Gadani tragedy
IT is most famously known as the place where ships go to die, but it seems that the Gadani ship-breaking yard is also a place where workers perish on the job. Tuesday’s oil tanker explosion, which killed almost 20 workers, injured scores and left many trapped, should awaken us to the callous treatment of labourers in the informal sector. A mere two days before the tragedy, a small group of labourers from the ship-breaking yard had come to the Karachi Press Club demanding better working conditions and more attention to their safety. The next day, some of them were ordered into the doomed oil tanker to begin its dismantlement; they were told to work quickly, even though the tanker had six feet of oil in its hold, according to one injured worker. The explosion that followed once the workers fired up their blowtorches to start cutting through the metal was so intense that some individuals were hurled over a great distance and their bodies recovered from nearby villages.
The numbing frequency with which such incidents occur should not take the focus away from the hellish conditions in which these men are made to work. A number of workers and their representatives on the scene of the burning tanker have spoken of how poorly equipped they are to handle the hazards of their job. According to one member of the Gadani Municipal Committee, it was impossible to ascertain the exact number of workers trapped inside the tanker. It is the height of callousness that workers in their hundreds can be given dangerous work, without any effort being made to record their names, numbers or the specific task they have been assigned. The rescue and emergency response was equally appalling; according to a member of the National Trade Union Federation, the fire broke out at 9 am but rescue operations began at 3.30 pm.
What does it say for the authorities, and society at large, when not a whimper of protest goes up for workers who die under such hellish circumstances? In the case of Gadani, when workers have protested, they have met with police brutality. Meanwhile, the owners of these shipyards should be made to meet the families of each one of the dead and injured workers and give compensation. They should be made to sit with the union representatives and listen to their grievances — although that is perhaps too much to expect given that they reportedly did not even reach the site of the accident where scores of charred bodies were being recovered. However, they must now be made accountable for not maintaining acceptable standards of workplace safety. There is no sense in going on about accountability anywhere in the country if we cannot ensure it for those who toil so hard for a living.
After Quetta attack
THE pain of Balochistan, particularly Quetta, is such that even those not directly affected would find it difficult to contemplate the recent tragedies without a shudder. The violence-weary city had not yet come to terms with the killing of 70 lawyers in August, when on Oct 24 another unspeakable slaughter occurred. This time the assailants crept into Quetta’s Police Training Centre and, under cover of darkness, laid to waste one of the four hostels on the 150-acre facility. The lives of 62 recently graduated policemen were snuffed out under the most terrifying of circumstances. Survivors — the young men had all been unarmed — recount hiding behind beds and of being unable to distinguish between their colleagues and the attackers. The latter had come dressed in camouflage and used the despicable tactic of pretending to be from the army to get their targets to unlock doors. What the victims’ families are going through can only be imagined.
What need not be left to the imagination, though, is the callousness of the state and official apparatus and functionaries, which could not even ensure, for example, that all the fallen made their final journey back home with dignity and in ambulances. Their relatives have horrifying tales to report: where some families received no word at all from the authorities, others talk of having to delay the mourning and burial process because they had to wait until VIPs had wrapped up their photo-op visits. And of course, there is the valid observation that the state was more focused on the dharna-related events in Islamabad than the Quetta tragedy. If this were not shameful enough, there are other, deeply troubling questions that the official apparatus must be made to answer. This was not the first time the academy has been attacked; why was security so weak when even the speech delivered by the Balochistan IGP at the facility’s passing-out ceremony on Sept 6 referred to it? Then, the young men had graduated and gone home, but were compelled to return for no specified reason — only to meet their deaths. Their families, in fact the public at large, should be taken into confidence about where that order came from, and why. Ultimately, Pakistan needs to face the fact that our law enforcers as well as the general public are in mortal danger from unflinching groups that deal in terror; measures must be taken accordingly across the board.
Mosul campaign
IF Iraqi forces manage to liberate the city of Mosul — under occupation of the militant Islamic State group since 2014 — it will be, symbolically, a major blow to the fanatical movement. As per the latest reports, the Iraqi military, aided by an assortment of Shia and Sunni militias, Kurdish peshmerga, as well as American forces, has entered this key city, where IS ‘caliph’ al-Baghdadi once held forth from within its historic mosque. However, the task before the Iraqi security forces is far from easy as thousands of IS fighters are reportedly holed up in and around Mosul, along with over a million civilians. As the UN has noted, the militants could use non-combatants as human shields. Iraqi forces must, therefore, proceed with caution and ensure the safety of civilians as they march upon Mosul. While IS still holds some other parts of Iraq, the return of Mosul to state control will be a psychological blow to the militant group and its dreams of a transnational ‘caliphate’. Ever since the group established itself in Iraq and Syria over two years ago, it has supported or inspired a devastating wave of violence affecting different parts of the world, including this region.
However, if IS is successfully dislodged from Iraq, its fighters can still seek refuge in the group’s Syrian fiefdom. Already, there are reports of militants crossing the border into Syria to escape the Iraqi advance. Defeating IS requires a holistic response from the international community. But for this to happen, there must be a halt to the civil war in Syria, as this bloody conflict has helped spawn a plethora of extremist groups. Will major global powers be willing to abandon the great game in Syria and unite on a one-point agenda of eliminating IS and similar terrorist groups active in the region, instead of focusing on regime change in Damascus? Unless IS and other terrorist groups are targeted in both Iraq and Syria, success in Mosul will be a pyrrhic victory.
Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2016