Unwise US policy

THERE has been a regime change in Islamabad, but the basic misunderstanding between Pakistan and the United States on how to conduct the war on terror seems not only to persist but grow. This is evident from the utterances in Islamabad and Washington by authorities both political and military. On Wednesday, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani rejected the American claim that the rules of engagement gave the American forces the right to take military action inside Pakistan. In a statement, the chief of the army staff said the rules of engagement among the allied forces were “well defined” and that military operations against the militants in a given area were the responsibility of the armed forces of that country. The statement is significant because it comes in the wake of his mid-sea meeting with US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen on an aircraft carrier where the two reportedly reached an understanding on some of the irritants that characterise their relationship. But on Wednesday, Mullen told a congressional hearing that his country would adopt “a new, more comprehensive strategy” that would cover areas on both sides of the border.

The same day, while the State Department and the White House merely spoke of the need for greater cooperation with Islamabad, the American press said the US forces would not seek permission from the Pakistani military about an attack in Fata but would merely “inform” it. The press reports claimed that in July President Bush approved orders authorising the American Special Operations forces to carry ground assaults inside Pakistan. The report quoted an American official as saying that the situation in Fata was “intolerable” and that the US military had to be “more assertive. Orders have been issued”. It is astonishing that America should fail to grasp what France has the good sense to appreciate. On Tuesday the French Foreign Office said attacks like the one by a drone in Fata on Monday caused human tragedies and undermined international efforts to fight terror.

The Taliban are a problem for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but as Gen Kayani said a successful war on terror required an indepth understanding because it was a complex issue. While force had to be used where necessary, he said, political, reconciliatory efforts could not be ignored. What the American strategists do not realise is that by flaunting their power to attack in Fata they are undermining Pakistan’s democratic government. Pakistan considers the war on terror its own war, because the Taliban are waging a rebellion against the state and have killed, mutilated and injured thousands of Pakistani men, women and children. Regrettably, Pakistan notes to its dismay that the coalition forces do not have their heart in the fight against the Taliban and are casualty-conscious. The truth about the mess across the Durand Line was highlighted by an Isaf spokesman at a presentation in London last July. He conceded that unless the present number of coalition troops was trebled, it would be impossible to stop infiltration. It is quite clear that Pakistan would not be required to ‘do more’ if both the level of commitment and the number of troops in Afghanistan were increased.

Whither woman power?

IT may be some time before the three brutalised women of Balochistan are cold in their graves and the uproar dies out. But neither the despicable brutality nor the resultant outrage, seems to have delivered the message of tolerance and sensitivity. This week in Islamabad, yet another woman’s face was doused in acid by a man, who was also her teacher, after she turned down his proposal of marriage. Small wonder then, that the results of a research conducted by the Asian Human Rights Commission cannot be refuted. It clearly states that there has been negligible change in the incidents of violence against women after the Women Protection Act 2006 came into force. This is further supported by a report issued by a local NGO which has brought staggering figures of violence against women to light — as many as 1,321 were recorded in the first quarter of 2008 with 44 in Islamabad. Another document reveals nearly 328 cases in Sindh alone. Perhaps the fault lies in isolating and highlighting a particular atrocity as opposed to pursuing a consistent collective movement — the only way to achieve the ultimate goal of a sensitised environment.

Experts and activists have long insisted that the National Commission on the Status of Women be made more independent and relevant in both urban and rural areas, and undeniably this has to be one of the most urgent and foremost priorities of the elected government. In the past, the Ministry of Women Development and an NGO had joined forces to support survivors of violence and facilitate their reinstatement in society with a joint venture that focussed on capacity-building for state-run women centres. It is hoped that the government will allow similar endeavours to flourish and not thwart them as residues of an old regime. After all, survivors of brutalities are often the most neglected aspect of a crime and their rehabilitation must be held supreme.

Second, before these atrocities begin to question the validity of the Women Protection Act, lawmakers need to ensure its large-scale implementation with stringent penalties for the perpetrators. It is also imperative that families are encouraged to register complaints and this is only possible if women police stations are operative and police stations in general are sensitised towards the treatment of women with an understanding of the excesses carried out against them.

No let-up in price increase

THE price-checking campaign initiated over a week ago by the Karachi city government has not led to a cessation of profiteering. Notwithstanding the price-control mechanisms put in place prior to Ramazan, prices are rising unabated. Since price lists continue to be ignored, the latest measure by the city government to check profiteers has been to set up 54 complaint centres in the city. These may have worked insofar as prices have come down in certain areas with a fine of Rs3.27m being collected from over 2,000 profiteers and some unscrupulous retailers being put behind bars since the beginning of the month. But this small difference in the state of affairs is not enough and much more needs to be done to bring down prices across the city.

The rising rates of essentials can be attributed to inadequate resources for implementing the price-control mechanisms. For a city divided into 18 towns with an overall population of 14 million, there are only two to four complaint centres per town. Also there are insufficient price checks as there are only 50 price magistrates in the city. However, more than that it is sad to note that the response of the consumers to these centres has been lukewarm at best. According to official estimates, on average a town receives 12 to 15 complaints of overcharging by retailers each day. The public needs to overcome its reticence to report instances of overcharging and make full use of the complaint centres in this respect. Prices have come down in some areas where complaints have been lodged. The government, on the other hand, needs to install more such centres and increase the number of price magistrates in the city. A combined effort by the people and the authorities will alleviate the problems associated with the current price hike.

OTHER VOICES - Pushto Press

Afghan genocide must be stopped

Tolafghan

AFTER the fall of the Taliban … the allies started focusing on reconstruction in Afghanistan and the people there thought they would be able to build a place for themselves in the international community.

Unfortunately … the suffering of the people increased and their hopes were thwarted. …The Afghans experienced bombings by the allied forces on their wedding ceremonies, cultural gatherings and places of social festivities. The frequency of such attacks has increased in the last seven years. Even the reports of the UN, usually controlled by the allies and Nato, state that the number of Afghan casualties is more than 8,000.

The indiscriminate deaths of women, children, the elderly and the unarmed illustrate the fact that the foreign troops are not here only for Al Qaeda — the enemy of the foreign troops. Many people are of the opinion that the foreign forces want their stay to be as extended as possible and so they intentionally commit genocide. Several questions have been raised about the activities of the allied forces. Why can’t they discriminate between the civilians and those involved in armed resistance against the allied forces? Why do the allied forces always target wedding ceremonies and social festivities? The Afghan people have yet to get answers to these questions.

If the allied forces are convinced that the Taliban are not in majority among the Afghans … why do they look for them amongst the common people? The Afghans are caught between the ferocity of the Taliban and the ruthlessness of the allied forces. If the latter continue in this manner, the Afghans might be forced to take the path of a popular uprising. …The genocide of the Afghans should be stopped immediately. — (Sep 6)

— Selected and translated by Khadim Hussain.

No room for fanaticism

Fanaticism has grown in the country to the extent that settled areas in the NWFP and even in Sindh are facing a threat of take-over by obscurantist forces.

When we call these forces “religious extremists” or “religious fundamentalists” we tend to confer a kind of legitimacy on them by associating these trends with some form of religion when the reality is to the contrary.

Islam does not allow indiscriminate killing of innocent people no matter what the reason. Means are important and ends do not justify the means. God allows us to fight against only those who fight us and does not expect us to commit excesses as Allah loves not the ones who commit excesses. Killing one innocent person is like killing entire humanity. God also says that there is no compulsion in religion. And, God allows a great deal of freedom of expression and individual action.

He could have decreed and all would have fallen in line. But, this is not the route He adopted. God Himself appealed to human reason, and sent His message through thousands of messengers for the people to understand, own, believe, and then follow His creed. The fact that a whole lot of sinners thrive on earth shows that God gives people ample time, space and opportunity to rectify their behaviour before they are judged by Him. And, no one is allowed to take one’s own life no matter what. Life is a gift from God to whom the soul is destined to return only at a time of His choosing. No freedom of choice is allowed to human beings in this respect by the Creator.

These are some of the religious guidelines regarding human life and respect for it. Religious teachings must be followed, and we must be tolerant and wise instead of attempting to enforce our own worldview through brute force at the expense of innocent lives. According to the fundamentals of the faith, no physical offence should be done, no one should be harmed indiscriminately, and certainly no suicides.

An Islamic society is based on honesty, integrity, justice, equity, fair play and equal opportunity for all. Thus applied, Islam calls for an earnest effort made in the way of God to establish a benevolent society for His people to benefit from. Emphasis is required on good, polite behaviour, codes of public conduct and community, and national decision-making that would steer society in the desirable direction instead of expanding one’s own zone of influence through sheer terror.

Islam places great emphasis on knowledge acquisition and its valuable dissemination for a favourable impact on society. The first word of the first revelation sent to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) was Iqra, that is, ‘read’. Nowhere did God ever enjoin only the men to read and not the women. Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in his famous saying, “Acquire knowledge even if you have to travel to China,” does not discriminate between men and women. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge would then be the pursuit of the religious.

Burning down girls’ schools and depriving half the population of the opportunity to gain knowledge is not only extremism but irreligious conduct. It is fanaticism of the kind of shab-khoon, called terror in modern parlance.

In olden days, shab-khoon was a way to get people unawares while they slept at night, and shed their blood. The practice was considered highly reprehensible even in times when the world had not developed much scientifically and technologically, because it was unjust terror unleashed on a people who could not defend themselves.

Like all monopolies, any effort to establish a monopoly of a certain shade of religion over the people is equally bad. It generates negative spillovers. There is a need to dissociate oneself from practices based on brute force so that there is a clearer understanding of the tenets of Islam. This is necessary to deny any implicit sympathy that some, who call themselves religious-minded, may have for terror. The erroneous worldview must lose support amongst pockets of the population, poorest of the poor, as we see today.

Due emphasis should be laid on the economic prosperity of the community and on poverty alleviation that Islam so stresses. This can be done through better understanding of the principles of economic justice and equity enshrined in the faith which aim at ensuring a life of dignity for all. The uplifting principles of Islam need wider dissemination through the education system so that we attain the twin goals of ridding society of violence as well as poverty.

Income poverty stems from a poverty of knowledge, poverty of a mistaken belief system, poverty of values and poverty of intellect. All this requires a holistic knowledge-based view of what life is, what its purpose is, and how it should be lived.

Investment in water

COUNTRIES across the world will have to dramatically increase investment in dams, pipes and other water infrastructure to avoid widespread flooding, drought and disease even before climate change accelerates these problems, experts have warned.

Investment needs to be at least doubled from the current level of $80bn a year, an international congress was told this week, and one leading authority said spending needed to rise to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product just “to be able to cope with the current climate” — one thousand times the current level.

The warnings follow a summer of dramatic events, from hurricane flooding in the Caribbean and the east coast of America to desperate measures in drought-stricken Mediterranean countries, including importing water by ship.

Rich nations suffer huge under-investment, but the threat of poor infrastructure to populations in developing countries is even greater, said Dr Olcay Unver, director of the United Nations’ Global Water Assessment Unit.

So serious is the problem that next year the UN’s World Water Assessment Report will make one of its main messages the need for investment to “accelerate substantially”, said Unver.

“You can’t justify the deaths of so many children because of lack of infrastructure or lost productive time of people [who are] intellectually or physically incapacitated because of simple lack of access to safe water or sanitation,” he added. Dr Glen Daigger, senior vice-president of the International Water Association, said there was growing evidence that spending on clean water and sanitation was the single greatest contribution to reducing disease and death.

The UN has identified dams for hydropower and irrigation as leading drivers of sustainable economic growth in developing countries. “Water and sanitation is clearly a better investment than medical intervention, but it’s not sexy,” added Daigger.

Last year the World Bank called for investment in water infrastructure to more than double from $80bn to $180bn over the next 20-25 years to cope with population growth and climate change, which are expected to leave about four billion people living in “water stress” areas —deemed to have insufficient water to meet daily needs. Conditions would be particularly severe in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, said the bank. Water pollution and the threat to coastal areas of erosion, sea level rise and storm surges are also growing concerns.

However, experts meeting at the IWA conference of 2,700 water professionals in Vienna suggested the true scale of the problem could be much higher.

Prof Pavel Kabat, one of the lead authors of the water chapter in last year’s report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said investment needed to rise to 1.5 per cent of GDP for 20 years, just to cope with existing population demand and climate variability. Africa, the region with the greatest lack of infrastructure, would have to spend its entire forecast GDP growth for more than half a century even to reach relatively modest levels of water storage and supply; and even Europe would have to triple spending.

Failure to invest would mean “we’d have more recurrent floods and droughts because our systems are not able to take the magnitude and frequency of water we’re witnessing,” he said. It would also undermine other development spending in poorer nations, said Kabat, citing the example of Kenya, where he said two extreme years of wet and dry in the 1990s destroyed 40 per cent of the country’s wealth.

“If these things are not in place we can keep on building schools but we’re not doing the right thing,” he added.

Earlier this year the American Society of Civil Engineers said the US needed to spend $1.6tn over five years to repair all its crumbling infrastructure, and gave the worst assessment of all to the water sector.

—The Guardian, London