a “long-term commitment to the country” aimed at enhancing “Pakistan’s ability to act against insurgent safe havens” would in effect be a continuation of his fellow Republican George W. Bush’s policies. The evil that Bush has wrought will live after him, in McSame.
Obama and his running mate Joe Biden are both over-familiar with Pakistan. Unlike George W. Bush before his inauguration in 2000, they do not need prompting to locate Pakistan on the map. They are both personally acquainted with it. A homeless Obama was once given shelter by a Pakistani friend in New York; Biden came to Pakistan to witness our elections on Feb 18.
For advice on foreign affairs, Obama’s camp draws upon 300 specialists in US think tanks and from Bill Clinton’s former staff. Because of them, perhaps, he is convinced that Iraq is not the problem: Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Fata are. He believes that US aid is enriching the Pakistan army, not the Pakistani public. Obama complains (as do many Pakistanis who reach upwards to grasp the poverty line) that not enough US aid has gone to building schools or to create an infrastructure that will “help develop and give opportunity to the Pakistani people”.
His opinion is based in part on the testimony given to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January this year, where it was disclosed that out of the $10bn remitted to Islamabad since 2001, almost $6bn was applied towards Coalition Support, another $1.8bn towards security assistance, $1.62bn to buttress Pakistan’s economy, and only nine per cent ($0.9bn) for development and humanitarian assistance.
“Since counterterrorism operations will continue to be important to American security for the foreseeable future,” one critic of unbridled US aid to Pakistan has commented, “…reforming the disbursal system — by amending the authorising legislation if necessary — is critical. The current system of simply cutting checks for whatever bills are presented monthly by Islamabad as the costs borne for counterterrorism support engenders institutional corruption in the Pakistani military, destroys the integrity of the US assistance programme, and is unfair to the US taxpayer.”
Perhaps this might explain to the Pakistan public why our top brass was invited to meet US Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and his team on board the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Aug 26, to sort out the wrinkles in a common strategy and uncommon book-keeping.
The war on terror continues with the relentlessness of a mini-Armageddon, with the US and the UK supporting an intensification of cross-border attacks, and Nato unwilling to flout international laws that twice failed to protect member countries, pre-1914 and pre-1939.
Presidential laurels, to those voted in to wear them, must now seem more like thorns.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Disaster risks for mountain communities
COMMUNITIES and development activities in the Northern Areas are affected by many kinds of landslides. The yearly toll of debris flows and slope collapses along the Karakoram Highway (KKH) is well-known. However, until recently the largest and most dangerous landslides, catastrophic rock slope collapses, went largely unrecognised. They are catastrophic because they occur suddenly and have great size.
Some in the Upper Indus Basin exceeded 20 cubic kilometres in volume, most involve over 100 cubic metres of rock. They derive from collapses on steep cliffs, mountain ridges or peaks and generate rock avalanches; a rapid run-out of crushed rock travels at 150-250 km an hour and for distances of up to 15 km.
Many rock avalanches have dammed the Indus or its tributaries, impounding large lakes where huge episodes of sedimentation were followed by trenching and the removal of sediment. Because no structure or population can survive the impact of the landslide itself, they can be catastrophic in this sense too. The inundations and possible dam burst floods are other hazards.
Only one landslide of this type was known in the Upper Indus Basin up to the late 1980s; an 1841 earthquake-triggered landslide below Nanga Parbat (8,125 metres). It blocked the Indus near Lichar for six months. Then the dam failed and emptied in 24 hours. It caused the most destructive historical flood and the largest one measured in Attock.
Though often cited in the literature of landslides it seemed a lone event. However, recently, I have identified hundreds of these landslides, and colleagues working nearby have added others. A few fell on glaciers in the past two decades. More than 300 are prehistoric events that occurred in the now inhabited areas.
Dozens of villages and small towns like Skardu, Khapalu, Gupis and Sost are clustered amid the rubble of rock avalanches. So are some well-known historical and culturally significant sites including the Baltit Fort in Hunza, recently renovated as a Unesco World Heritage site. In Chitral, Gilgit District and Baltistan the arable land is largely a result of these landslides blocking and modifying river valleys. More than 100 of these dammed the Indus or its tributaries for decades or centuries.
If you fly to Skardu you encounter the legacy at once. Taxiing to and from the airport terminal, you pass by old lake beds. They are testimony to a vast lake that filled the Skardu basin dammed by a catastrophic landslide at Katzarah (‘Kachura’). Shangri La Hotel offers strolls amid the great boulders of this event.
Taking the Karakoram Highway on its way to China, you cross more than 30 of the landslides in the 300 km between Sazin, just west of Nanga Parbat, and Sost on the northern rim of the Karakoram. Places notorious for frequent blockages are through ancient, unstable masses of landslide material. Nothing presently compares with the great landslide lakes of the past.
Two of the largest dams, at Rondu-Mendi 60 km below Skardu, and at Nomal on the Hunza River above Gilgit, were over 1,000 metres high; their lakes stretched back 130 and 90 km respectively. Some idea of them is given by the Usoi Lake in Tajikistan, dammed by an earthquake-triggered landslide in 1911. There are small landslide lakes in the tributary valleys today, such as the Naltar Lakes near Gilgit.
These discoveries introduce a new, urgent dimension to the disaster risks in the Northern Areas. For example, when Canadian consultants proposed Bhasha Dam in the 1980s, we knew nothing of these hazards. Now, 55 catastrophic rockslides are identified within an 80 km radius of the site. The impoundment will drown remnants of at least 20 rock avalanches. It is not clear whether they have been taken into account. Proposals to build a dam at Katzarah would drown the Skardu basin again — by building an artificial dam over a natural one.
This is not new. Wapda’s recently-built dam to raise Satpara Lake, that supplies Skardu with power and water, has done exactly that. The boulder piles in front of the lake, on which the new dam and a PTDC Hotel sit, are remains of a great landslide.
These, I believe, are new but established realities. The question of what they mean for future risks is more problematic. Remnants of some 60 landslides had been misinterpreted as glacial deposits. These occurred since the last major glaciation. Many events are younger than 7,000 years which means they occurred under conditions very similar to those today.
Few slopes reach a state of weakness and simply fall down. It can happen, but usually something intervenes to cause a sudden collapse. Earthquake-shaking is the most important trigger of catastrophic rock slope collapses. Extreme weather events are also involved. An earthquake triggered the 1841 landslide; some 1986 rock avalanches at Bualtar (Hopar) Glacier in Nagar, were triggered by exceptional snowmelt and rainfall. One view is that such landslides have tended to decline in size and frequency since the last major glaciation. Another is that great landslides in the Himalayas record very large, rare earthquakes (at 500-year-plus intervals).
There are two insurmountable problems to resolving these questions and assessing the risk: the enormous size and ruggedness of the region, and the complex nature of the conditions influencing landslides. A promising approach is indirect: getting a set of good dates for known landslides and a representative sample of Northern Areas environments. Past incidence should be a good guide to future likelihood. However, any progress here will depend on whether attention is given to the problem and, presumably, how it rates among other urgent priorities.