| April 08, 2008 | Tuesday | Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1429 |
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
Two premiers, two paths
Triumph of the truth
A ray of hope
Justice denied to the Baloch
The haves and the have-nots?
KU teacher’s manhandling
Dead fish
Where is my graduate degree?
Puppets
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
PAKISTAN has failed in protecting Frontier and tribal areas. Taking a cursory look of the overall condition of the Frontier and Fata areas, it seems that Pakistan in more than 50 years has failed to ensure security, economic development, quality educational institutions, employment and an industrial network in Fata and the NWFP. The conditions of Fata and the NWFP are getting worse day by day and life of the common man is just hell there.
Parachinar, considered the Switzerland of Pakistan, was visited by the former prime ministers of Pakistan, Z.A Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. The educational institutions are closed there and the upcoming matriculation examinations will not be held this year due to unrest in the area.
Basic daily food requirements are not available. The main Thal-Peshawar Road which leads to Parachinar has remained closed for the last three months. When opened for one day, the local militants attack and freely kill and behead the passengers. From the last one year till now, more than 100 innocent people have lost their lives on this road at the hands of terrorists.
The main problem is that Parachinar is the only area in Fata where Shia Muslims live. It is surrounded by militants who either directly or indirectly are involved in militant activities. There is no law and order and the area does not seem to be part of Pakistan. One can easily say that the Pakistan government has failed to protect its frontiers and could not bring Fata in the mainstream of the country.
Z. A. Bhutto in his speech at Parachinar had praised the beauty, talent and fertile lands of Parachinar and promised: “I will make Parachinar a piece of Heaven”.
Afterwards, the Zia regime give the region a culture of war and terror and sectarianism. He pushed this beautiful area through ongoing sectarian clashes. From the time of Zia’s regime till now, thousands of people from both sides have lost their lives, many becoming homeless and disabled.
Such black days ended when the golden days of Benazir Bhutto came. She as prime minister visited Parachinar, had women colleges opened and promised that she would improve the living standard of the people of this area. The unemployed were given jobs, roads were paved and extended, and a broadcasting station was opened and many more things were done.
Over three months ago, when sectarian clashes began in Parachinar again, I sent a comprehensive report on Parachinar to Ms Bhutto through Sherry Rehman and Farzana Raja. She personally showed great grief and promised that after coming to power she would change the condition of Parachinar.
Today Parachinar is burning: daily bodies of more than five beheaded persons reach Parachinar. The situation of Parachinar is getting worse day by day and so is the life of all people living there. It’s a matter of great sorrow and shock that Pakistan, in spite of bringing Fata into the mainstream of the country, has been pushed into fighting a continuous war and facing terror.
The new prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and the PPP co-chairmam, Asif Ali Zardari, are requested to help us as the last government could not heal our wounds. Z. A. Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto always wanted Parachinar to be a piece of heaven while now it is piece of hell.
RIAZ ALI TOORI
Malana village, Parachinar
OUR new prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, announced some measures to bring down the government’s expenses, right after winning the vote of confidence. These include a reduction in expenditure on the PM’s house by 40 per cent, ministers’ use of cars having no more than a 1600 cc engine and their travelling in the economy plus class (March 30).
This must be contrasted with what the caretaker prime minister had been doing. According to a report in a section of the media (March 27), Mohammedmian Soomro recently got an order placed for not one or two but a full five Augusta Westland helicopters costing a hefty $65 million, for the purpose of VVIP movement.
Some of the facts of this case are quite intriguing. This project was being worked on by the previous prime minister Shaukat Aziz. After taking over as a caretaker PM, Mr Soomro had initially intervened to scrap the whole thing. But then he suddenly asked the cabinet division to again put up a proposal, which he approved immediately. When the finance ministry objected on the grounds of paucity of funds, he reportedly came down hard on it and pressed it to place the order during his tenure.
Consequently, the letter of credit was opened by providing a 7.5 per cent down payment and the new government will not be able to cancel the deal even if it wants to. This raises a number of questions such as: what was the urgency of doing this in undue haste? Why did he reverse his own decision? Or, who had asked him to intervene personally to force the finance ministry to arrange the money for the L/C?
In his article, ‘Where does Pakistan stand today?’ (March 23 supplement), Syed Rashid Husain has noted that with the crude oil prices touching new heights, our prime ministers from Jamali to Mohammedmian Soomro have repeatedly requested Riyadh to restore the ‘deferred payment’ facility.
He says: Only recently, when the caretaker prime minister … visited Saudi Arabia, in the wake of high global crude prices and the growing distortions in the balance of payments of the country, he reportedly again requested the Saudi leadership to restore the facility…. The recent decision to raise petrol and diesel prices was apparently made only after the request was turned down by Riyadh.
Meanwhile, the PPP co-chairman has pointed out that foreign loans had risen from $30 billion to $42 billion and the domestic loans had also touched a historic high (March 31). Besides that, it’s been said Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have plans to visit Saudi Arabia to seek help in easing our economic woes.
Therefore, with all this background, would Mr Soomro care to tell the nation of the need to place this order?
It may also be recalled that the expenditure on the president’s house as well as on the parliament has gone up by nearly five times since 1999. Premier Gilani is requested to take a look into all the wasteful spending wherever it exists.
IBNE INAYAT
Karachi
IT was a treat to watch News Night on the BBC on March 29. Of the events being discussed, most interesting was invasion of Iraq. Theme was flawed and fabricated intelligence. The man blamed was an Iraqi national code-named ‘Covered Ball’. This man left Iraq in 1995 and sought asylum in Germany.
The coverage and discussions included clippings from statements by George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell. Speeches for invasion of Iraq and subsequent acceptance of the flawed intelligence were shown. When the anchorman grilled a senior staff officer from the US State Department about reliability of one man’s evidence and German intelligence, he could not help saying: “That was a horrible hoax”.
With this background let us read the latest from Time’s issue, vol. 171, wherein M. Dick Cheney, when told that two-thirds of the American people do not support Iraq war, stated that public opinion polls do not determine the conduct of the war. Add to this the statement by an unknown American that freedom has been forfeited in a country which was once upon a time beacon for the rest of the world.
Iraq war was unauthorised by the United Nations and uncalled-for by any of regulation of international law. Thank God the Americans are discovering the folly of their leaders belatedly. In a different direction but related to the truth and the events of 9/11 are a few questions which have bothered me for many years.
a. How could the American CIA retrieve intact passports of Saudi nationals from the inferno that World Trade Centre became? Why nobody registered the denial by Saudi nationals who were not even present in the US.
b. It is now opined by some Americans that the individuals who have been incriminated in the hijacking of the planes on that day could not even drive a plane on the tarmac in a straight line.
c. How could perfect coordination with precision and accuracy be achieved for four aeroplanes by an organisation without ground support?
d. Was not Al Qaeda an appendage of American CIA at one point of time?
One great triumph of the truth is that it always surfaces. One day I am sure it would be known what really caused the events of 9/11. In case that too is found as a hoax, that would be the ‘Hoax of the Millennium’. May God help the American people.
PROF KHALID HASSAN MAHMOOD
Karachi
AFTER eight years of dictatorship, one can have a sigh of relief with the emergence of a new democratic process in the country. Most importantly, all the political parties of the country are a part of this process expect the PML (Q), which has visibly proven to have nothing to do with democracy as it emerged under the shadow of dictatorship. It will spill down with the impending departure of President Musharraf.
The coalition of the PPP and the PML (N), once political rivals, is a good omen for democracy and development of the country. It will also discourage political vendetta. The country is passing through a testing time, so the need of the hour demands unity among all segments of society to tackle issues confronting the country in the form of terrorism, instability and poverty.
Now the onus is on the leadership of the country to take the country out of all these miseries. If this opportunity and mandate of the people will be abused by the parties, then it will have severe repercussions for the country and will also exaggerate the already hostile situation in the country.
FARRUKH SHAHZAD
Australia
IT is very sad to see the former chief minister of Balochistan, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, being treated in a draconian manner. It has almost been two years since he was arrested on a charge of detaining two personnel of the Military Intelligence who were harassing his children on their way to school.
Akhtar Mengal did what probably any father would do to protect his children and had held the men to inquire as to why they were following his children. This act was seen as something so terrible that the ATC awarded 45 years’ imprisonment to the two bodyguards of Akhtar Mengal.
His trial has not even begun despite being in jail for almost two years although, according to my knowledge, cases in the ATC are wrapped up in seven weeks.
A thought comes to mind: if detaining MI personnel would land a person in the cellar for 45 years, then what about the thousands of Baloch men who were detained for nine to 10 months and some who are still languishing in the military camps? Who is going to compensate them and how?
WASHANE
Karachi
THIS is apropos of Sumyra Kamal’s letter (March 30) in which she deplores the callous attitude of a certain private hospital for not allowing servants/maids to accompany their employers inside their premises. However, there is another perspective from which this incident can be seen which gives a very interesting picture of our so called society of equal opportunities.
I work in the emergency department of a prestigious Karachi hospital where the appalling behaviour of the so called elite makes one wonder whether culture and money can be so mutually exclusive. These elite come with an attitude that they should be given special treatment, seen before their turn, that the staff ought to fall over themselves to attend them, indeed as if it is the hospital staff’s fault that they fell sick in the first place. What is really amusing is that these individuals think that a fake English accent and arrogance would endear them to the harassed hospital staff.
In such situations, the limited resources of the hospital in terms of staff and amenities are seriously compromised by the retinue of servants and maids which are brought in by our elite. The last thing you need in a busy, worked off its feet emergency department is servants squatting all over the floor, for their ‘kind’ employers continue their discriminatory attitude against their servants on the hospital premises.
Not only are they to look after their ailing elderly parents and children but also to do the dirty work regarding bodily fluids and dressing up. In some cases the servants are even required to give blood and platelets. Such people are reluctant to even come near their own relatives, let alone touch their own flesh and blood.
Imagine my horror when I found an elderly, demented lady who could only be touched by her daughters after they had donned gloves. Most of them insist that their patients should be admitted in the hospital for the simple reason that they don’t want to take responsibility of caring for them at home.
What has also been noticed is that most of these families come from a particular housing society of this city to which we laughingly refer as the ‘other side of the tracks’. In fact, the hypothesis that people from these areas are going to misbehave is so strong that I feel embarrassed to tell my staff that I reside in the same vicinity, because it’s a foregone conclusion that ‘Defence Wallay’ and misbehaviour go together.
Regarding Ms Sumyra’s anguish, I’m sure the hospital would gladly treat the maid, if her noble minded ‘Baji’ would foot the bill. As for the poor illiterate guard, himself a have not of society, he could not have discerned the difference between employer and ‘nauker’ if they had both been dressed alike and walked in together rather than the maid a ‘safe’ distance behind the Baji. As it were, his attitude showed that how with a little bit of power one could be more haughty than the haughty themselves.
Same could be said about the position of various elite clubs/institutions, reference to some of which have appeared in this paper in the past. There too if the employers insist that their servants should be allowed to accompany them inside, it is not for the servants’ feelings but for their own convenience. Their charity stops there, as often these maids are seen sitting on the floor, watching while the family eats, and drinks and enjoys itself. The clubs’ administration would have no objection if the maid sits with the family on the same table.
As some one said institutions are the DNA of a society and are truly reflective of the value it places on various aspects of human life and dealings. At the national level there is a need to uphold and cooperate with the working of good institutions whose rules and regulations have been made with a lot of deliberation and painstaking research.
DR. H. WASEEM
Karachi
THIS refers to the ugly incident of manhandling of a scholar of Karachi University, Dr Riaz Ahmed, by the Rangers (‘Rangers beat up KU teacher’, April 1). Dr Ahmed has three distinctions: first, he is one of the two academics of Karachi University having PhD from the prestigious Cambridge University.
Second, Dr Ahmed is an outstanding teacher and researcher of his department, Applied Chemistry.
Third, and more significant, Dr Ahmed is an untiring campaigner of human rights, especially ‘the freedom of expression’, exercised by academics.
When four of us were twice charge-sheeted and ultimately served the final show-cause notice for dismissal from our jobs by the army-appointed retired bureaucrat vice-chancellor of Sindh University, Dr Ahmed unflinchingly stood by us and wrote a number of letters and organised corner meetings in our support.
When I opposed the four-year bachelors degree programme imposed by the HEC on the poor students of Pakistan, and was stigmatised by the Sindh University authorities and their stooges, Dr Ahmed stood by me. When Agha Nasir Hussain and his three colleagues challenged the authoritarian style of the retired brigadier-turned-vice chancellor of Balochistan University, who ultimately dismissed them, Dr Riaz Ahmed supported them in their difficult hours.
Thus, the humiliation of Dr Ahmed is the collective humiliation of the academic community of Pakistan. I strongly condemn it. And urge the new government to punish the culprits and withdraw the Rangers from all university campuses all over the country.
DR MEHTAB ALI SHAH
Sindh University, Jamshoro
I FIND it incredulous and annoying that KPT officials, who incidentally we do not know who they are, issue statements as to the causes of the huge loss of marine life at Karachi’s doorsteps, without as much as lifting a finger. No research, no discussions with the environmentalists or oceanographers, no tests , absolutely nothing is done and yet positive and conclusive answers are heaved overboard at us.
It is time the newly-formed government took these incumbent KPT officials to task and made them accountable for what happens at and on our sea shores. Any official found to be issuing false statements should be relived of his job. We, the people, have the right to know the facts. The buck has to stop somewhere. Or am I reaching too far in the deep sea?
AYAZ SHAIKHZADEH
Switzerland
IT is a good time for all of us that the University of Punjab is playing a constructive role in ensuring a graduate assembly.
Recently some reliable source told me that my degree had been issued to a politician because of the condition that a MNA/MPA/nazim should be a graduate. The performance of the degree cell is praiseworthy as it has rendered a national service.
I should consider myself fortunate that my degree for BA is in the use of a politician. He is perhaps more needy than me.
I had applied for the same vide Punjab University’s receipt No.5957, dated 18-5-2004, and subsequently made various visits to the Degree Cell but so far I have failed to obtain my B.A. degree. I have been told by the Degree Cell that someone from the Governor’s House had taken away my original degree. Either it is the misery of fate or the corrupt mafia that sold my 14 academic years to one of them who were supposed to show a graduate degree certificate for eligibility in the election.
I am being convinced to apply for a duplicate degree. Why should I not get my original degree for which I spent 14 years?
ASHRAF ALI
Islamabad
REFERRING to the news item, ‘Puppets tell the story of Pakistan’ (April 6), one has no objection to puppets telling the story of the unfortunate country.
However, one only hopes that in the days to come ‘puppets’ don’t make the story of Pakistan, as they did in the past.
DAUD MALIK
Rawalpindi
You can also send letters to the Editor
Just send your message to the following address: letters@dawn.com
Make sure you include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, and in the case of Pakistan your day-time telephone number.
