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interview Preaching
compassion Taal
Matol profile The creeping
emergency RIPPLE EFFECT
Renowned journalist Ahmed Rashid on the latest situation in the tribal belt, the mistakes made and possible solutions By Farah Zia The News on Sunday: The Americans are saying they want to deploy ground troops in Pakistan. What kind of consequences will it have? Ahmed Rashid: I think it
will be a disaster if American troops en masse were to come inside Pakistan. On the other hand I think there must be greater cooperation at the covert level between Pakistan and America; with intelligence and special forces, because clearly Pakistan has failed to capture top al-Qaeda leaders nor has it made any effort over the last two and a half years to do so. What could be beneficial is a discreet, covert, improved relationship, not just with the Americans but with NATO itself, in order to better coordinate the forces on both sides of the border. TNS: You've talked about the consequences for Pakistan but if the US troops were to come at all, what could they possibly achieve considering their near failure in Afghanistan? AR: I think this has become a political football for the American elections. It has got a lot to do with the Republican administration trying to position itself at a time when all the reports are saying that Afghanistan is a failed state. Seven years of American activity in Afghanistan has been a total failure, a terrible legacy for the Bush administration to have to live down in the last twelve months of his presidency. That they have failed in Iraq as well as Afghanistan could affect the Republican vote in the presidential election. Secondly, it is a way for the Democrats to show that they would do much better and have a better strategy. The bigger failure has been that neither the US nor the NATO have had a strategy in Afghanistan. The second part of it is that neither the Americans nor the Pakistan army have had a strategy in the North West Frontier Province. The Pakistan army has been worst at it because they have had this piecemeal attitude of making peace and then attacking and making peace and then attacking. There has been no consistent strategy or planning and, at the strategic level, there is a complete lack of trust between the militants and the people of NWFP and the army. TNS: Many analysts think that Baitullah Mehsud is more of a top al-Qaeda leader than a local Taliban leader. Why is it so? AR: I think Baitullah Mehsud is becoming a sort of an iconic figure like Mullah Omar and Bin Laden. He is heading this militia and a great deal is being done in his name, but it is not necessary that he is either ordering it or organising it. There are a lot of militias acting independently of Mehsud. This whole Islamic movement or militancy, since the 1990s, has shown in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that they need an Amir, someone who invokes the power or influence of the seventh century Arabia, after the death of the prophet. They need someone who they can claim to be a uniting factor, given that they are operating in a very divisive tribal society. So whether it is Taliban or al-Qaeda you need a leadership at almost a supernatural level, which is what Baitullah Mehsud has become. TNS: Do you see some sort of a merger between Taliban and al-Qaeda and to what extent? AR: For the last two years there has been a very effective alliance between al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, Pakistani groups fighting in Kashmir, urban militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkatul Mujahideen, foreign groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkistan Movement in Muslim China. So I think there is a very broad-based alliance, of which Pakistani Taliban is playing a leading role because they have been the hosts of all these forces. All these forces are based in Pakistan, their leaders are living in Pakistan, their logistics and supply lines are here. So obviously, in order to run this, the Pakistani Taliban are playing a very critical role. TNS: Specifically, do you see any links and coordination among the Taliban here and in Afghanistan? AR: After 9/11 the Afghan Taliban retreated into Pakistan. They were never defeated by the Americans; they were hosted here by Pakhtun tribesmen, and by elements of the intelligence services, and the government, helped by the JUI in Quetta and Peshawar. They were able to exploit their hosts in order to rebuild their movement inside Afghanistan. But as part of that process, of rebuilding their movement in Afghanistan, they in turn ideologised their hosts, the Pakistani Pakhtuns. These Pakhtuns, who had already fought with the Taliban in the 1990s against Ahmed Shah Masud and later against Americans, were very amenable to being ideologised; also because they received a lot of money from their guests. It is very ironical because when the Afghan Taliban were created in 1994 they were highly influenced by the madrasas in Pakistan. And now we have a backlash of that. We now have the Afghan Taliban helping create the Pakistani Taliban. So there's this cross border fertilization that is constantly taking place. This issue cannot be addressed unless both countries address it as a regional problem. It has to be tackled as a cross-border problem and not of one country. TNS: What do you think is the way to contain extremism and militancy which has now spread to Dara Adamkhel and Swat? And do you think the Pakistani army, in its present shape and with its present level of training, can tackle it? AR: The first thing is that Pakistani Taliban and the alliance of extremists want to destabilise Pakistan and if possible to conquer more territory and claim NWFP as a Shariah state, that can somehow be separated from the rest of Pakistan. At the same time, they are spreading that campaign in other parts of Pakistan -- in the urban areas. With attacks in Karachi and Lahore, they are trying to destabilise the country. The thing is that under the political dispensation of President Musharraf, there is no support in the country for a concerted campaign against extremists because there is no support for him and his government. Until there is a legitimate government, which is representative and can mobilise people to stand up and resist the extremists, we're going to go down on this score. This is the biggest failure of the Americans -- not to understand that the real problem in Pakistan is the lack of legitimate government. It's not a question of better guns or money etc. It is a matter of legitimacy and having the people's support. The second thing is that this is also affecting the morale of the Pakistan army. We've seen how the morale has plummeted in the army, in the Frontier Corps, in the Police; the security services are extremely scared of the militants. The tactic of suicide bombing has created enormous fear amongst them. They also need motivation and mobilisation. I don't think that can come about with a military that one day is asking them to crack heads of civil society, of lawyers and women, and is then asking them to take on extremists at the same time. You have to decide; you can't ask the police and the military to be involved in both because it's going to confuse them. Thirdly, the US plans to rearm the Frontier Corps and sections of military and re-train them for counterinsurgency is very necessary. The army itself has to undergo a process of reconstruction and screening because within its ranks there are a large number of extremists. I think the army chief has to screen these people out of these services before any kind of retraining programme. TNS: You have talked of Musharraf as a weakened president with no legitimacy. But can we expect some change of policy if PPP comes into power? AR: I think the PPP can do a great deal to mobilise the public. But will Pervez Musharraf allow them to do it? Is he going to share power? Is he going to allow the prime minister to function? We saw what happened with Shaukat Aziz. Certainly the PPP government is not going to act like Shaukat Aziz. If they do, they will be thrown out within three days. This is a political party with a political manifesto and political leadership, which needs to be treated as a proper political representative of the public. If they are elected to power and Musharraf continues with his present behaviour, we will have another crisis within weeks. TNS: With the Americans now ready to give financial assistance for the tribal areas to the tune of 750 million dollars and some part of it reserved for Frontier Corps, there are reservations about how this money is going to be spent. Can you think of some mechanism to spend it honestly and in what order of priority? AR: I think this entire plan is wrong and warped. What is needed first is immediate action by the Pakistani government to bring FATA into the mainstream of Pakistani politics. Now this cannot be done in one go, I accept that. FATA has to be brought under the constitution. The people of FATA should be asked through a referendum what kind of a status they want, whether they want a separate province or want to be a part of NWFP and the laws should be gradually changed. An immediate law that could be changed, even before this election, is that political parties should be allowed to operate in FATA. Unless this happens, and unfortunately there is no American pressure for the army to do this, the situation will stay the same. This should have been done back in 2002, when the first rigged elections were held by Musharraf. Then he had a big chance to so this but he lost that opportunity. Now we've seen this virtual collapse of FATA. To provide money now would mean you are bolstering the present setup which is a fake setup, very unpopular among the people. At the moment there is no civil society in FATA. The Taliban have wiped them all out. The government has failed to protect the maliks, school teachers, bureaucrats, journalists and the local people who formed the civil society. In FATA there was a civil society, which has been eliminated after 9/11. The government has allowed it to be eliminated. They have either been killed by the local Taliban, or driven out as refugees. So you have the most educated people living in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. This is a criminal thing; one part of the country has been denuded of its entire civil society because of the lack of action by the government. TNS: Looking back what do you think were the mistakes committed in Afghanistan, because we haven't seen any stability there. Brahimi, the UN envoy who organised the Bonn conference, has recently admitted it was a mistake not to have included the Taliban in decision making process? AR: I think Brahimi's comment is a regret that there were not more Pashtuns at Bonn which I think is absolutely correct. I doubt very much if the Taliban would have come to Bonn even if there had been an invitation. The real failure in Afghanistan stems from a lack of US seriousness in addressing the problems of nation building and reconstruction. We now know that within months of American victory in Afghanistan, they were already preparing for Iraq and there was no intention of rebuilding Afghanistan. Rumsfeld and Cheney had no intention to spend money, time or troops. This situation persisted till around 2005 when only after Iraq started going wrong did they realise that they better do something about Afghanistan. And then we saw a much greater commitment towards building the Afghan army, police, more money etc. But by then the Taliban insurgency had caught on. And you can argue today that perhaps it was too little, too late. TNS: What role do you see for Taliban and do you think they can be part of the new project in Afghanistan? AR: A lot of Taliban rank and file can be bought over with inducements of rehabilitation, reconstruction -- bribes in many ways. But I think the Afghan Taliban leadership is incorrigible. They will have to be eliminated. They are not going to surrender or do a deal with the Americans or with the Karzai government.
By Babar A Mufti "The first thing that impressed me about Islam was its pluralism. Quran praises all the prophets of the past," said the ex-Catholic runaway nun Karen Armstrong. During the last decade, in particular, her interest in Islam increased and she was able to endear herself to Muslims at large. So much so that now she is not only expected to guide them but also to explain their religion to them. In 1999, the Islamic Centre of Southern California honoured Armstrong as a bridge builder who promotes understanding among three faiths. Karen is a self-appointed
apologist for Islam in the West, who discusses the familiar questions of
similarities between Abrahamic religions and of Western misrepresentation of
Islam from the It was afterwards that her writing career kicked in. "After I left convent, for five years, I was worn out with religion," says Karen. Gradually, she turned more optimistic about religion and her commitment to scholarship also revived. She has written some 20 books since, of which 'The Great Transformation: The Beginning Of Our Religious Traditions' published in March 2006 is the latest. Karen has been fortunate too that her interest in religion has coincided with the interest in Islam across the globe. Karen Armstrong came to Pakistan on the invitation of the Aga Khan Foundation to mark the golden jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan. Here, her talks and lectures have sometimes even bordered on sermons, not because she intended them that way but because of the questions she was asked. She was always expected to be more prescriptive and authoritarian. She spoke on her favourite topics, explaining the nature of religion and the need for compassion and tolerance. Her lecture at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad entitled 'Tolerance in Islam' was possibly the highlight of her tour, and also of Islamabad's intellectual life last week. She received a large audience -- buses full of students. People, irrespective of their interests and needs turn in large numbers to attend a lecture whose contents were not only familiar to them but also quite accessible in the number of books she wrote and the numerous interviews she gave. It is not that the interest of a white European in Islam is music to our ears. The concept that the main monotheistic faiths emanate from the same Abrahamic tradition of religion is not new to the Pakistani audience, who receive heavy doses of religion at a very early age. People flocked to listen to Karen because they have love for intellect and a hunger for the environment that such intellectual activity inevitably entails. Historically, also, Pakistanis have been respectful of others' opinions and open to debate. Karen also earns respect because she could see behind the usual western discourse on Islam. She has achieved a different understanding of religion, taking inspiration from the religious traditions of all three faiths. She attempts at religious globalisation and thinks that God is ineffable, too beautiful or great to be described in words and that "nobody can have a last word on something that exceeds words." Three of her books -- 'A History of God,' 'Jerusalem: One City,' 'Three Faiths' and 'The Battle for God' show what unites the faiths. Each, Armstrong writes, talks of a God who was first revealed to Abraham. Each of these religions has also developed a hard-line conservative strain as a reaction against the modern world. Armstrong, consequently, does not buy Huntington's idea of 'clash of civilizations,' as for her fundamentalism is a product of modern culture, which manifests itself not only in its Islamic but also in Christian and Jewish forms among others. She believes that 9/11 only confirmed a deep-seated conscious belief in the west that equated Islam with the sword. The western perception, she thinks, did not realise that the terrorists were deviants of Islam as well. An implicit meaning of her lectures in Pakistan was to dissociate Islam from terrorism. It was to show that terrorism has its roots in current economic and political situation of the world. In the same vein, she has also been a vocal critic of the offensive caricatures of prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) published in some of European newspapers in Feb 2006 and of the Pope's remarks on Islam some time later. Karen has made it clear that the west can't afford to continue the ancient prejudices against Islam and said that the these remarks were dangerous and would convince the Muslims of the West's incurable Islamophobia. Her noble overtures, such as these, have made her dear to Muslims. Pakistanis listened to her because she has been through a period of religious doubts in her life. The inherent distrust of religion evoked in such works as Bertrand Russell's 'Why am I not a Christian' gets counterbalanced in Armstrong as she has shown that secularism has shown that it is as lethal as religion and life without religion would not be any better. By Shoaib Hashmi There is a brand new coffee shop in town. Well, by itself that is not earth shaking news, after all coffee houses are really a nineteenth century Viennese tradition, where they were a sign of gentle sophistication. Here too there used to be a chain of 'Zelin's' coffee houses all over the subcontinent, including the one in Lahore on the Mall. In fact you might as well know that the recent hullabaloo about the Pak Tea House is a bit of a wild goose chase. The real meeting place and
watering hole of the literati in Lahore was the Coffee House, not the Tea As I say, the tradition started in Vienna where the clientele was the music crowd led by all the Strauss' in turn, and from there it spread to the rest of Europe. In the London of the sixties, one centre was Baker Street whose previous claim to fame was that it was the abode of Sherlock Holmes at No: 221-B and has always been the abode of Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. They tried all kinds of tricks to make their own establishment distinctive, and I still remember one named 'Le Macabre' which had tea sets shaped like skulls and stuff. Come to think of it, lately we too have gathered a spate of coffee houses though in a slightly altered form. Any number of places which started as bakeries have set up cute little places with Vienna style glass-topped tables, cast iron painted chairs, steaming coffee dispensers and attracted their clientele of young students and yippies. But the one I am talking about is different because it has been set up inside my favourite bookshop on the Main Boulevard. I must confess that I haven't been there yet, but I am constrained to talk of it because I admire the sentiment. Obviously the owners have their hearts in the right place and believe the purpose of a book is to be read, so the right thing for the sellers to do is to make a nice, comfortable and inviting space where one can relax and just be among books. Kudos! In the old days, Lahore's best loved bookshop used to be on the corner of the Mall and Old Anarkali, where they had leather covered sofas with personal reading lights, and the unspoken tradition that if you wanted to read a book, and couldn't afford it they would not sell the volume until you had finished with it. The place has since gone the way of all flesh and given place to a straight commercial establishment, but we knew it and admired it, and the best we could do to preserve its memory was to buy up the teak wood bookshelves for the library at GC!
Instead of continuity that his candidacy would have symbolised, Shaukat Aziz has been consigned by his own best friends to the fate of a footnote By Adnan Rehmat Love him or loathe him, the son of Aziz Ahmed born in Karachi on March 6, 1949, was destined to be the prime minister of Pakistan one day. Because he was handpicked by a military ruler, there is little that Pakistanis could have done but to accept Shaukat Aziz as the country's 22nd Grand Vizier (that would be the Urdu translation of prime minister when seen in Pakistan's context of a premier led by self-appointed martial rulers). The clean-shaven, Seville
Row-suited one was preceded by the hirsute Zafarullah Jamali -- as There are many paradoxes about Shaukat. From a banker to finance minister to prime minister, he was quick on the uptake, earning himself the suitable moniker of 'Shortcut.' Someone in the mien of another illustrious shortcut variety -- Moeen Qureshi; former bankers who have no hesitation to offer solutions called 'faster, stronger GDP growth' to military rulers, or their proxies, and are always dying to save Pakistan from its incestuous economic gnawing. However, in a departure from the likes of his own ilk, such as Qureshi and Soomro, Aziz lasted much, much longer than three months of caretaking prime ministership. In fact, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was ousted in 1977, Shortcut Aziz managed to serve as the longest reigning prime minister of Pakistan: 38 months. In contrast, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif managed to be premiers, at any single time, for 24 and 32 months only, respectively. Clearly General Pervez Musharraf was more generous than either Ghulam Ishaq Khan or Farooq Leghari. Or does the credit really go to high compliance levels of the Grand Vizier who did not stray from the script. So was the Shaukat ministership (both finance and prime) a shortcut to being the chief executive of Pakistan or was it the interregnum between serving Citibank and Pakistan? Or between the prime minister of the 'world's most dangerous' piece of real estate and the World Bank (the IMF, sadly, appointed a new vice president last week; a Chinese)? Or is the Shaukat shortcut a reference to the brief transition between being a banker and a finance minister? Or maybe the flash transition between being finance minister and prime minister? Or is it the gap between being a senator and a member of the National Assembly (he is certainly the only one in living memory to have made this particular astonishing transition)? Better still, all these are shortcuts and Shaukat didn't just do one; he did them all and is thus the mother (or is that 'father'?) of all shortcuts. That's a pretty long route of shortcuts! Shortcut Aziz may have pulled many a fast ones there but what is his political legacy -- the interregnum between his vacancy of the Prime Minister House, nestling in the lap of the scenic Margalla Hills in Islamabad, and Soomro's keeping the seat warm for the next Wazir-e-Azam? Shaukat was a lateral entrant to Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q and made Senator so that he could serve as the military ruler's economic czar on the federal cabinet. After Musharraf tired of Jamali, the gentle giant, as the puppet prime minister, it was only a matter of time that he would bring Shaukat to the fore -- who wants to deal with messy politicians, even if they are of the cultivated kind, when there are smooth--talking, telegenic former bankers with no constituency to cater to and who can handle the political economy that keeps the Men in Khaki in the game? And so it came to pass; Musharraf conjured up yet another shortcut for Shaukat -- Shujaat Hussain kept the premier's seat warm as he 'ran' for public office from Attock and Tharparkar and was given the 'public's mandate' to become Pakistan's latest prime minister. The first shortcut of Shaukat's Pakistan adventure really began on Nov 26, 1999 at about 10 pm, a few days after Musharraf had staged his dramatic airborne coup, while addressing a gathering of PakPAC, a political lobbying sub-body of the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA). Musharraf stated in his dinner speech that Shaukat has come to Pakistan with 40 financial experts who have 'offered free service' to revive the Pakistani economy (at least 20 are still heading either government corporations or sitting on their boards of directors. His closest former colleague and protege, Salman Shah is now in his boss's finance ministry seat for the caretaker cabinet). Then he asked Shaukat to stand up and introduce himself to the audience. He obligingly did. And so he became minister of finance with immediate effect, Musharraf handing him Pakistan's treasury. His official responsibilities included finance, economic affairs, statistics, planning and development and revenue division. He also headed the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet, the Cabinet Committee on Investment, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, and the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation. In 2001, Shaukat was declared 'Finance Minister of the Year' by Euromoney magazine and by the time he became prime minister he came to be associated with accelerating growth in the Pakistani economy and making it one of the fastest growing in the world. In a telltale sign, however, in the 90 days after he left office, Pakistan has plunged into a cold (no gas), dark (no electricity) and hungry (no atta) place. Clearly someone had made various shortcuts in economic projections and figures. Shaukat's 'bumper' wheat and sugar had disappeared and expensive imports were proving inadequate to put enough rotis in peoples' stomachs to think about voting for the PML-Q, and thus his economic miracle. Indeed Shaukat's failure to generate even a single megawatt of power or moving even a single inch toward the first cubic meter of Iranian or Turkmen gas in eight years in a remittance-rich, job-poor economy is seen as so damning that no less than his own senior party leadership (erstwhile Punjab chief minister Pervez Elahi) has heaped the blame on him for the energy and food crises that is driving 160 million Pakistanis mad ahead of the February 18 elections. In fact, public socialisation with Shaukat is associated with potential depletion of votes so much that his former party boss (the mumbling but not humbling Shujaat Hussain) refused to go out to lunch with him in London last week. Who in his right mind turns down the gastronomic delights of London? He may have shared with Musharraf, the commonality of surviving an assassination attempt (both in their swanky bullet-proof Mercedes no less) -- unlike poor Benazir Bhutto (oh how the heavens can be unfair sometimes) -- but does that make Shortcut Pakistan's best prime minister, as his retired army chief boss claims? That would be a tad unfair. It was Shortcut's government -- as the prime minister sat mouselike quiet -- that virtually the entire judiciary was sacked and the media gagged. History will remember (we won't have to wait for long as it is already happening) Shortcut as Pakistan's only prime minister who was so harmless and uninvolved in governance that he was not even ousted in the coup against his government! There was no need for Musharraf to kick Shortcut out like he had Sharif -- and others before him had Bhutto and Benazir -- because he was as invisible as invisible is. He was so much an embarrassment for the party he represented that it spat him out like Pakistan's much boasted but invisible GDP growth rate, which has turned the country into a land of ravaging shortages. For a party that claims economic miracles that people all over the world usually reward with their votes, Shaukat was not just not fielded as the next prime ministerial candidate (so that he could offer more fun statistics from the Federal Bureau of Statistics to the people for their loyalty) but not even granted a PML-Q ticket. Now that takes enormous talent -- seeking a PML-Q ticket in these times and being turned down! From seemingly a land of plenty of noise and energy, he converted Pakistan into a land of poverty of hope -- a state where media is gagged, judges are held hostage, lawyers are jailed and civil society members are these days identified by the baton-lumps on their heads. How ironic that arguably Pakistan's richest prime minister almost doubled Pakistan's domestic and foreign debt. He could not even prove an effective economic hitman. So much for Shortcut's legacy -- instead of continuity that his candidacy even as an MNA (much less prime ministership) would have symbolised, he has been consigned by his own best friends to the fate of a footnote. There's no shortcut from there and that's the long and the short of it.
By Shahid Husain "No case has been detected in Sindh that the H5N1 has affected any human being. The three poultry workers who had been put on observation at Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) are perfectly all right," Dr. Shakil Mallick, deputy secretary, Public Health, government of Sindh told TNS. Aslam Jalali, provincial surveillance officer, City District Government Karachi (CDGK) corroborated with his assertion. "The two affected poultry farms namely Uni Poultry farm and Rangers Poultry Farm have been sealed and the three poultry workers who have been under observation at CHK have shown no signs that they have been affected by the virus," he said. However, a team of World
Health Organization (WHO) after visiting the affected farms of Gadap on Rafaqat Hussain Rajam, federal commissioner for livestock husbandry, has been reported to have said that 1.5 million chickens had so far died of the virus. But Kamal Alktar, president, Karachi Poultry Association claimed that 3.5 million chickens have died of virus. To what extent the catastrophe has affected business could be gauged from the fact that poultry business suffered losses worth billions of rupees, Pakistan Poultry Association has been reported to have said. Although the two affected farms have been sealed, one could not be sure if the dead birds have been disposed off scientifically. In fact, Jalali showed skepticism about their proper burial. "The dead birds should be put in polyethylene bags and sprayed by chemical called formalin before they are buried. The bags can also be buried if limestone water is put on them before burial," he said. He dispelled the impression that the affected birds could cause an epidemic but said animals such as stray dogs could be affected if they eat infected birds. Aqueous solution of Formalin or Formaldehyde could be used as a disinfectant, as it kills most bacteria and fungi, including spores. But since several poultry farms are not following the proper procedure for the burial of dead chicken, it could lead to a catastrophe. "If they (dead chickens) are not disposed off properly then there is a good chance that these viruses will further disseminate among other poultry farms not only in the outskirts of Karachi but it may spread in other provinces," cautioned Dr. Afia Zafar, consultant microbiologist, Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH). Following the confirmation of the detection of Bird Flu virus H5N in two poultry farms of Gadap, the government has approved the national plan for prevention and control of avian and pandemic influenza, costing 5.511 million dollars. This was stated by Joint Secretary and spokesman of the Ministry of Health, Oriya Maqbool Jan Abbasi while addressing a news conference is Islamabad. He said the government was fully aware of the myriad dimensions and sequel of influenza pandemic and was closely monitoring the situation in collaboration with national and international partners across the country. Abbasi added that the backyard poultry were the biggest challenge for government to tackle the bird flu issue. It was the responsibility of the district government to ensure the safe disposal of birds, not the federal government. It may be recalled that eight cases of bird flu were detected in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) last December, and one patient succumbed to death while one remained under medical supervision in Abbotabad and Mansehra. Mercifully, six patients recovered from the deadly disease. Avian influenza or 'bird flu', is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and less commonly pigs. Avian influenza viruses are highly species-specific, but have on rare occasions, crossed the species barrier to infect humans according to WHO. In domestic poultry, infection with avian influenza viruses causes two main forms of disease, distinguished by low and high extremes of virulence. The so-called 'low pathogenic' form commonly causes only mild symptoms (ruffled feathers, a drop in egg production) and may easily go undetected. The highly pathogenic form is far more dramatic. It spreads very rapidly through poultry flocks, causes disease affecting multiple internal organs, and has a mortality that can approach 100 per cent, often within 48 hours. Influenza A viruses1 has 16 H subtypes and 9 N subtypes2. Only viruses of the H5 and H7 subtypes are known to cause the highly pathogenic form of the disease. However, not all viruses of the H5 and H7 subtypes are highly pathogenic and not all will cause severe disease in poultry. In the past, highly pathogenic viruses have been isolated from migratory birds on very rare occasions involving a few birds, usually found dead within the flight range of a poultry outbreak. Recent events make it likely that some migratory birds are now directly spreading the H5N1 virus in its highly pathogenic form. Further spread to new areas is expected, according to WHO. In recent years, bird flu has taken Asian nations by storm and despite best efforts to contain the disease, it is taking a heavy toll. The gravity of the situation could be gauged from the fact that in 2008 alone, five deaths were reported by bird flu in Azerbaijan, seven in Cambodia, 17 in China, 19 in Egypt, 103 in Indonesia, two in Iraq, two in Lao People's Democratic Republic, one in Pakistan, 17 in Thailand, four in Turkey and 48 in Vietnam. In 2007, one death occurred in Cambodia, three in China, nine in Egypt, 37 in Indonesia, two in Lao People's Democratic Republic, one in Pakistan and five in Vietnam. In other words, the deadly disease is spreading like wild fire and necessitates emergency measures to contain it.
RIPPLE
EFFECT By Omar R. Quraishi I couldn't agree more with Masood Hasan who wrote in his Sunday column for this newspaper's op-ed pages that the problem with many Pakistanis was that they were all more or less afflicted with the 'oh-it's-not-my-problem' syndrome. Talking about the severe water shortage in the country, he gave the example of individual car-owners who have no problems using dozens, if not hundreds of gallons, of water to clean their vehicles. In any civilised country worth its salt, this would be both legally and socially looked down upon but in Pakistan, where flouting the law -- and good sense and logic -- is increasingly become the norm, such abnormal behaviour is fast becoming the norm. Take for instance, the observance, mostly in the breach of traffic laws in the country, especially by motorcyclists. They will drive the wrong side of the road, they will side you and they will do all of this while pretending and in fact believing that they are doing no wrong. And if you -- driving a car -- try and talk sense to them and tell them to at least leave you and your vehicle alone, they will stare and glare at you and have no problems getting into a fight with you, as if you have done something wrong. The perversion of the law is so complete that those who follow the law are made to feel as if they are the ones in violation of it -- no wonder people, mostly those living on foreign shores -- equate this with a country on its way to becoming a failed state. And in response to this, instead of trying to look inward and see where we have made mistakes or how we -- individually and/or collectively -- may need to fix or correct ourselves, most of us get all sensitive about such reports and many even get offended. Another example here will suffice. Take a recent article in Newsweek which called Pakistan the 'most dangerous country' in the world. Upon its publication, I emailed its writer Ron Moreau, who I happen to be acquainted with, and asked him what kind of feedback he got to which he said that it was mostly negative and that a lot of people were very angry -- but that he stuck by what he wrote. And why shouldn't he -- after all, if one looks at the past nine months or so, dozens of suicide bombings have taken place in which hundreds of civilians, police personnel and soldiers have died. Surely that doesn't happen in a country where the law and order situation is even remotely passable -- unless of course one is looking at Iraq or Afghanistan, and that is exactly the points of reference that the article made while passing judgment on Pakistan. If one needs further proof of abnormal/irrational behaviour one need look no further than the recent pronouncements of government spokesmen, including the information minister, on the issue of media freedom, or rather its lack thereof, in the country. Take for instance the claims made by the government regarding the continued detention of deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and several other judges of the superior courts as well as leaders of the lawyers' movement. The country's, in fact the world's media, reports that these people are under house arrest and that their and their families' movements are restricted -- this is supplemented by footage updated frequently and broadcast periodically showing conclusively this to be true. But despite this the government claims that no such restrictions are placed on these judges and that they are free to move about. The same is the case of several leading lawyers, and it seems as if the government thinks that the rest of the world is made up of fools who cannot see reality for themselves and are also foolish enough to digest the government propaganda. What is this? Is it abnormal behaviour? Is it a case of denying the obvious, being very economical with the truth -- or, all of the above? As for the restrictions on the media, we see the information minister give a most blatant threat to it, warning it that it better abide by the code of conduct or else they could face a Nov 3 situation. He bristled at what he said was the (apparent) violation of this code of conduct saying that it was President Pervez Musharraf who allowed the electronic media 'unprecedented freedom.' Here the minister needs to be reminded that this 'unprecedented freedom' pretty quickly turned into 'unprecedented censorship' when independent TV channels began to show things that the president and the government did not like. Also, it comes as a complete shocker (other than the fact that he made such a threat) that the minister thinks that the TV channels, anodyne as they have become following the implementation of the insidious 'code of conduct', are now actually violating it. As if this is not enough, the very next day that this most unfortunate (most unfortunate because it seems that nothing has been learnt from the past) warning is issued, a lengthy rebuttal by a government spokesman is given in response to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists -- a very respectable US-body watchdog for journalists all over the world -- which says that the media is among the freest in the world and that there are no restrictions imposed on it. In this regard, these government spokesmen, including their bosses in the information ministry and presidency frequently say that a code of conduct for the media is commonplace. This is precisely what the president said to an American interviewer recently, who promptly corrected him saying that there was no such thing in the US. In fact, the interviewer probably should have told the president that the American Constitution's First Amendment explicitly says that parliament, i.e. Congress, "shall make no laws abridging" the freedom of speech and expression. References are also made to a code in the UK but there too the Press Council is a self-regulatory body and the government does not make signing of any code a precondition for broadcasting. A similar thing happened in the case of researcher and freelance journalist Nicholas Schmidle who was asked to leave the country in controversial circumstances and after which, he wrote a long article for the New York Times magazine detailing what he claimed was the rise of the next generation of the Taliban. Mr Schmidle probably made the mistake of travelling by himself in Balochistan, much like Carlotta Gall, a Times correspondent for the region, made last year. Whoever issues these statements does no credit to the government and only serves to lower its dwindling credibility. Calling night day repeatedly and denying the obvious doesn't make the untruth truth. Postscript: Even the Pakistan Poultry Association seems to have become a victim to this kind of refusal to see reality straight in the eye. What else is one to make of a statement made by its chief this past week saying that bird-flu was 'a propaganda' by the enemies of the industry. To quote the chairman of the association, a Mr Abdul Basit, the "bird-flu propaganda is a well thought-out conspiracy." He also said that the disease is found in birds and "can hardly pose any real threat" to people. Another instance of the 'oh-the-world-is-wrong-we-are-right' syndrome. Other than that no comment. The
writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News. Email:
omarq@cyber.net.pk
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It would trigger off a general uprising in the NWFP by Pashtun militants
which may possibly swamp the Pakistan army or divide it and lead to coups
within the army. Such a trigger is not needed at all.
pre-crusades period. However, before Karen became an expert on comparative
religions, she went through a rough phase of life. She got disillusioned as a
Catholic nun, which she put in plain words in her book 'Through the Narrow
Gate.' Subsequently, she tried her luck in academia, where her doctoral
thesis was ruthlessly rejected. She even lost the job of a schoolteacher
during that difficult stage.
House, which was next door but only came into its own after Independence
after the Coffee House had gone to seed. In fact, I have always thought it a
bit peculiar that such a fuss should have been made about the Tea House,
because it may have been turned into a haunt by Zahid Dar's generation, but
certainly Intezar Sahib's generation must know that Manto Sahib and his
friends used to hang about the Coffee House. It later was turned into a
centre for storing and hiring out film making equipment and retained the name
even after it repaired to Multan Road and the film studios neighbourhood.
genteel as they come in the Land of the Pure -- and succeeded by Mohammadmian
Soomro, he with the formidable handle-bar moustache albeit equally mannerly.
Thus sandwiched is Shaukat Aziz's place under the Pakistani sun -- the
lengthening list of the game of musical chairs that is the prime ministership.
His immediate past morphing into his immediate future -- he changed nothing.
Wednesday and meeting poultry workers also went to Baqai Medical Hospital
situated on Super Highway to ascertain to what extent the medical facility
was equipped should the deadly virus affect humans.