Margallas in danger
EFFORTS to stop commercial stone-crushing and quarrying activities in the Margalla Hills in and around Islamabad are not new. Conscientious citizens and officials have for long tried to put an end to such activities in the Margalla Hills National Park, where quarrying and crushing were outlawed by a 1979 ordinance. But despite even the Supreme Court’s intervention, these activities have continued unabated in the hills. At a hearing on Monday, the apex court came down hard on the Capital Development Authority for failing to protect the national park; it described the Margallas as a “national asset” and a “public trust”. The CDA in the past had said — also under court pressure — that it would demolish stone-crushing units within the park area. Unfortunately, this has not happened. But the threat such operations pose to the ecological diversity of the Margallas, as well as to the health of the workers employed by the units, and of those living near the plants, calls for concerted action before the lush green hills are forever denuded.
Firstly, it must be asked why units have been allowed to operate in protected parkland, in clear violation of court orders and the law. Numerous animal and plant species are at risk due to the commercial activities. Environmental experts also point out that quarrying activities affect the health of the population by adding to air pollution. Particulate matter found in the air in areas where crushing takes place has been found to be much higher than acceptable standards. Labourers employed at the units, apart from working in a dangerous environment, often end up suffering from pulmonary and respiratory diseases. All these factors illustrate the seriousness of the matter. Efforts must be made to immediately stop commercial activities in the protected parkland and to shift these to areas located far from population centres. And wherever quarrying and crushing activities are taking place, dust-suppression methods must be employed to minimise workers’ exposure to particles and control the level of air pollution.
Way ahead for MQM
THE ripples from the raid last week on Nine Zero, the MQM’s headquarter in Karachi, continue to course through the city and wider afield. Considering it is the fourth largest political party in Pakistan and one that has reigned virtually unchallenged in the country’s financial jugular — some would say had a chokehold on the city of 20 million — this is scarcely surprising. Let alone the citizens of Karachi, the party itself appears to have been caught completely off guard by the no-holds-barred, Rangers-led raid on its formidable redoubt. The party’s response to the offensive, perhaps the harshest action against it since the army-backed operations of the 1990s, has ranged from plaintive claims of victimisation to belligerent denials of culpability. On Monday, party supremo Altaf Hussain refuted allegations of a militant wing within the party, maintaining that any misdeeds committed by its activists comprise “personal conduct” of individuals rather than actions sanctioned on an organisational level. That would, at the very least, mean that the MQM is shockingly poor at screening its cadres. The MQM is an anomaly, a party that has survived in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics despite a central leadership remotely controlling it from thousands of miles away.
Usually, fear has been the not-so-secret weapon it has wielded to that end, both when it wanted to bring Karachi to a standstill at a moment’s notice — thereby demonstrating its relevance in the national political landscape — and also when it wanted to chastise its own leaders for perceived crimes of omission or commission. Those who could have comprised the second tier of the MQM leadership and taken politically sound decisions are instead perpetually engaged in a struggle to keep their heads above water. Some of them have mysteriously either met a nasty fate or voluntarily removed themselves from the political arena. As a result, there is a crisis of leadership in the party, with a yawning vacuum below the man in London. After the recent turn of events, there is only one possible way ahead for Mr Hussain. And that is to purge the MQM of the militant elements within — whether they have taken “shelter” within it, or been actively cultivated by it. For a party that has been sending its representatives to the assemblies since 1984, electoral politics is not a strange country. It is high time this is the only kind of politics it engages in.
Reading Lahore’s lynch mob
SPEAKING in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan stated that the lynching of two men at the hands of an enraged mob in the aftermath of the church bombings in Lahore on Sunday was “the worst form of terrorism”. The tragedy does indeed compound the original horror, particularly since the assailants — even though they are yet to be identified — were in a sense victims themselves: their fury was kindled by the assault on their community. Does this take society’s behaviour in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in a twisted new direction? Could the future be one where members of various communities turn against each other, thus achieving the goal the terrorists have so far unsuccessfully been striving for? An answer of sorts can be found in the minister’s speech. Chaudhry Nisar invoked the example of earlier attacks on imambargahs and mosques, saying that a violent mob reaction such as that in Lahore had not been witnessed in those incidents. He went to the extent of citing the example of the Charlie Hebdo killings, pointing out that the minority Jewish community of Paris did not erupt in violence.
This is true. But there is a distinction to be made between the anger in Paris — or that experienced by terror-drenched Pakistanis in general — and what fuelled the lynching in Lahore: religious minorities in Pakistan have been targeted in a sustained fashion by militant and terrorist groups for at least a decade and a half. These communities have had their backs to the wall for a very long time and, further, have for generations borne the brunt of discriminatory practices and laws — the worst being the blasphemy law. While Pakistan has seen lynching incidents in the past, often over a blasphemy accusation, these have been premeditated murder in the sense that clerics and others have knowingly incited a mob to violence. In Lahore’s case, to delineate, the crowd’s actions — though horrific— appeared spontaneous. This provides a window into the pain and frustration of the country’s religious minorities, left unprotected by a callous state that simultaneously refuses to offer any meaningful redress.
Now that this eventuality has occurred, the state must realise the need to pursue this incident with much more seriousness than it has tended to show in the past. There are avenues of identifying the perpetrators of the lynching, and of ascertaining whether any incitement to violence occurred; those responsible must face the penalty of law. But in the larger picture, the state and government need to improve security across the board, improve police performance and urgently take ownership of religious minorities and vulnerable groupings. Without the reversal of the growing sense of victimhood at the level of the community, the future bodes dark.
Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2015