Deadly consequences
November 21st, 2012
A picture carried by this newspaper yesterday was certainly worth a thousand words. It showed rows upon rows of military uniforms on sale at a market in Mardan, despite a ban on such sale. It is pertinent to highlight here that several major terrorist incidents over the past few years have been carried out by perpetrators clad in army uniforms. These include, among others, the massacres of Shia bus passengers in Kohistan and Mansehra in February and August this year, respectively, as well as the attacks on the PNS Mehran and Minhas Kamra airbases. The army itself fell victim to this ruse when terrorists in army uniform attacked the GHQ in October 2009, after which a ban was imposed on the unauthorised sale of military uniforms. By all accounts, the ban has never been enforced.
Impersonating members of the army or law-enforcement agencies is a virtually foolproof tactic of gaining access to at least the outer parameters of high-security areas, not to mention an effective way of intercepting vehicles on the road. It is thus incomprehensible how army uniforms, as well as those of civilian law-enforcement agencies, can be openly sold in markets to which the public has access. Moreover, the particular market depicted in the photograph mentioned above is not in some remote outpost in the tribal areas but in Mardan, the second largest city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is the province most affected by terrorism. While it may be difficult to completely prevent people bent on creating mayhem from acquiring such uniforms, the government can at the very least ensure that the ban is strictly enforced and those flouting it are penalised to the fullest extent of the law. In a country where terrorists are running amok, let’s not make their job easier.
Slaughter in Gaza
November 21st, 2012
International efforts to effect a ceasefire in Gaza had not succeeded when these lines were being written, but eight days of Israeli rocket fire on the Mediterranean enclave’s crammed population centres has led to over 100 deaths. More menacingly, as reported by a Western wire agency, Israel has “signalled a readiness to expand” the war. That was hardly a reportable “readiness”. Delegates from the two sides have met in Cairo to stop the killings, but the United Nations has done nothing to put an end to them. Instead all that the diplomats at the Security Council have done is to draft a statement which they have sent to their respective foreign offices, while the international media continues to convey graphic scenes of the death and devastation inflicted on the Palestinian people.
A ceasefire will sooner or later come into effect, but the pertinent question to ask is: when will Israel launch its next blitz? Are peacemakers — from the secretary general of the United Nations to the re-elected president of the sole superpower — really making an effort to solve the problem for good and seeking a solution that will last? In other words, do they really think they can put out the fire by tackling the flames instead of going to the source of the blaze? The issue is the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; the issue is the continued occupation of the Palestinian people’s ancestral land by settlers; the issue is how to end the occupation of the Arab lands and give to the people of Palestine a state of their own, with Jerusalem, now under Israeli occupation, as its capital.
Not that the world doesn’t know of this historic injustice. It does, but only in theory. The UN has passed at least two landmark resolutions — 242 and 338 — calling for Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian territories, and at least two American presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, had the wisdom and courage to make Israel accept reality and give up what was not its own. The 1978-79 Camp David agreement made Israel withdraw from the Sinai while the 1993 Declaration of Principles laid down a timetable for the Israeli withdrawal. But, after the man who signed it for Israel, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered, successive Israeli governments have reneged on it. Since then, there has been a stalemate, and Israel continues to build new settlements on the West Bank to alter the occupied territory’s demographic character. As experience shows, a ceasefire serves to end a slaughter only temporarily; it doesn’t root out the cause of the conflict that has continued for decades.
Anti-polio efforts
November 21st, 2012
For several years now, any progress on Pakistan’s anti-polio efforts has been followed by several steps backwards. At one point, there was hope that the crippling disease would soon be eradicated in this country. Instead, along with Nigeria and Afghanistan, we remain one of the world’s last three polio-endemic countries. Formidable challenges have raised their heads on numerous fronts. On the side of the state, these have included vaccinating teams missing children because of the remoteness of their area of residence and interruptions in the cold-chain storage system. Immense damage has also been done to the vaccination campaign by the rhetoric of hard-line clerics in the northwest that the drops would harm children. To add to this, the Pakistani Taliban ‘banned’ polio vaccinations in areas under their thrall, while a jirga decided that they too would resist the campaign unless drone strikes were halted.
All this has meant that cases of polio are being reported in an increasing number of spots in the country with alarming frequency. Now, it seems, officialdom has realised that in the north, Peshawar is a ‘polio reservoir’, with at least 10 new polio cases reported over the province’s five districts having originated in the provincial capital. Reportedly, the provincial health secretary chaired a meeting and ordered that special anti-polio drives should be initiated in 42 high-risk union councils. Further, it was decided that records would also be kept of those children that had missed vaccinations. This last step may prove useful in identifying the trends in the failure to administer the drops and to create more targeted interventions. No doubt the challenges are myriad but they must be surmounted. The resistance to polio vaccinations may actually be growing in Pakistan, as indicated recently in a survey conducted in Karachi: of well-off parents interviewed in five large shopping malls across the city, 72 per cent believed that the vaccine was harmful while 8.5 per cent said it was unnecessary, indicating that the problem is not one of low-income or the lack of education. This profoundly depressing finding should add to the impetus of anti-polio efforts.