For 85-year-old Hasina, whose family emigrated from Calcutta to what was then East Pakistan after partition, the wait has been long enough. Together with more than 500 other Biharis, she lives in Mirpur, an impoverished district in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, where the stench of raw sewage permeates the air.
”I’m Bangladeshi. I’ve lived here all my life. But where are my rights?” Hasima asks, pointing to the 40 sqm area she shares with four other families.
It is a common complaint among the Biharis, most of whom live in squalid conditions in 116 ghettos around the country.
Despite a landmark high-court ruling reaffirming their longstanding claim for full citizenship in 2008, social integration and rehabilitation remain elusive.
Background
There are more than 200,000 Muslim Biharis or Urdu speakers in Bangladesh today, many from the Indian state of Bihar, who moved to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) both during and after partition in 1947.
The Biharis received preferential treatment from the West Pakistan-based government, while the majority of Bengali speakers were often marginalised in their access to government jobs, land, property and contracts.
A 1948 decision declaring Urdu the national language of Pakistan set the tone for further tensions between the two groups, as well as galvanizing the Bangladeshi national identity movement. An estimated three million people died in the 1971 war of liberation and much of the Bihari community sided with the Urdu-speaking Pakistan army.
While the 1972 Simla Accord, a tripartite agreement between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, saw more than 100,000 Pakistani nationals relocate to Pakistan over the next 10 years, thousands more were left stateless.
Of these, a small number continued to demand repatriation, leading many to refer to them as “stranded Pakistanis”.
But most of the remaining Bihari population wished to stay, despite the fact that their status in terms of nationality remained in limbo.
Because they lacked Bangladeshi nationality, Biharis were denied the right to primary and secondary education until 2000 and faced other discrimination, particularly in terms of access to housing.
Following the war, many Biharis, fearing retaliation, were forced from their homes and property and relocated to some 100 “colonies” or ghettos, many of which are on public property.
In some areas, the International Committee of the Red Cross provided temporary shelters while a durable solution to their status was sought.
However, that did not happen until a 2003 landmark High Court decision recognized the Biharis as Bangladeshi nationals.
And while the government agreed to implement the decision, public sentiment prevented it from moving ahead.
Landmark decision
Today the atmosphere in Bangladesh has changed significantly. There are few, if any, instances of inter-communal violence and in 2008, the decision was reaffirmed.
However, huge challenges remain.
”The court recognized our right to citizenship. This was the first step,” said Sedakat Khan of the Urdu-speaking People’s Youth Rehabilitation Movement.
”But now we need integration,” he said, referring to their need for education, shelter and access, as well as access to healthcare, and recognition as part of Bangladesh society with a distinct cultural and linguistic identity.
Living on public property and struggling to make ends meet, many residents face possible eviction with nowhere to go. The government should not evict people until alternative arrangements had been made, said Khan.
According to Al Falah, the only registered NGO working with the Biharis, things are moving, but outside help is still needed. Only 6 percent are literate compared with a national average of 74 percent, limiting their ability to compete for jobs.
”This is the main barrier to their social integration,” said Ahmed Ilias, executive director of Al-Falah. “But the government of Bangladesh can’t do it alone,” he added, appealing to the UN and Muslim organizations to step into the breach.
Archive for July, 2009
Biharis Fight for Their Rights in Bangladesh
ISI Tells the Indians to Talk to ISI Directly
by Nirupama Subramanian and Siddharth Varadarajan
Days before PM Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Gilani met in Egypt, the head of the ISI floated a suggestion that India deal not just with Pakistan’s civilian government but also directly with its Army and intelligence agency.
Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha made the out-of-the-box overture during a meeting earlier this month with the three Indian defence advisers representing the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force attached to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
The sit-in at Lt. Gen. Pasha’s office in Rawalpindi on July 3 took place entirely at his initiative, though it was ostensibly convened in response to a request made by the Indian High Commission “years before.” It is normal for defence advisors attached to various diplomatic missions in Islamabad to seek and be granted calls on the ISI director-general — a wing of the ISI is the co-ordinating agency for them — but Indians have rarely had an audience.
During their discussion, Lt. Gen. Pasha and the defence advisors did not refer to the Mumbai attacks or the investigations into it, either on the Indian or Pakistani side. Nevertheless, senior officials in Delhi saw the interaction as an attempt by the ISI to “reach out” to India in the run-up to the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting of the two Prime Ministers.
During the course of the extremely cordial meeting, Lt. Gen. Pasha came clean in stating that the ISI and the Pakistan Army were involved in framing Pakistan’s India policy, along with the Foreign Office. He made the oblique suggestion that India deal directly with these three institutions if it had a similar three-way mechanism.
In their effort to understand the genesis of this idea, Indian officials sought to establish whether the ISI chief — who has a reputation for speaking his mind freely — had merely made an off-the-cuff remark or was floating a trial balloon after consultations with all other “stakeholders” in the Pakistani establishment.
Ministry of External Affairs officials asked Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik about the ISI chief’s suggestion, but the envoy was unaware that the meeting had even taken place. This led the MEA to conclude that the Pakistani foreign office may not be in the loop.
Major-General Athar Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said he had no knowledge of the meeting. Officials at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad also refused comment.
Highly placed South Block officials said that India is not averse to talking to the Pakistani military or the ISI even as it engages with the civilian government but there were two problems with the suggestion. First, any proposal to open new lines of communication must come from the Pakistani government. And second, the power structures in India and Pakistan cannot really compare with each other.
Although Prime Minister Singh and PM Gilani agreed the ISI chief could come to India in the immediate aftermath of last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Islamabad quickly backtracked. Since then, no formal proposal for interaction between the ISI and an Indian intelligence agency has been made. Indeed, Mr. Gilani told The Hindu at Sharm el-Sheikh that the question of an intelligence chiefs’ dialogue did not come up in his meeting with Dr. Singh, a fact confirmed by Indian officials.
But apart from form, it is the question of structure that poses an obstacle. “The Research & Analysis Wing operates within the law and is subordinate to the government,” a senior intelligence official told The Hindu. “There, the government is subordinate to the ISI, which is a law unto itself.”
South Block officials said the Indian High Commissioner and his officers could and should be in touch with the Pakistani army and intelligence chiefs. “But I wonder what would be the point of the Indian Army Chief talking to his Pakistani counterpart … their job definitions are so different.”
French New Generation Says Non to Nude Sunbathing
France is experiencing its blush of youthful prudishness as an entire generation of younger French women says non, merci to the summer tradition of topless sunbathing.
Since France’s summer-vacation season kicked off in early July 2009, the press has repeatedly sounded the alarm over the shrinking number of topless women on the nation’s beaches. The prevailing trend among sun-loving women these days is to actually use both pieces of their bikini. Le Monokini, C’est Fini! shouted Le Parisien in its July 21 report from a Mediterranean beach, using the preferred term for one-piece toplessness.
Nude Breasts Are Less Trendy” concurred the free daily Metro France. “The fashion has become common, and as a result, less appealing. Some observers have noted too that the return to the two-piece is a response to rising concerns about skin cancer.
But the more concealing swimwear trend is also part of a wider social movement by younger French women who are shunning the less inhibited habits of previous generations. If burning bras and going topless were the ways French women of the 1970s and ’80s demonstrated their freedom, their daughters and grand-daughters seem less comfortable with exposed flesh. “We’re seeing a return to more [conservative] and family values,” said Kaufmann. “Modesty and discretion are in fashion now.”
A survey titled “Women and Nudity” released by polling agency Ifop captures the move to cover up. It indicates younger French women not only have a problem with nudity but actually consider themselves prudish. Fully 88% of the women questioned qualified themselves as pudique — a term that can mean anything from modest or prim to full-blown priggish.
And they aren’t joking. Though 90% said they get naked with their husband or partner, nearly 60% actively avoid being nude around their children. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they also refuse to undress around women friends. About 22% said they considered a woman in her underwear already naked.
With sensitivities like those, it’s little wonder that the poll also found that French women had strong opinions about public nakedness. Nearly 50% said they were bothered by total nudity on beaches or naturist camps, and 37% said they were disturbed by publicly exposed breasts or buttocks. Forty-five percent of respondents reported they’d simply prefer to see a lot less flesh — male or female — hanging out in full view.
Those attitudes got even more pronounced with respondents ages 18 to 24. Fully 25% of women in that age group described themselves as very pudique, and 20% said they considered any nudity tantamount to indecency. That, sociologists say, helps explain the changing scenery on French beaches. Younger women disinclined to bare their more private parts make up the majority of female sunbathers; those still willing to go topless are usually older French women who blazed the trail all those years ago. Or as the Times of London’s website phrased it, “Only the Oldies Go Topless on French Beaches.”
“There aren’t any rules, but yeah, it’s true, when you’re at the beach and look around, the only topless women anymore are older,” said a 19-year-old named Elodie as she visited Paris’ summertime artificial beach known as Paris Plage. Elodie pointed out that a municipal fine — and frequently lousy weather — made going topless at Paris Plage a nonstarter. When asked whether she went topless on vacation beaches — and what factors made her decide when she did and didn’t — Elodie gave a reply as chilly as it was logical. “All those things,” she said, “are personal concerns.”
Good point — and one apparently leading most French women of Elodie’s age to keep themselves bikini’d up. But the contrast with U.S. practices is hard not to notice. After all, American women visiting France these days have no qualms about going topless. And plenty of young American women are only too happy to playfully flash their wares in exchange for a few beads. In some ways, the puritanical swimsuit now seems to be on the other torso — a new French squeamishness that will doubtless leave some Americans, well, titillated.
Hye Plot, Hye Plot: Ansar Abbasi Sells His Soul for a Plot
In his interview while referring to Quarnic verses, Ansar Abbasi of the News Islamabad time and again lebelled the people ignorant urging them to at least learn what Quran says. But, this self-styled scholar of the Holy Book had to apologize later on for misquoting Quran in one of his columns published in Urdu daily Jang.
Irrefutable evidences have surfaced about Editor Investigation of The News, Ansar Abbasi’s lust for land grabbing. And unlike any other honourable person, Ansar Abbasi used his wife to plead the case for a government plot in Islamabad worth millions of rupees by falsifying and concealing information.
These official documents emerged after Ansar Abbasi, tried to hoodwink the public by returning a 250 square yard plot of the Punjab government.
According to the details gleaned from official documents, the self proclaimed moralist of Pakistani journalism Ansar Ahmed Abbasi, son of Mohammad Sajawal, sought from Musharraf regime a one Kanal (500 square yards) plot worth millions of rupees at throwaway price in Islamabad’s sector G-14 in 2004.
Ansar Abbasi was then the Bureau Chief of The News in Islamabad. He was among the few journalists who rushed to apply for the one kanal plot in sector G- 14 and subsequently deposited Rs125,000 with the Ministry of Information.
The government had established an eligibility criterion that only those journalists were eligible against three per cent quota for journalists who did not own any plot or house in the federal capital, Islamabad. It was to meant to provide roof to the journalists in dire need of shelter.
He who is greedy is always in want
Ansar Abbasi did not care for this important clause and submitted an affidavit on oath knowingly, that he was giving a false oath on the Holy Book, Quran, not withstanding his self claimed righteousness and championship (read demagoguery) of Islamic values. Mr Abbasi concealed the information that he lived in a house in the most posh sector of Islamabad in House No 217, Street 100, Sector I 8/4 Islamabad.
This house is owned by Ansar Abbasi himself where he lives with his brother Ejaz Abbasi.Sources close to Ansar Abbasi say that Ejaz Abbasi acts as a front man for the acts of omission and commission of his journalist brother. The sources say Ansar Abbasi and Ejaz Abbasi have joint stakes in many a businesses including hotels and petrol pumps.
In the personal affidavit submitted by Ansar Abbasi to the Ministry of Information, he claimed that he did not have any house in his name at all. In the forms submitted to the Ministry of Information, Abbasi cleverly mentioned in the column where it was required to be mentioned whether he owned a house in Islamabad or not, that he had a shared property in I-8/4.
He did not mention that he actually owns a house. Had he admitted the ownership of his house, then he might have been deprived of his right to even apply for the plot. But he hid the truth from the authorities in the application form.
“Corruption of the best becomes the worst”
Ansar Abbasi’s craving for a plot on throwaway price shocked the officials at the Ministry of Information when he submitted an affidavit of his wife, Zeba Abbasi. He was the only journalist in Pakistan whose wife submitted the affidavit, literally kneeling down to beg for a plot for her husband in sector G-14. No other journalist ever submitted such affidavit of their better half.
In her affidavit, she wrote
“I, Zeba Ansar Abbasi, wife of Ansar Ahmed Abbasi NIC 6110-9436395-8 has been nominated by Ansar Abbasi, in respect of the plot to be allotted to him. In this regard, I undertake to bear all liabilities in respect of plot to be allotted to him, in event of his death without prejudice to the rights of the legal heir under the relevant laws”.
The Information ministry officials were dumbfounded shocked as according to them they did not expect Ansar Abbasi to become so crazy for a piece of land that he could even submit a false oath or an affidavit of his wife. The officials were taken aback to know that Mr Abbasi’s wife wanted the plot even in the event of her husband’s death and pay the installments after her husband’s death.
Snowball effect
But, Ansar Abbasi felt that despite his own affidavit and that of his wife Zeba Abbasi’s, he still needed to do more to convince the Musharraf regime to allot him one Kanal Plot in Sector G-14 of Islamabad. Therefore, he prepared another affidavit to get this plot.
This time, Abbasi narrated how he was inducted in the profession of journalism through some tabloid newspaper which was closed down soon after he joined it. Then he joined Pakistan Times, but interestingly, this too was closed down once Mr Abbasi became its part.
Now, Abbasi wrote that he did not have any experience certificates of these two newspaper papers which were the requirement to show that his experience in the journalism was more than 15 years to qualify for the plot. Thus, he could not produce those certificates of his relevant experiences.
In a laughable move, Abbasi however attached the “press cards” of Pakistan Times and Democrat to lay claim over the plot in G-14. To convince (read mislead) the government about his eligibility in his lust for the plot, Abbasi crossed the limits of absurdity as far as references are concerned. In a more laughable manner, Mr abbasi wrote the name of a photographer, Ishaq Chaudhry, to establish his credentials.
Had the editors of the closed down publications been alive, they might have confirmed or denied if they knew anyone by the name of Ansar Abbasi and if the closure of the publications was due to non-professional extremist instincts of Abbasi.
Abbasi was so desperate to get the government plot that he had even offered to produce some evidences in the shape of senior journalist of Dawn Mohammad Ilyas who according to Abbasi was the chief reporter of The Pakistan Times when he joined the newspapers. Sadly, after a few days of submission of third affidavit by Abbasi, Mr Ilyas also died.
Ironically, by a hand of fate or sleight of shrewdness, all the journalists Mr Abbasi mentioned as references had been died, except for photographer Ishaq Chaudhry.
A man’s heart deviseth his way, but …
The committee constituted by the government to scrutinize eligibility though believed the words of Abbasi but with a pinch of salt and recommended him for a category-II plot in G-14. A letter was sent to Mr Abbasi telling him that he was not eligible for the Category-I plot for which he had applied.
Upon this, Abbasi wrote back to Ministry of Information that he was ready to accept anything thrown at him, even if the category in which he was being allotted a plot was being down graded.
Who Does the Interrogation of Terrorists in the USA?
In the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA, lacking experience in interrogating jihadis, turned to experts from a military school where soldiers are trained to resist torture. These experts came up with a range of “coercive” interrogation techniques, including the now-infamous water-board. When these methods were employed at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the methods led to an angry confrontation over their legality between interrogators from the FBI and the CIA. Eventually, the FBI withdrew from the interrogations — an less than amiable divorce, so to speak.
Yet, the President’s task force on interrogation and transfer policies for terrorism suspects is readying a proposal for a new unit that will once again join together several agencies. The task force, comprising experts from the FBI, CIA and the military — will be a big element in any new interrogation blueprint presented to the White House.
Unsurprisingly, the plan is being greeted with skepticism by many in the intel community. One veteran interrogator says the proposal “is either stupid, or very stupid.” He argues that inter-agency teams are doomed to fail because of the practical problems of dealing with multiple bureaucracies, and the political infighting between their bosses. Turf battles are inevitable, because each member of the team “carries the equities of his own agency.”
A national security expert says the differences are more fundamental: the agencies have divergent missions and requirements. In any interrogation, she says, “they’re looking for very different things: for the military, it’s what’s over the next hill; for the Bureau, it’s evidence that will hold up in a courtroom; for the CIA, it’s information that gives the President decision advantage.” Reconciling all these interests may be impossible.
But some intel experts say pooling the different agencies’ interrogation resources may be the practical solution to a basic problem: although the U.S. has captured thousands of terrorism suspects in the six years after 9/11, it still lacks the ability to consistently extract information from them. “A small professional cadre of interrogators, which can be brought in by any agency that needs their services, would be a good idea,” says Carl Ford, an ex-CIA hand who headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
The agencies may have different missions, but that should not prevent them from sharing the expertise they’ve accumulated in recent years. After 9/11, it should not be a problem to unify the agendas. The key is strong leadership.
But who exactly should lead the interrogation team? The task force has not yet formed a view on which agency should have overall command, although some reports suggest the CIA has been ruled out. Maddox himself believes the team should report to the Pentagon, since the military has the greatest experience in interrogating terrorist suspects.
Intel experts disagree, arguing that the military’s interrogators tend to be low-ranking soldiers who are unlikely to have much understanding of the psychological aspects of interrogation — or the broader strategic implication of the information gleaned. “Military guys, they want to know the location of the next IED, the next arms cache — immediately actionable information,” says the retired interrogator. “Intel people, we like a more long-term view. We want to know about the structure of a terrorist organization, the larger objectives.”
30% of Under-16 ve Sex for the 1st Time in America
What’s tougher than being a pregnant teenager? Try being a pregnant teenager in foster care. The numbers for girls in the foster-care system have reached truly epidemic levels. A study at the University of Chicago found that nearly half of girls who had spent time in the foster-care system had been pregnant at least once by the time they were 19 years old. Even more troubling, unplanned pregnancy had already become a pattern for many of the young women — close to one-quarter had experienced multiple pregnancies in their teens.
The stats shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows the risk factors for teen pregnancy. A report released the week of July 20 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that almost half of the 500,000 or so kids in foster care had sex for the first time before age 16, compared with 30% of their peers not in foster care. They’re also more likely to have experienced forced sex and less likely to use contraception.
Perhaps the most important asset teenagers need to avoid early parenthood is a strong relationship with parents or other adults in their lives. But these are precisely the kinds of bonds that many foster teens lack. You’re so busy being transferred from home to home. You don’t have a lot of stable connections.
If many social workers are disinclined to make sure their young charges are schooled in the basics of sex education, foster parents are often equally uncomfortable with the topic. Having “the talk” with their own kids is something many parents dread; discussing sex with a teenager they don’t know well is even less appealing for foster parents. And the frequency with which many foster children switch homes makes it easy for some parents to assume — or hope — that someone else already covered the birds and the bees.
Effective sex ed, however, is an ongoing conversation. Teens are more comfortable asking a total stranger about sex.
While unplanned pregnancy is a concern for many girls within the foster-care system, intended pregnancies are part of the story as well. For some foster youth, having a child is a way to create a family that they don’t have, or to fill an emotional void. Sex education is awesome. But that’s not always the issue. You don’t really have an identity in foster care because you move around so much. And if you’re not sure of who you are, you don’t make good
decisions.
Karachi Dreams Big
What mayor these days doesn’t want his city to be world class? The allure of miraculous transformation writ large across a massive cityscape is today’s urban alchemy. Syed Mustafa Kamal, 36, is no exception. The mayor of Karachi, Pakistan’s sprawling metropolis by the sea, has sworn that his city will rival Dubai in five years.
He’s made some progress. He’s building a 47-story IT tower with a 10,000-seat call center, one of the biggest in Asia. And the city has completed six over- and under-passes to ease congestion, along with a signal-free crosstown corridor. But he still has a long way to go. More than half the population of 16 million (give or take a few million) lives in ramshackle squatter settlements. Power outages are common. Only about half the city’s daily water needs are met. Crime, congestion and political volatility have plagued this ancient port for decades.
Unhappily, terrorism is making inroads. On July 7, six bombs detonated across the city in succession, spreading panic and instability. On Oct. 19, 2007, a suicide bombing at the homecoming rally for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed 141 in the worst terrorist attack in Pakistan’s history. Kamal, who wears the goatee and well-cut suit of the IT professional he once was, waves these issues away as if they were minor details. “It can be done. It will be done,”he says. “In five years time, I can turn this city around.”
There is only one caveat. He doesn’t control the city. No one does — at least not all of it — and it’s a problem that is not Karachi’s alone. As big cities expand into mega-cities, city governments don’t necessarily go along for the ride. That makes governance a chore and development a nightmare. Karachi is made up of 18 towns and six cantonments — legacies of a military system that awards high-ranking officials with prime allotments of land. A local board runs each cantonment. It charges fees and sets plans. It builds roads, digs sewers and erects traffic lights. It organizes maintenance and garbage collection.
And none of them are answerable to the city government. It’s kind of like a condominium board made up of former Marines taking over an entire city block. “You can’t even run a house when you have more than one owner, so how can you operate a city with so many different bosses?”asks Kamal. As it turns out, not easily.
Every year Karachi is inundated by the monsoon rains of late summer. Last year floods paralyzed the city for more than two weeks; workers navigated the streets in small boats as if the city were an Asian Venice. Twenty-eight people died — some drowned, and some were electrocuted when live wires hit the water.
Kamal has spent $2.6 million in the past year excavating and renovating the city’s fetid wastewater canals. But the work had to stop at the cantonment lines. Some of the cantonment boards worked with the mayor. Others revamped only parts of their cantonment, leaving out the impoverished areas. And at least two of the cantonments have filled in drainage canals in order to build new luxury developments. That may help with Kamal’s Dubai scheme, but those upstream will suffer. And Kamal will get the blame. “When everything goes right, no one thanks me,” he complains. “But when there are problems, even if they are in the cantonments and I have no jurisdiction, they come to me to complain.”
If too much water is a problem, so is not having enough. The mayor is supposed to sit at the head of the Karachi water and sewage board, an ungainly and corruption-ridden department that governs the entire city’s water supply. For politicians on the make, however, it is the ultimate prize. Fresh water is a scarce resource in Karachi; its steady delivery is often used to thank political supporters. Not only that, but the Karachi water board also has some 8,000 jobs available — invaluable political capital. Now this is where it gets complicated.
For the past four years, Karachi has been governed by Kamal’s party, the rough-and-tumble MQM — which represents ethnic Mohajirs, who arrived in Pakistan from India at partition (think Richard J. Daley’s men in Chicago, with mustaches), and was aligned with former general and current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. However, Sindh province, where Karachi is located, is run by the PPP, the national party that trounced Musharraf’s early this year.
In May while Kamal, the mqm man, was in New York City attending a conference, the PPP provincial government staged a mini-coup, taking over Kamal’s office at the water board, installing one of its own and removing Kamal’s nameplate. Suleiman Chandio, the newly appointed managing director of the board, says the board was always under the jurisdiction of the provincial government. It was only under the military government of Musharraf that the valuable portfolio was handed to the mqm mayoralty in return for support. Besides, says Chandio, Kamal abused his position by giving only MQM supporters jobs at the board.
Kamal denies the accusations, pointing out that for the past two and a half years, he has spent nearly $500 million on water and sewer projects throughout the city, principally in impoverished districts that have never voted for his party. Bhit Island, a tiny sliver of land studded with concrete and corrugated-iron shanties a 10-minute ferry ride from the coast, is one such neighborhood.
For decades the native Sindhi residents (and PPP voters) have depended on tanker boats to take water to the island. But in February, just before the elections, Kamal was able to finish an undersea pipe-laying project that delivered fresh water directly to the island for the first time. Walls in the village that once were emblazoned with only PPP slogans sport the red-green-and-white banners of the MQM these days as well. Each of the island’s 1,200 or so houses now boasts a white plastic pipe topped by a red faucet handle.
Not all of them work. Corruption flows with water. Some families with influence — or cash — were able to install two faucets, which means that households farther down the pipeline receive none. The pump-house overseer estimates that 30% of the island’s residents don’t get the water they were promised. “What’s the use of new water lines when there is no water in them?” asks Hoor Bhai Hajani, 60, matriarch of a family of 20. She gestures at the dusty faucet in her courtyard. A limp hose is coiled underneath, the deflated hope of her entire family. “We were so happy when we heard the news that the island would have water. Now it is just painful.”
A month and a half after the board coup, the federal government stepped in and ordered the provincial government to give the water portfolio back to the mayor. Many suspect the reversal resulted from heated negotiations between the warring parties. Now Kamal has a vice chair, appointed by the PPP, in addition to the managing director. It’s the kind of power-sharing arrangement that has marked Pakistani politics for the past several years. It’s also the kind of agreement that has paralyzed progress. “The appointment of the managing director and vice chairman might create hindrance in planning and decision-making processes,” says Kamal, but he’s willing to wait and see.
The fight to control Karachi is a brutal political game. So why would the former IT Minister even want the job? Kamal throws his arms up in mock exasperation. “It’s not a bed of roses,” he concedes. “If I were given an opportunity to have an honorable exit, I would walk out right now.”
But honorable for Kamal would be fulfilling his pledge. And the alchemic goal of a world-class city still beckons. Karachi’s unruly sprawl of commercial and residential development has grown up around one of the most important harbors on the Arabian Sea. It occupies a strategic position between the Middle East and India that has made it a trading hub for centuries. It is also the gateway to Central Asia. “Karachi has so much potential,” Kamal says quietly. “It is not just a city. It is the future of Pakistan. If Karachi develops and prospers, so will the country.” Despite the frustrations, expect Kamal to pursue his goal.
Allah, America & Army: Tariq Ali’s New Book
Allah, Army and America” – or, to put it succinctly, the “3 As” – is a formula coined by social scientists often used to explain the political and social malaise that afflicts Pakistan. Numerous studies have been written on the Pakistani ruling elite’s amour with 2 As, namely Allah and the Army, most recently by Hasan Abbas and Irshad Haqqani on the former, and by Ayesha Siddiqa and Shuja Nawaz on the latter. However, what is usually missing from the discussion is how incurably enamoured the Pakistani ruling elite has become of the greatest imperialist power since the end of the Second World War, and how small the dividends, if any, this dangerous liaison has yielded to the people of Pakistan.
Tariq Ali’s latest work, The Duel, attempts to bridge this gap in our understanding of the relations between the United States and the Pakistani ruling elite.
Ali is one of the few prominent Pakistanis on the Left who grew up during the formative years of Pakistan’s birth as a postcolonial state, and the fact that he left it in the 1960s to pursue a more fulfilling political career in Britain has not stopped him from penning three works on his native country.
His two earlier works on Pakistan created some controversy (not with readers but with Pakistan’s ruling elite), the hallmarks of which can be seen in this latest work. That no doubt played a part in the book’s subsequent unofficial ban in Pakistan, followed lock, stock and barrel by the Pakistani media.
When I asked Ali during an interview, while he was visiting Pakistan in 2002, whether he had any plans to update his conclusions about the country in Can Pakistan Survive?, he emphatically dismissed the suggestion, saying that the conclusions he drew in 1981 were still relevant. That he had cause to change his mind is disconcerting. In many ways, the book is a mea culpa for his native country’s economic and political woes and a testament to the changes that he has witnessed – and chronicled – in other parts of the world, in Latin America for instance, but never in Pakistan.
The book begins with a foundational history of Pakistan as a confessional state, brought into being by a political party dominated by feudal potentates. In many ways, the fact that the All India Muslim League looked to the British Empire, rather than the Indian people, for protection and advancement of its interests, and its demand for a separate state had a shaping influence on the actions of independent Pakistan’s ruling elite. The latter also relied selfishly on its relationship with the U.S. for self-preservation rather than on the people who had actually sacrificed their lives and properties in the bloodbath of Partition.
Most readers will not be amused to find out that even the founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was not immune to the charms of Washington, most noticeably evidenced by the fact that he once tried, unsuccessfully, to sell the Flagstaff House to the then American Ambassador in Karachi.
This lucrative relationship was facilitated by the fact that for the first decade of Pakistan’s independence, the new country did not have a Constitution or elections: this situation allowed an unelected coterie led by Ghulam Mohammad and Iskander Mirza to strengthen their power and cement a lasting alliance with the landed elite and the military. This coterie also set the tone for Pakistan’s foreign policy slavishly in tune with U.S. strategic interests. A curious thing that happened was the inclusion of this “most Allied of America’s allies” in the Non-Aligned Movement and its building of an all-weather friendship with Maoist China, which survives to this day.
We all know the sorry state that Pakistan was in after the bureaucratic-military raj gave way to a more direct military takeover by Ayub Khan in 1958. Ali’s description of Ayub’s years in power as well as the resentment that festered in East Pakistan is tinged with uniquely personal insights, especially into the class nature of the new Bangladeshi leadership under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as well as the Mukti Bahini guerilas inspired by Che Guevara, among others.
The truncated and moth-eaten state that remained after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 had a remarkable opportunity to be refounded by an unchallenged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with the military’s humiliating retreat to the barracks. However, he squandered the few chances that were made available to him, and the promise of limited land reform, free public education and health, nationalisation of public utilities and an independent foreign policy gave way to a deterioration of democracy not only within the PPP but in the country as a whole. This, combined with Bhutto’s intransigence vis-a-vis the U.S. over Pakistan’s nuclear bomb precipitated the overthrow of the first democratically elected leader in the country’s history. It also led to the brutalisation of Pakistan’s political culture at the hands of a dictator who was greenlighted to power by Washington, having firmly established his credentials for the job earlier in 1970 by brutally crushing Black September, a popular Palestinian uprising against the Jordanian monarch.
Tariq Ali, who was close to Bhutto, and was later in touch with Bhutto’s daughter Benazir, devotes a whole chapter to the rise and fall of the Bhutto dynasty. As with all charismatic postcolonial leaders of the Third World, the tragedy of this dynasty is inevitably the tragedy of modern Pakistan. The PPP was formed by a dedicated cadre of people who wanted a thoroughgoing structural transformation of the state. But petty dynastic politics and attempts to be on the “right side of history” have gradually isolated the PPP from its mass base, with the result that the post-Zulfikar Ali Bhutto leadership reposes more trust in the halls of power in Washington and London than in the Pakistani people. As a result, Pakistan’s largest political party is now little more than a patronage-doling machine dominated by feudal elements, opportunists and bandwagon careerists of every hue who have now anxiously hopped onto the Washington Consensus to preserve their privileges. This can only lead to tragedy, as in the case of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
The failure of the Bhuttos, however, does not absolve the other dynasties that have ruled Pakistan in the past and, unlike the Bhuttos, owe their origins to benign dictators – the Sharifs and the Chaudharys of Gujrat, whose servility to power is well known and do not offer any hope for the future.
The price Pakistan has paid for being steered into the flight path of American power has been great and is growing. One of its most disastrous results is the events in Afghanistan, where state-led efforts at modernisation and establishment of secular nationalism were repeatedly stalled by foreign powers, Pakistan included. All that eventually boomeranged on America, in the form of 9/11, and on Pakistan, which has a murderous imperial war going on on its western borders involving the Taliban, the Pakistan Army and the U.S. forces.
In the absence of a secular-nationalist Left, and with a puppet imported from California in power in daytime Kabul, the task of resistance to foreign occupation in Afghanistan is inevitably left to the remnants of the Taliban. The latter might very soon be reclaiming their past status as rulers of Afghanistan, thanks to the spectacular corruption of a tiny U.S.-backed elite and the success of the resistance. Only a total withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and an alliance with China, Pakistan, India and Iran that guarantees non-interference in that country’s affairs can salvage a lasting peace for this tortured land.
Ali shatters a few myths about Pakistan, which in the West fill tonnes of paper, devoted to proving that Pakistan is a failed state. Firstly, the duel that he alludes to in the title of his book is not one on its western borders between the Taliban and the government, but the duel between the people of Pakistan and the American-backed elite, who have historically ruled and plundered the country. In fact, this duel is a familiar story in many parts of the world – Colombia, Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the scores of tiny American protectorates in the Gulf, the Balkans and the Caucasus are part of this distinguished club. Secondly, that Pakistan is on the verge of a takeover by the Taliban and that the only party able to do business with them are the khaki ironclads. Indeed, the way Washington is currently dealing with the new regime in Islamabad proves that the latter claim is false.
The way forward for Pakistan, according to Ali, lies in the end of the American search for a perpetual khaki-clad to manage Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan has to evolve from a national security state to one where desperately needed land reforms are carried out, with free health care, education and housing for the poor. Peace with India should be the foremost priority, as also the formation of a South Asian Union with increasing political and economic ties to China and Iran in order to counter American efforts to put a permanent military presence there. Ali places little faith in the traditional political parties but hails the enthusiasm of the judicial activism that erupted in March 2007.
One wishes he had also mentioned the scores of social movements that have been battling to change the status quo in various parts of the country – the Anjuman Mazareen Punjab in Okara, the Baloch resistance, the peasant resistance in Hashtnagar in the NWFP and the Fisherfolk Forum in Sindh, all refreshingly secular and having no truck with religion. But he makes up for it with warm references and homages throughout the book to regional poets and writers to show that art and culture have never been coopted by the Washington consensus.
Earlier, in September 2008, the Pakistan government paid its own tribute to Ali’s book when it unofficially banned the work in Pakistan. However, the learned mandarins within the Ministry of Information did not have to wait for long to discover that books and ideas are never hindered by frontiers. Ali’s book, like his previous two on Pakistan, succeeded in finding a large black-market readership before the ban was ultimately revoked.
Chief Justice, & Not the PPP, is the Champion of the Poor
Instead of PPP giving relief to the poor, the Chief Justice is trying to help them.
Since March 2008, PPP has not done any thing other than establishing a Benazir Fund, to change the direction of economic policies which were followed by Musharraf.
Whats the point of having democracy when no benefits occur to the deprived classes. Why should people wait for democratic governments?
What PPP could have done since coming to power:
–PPP with the help of ANP and MQM should have implemented the 1977 Land Reform passed by the Parliament.
–All taxes taken indirectly from people like the PDL, 17% Excise duty on electricity, gas and telephone, Rs 25 Custom plus other taxes on edible oil and other such items could have been withdrawn to give immediate relief to the people.
To cover the loss in income, salaries and benefits of all government employees may have been reduced.They have increased 400% during the last 4 years and thus at even at half they will up 200% or 50% annually. While the poor have been crushed with more than 60% inflation during the same period.
–To tax the rich, 40% Inheritance Tax could have been imposed and Wealth Tax revived at 2% above Rs 4 crore.
–Besides the whole Tax collection system may be tendered out. I estimate that it will be taken up at Rs 4 trillion against current collection of Rs 1.1 trillion.
–To make Army self financed, all Army barracks and offices in Urban Areas may be auctioned out and all installations shifted to remote areas. I estimate it will bring in Rs 50 trillion.
–Out which, Rs 10 trillion should be enough to make state of the art defence facilities while Rs 40 trillion invested at 10% should bring in Rs 400 billion annually for running expenditure of the army.
Tarique Khan Javed
President,
Overseas Pakistani Investors Forum (OPIF)
0300-923-2476
www.tariquekj.com
