Hasba bill: time to act

THE passage of the revised version of the Hasba bill by the NWFP Assembly on Monday raises a question or two which are of profound significance for the entire country. Even though confined to the NWFP and subject to gubernatorial assent, the bill seeks to set up a department and a police force whose duty it will be to enforce Islamic morality. By appointing ombudsmen at various levels of government to “enforce virtue” and “prohibit vice”, it establishes what looks like a parallel judicial system in a province (and a country) where three sets of laws — the British-crafted criminal procedure code, the ‘Islamic’ Hudood ordinances, and the various martial law regulations which have been given constitutional cover — already exist. The question is: what sort of message is an elected government giving to its constituents and the country at large? If the MMA thinks it has a duty to serve the people who have voted it to power, then it must ask itself in what way the Hasba bill promotes the people’s interests and aims at lifting them out of the poverty-ridden life which has been their lot for long. In fact, the first duty of any Islamic government is to work for the creation of an egalitarian society free from want. The Hasba bill does not set the MMA government’s course in that direction.

Looking back at the MMA’s tenure as a ruling party, one notes with regret that, notwithstanding its Islamic claims and credentials, it has not put in place a system that aims at public good in the widest sense of the term. Public good here means ending poverty and unemployment, spreading education for both sexes, building hospitals, schools and colleges, taking electricity to the remote areas, giving land to the tiller and in general adopting a development strategy that brings to the people of the NWFP the benefits of modern science and technology. As against this, the Hasba officials’ duty will be to ensure that children honour parental wishes. How precisely this objective is

to be achieved defies an answer. Also, to give a liberal look to the bill, it pledges to ensure women’s rights and discourage honour killings and Swara. But the people have not forgotten that the only manifestation of the MMA’s respect for women’s rights was when its party zealots went about defacing women’s faces on billboards.

One hopes that the governor and the federal government will use their constitutional powers to block the bill which in essence violates one of Islam’s fundamental principles by attempting to create a hierarchical priesthood for controlling the people’s daily lives. It is amazing how the atheist communists with their apparatchiks and the MMA with the Hasba brigade seem to agree on a common methodology for ensuring absolute conformity. Unfortunately, the generals ruling Pakistan do not seem to admit their guilt in foisting on us parties and groups pledged to Talibanisation. The reason for the MMA’s electoral victory in 2002 was the military’s decision to queer the pitch for the PPP and PML, and unless there is evidence to the contrary, one has the troubling feeling that things may not be any better next year. Talibanism is knocking on the door, and it is the duty of all those who do not wish to see Islam become an instrument of tyranny in the hands of priests to come forward to resist this law that defies political common sense.

Focusing on water

THE UNDP’s annual report, which focuses on the water crisis, reveals some disturbing facts. More than one billion people in the world are denied the right to clean water and 2.6 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. As a result, 1.8 million children die of diarrhoea every year. Is the problem to be attributed to a scarcity of this vital natural resource on which human life depends? The report rejects this view and traces the water crisis to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships as well as flawed water management policies. If one has to establish the truth of this contention one has only to look at Pakistan where, according to the report, 91 per cent of the people have sustained access to an improved water source, while 59 per cent have sanitation facilities. While these data are questionable — depends on how one interprets the term ‘improved water source’ — we also know that Pakistan could have done better with an efficient water management system.

The UNDP’s report sets the minimum threshold for water needs at 20 litres a day. The fact is that in Pakistan, apart from a very small elite, the people are required to subsist on much less water than that. Moreover, the water supplied in even big cities is not always potable. True, over the years the water resources have been shrinking and the country suffers from a water shortage. But it is also known that with better management and use of technology it is possible to raise the availability of this precious resource. This has not been done because our water policies have been essentially flawed. The absence of long-term planning, failure to allocate sufficient funds for this sector, corruption and a lack of political will have contributed to our failure to provide clean and sufficient water to the common man. Sanitation has also been neglected. How else would one describe the policy of a government that spends 47 times more on defence than on water development? Since the rich, who have the resources and are also powerful, can afford to buy water for their homes, they are not concerned about the policies that are adopted. As for the poor, since they do not have the political clout to change the direction of the government’s policies, they suffer in silence.

Under the smog

AS winter sets in, Lahore’s notorious smog is back with a vengeance to choke the city’s air with suspended, toxic particles. A thick, dark film of pollutants hovers over the city, raising allergy levels, spreading seasonal illnesses like influenza and causing respiratory disorders. The urban poor, the children and senior citizens face a greater risk of contracting pneumonia, bronchitis and infectious diseases. How the once harmless fog that came to romantically envelope the city for a couple of weeks every winter has transformed into a monstrous smog is a story of environmental degradation brought on by lopsided development in recent years. The smog now is so bad that it brings tears to your eyes as you venture out and breathe in the fumes. The winter phenomenon is caused by warm air taking much longer to lift and dissipate into the upper, cooler atmosphere. The problem can last for weeks as the dry spell with little breeze continues.

Two years ago, the Punjab government had announced plans to follow the example of Delhi to reduce the levels of air pollution by replacing all two-stroke vehicles and diesel-powered public transport with those run on eco-friendly CNG. The deadline set for banning the plying of all high-emission vehicles in Lahore was December 31, 2006, which cannot be met because only negligible progress has been made in replacing the polluting vehicles. Environmentalists say that even if all of the city’s 1.5 million vehicles were to run on CNG, there remained little hope of effectively addressing the problem over the longer term. Pollution caused by hundreds of industrial units set up over the past two decades is yet to be addressed. Unless a comprehensive environment protection programme is put in place, Lahore — and other big cities — will continue to suffer from rising environmental degradation.

US nightmare: interrupted, but not over

SHORTLY after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and surrounding regions last year, George W. Bush felt obliged to emerge from his comfort zone and tour the affected areas. By then it was already becoming clear that the plight of nature’s victims had been exacerbated by the appalling inadequacy of rescue efforts.

The federal agency responsible for this crucial work had, under Bush, been subsumed into the Department of Homeland Security and was headed by Mike Brown, a Bush crony with a long record of dubious competence.

In a speech during a stopover in Mobile, Alabama, Bush glanced at the agency’s director and declared: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Ten days later, Brown was forced to resign.

I recall noting at the time that on a September morning in 2001, Bush had been caught napping while disaster struck in New York and Washington. For several minutes after being informed about what was happening at the World Trade Centre, an impassive-looking president kept listening to a story called ‘My Pet Goat’ at an elementary school in Florida.

Brown’s post-Katrina exit in 2005 was calculated to take the sting out of widespread criticism of the federal government’s handling of the hurricane’s aftermath, and it seemed the dire Bush presidency could be summed up as a four-year journey from ‘My Pet Goat’ to ‘My Pet Scapegoat’. Who could have guessed that there would be a blockbuster sequel in store?

Less than a week before election day, Bush told news agencies that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were both “doing fantastic jobs”. Once the election results were in, Rumsfeld was out. Cheney, unfortunately, appears to be going nowhere for the time being. He nonchalantly went hunting on election day, but evidently didn’t take Rumsfeld or Bush with him.

‘My Pet Scapegoat II’ might have been an apt title for the Rumsfeld episode, except for the fact that, as a leading proponent and architect of the aggression against Iraq, he doesn’t strictly qualify as a scapegoat — although there can be little question that his exit is intended to take some of the heat off the Bush administration. White Hawk Down might, in the event, be more fitting.

And chances are we won’t have to wait until next year for the follow-up: with little prospect of congressional ratification, John Bolton is unlikely to retain his job as the US ambassador to the United Nations beyond December 31. Although the upper house will remain in Republican hands until the end of the year, crucial senators from both parties have suggested there would be little point in reconsidering Bolton’s nomination. The White House is standing by the ambassador, hailing him as a consensus-builder — an aspect that was conspicuously on display in the Security Council last Saturday as Bolton vetoed a resolution critical of the carnage Israel is causing in Gaza.

On the other hand, it is unlikely that Robert Gates, who has been nominated to succeed Rumsfeld as defence secretary, will face too much trouble during confirmation hearings, even though he does have a past that deserves scrutiny. As a deputy director of the CIA, he was in charge of sharing intelligence with Saddam Hussein’s regime during the Iran-Iraq war. In the late 1980s, he was nominated by Ronald Reagan as head of the CIA, but Congress baulked at the idea in the face of strong suspicions of his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair (which makes it particularly ironic that his return to the limelight coincided with Daniel Ortega’s victory in the Nicaraguan presidential election).

When Reagan’s successor, George Bush the Elder, re-nominated him as CIA director in 1991, Congress heard plenty of evidence that Gates had been involved in skewing intelligence about the Soviet Union in order to align it more closely with his own ideological inclinations and those of his political masters. The serious risks associated with that tendency have, of course, been amply illustrated in the context of Iraq. But Gates will get an easy ride this time around, if only because he is not Rumsfeld. Fortunately, he appears to realise that Iraq is a mess of America’s own making, and has hitherto preferred the idea of negotiations rather than a confrontation with Iran.

Until his nomination, Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and ex-congressman Lee Hamilton. The group, whose members met George W. Bush this week, is expected to come up with proposals on a different strategy on Iraq early next month. Leaks suggest these include a plea for coordination, rather than confrontation, with Syria and Iran. There have, separately, been calls for a regional conference in the Dayton mould. In meetings with Democratic leaders, a visibly chastened Bush has declared himself to be amenable to bipartisanship.

The president, however, is probably aware that the Democrats don’t really have a plan: although their resounding success in last week’s elections was primarily based on opposition to the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, hardly any of them has articulated a clear alternative. Much like the White House, they are waiting to take their cue from the Baker group’s report. The trouble is, the latter’s recommendations are hardly likely to measure up to expectations. The group is being counted upon to come up with a miracle: a plan whereby the US can extricate itself from Iraq with a modicum of dignity, preferably without leaving behind a bloody mess.

That is impossible. It hasn’t really been possible since the beginning of the invasion. In remarks made after his resignation was announced, Rumsfeld declared: “The first war of the 21st century ... is not well known, it was not well understood. It is complex for people to comprehend.” That’s only true to extent that, as most US generals have long been aware, he was personally never able to comprehend what was going on. But then, one could hardly have expected him to acknowledge the one thing about the war that has been painfully clear from the outset: that it should never have been waged in the first place.

The schadenfreude that greeted last week’s events in the US isn’t misplaced. Within the limitations of American-style democracy, an important point has been made. But there are no sound reasons to allow the initial excitement and relief to give way to a sustained optimism.

The Democrats did indeed do better than many analysts suspected they would: they will comfortably control the next House of Representatives, and have managed, against the odds, to gain an edge in the Senate with the support of two independents: one of them is Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the first socialist senator in US history; the other is the far-right, pro-war Joe Lieberman. The Democratic intake includes a sizeable proportion of social conservatives, who may well have been put up as candidates precisely for that reason, in the hope that their opposition to abortion and gun control would help to push them across the line. Perhaps it did: the Democrats improved their share of the Catholic and evangelical votes. But where exactly does that leave the United States?

Not particularly far removed, it would seem, from the spot where it stood on the day before the elections. It is significant, of course, that a majority of voters paid no heed to Bush’s absurd insinuation that a Democratic victory would be a victory for the terrorists, thereby dealing a possibly decisive blow to Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority. It is at least equally significant that such a bitterly contested election attracted a turnout of little more than 40 per cent, which is considered high by mid-term standards. I haven’t come across any breast-beating in the American press over this dismal statistic, which betrays a serious democracy deficit. Nor do any media organs appear to have shown the slightest inclination towards investigating why nearly 60 per cent of the electorate couldn’t be bothered to vote. Is cynicism the primary motivating factor for the self-disenfranchised, or is it apathy? Could it be ignorance?

Some commentators have described the Democratic tide as a triumph for the Left, but it can only seem that way from an extreme Right point of view. Nancy Pelosi, the next speaker of the House of Representatives — and the first woman to reach that position, which puts her two heartbeats away from the presidency — recognises that the American presence in Iraq is a pointless provocation, but her power to compel a drastic change of course is limited, while her reputation as a San Francisco liberal is somewhat exaggerated.

Other senior Democrats have called for troop withdrawals to begin within the next few months, even as neo-con ideologues — increasingly disenchanted with the Bush administration for its inability to deliver free markets and a US-friendly democracy via bullets, bombs and missiles — continue to call for increased military strength as a means of exterminating the dogged Iraqi resistance.

Yes, there is cause for rejoicing, but let it be tempered by the realistic recognition that, in all probability, the question of what to do about Iraq will still be up in the air by the time the next presidential election rolls around in 2008. Nor is there any guarantee that the US will indeed choose jaw-jaw over war-war as the ideal means of dealing with Iran. And for the besieged Palestinians of Gaza there can be little comfort in the knowledge that the Democrats, if anything, are even more hide-bound than the Republicans in their obsequiousness towards Israel.

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