Terror and Punjab
Friday, 17 Apr, 2009
THE New York Times is not the first one to underline the growing militant threat inside Punjab. This has been a constant refrain. For instance, last year Frontier Governor Owais Ghani said in Lahore that terror in Fata and parts of the NWFP had links with groups in southern Punjab. NYT sums up previous reports when it charts the advance of militancy to Dera Ghazi Khan and even Multan and writes of a tactical alliance between the so-called Punjabi militants and the extremist outfits that had thus far operated mainly in the Frontier. The paper has attributed the attack on the Lankan team in Lahore in March and the one on The Marriott, Islamabad, some months ago to this ‘new’ terrorist nexus where Punjabi elements are said to be providing logistical support to resourceful Pakhtun Taliban and Arab militants in the Al Qaeda fold.
There is evidence to support the assertion — television channels flashing the news of two Punjabi bomb-makers in Islamabad just as these lines are being written. We are also told that all the 10 men who besieged Mumbai last November could have come from various Punjab districts. But despite all this, there is reluctance in Punjab to concede that its own people could be involved in the violent anti-state campaign run in the name of Islam and anti-Americanism. There is this urge, and perhaps psychological need, to ideologically de-link the militants in Punjab from those in the Frontier. It is often said that militants in Punjab’s south and elsewhere in the province are exclusively committed to jihad in Kashmir, that, under no circumstances, are they to leave their brief and switch to other wars being raged in the name of religion. The question is: what do they do when they are not or cannot be in Kashmir?
There are obviously no guarantees that these trained hands won’t be pressed into service in pursuance of another holy cause. One other reason that quite often stops governments from taking cognisance of extremist threats in their own backyard is as global a concern as should have been the war on terror. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are as afflicted with the syndrome of denial as those who administer Punjab today. They are wont to blame terrorism on outside forces, absolving people in their own jurisdiction of any involvement and wishing other regions to snuff out a problem that is as much their own as the rest of the world’s. This policy is not going to work as terror closes in. It is hard to contain and cannot be dealt with in isolation. We tried doing it in Swat only to be hit by a suicide bomber in Charsadda a few days later.
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More harm than good
Friday, 17 Apr, 2009
IN refusing the Pakistan High Commission consular access to 11 Pakistani students arrested on the suspicion of involvement in bomb plots, the UK government has displayed a knee-jerk reaction that bodes ill for future cooperation in terms of controlling terrorism. The UK government, and in particular Prime Minister Gordon Brown, accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to curb terrorism. But given that both countries have a stake in this struggle, there is every reason to foster an environment of close and candid communication. By refusing access to the arrested Pakistanis, the UK government in effect has put impediments in the path of local authorities to investigate the suspected terrorists’ links in this country and the wider network they may be part of.
The UK government’s lack of cooperation also raises doubts about the credibility of evidence on the basis of which the men were arrested. It has already been reported that while British officials spoke of intelligence regarding the suspected terrorists’ involvement in the plot, they admitted that this information could not be presented in court. This raises the possibility of the evidence having been improperly collected, in which case the arrested men are being punished — through arrest and probable deportation — without their guilt having been wholly proved. If, on the other hand, the ‘evidence’ is of such an incendiary nature that the risk of it being made public cannot be taken, Pakistani authorities have a right and a need to know since Islamabad is already deeply mired in the struggle to curb terrorism.
Given that the arrested men are Pakistani nationals and, reportedly, a decision has already been taken to deport them, the UK government is exposing itself to criticism for having violated their rights by denying Pakistan consular access to the students. Furthermore, the move sets a dangerous precedent for the security of thousands of other Pakistani students in the UK, who can now no longer depend with any confidence on their embassy’s ability to intervene in case suspicion falls on any one of them. The UK government’s move has about it the sinister echoes of the manner in which wartime prison camps are operated — infamous amongst them are the US camps established during the Bush years — where detainees are held incommunicado and outside the reach of their governments. Through this move, the UK damages its own reputation of subscribing to the values of fair play and does irreparable harm to those who, on currently available evidence, may well have been targeted on mere suspicion.
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Now they must govern
Friday, 17 Apr, 2009
THE meeting of the central working committee of the PML-N has yielded the expected response to the PPP’s offer to rejoin the federal government: the PML-N will sit in the opposition and will ‘support’ the government from the outside. In what were generally conciliatory remarks to the media, Nawaz Sharif did however intimate that his party’s support was conditional. Top of that list of conditions yesterday was the need to address the problems in Balochistan, but Mr Sharif tied that demand to his party’s position that the PPP-led federal government honour its pledge of abiding by the Charter of Democracy. It seems though that now, after a year of uncertainty, the configuration of power in Islamabad has been resolved, at least in the near term: the largest party in the National Assembly, the PPP, will lead a coalition with a clear majority while the opposition will be headlined by a watchful PML-N willing to extend its cooperation on an issue-to-issue basis. Given that the major political storm clouds have cleared — the controversial presidency of Gen Musharraf is over, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has been restored, and the party that is to govern Punjab has been established — the present set-up appears to be the most realistic outcome in the circumstances.
Now it is incumbent on the PPP and PML-N to make the arrangement work. President Zardari has sent the right signal to the parliament by asking it to take up the issue of constitutional and legislative changes needed to amend the balance of power between the institutions of the state. Political parties must now get down to hammering out what those changes are to be. At first blush, this may appear an easy task but serious, and legitimate, differences remain. Consider the case of provincial rights. Doing away with the concurrent list, which allows the federal government to excessively interfere in what should be provincial matters, is not enough. The distribution of financial resources, water rights, pricing and movement of staple foods — these are just some of the other provincial disputes that will take a lot of time and serious effort to resolve. What’s really needed is for the politicians to switch from their perennial politics mode to a governance mode.
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OTHER VOICES - Bangladesh Press Diarrhoea and Wasa
Friday, 17 Apr, 2009
THE diarrhoea situation continues to worsen in the capital with 700 to 800 patients, mostly children, thronging to the ICDDR,B for treatment every day…. [O]ne day the number of diarrhoea patients admitted to this hospital stood at 1,000.
The main reason behind this alarming situation is scarcity of pure water. The Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) has been contributing to this crisis enormously by failing to ensure supply of safe drinking water. It is unfortunate that no effective measure could be taken to arrest the spread of diarrhoea which has [affected] several thousand people and claimed at least two lives in the city recently. Normally diarrhoea breaks out in and around the capital in April every year.
But this year the disease broke out about three weeks earlier and now continues to spread….
The Bangladesh Today
The outbreak of diarrhoea on a large scale is attributed to hot and humid weather and scarcity of pure drinking water as well as unhygienic conditions … especially in the slums and suburban areas. According to reports, the patients coming to ICDDR,B for treatment are from the impoverished areas….
There is a huge gap between the [demand] and supply of water in the city. Moreover, even the scant amount of water which is supplied by Wasa is not free from dirt and insects in many areas and is thus unsafe….
The authorities hardly pay any heed to the complaints made in this regard to them. The cases with many other areas of the city are also the same. This is perhaps because of the fact that Wasa, instead of serving as [a] water supplying agency, has turned into [a] haven [for] a section of corrupt people who are running after money ignoring their duties.
It is good that the government has removed both the chairman and managing director of Wasa and the board is going to be reconstituted soon. Let us hope that the change at the top level of Wasa will bring about a qualitative change in its services and help resolve the persistent crisis of safe water.
Meanwhile, to mitigate the sufferings of the city dwellers, who are forced to use dirty, contaminated and fetid water for cooking and drinking ... the authorities should try their best to ensure increased supply of safe water, make water purification tablets and other medicines available and enhance treatment facilities at hospitals. — (April 16)