No answers for the displaced
CITIZENS displaced by the military operation in North Waziristan are justifiably asking numerous questions about their fate. Yet neither the civilian leadership nor the military high command has any satisfactory answers for the IDPs. Tribal elders from the conflict zone addressed a news conference in Peshawar on Tuesday, in which they raised many of their key concerns. The tribal people have two main questions: when will they be able to return and will the state care for them until it is safe to do so? These are valid concerns. The tribesmen say they are willing to wait even for a relatively long period, but that they must be given a time frame. The North Waziristan residents have also highlighted the problems they have faced since fleeing their native areas, including insecurity and lack of proper shelter.
Perhaps the affected tribesmen are not wrong when they say that the response to the Swat IDPs’ crisis in 2009 was a lot more robust. For example, while the persons displaced by Operation Zarb-i-Azb have been given cash by the state, other arrangements have been found wanting. As the tribesmen look for answers, both the government and the military seemingly have bigger fish to fry. The IDPs’ plight is also a reminder of the general lack of attention the operation has been getting ever since the political crisis in Islamabad started brewing two weeks ago. When the operation began in June, ISPR, the military’s media wing, was very active in releasing frequent operational updates to the media. In fact, most of the information coming out of the conflict zone depends on the military, as the media does not have access. Yet for the past 15 days there has been mostly silence from the military. What is the status of the operation? Have all the areas been cleared of terrorists? When will it be safe for IDPs to go home? The security establishment has not given adequate answers to any of these queries.
Let us not forget that, due to the operation, hundreds of thousands of lives are on hold, with families living in limbo. While civilians cannot be allowed to enter an active combat zone, the tribal people must at least be told how long they will have to wait till they can return. The spectacle in Islamabad has managed to take the limelight away from the plight of the displaced. The state cannot afford to forget these unfortunate people in the midst of all the noise. The military and the government — busy as the latter is in trying to ensure its own survival — must also inform the nation of the status of Zarb-i-Azb. Not too long ago, we were told the operation was meant to wipe out an existential threat to Pakistan; today its details have been drowned out by loud calls of ‘revolution’.
Polio vaccination funds
AS if the job wasn’t difficult enough, Pakistan’s polio vaccination efforts are now suffering due to a shortage of funds. The Ministry of National Health Services has said that the countrywide polio vaccination and awareness programme will come to a halt if funds are not arranged within the next two months. Once the trained workforce of 2,000 communications specialists as well as polio workers disperse due to nonpayment of stipends and salaries, it will be very difficult to bring them back and restart the programme. Moreover, vaccination efforts at the Chaman border crossing appear to have suffered for a number of days now and officials of the health ministry claim that they are reduced to arranging funds from alternate sources as a stopgap measure. The funding difficulties have been attributed to the ongoing political crisis in Islamabad which has distracted the government from its day-to-day responsibilities. In this case, those responsibilities include convening a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet, in which representatives of the provincial governments are present, to approve the PC I for the campaign, which will open the doors for funding from various donor organisations to flow in. An ECC meeting was held recently, but apparently representatives of the provincial governments were not present, reportedly due to the political crisis.
Having braved security challenges, the anti-polio campaign now has to brave bureaucratic hurdles and a political stand-off. A mixture of four different government bodies and committees had to sign off on the funding the NHS requires to run the campaign. First it was the Central Development Working Party which approved the PC I, but the Planning Division required approval from the Council of Common Interests. When this was also achieved, the ECC had to sign off. One grows weary simply reading all the names and acronyms that make up government red tape, only to learn at the end that approval could not be obtained because a political crisis prevented key members from attending the last meeting. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation is preparing to review its decision to impose temporary travel restrictions on people travelling from Pakistan. That review is scheduled for November. What a pity it would be if the government is forced to tell the WHO to postpone its review because it has been unable to implement the required steps due to the political crisis in Islamabad.
A permanent truce?
IT may not exactly be the victory the Palestinians want to celebrate, but there is no doubt they have proved their mettle by taking on the Israeli behemoth and fighting back for no less than 50 days in a way that has impressed many. It was homemade missiles versus some of the world’s most sophisticated arms that Israel possesses. The Palestinians had to pay a heavy price for retaliating — over 2,000, a vast majority of them civilians, including children, dead, infrastructure destroyed, the economy crippled and the sick and wounded going without medicines. Even some of Israel’s most hawkish supporters refused to believe the state’s war machine was not deliberately hitting civilian targets, and that Hamas was using civilians as a shield when Israeli forces bombed two UN schools and two apartment buildings. ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’was a regrettable American cliché to justify what can only be called mass murder.
Described by Hamas authorities as “permanent”, and “unconditional and unlimited-in-time” by the Israelis, the ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, will no doubt provide immediate relief to the Palestinians, while the opening of crossings at the Israel-Gaza borders would enable relief agencies to move in. Israel has also agreed to restore the six-nautical-mile limit which it had arbitrarily reduced to three for Gazan fishermen. While the truce deserves to be welcomed, it doesn’t solve the real issue — Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories and the emergence of a Palestinian state. The US-led peace process is nothing short of farcical, and the Zionist state has no intention of giving up its theft of Palestinian land. Last month, speaking at the defence ministry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear he would never countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. The Palestinians are not likely to accept this stance. Which means that they will not be deterred from efforts to win their own state, even if Israel continues to perpetrate atrocities on the Gazans every now and then.
Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014