IDPs and dissent
Friday, March 27, 2009
The clash between displaced persons from Bajaur and other northern areas protesting the lack of facilities at the Jalozai Camp near Nowshera where some 3,000 are housed, once more draws attention to the plight of these persons. Some 1,500 protesters also blocked the road, leading to action by the police using teargas and batons. It has been reported that in response, some persons from the crowd began firing back, with one person killed and several others injured. This is not the first protest of its kind at camps housing displaced persons. Several months ago, the death of a child and injuries to another due to a fire that set alight tents had triggered a similar, violent protest. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) have also refused an offer from the Bajaur administration to return there until complete peace has been restored in the area and Sharia enforced.
Terrible conditions prevail in many areas where they have been housed. They also claim they have been given no form of compensation for the losses of home, land and livelihood caused by the war being fought in and around their home villages. What authorities seem not to realise is that in order to win the war against terror in the longer term, they need the support and backing of ordinary people. Some of the IDPs have horrific stories to tell of sufferings caused by the raging conflict. Their contact with the government at camps established for them should have served as an opportunity to persuade them that the state could offer them far more than the militants; that it cared about their well-being and wanted to build a safe future for them and their children by rescuing them from lives led in poverty. This, sadly, has not happened. Indeed the brutal encounter with the police in Nowshera has only added to the perception that the state is an uncaring one, unconcerned about the plight of people who have already suffered so much. This will in the longer term have an extremely negative impact on the overall situation in tribal areas where fighting rages on. Ordinary people who live here have become caught in a vice-like grip between militants and troops. They see, for the most part, both forces as enemies. It is only if they can be persuaded to see the state of Pakistan in a friendlier light that this can change. The opportunity to help them see it as such has, for the present, been lost. The consequences of this failure will become clearer only in the days ahead.
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Head-hunting
Friday, March 27, 2009
Hiding in plain view is something that occurs in nature all the time – creatures camouflage themselves either for protection from a predator – no pun intended – or as predators in hiding and waiting for prey. We have a fine example of the technique here amongst us, a certain Mr Baitullah Mehsud, who is visible to millions via the medium of television, but apparently invisible to those agencies searching so diligently for him. So visible is he that he recently gave a press conference that was attended by numerous print and electronic media journalists who had presumably arrived at his location by conventional means; and were not tele-ported in as we see travellers move around space and time in science-fiction films. All these media persons were presumably in possession of that essential adjunct to modern life – a mobile phone. Mobile phones emit tracking signals, signals which are regularly followed by intelligence-gathering agencies when they are hunting for the bad guys. Journalists are chatterboxes by nature – surely one of them must have made a call either from Mehsud's location or en-route to it? No? It stretches our credulity far beyond snapping point that no agency with an interest in the whereabouts of Mr Mehsud was apparently aware of this tête-à-tête. Had it simply escaped their notice, busy as they are with so many other things? Or did it just happen that they were distracted momentarily and looked in another direction?
The mystery of the invisible Mehsud is all the more perplexing when viewed in the light of the generous bounty recently offered by the American government for his capture. The United States has offered $5 million for information leading to the capture or death of Baitullah Mehsud. The US has offered large cash rewards for terrorism suspects in the past, but until recently they regarded Mehsud mainly as a threat to Pakistan and unworthy of their attention. Previous US drone attacks had avoided targeting Mehsud's hideouts but this changed earlier this month when US drones also began to target Mehsud and his men. The US State Department has identified Mehsud as a key leader of the Pakistani Taliban and an Al Qaeda 'facilitator' in South Waziristan. He is also fingered as a suspect in the killing of Benazir Bhutto and the Marriott bombing, plus he has made no bones about his intention of attacking the US if he can – and he probably can. All of this should qualify him for an early visit by Mr Predator and Mrs Hellfire -- if only he can be found, that is. It should not be difficult to find Baitullah Mehsud, any number of media persons knows where he is and so do others. Five million dollars is a lot of money and head-hunting via a bounty has loosened tongues in the past, so the technique is proven and the five million is peanuts as far as the US is concerned. It remains to be seen just how long hiding in plain view is an option for the elusive Mr Mehsud.
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No right to childhood
Friday, March 27, 2009
Despite the presence of laws that ban it, child marriages continue across the country. Most cases take place in Sindh with one of the latest emerging from a village near Jacobabad, where a policeman rather unusually intervened to halt the marriage of a seven-year-old to a man nearly four times her age. Her mother had sold the child to pay medical bills for her sick husband. Other little girls are of course not as fortunate. Reports of child marriages come in from many places, particularly Sindh and southern Punjab. There is evidence that growing poverty plays a part in the continuation of the practice, with impoverished parents sometimes feeling they have no options but to sell off daughters to pay debts or simply to survive. Often, the buyers are relatively elderly men.
There is, however, another reason that lies beyond poverty for the practice. The failure to punish those who play a part in arranging child marriages is a key factor. The impunity they enjoy encourages others to commit similar crimes. There are, unfortunately, too few policemen willing to step in and ensure a child is not robbed of her right to childhood or sold into a life that almost invariably brings immense hardship and often a risk to life posed by early pregnancy. The young constable who took so bold a stand to save a girl in his area needs to be applauded. We must also hope others will emulate his action and adopt it as a precedent. Only such initiatives from those on the ground can bring an end to an evil practice and ensure the law assumes meaning that expands beyond the sheets of paper it is written out on.