METRO VOICE: Make police part of our society

IT is said the essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience. Such experience sends messages that when decoded comeup with solutions to many of our social and personal problems. This requires an astute observation and the willingness to interpret those messages.

A day before Eidul Azha, I decided to buy a sacrificial animal from the Malir cattle market and went with a few friends.

The roads were jammed with all sorts of vehicles and it seemed that the traffic police personnel were helpless to do anything.

As our car entered the narrow lanes of the locality that surrounds the market, we saw teenagers coming towards us and waving their hands.

At first, we were alarmed but soon relieved when we saw one of the youngsters holding a card with ‘Parking Rs20’ written on it. The youth of the locality were controlling traffic and helping the vehicles negotiate the narrow lanes. They were also offering parking facilities in their lanes.

The idea of earning a few extra bucks to celebrate Eid had motivated these youngsters to become traffic management volunteers.

They were charging for a service that everyone wanted earnestly and no one minded paying for the service.

This makes one wonder why do our police personnel lack such motivation, is it because they are not provided with adequate incentives or necessary training. What do we have to do to instil a sense of responsibility among the police.

The motivational process begins with a drive; the individual gets conscious of unfulfilled needs, followed by restlessness and a search for means for the fulfillment of those desires.

I am sure our police personnel are a demoralised lot. They are paid low wages, have a poor service structure with uncertain chances of promotion. Then there are the daily pressures of the job, the long hours and the stress that comes with the profession.

I feel as a member of society it is time too stop criticising the police and complain ad nauseum of their poor performance, corruption and bad attitude towards the masses.

We have ignored the factors that compel an individual to indulge into corrupt practices. Since every individual in society is confronted with inflation and to make ends meet, thousands of people are forced to take up two even three jobs who do not have a way to indulge in corruption, why do we blame the police. These policemen are also part of the same society and face the same issues.

The Motorway Police proves my point. Their personnel are provided with various incentives, good salary packages and humane working hours, the result is there for all to see.

The mechanism of police constitutes the internal defense of society to detect, fight and control the enemies, visible and invisible, of the public and society at large.

The general image of the police is that of a tool to perpetuate and perform the will and whims of the powers-that-be, besides complaints of police torture and custodial violence complete the negative image.

Is this what the authorities want, if so why and for how long do they think the people will tolerate such a police force.

Better pay and working conditions will guarantee a good police force similar to the Motorway Police, then why do we have to put up with this one and why is the government and our public representatives doing nothing to give us a better police force.

Violence haunts future of Somalia

ADDIS ABABA: Abdulrahman Abdulqadir was watching his favourite football team Arsenal on satellite television when the seven gunmen burst into his shack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.

“They were shouting ‘This is not allowed’, ‘This is against Islam’,” said the 18-year-old electrical engineering student.

“We ran out and they started firing their Kalashnikovs over our heads. That’s when I decided I had to leave.”

Back in December, when the Union of Islamic Courts was strengthening its grip on the city, the decision to leave was easy.

Abdulrahman joined scores of other Somalis on a 15-day trek by rented car and packed minibus north from Mogadishu to Somaliland, then west to the sanctuary of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

Today, a month later, with the Islamist forces largely defeated and a resurgent national government claiming control of Somalia, Abdulrahman and his fellow refugees are facing a much tougher choice: whether to go back home.

“At the moment, the arms are in the hands of the people,” he told Reuters. “I won’t go back until everyone is disarmed.”

Not that he is pessimistic. “That will happen. It will take a month. I’m happy that the transitional government has taken over,” he said.

“Now that the government is in the capital, I can’t see how the Islamic Courts will come back. I’d like to go back to continue my studies. But I’m still deciding.”

Abdi Abdullah flew out of Mogadishu in October, after scraping together cash for the flight from friends and family in the city. The 16-year-old’s first priority is to try to get passage to the United States to stay with family in Minnesota.

If that fails, he is not sure about returning to Mogadishu.

“It’s not safe enough yet – there are still some parts of the Union left. When everyone is defeated, that’s when I might go back.”

Both men were speaking at the headquarters of Somali Community Ethiopia, an Addis-based charity that raises funds for what it says is a 60,000-strong Somali community in the Ethiopian capital.

Over the past few months, that number has been increasing by over 150 a day – all refugees from Somalia – according to the charity’s chairman Mohmaud Issa.

Reliable estimates of the total number of refugees coming over the border are hard to come by. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has sent a high-level mission down to Ethiopia’s remote and porous border with Somalia to gauge their number.

“There are thousands of people who have come here and other major towns for safety. They are stuck here and they cannot go back to the south,” said Issa.

The numbers of refugees started increasing dramatically seven months ago, he added, when the Islamic Courts took control of large swaths of central and southern Somalia.

“The first people who came were the artists, the singers, the comedians, the musicians – because they were banned by the Islamic Courts. They became the first target.

“Then it was the moderate people – the people who chew chat (a mild narcotic also banned by the Islamic Courts), the people who drink – most professionals, people with a western education. They saw a Taliban-style administration which they couldn’t live with.”

According to the UNHCR, the flow of Somali refugees to Ethiopia was less significant in 2006 than the 34,000 who went to Kenya. At the peak of the Somali influx into Ethiopia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than 250,000 Somalis fled to Hartisheik camp in eastern Ethiopia – then billed the world’s largest refugee camp.

Mohammed Ali, of another community association, The Somali Literacy Centre, estimates there are currently around 20,000 Somali refugees in the Addis area alone. “Most have friends and family to stay with. Some are living up to seven in one room.”

Both associations are based in Addis Ababa’s ‘Little Mogadishu’ district, the biggest of around ten Somali population clusters in the capital.

It is a tangle of dusty streets packed with Somali restaurants and cafes, leading up to a half-built mosque which is being constructed to cater for the area’s growing Muslim population.

The walls of the Somali Community Ethiopia centre are plastered with posters listing details of how to apply for asylum or citizenship in Canada. But Somali Community Ethiopia’s Issa says many of the new refugees would be much happier going back to Somalia.

“They are waiting and looking for improvements in the capital. When they see disarmament they will start to go back – gradually. There’s a lot of opportunity.

“There are lots of natural resources, the longest coast line in Africa. It has uranium, it has petrol, it has gas.

“It has four major ports. Anyone, even with the smallest investment, can make a good business.

“But if the international community doesn’t intervene – if Somalia goes back again – it will be a disaster that will affect Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Yemen – who knows where it can reach.” —Reuters

Al Qaeda suspect a threat to S. Africa?

JOHANNESBURG: If the United States is right about Junaid Dockrat, the South African dentist is helping Al Qaeda wage a holy war when he is not filling root canals.

South Africa’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday confirmed a newspaper report that Junaid and his cleric cousin Farhad Dockrat were put on a UN list of terror suspects because of alleged ties with Al Qaeda.

Papers submitted by the United States to the UN Security Council alleged Junaid is an Al Qaeda financier, recruiter and facilitator who coordinated the travel of South Africans to Pakistan to train with the group.

Both men denied the allegations made by Washington, which says Al Qaeda operatives are in Somalia, Sudan and North Africa, while fundraising and recruiting have become a serious worry in South Africa, Nigeria and the trans-Sahara region.

Police officials have declined to comment on whether Al Qaeda is a serious threat in South Africa or whether they have been conducting surveillance on suspects or mosques.

Anneli Botha, senior researcher on terrorism at the Institute for Security Studies, said it was difficult to gauge Al Qaeda’ s presence among South Africa’s minority Muslim population.

“There may be some sympathy in the Muslim community, which is very active, in terms of it seeing the war on terror as a war on Islam,” she said.

“And there may be some individuals who may want to participate in the Al Qaeda network. But how can you tell a supporter from a sympathiser from an active member?”

It is not clear how the South African government will respond to the allegations made against the Dockrat cousins.

Asked if South Africa would take action against them, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said: “We are in contact with the Americans on this issue and we are still waiting for directives from the minister of foreign affairs.”

Junaid’s father Ismail suspects he was put on a US list of Al Qaeda suspects because of his “harmless” ties with Zubair Ismail and surgeon Feroz Ganchi, who were arrested in Pakistan in 2004 and later released.

The pair was caught with senior al Qaeda operative Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian who was indicted as a conspirator in the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people.

“Junaid knew Zubair. They went to school together. He also knew Dr Ganchi well. But that does not mean he is guilty,” he told Reuters.

“The Americans just decide someone is guilty and they go after him. Junaid is a good man. Now our home is like a funeral parlour because everyone is so upset.”

Farhad Dockrat, who preaches at a mosque near Pretoria, called the allegations that he gave $57,140 to the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan to forward to a fund-raising group for Al Qaeda defamatory.

“I have been previously interrogated and unlawfully detained in Gambia for three weeks and was released without any charge,” he said in a statement. “My home has been unlawfully monitored.”

Junaid, 35, his father and brother-in-law Mohammed share a practice in Mayfair, a middle-class Johannesburg neighbourhood that is home to other Muslim families.

Patients on the first floor of their building ranged from a woman in a head-to-toe Niqaab veil to an elderly man with white hair. A sign instructed people to leave a deposit for dentures.

Ismail said his son had been harassed by the South African authorities for some time.

“I remember we were flying to Makkah and suddenly someone pulled Junaid aside and searched his suitcase in front of everyone on the tarmac. Some of the people were his patients. He was humiliated.”

Aside from his dental business, Junaid also owns a camouflage clothing company called Sniper Africa, which promises buyers they will be comfortable stalking when hunting.

Standing near fishing rods and reels, Junaid’s brother Suleiman dismissed the Al Qaeda allegations and said the business had no ties to Pakistan or the Taliban in Afghanistan. “We export to neighbouring countries. Botswana and Zambia and we have sold items to the United States,” he said.

“Look around do you see anything strange? People see long beards like mine and they are immediately suspicious.”—Reuters

Israeli occupation worsening Palestinians’ condition

HEBRON: Hebron, about 35 km south of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, has historically existed as a mixed Muslim-Jewish city, but over the last few decades the Israeli authorities have been choking its 150,000 Palestinians while supporting the settler movement.

Approximately 650 radical right-wing settlers have taken over parts of the old city, destroyed Palestinian neighbourhoods and the economic infrastructure, and are free to terrorise Palestinians at whim.

Hebron is divided into two parts called H1 and H2, drawing a line between the settlements and the rest of the city. Today, most Palestinians are not allowed anywhere near H2.

Once a bustling marketplace and residential neighbourhood, that part of the city has become essentially a ghost town inhabited by settlers who are protected by the occupation soldiers and the Israeli police force.

Graffiti is sprayed all over the closed metal shop doors and mosques, with Stars of David and slogans such as ‘Kill the Arabs’, ‘God will take revenge on the non-religious’, ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’.

Hani Abu Akker was born in his house 40 years ago in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood, now a part of H2, at the top of a steep hill that overlooks the old city of Hebron. Here, the cacophony of the lively Palestinian market below blends with the shouts and sounds of children playing soccer against the walls of apartments near Hani’s home.

“See this street? My father built it with his own hands in 1945, before there was anything called Israel,” he told IPS, standing near the house where he now lives at the bottom of the hill.

Abu Akker cannot enter his home through the front door. Barbed wire and steel bars enclosing his home are only minimal protection against the ongoing attacks and harassment he and his family of ten face almost daily. To come and go from home, Abu Akker must use the backdoor, cross a small, muddy meadow and circumvent the neighbourhood from the back.

Abu Akker’s house is in the middle of a colonial war zone, and the Israeli soldier behind a small pillbox barrack mandates who comes and goes up and down his street. Jewish settlers roam the streets often carrying firearms.

Israeli Yehuda Shaul knows too well the structure of policy and law enforcement in Hebron. Co-founder of the left-wing activist group Breaking the Silence, Shaul earlier spent his mandatory military service as commander of a battalion stationed in the H2 district.

“All you need to know about the occupation you can see in this five-kilometre square area inside Hebron,” Shaul tells IPS, standing in the middle of an open space that was once a lively meat market but is now completely destroyed and abandoned, with garbage and twisted metal littering the ground.

“It’s all here. This is a microcosm of what’s happening in Israel-Palestine...here, 650 settlers run the town, and 150,000 Palestinians pay the price. There is a policy here, and I know because it was told to me, and I was expected to pass it on to my unit, that we are not to interfere against the settlers.”

Palestinians living in this area have been attacked and harassed for years. Many families have left the area after years of torment, and the rain of garbage, faeces, oil, car batteries, used diapers, old furniture and large rocks thrown onto their homes and through their windows.

Palestinian children have been the target of serious physical attacks in recent years. International human rights workers have stationed themselves near the elementary school specifically to escort children to and from school during the day.

Last week Efrat Akobi, a settler in Tel Rumeida, was questioned by the Israeli police after B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, released film footage where Akobi was seen verbally harassing a teenaged member of a Palestinian family in the neighbourhood.

In the footage, Akobi taunts the young girl, telling her to “get back in your cage”, while hurling insults at her.

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said he was “shocked” by the footage and announced he would ask for a full investigation. But Palestinians in Hebron say this is not an isolated incident, and that many more shocking incidents come daily in this small area.

B’Tselem said in a statement published last week: “The attacks in Hebron are carried out in full view of Israeli soldiers, who are unable or unwilling to stop them. The Hebron police, who receive hundreds of complaints about settler violence, are also well aware of the situation.”

The statement added: “The fact that the Defence Minister and the security establishment feign ignorance and mobilise to respond to the problem only following the public controversy generated by this video is outrageous.”

Meanwhile, as press coverage waxes and wanes, Hani Abu Akker recalls something that happened almost two years ago, that he says still keeps him up at night.

“My father at the time was very sick. We negotiated (with the Israeli military) for the ambulance to come to our house. It took over 48 hours for the ambulance to pass. My father went to the hospital, and slipped into a coma. My father told me two weeks before that he wanted to die in his house and that I should make arrangements when it was time.

“After a few weeks, the doctor said my father should go back to the house to die according to his wishes. After another two days of negotiations with the Israeli military, they let us pass to our home. My father eventually passed away.

“When my father’s body was transferred to the ambulance, the settlers made a circle and surrounded it. They began dancing and throwing sweets and candies at the ambulance. They cheered, ‘Your old man is dead. We hope all of you will be dead too.’

“I saw an Israeli soldier standing alone, tears streaming down his face. He was sad and frustrated that he could not stop this from happening. I realised that I was not the only one bothered by this. Even the soldiers that are here to protect the settlers could not believe what was happening.

“Before this happened, I tried to make contact with the Israeli settlers; to talk with them, to say that we should try peace — we live in the same neighbourhood, so we should live together and live our lives in peace. But instead, on that day, I understood that they came not just to live here but they came to move the Palestinians from their neighbourhoods; to remove them without discussion.”

Two years on, all that has not changed in Hebron.—Dawn/The IPS News Service

Afghan women stepping into commerce

MAZAR-I-SHARIF (Afghanistan): Afghan woman Kamila Kabuli is causing a bit of a stir in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif just by selling cosmetics on the street. Kabuli, 35, runs a small stall at a busy city-centre roundabout that was set up with the help of the provincial women’s department, in a ground-breaking project aimed at getting women into a business long dominated by men.

In a conservative society where men have traditionally run all trade, the stalls are raising lots of eyebrows, some opposition and much approval.

“I’m very proud to have been chosen for this job although it is difficult. It can be a bit tough, but I can show that women can do it,” said Kabuli, bundled up against the cold with a scarf wrapped over her head. She said some shoppers, especially people coming in to the city from the countryside, were astonished to see a woman vendor.

“Sometimes men laugh at me, they whisper and say it’s funny for women to run a shop. Some come here only to tease me,” she said with a sigh.

The women’s department has so far set up three women with stalls that sell handicrafts, clothes and cosmetics. It plans to open another 20 and rent them out to women in the next few weeks.

“Men and women have same rights. Women can also deal with people in the city. They can do trading and selling,” said the department’s head, Friba Majid. “A lot of women have expressed their happiness, they say they want a big market for women selling stuff.”—Reuters

Americans fall in love with Chinese

WASHINGTON: More Americans are dunking their children in Chinese immersion classes and hiring Mandarin-speaking nannies in the hope of giving them a competitive edge as China imposes itself as an economic giant.

“The Chinese language is extremely hot at the moment,” said Michael Levine, vice-president of the New York-based Asia Society, a non-profit organisation that promotes knowledge and understanding of Asia. “Chinese is a language that people in the hinterland – in states as diverse as Kansas and Kentucky – now want to speak.” The trend is such that many schools across the country are unable to meet the growing demand for Mandarin Chinese, the most widely-spoken language in the world but one that is just starting to make inroads in US schools.

“Parents and people in the school business are beginning to see China as one big opportunity,” Levine told AFP. “The 64,000-dollar question is: where on Earth, literally, are we going to find the high-quality teachers that we need to fulfill the demand?” Shuhan Wang, executive director of the Asia Society’s Chinese Language Initiative, said between 300 to 400 schools nationwide currently offer Chinese to an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 students and many more are gearing up for it as the federal government makes funding available.

“I have been waiting for this for 20 years and I was always hopeful that finally one day the US will wake up to the fact that we really need to expand language offerings in our schools,” Wang said.

At Potomac Elementary School, near Washington, the Chinese immersion programme launched in 1996 has become so popular that about 40 children are on a waiting list to join and several of the spots available each year are given through a lottery. About 18 per cent of the students are of Asian origin.

“It’s been a hit,” said principal Linda Goldberg. “We’re in a global society and the parochial view of English first ... no longer holds.” Diana Conway said she and her husband decided to enroll their three children in the Chinese immersion programme at Potomac to expose them to a different language and culture increasingly present on the world stage.

“Whatever path my children follow, this will be terrific for them,” she said. “French is a wonderful language, it will open Europe to you and a lot of Africa but ... it won’t open any doors to you in Asia.” The 150 students in the programme at Potomac, where signs are posted in English and Chinese, spend half their school day learning mathematics and science in Mandarin and then switch to English for reading, social studies and language arts. Many of the children also get to travel to China during spring vacation.

The public school’s three Chinese teachers speak only in Mandarin to their pupils, using the blackboard, body language, facial expressions and objects to get their message across.

“It’s kind of difficult but it’s cool and people recognise you for it,” said James, a 10-year-old struggling with a math equation in one of the classrooms.

Olivia, seven, said she enjoys learning the language for another reason.

In New York, Chinese nannies are in such demand that some can command a salary of $20,000 more than an average nanny would earn.

One nanny reportedly even managed to secure a $70,000 salary after a bidding war between two families.— AFP

UK police involved in N. Ireland killings: report

BELFAST: British police colluded with paramilitaries behind at least ten murders in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, via informants who were protected from prosecution, a damning report said on Monday.

Investigators also found evidence linking police informants to ten cases of attempted murder, ten punishment shootings and 13 punishment attacks by Protestant outlaws, according to the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.

The British government, which is currently trying to persuade the Catholic-backed Sinn Fein to cooperate with police as part of efforts to restore self-rule in Belfast, admitted the report made “uncomfortable reading.”

A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said the activities by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) revealed by the report were “deeply disturbing, wrong and never should have happened.”

From 1991-2003 one Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) figure, named as Informant 1, was paid at least $157,640 including a series of “incentive payments” by his police Special Branch handlers.

Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan “established a pattern of work by certain officers within Special Branch designed to ensure that Informant 1 and his associates were protected from the law,” said the report authors.

“She also identified a series of instances when they took steps to ensure that police informants who had committed crimes were protected from police officers investigating those crimes and from other agencies within the criminal justice system.” The 160-page report was the result of a three-and-a-half-year investigation centred on activities in north Belfast, during which more than 100 serving and retired police officers were interviewed, 24 of them under caution.

As well as the murders, attempted murders and punishment attacks, the report also cited police informant links with a bomb attack in the town of Monaghan, 110 kilometres southwest of Belfast across the border in the Republic of Ireland.

The report also said informants were “babysat” by their minders to prevent them incriminating themselves during police interviews.

Sinn Fein Gerry Adams said the report was “just the tip of the iceberg,” asserting that collusion had gone on since the 1970s, and that up to 1,000 people had been killed as a result of it.

“This was a war of terror what was inflicted on Republican and nationalist people for a very long time,” he told Sky News.

Britain and Ireland are battling to persuade both sides in Northern Ireland — Catholic-backed Republicans who want union with Ireland, and Protestant Loyalists who favour keeping ties with Britain — to end their differences.

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, is resisting cooperation with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successor of the Protestant-dominated RUC.

Under the St Andrews Agreement struck last November, power-sharing in Belfast — foreseen under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but suspended for the last four years — can resume on March 26.

The British government insists it is still possible to achieve that date, but only so long as Sinn Fein agrees to cooperate fully with police in the British-run province. Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain insisted on Monday that lessons of the 1990s collusion have been learnt.

“These things — murder, collusion, cover-up, obstruction of investigations — could not happen today, not least because of the accountability mechanisms that have been put in place over recent years,” he told BBC radio.

—AFP