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Rajuk’s demolition extravaganza
   Almost everyday headlines in the newspapers provide plenty of news stories about the new role of Rajdhani Unnayan Katripakhya (Rajuk for short) in demolishing scores of what is called unauthorized buildings and structures. Rajuk officials are also seen in the electronic media gleefully supervising such demolition extravaganzas. These officials take the advantage in informing newsmen how the owners of those structures had violated the Rajuk rules, building codes and deviated from the construction plans that Rajuk had authorised. Yes, indeed, if one has wilfully violated the rules of the game he has to face the music and pay for the same in one way or another; it appears to be a fair game.
   But is it really a fair game? The list of the large and high-rise structures being accused of violating the Rajuk rules is quite big and many of those involved are also some of the bigwigs in the game. How so many large and eye-catching buildings could be developed violating the rules and codes of construction without being detected by the Rajuk officials? Rajuk’s job is to examine building plans and other details very carefully before approving the same. Besides, they are also supposed to do some on-the-spot checking to ensure that the rules and codes are strictly being observed. The large number of cases of the violation the rules clearly suggests that this was not done.
   Rajuk officials have a readymade answer to this complain: ‘we are short of hand for doing the job effectively.’ A report in all major newspapers on Tuesday about Rajuk’s demolition work in Dhanmondi area and almost identical deviation by the developers of quite a few tall buildings from the Rajuk-approved plans gives a different impression. It tells the readers that the building rules and codes were violated by the developers in connivance with some of the Rajuk officials. Otherwise, all of them could not have made identical deviation from the plan. Both the developers and the concerned Rajuk officials believed that if the developers of so many imposing buildings commit the same crime, the authority might not be able to impose any harsh punishment on them. They thought there could be safety in number.
   In one of the reports, after partially demolishing a number of buildings on Mirpur Road in Dhanmondi, Rajuk officials were quoted as saying that developers of all those buildings, mostly markets and shopping malls, had shown space for car parking in the approved designs but wilfully violated it. The developers of Badruddoza Supermarket, opposite Dhaka Collage, had shown a big car park behind the market in the approved design of the plan but built a residential house there instead. One wonders, how could this happen?
   Rajuk and building code
   Rajuk is responsible for overseeing the construction activities in the Dhaka metropolitan area. Without getting the designs and plans approved by Rajuk, no one is allowed to build anything. If Rajuk has suddenly woken up after the imposition of the state of emergency to find out that widespread violation of its building rules and codes had taken place it needs to do a lot of explanation to the relevant authorities. Like the electric and gas metre readers in DESA and Titas gas distribution company, many officials of the Rajuk are also known to have become very rich by manipulating the approved designs and plans for the developers. Anyone who has ever built a house in Dhaka knows how difficult it is to convince the relevant Rajuk officials before getting the design approved. However, the large construction firms maintain their own set of people to deal with the Rajuk officials. For them, it is a cakewalk.
   Some greedy real estate developers – certainly not all – usually indulge in all kinds of shoddiness to maximise their profits. A government agency like Rajuk is responsible to oversee the conduct of all real estate developers in the capital city to ensure that they follow the rules and codes and do not cheat the unsuspecting flat owners who would eventually buy them. However, once the developers complete the development of the block of flats and sell them to the new homeowners, they become responsible for everything including all the misdeeds of the developers. The partial demolition of large and high-rise buildings has a cost – both to Rajuk and to the owners. This could have been easily avoided if Rajuk officials had done the job they are supposed to do. In other words, until the existing nexus between a section of the Rajuk officials and the sleazy business operators is broken conclusively, no amount of knee-jerk reaction is going to work.
   Now that Rajuk has suddenly become aware of building rules and codes, they also need to do something to demolish some of the very old and dilapidated structures in the capital city which pose a severe risk to the people living in them and also to the people in the surrounding areas. Rajuk and the Dhaka City Corporation had prepared a list of such old and dangerous structures quite sometime ago but have not done anything to complete the task. It appears that both Rajuk and the City Corporation would become active again only if and when any of those structures collapses causing death and injury to the inhabitants. One hopes that the authorities would do something before any such tragic incident takes place.
    Economy and housing
   The present caretaker government’s move against corruption and black money – though a smart and welcome initiative – seems to have adversely affected the construction and related sectors of the economy. The size of the informal or the underground economy is said to be huge, almost half of the country’s total economy. Widespread corruption and the generation of large amount of black money used to fuel the underground economy for years and were largely responsible for its growth. The impact of the SEC move has created a panic amongst the sleazy characters and other black money holders and they have withdrawn from the scene. This may affect the overall economic growth in the short run though it would have a positive impact on the economy in the long run.
   There are reasons why the move is affecting the economy. According to real estate developers, the sales of new flats in the capital city have dropped since the state of emergency in January. The army-backed government’s vigorous drive against corruption has driven away most of the probable new flat buyers. The Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB) arranged a housing fair last month and total bookings for new flats reached only Tk 250 crore. This compares very unfavourably to the housing fair that REHAB organised in 2005. At that time, the fair was able to generate sales of new flats worth over Tk 600 crore.
   The industry sources claim that about 2.5 crore people – directly and indirectly – are involved in the construction industry. Besides, close to 15 lakh skilled and semi-skilled workers are employed in this sector. The down trend in the sales of new flats has already slowed down the pace of construction of new blocks of flats and many workers are not being able to get regular jobs.
   The construction and, particularly, the housing sector is directly linked to the sales of construction and indoor fitting materials such as bricks, rod, cement, paints, ceramic tiles, electric and sanitary equipments, aluminium and furniture. For example, the country’s re-rolling mills are one of the worst sufferers. Housing sector consumes about 30 per cent of the re-rolling industry’s products. Bangladesh Re-Rolling Mills Association leaders stated that the industry is on the verge of collapse because the developers have ceased to buy their products. Likewise, cement industry sources claim to have lost over 10 per cent of their sales since January this year.
   The stakes are indeed quite high. The financial institutions are also feeling the pinch. Non-banking financial institutions, including house building financing agencies, have invested about Tk 500 crore in the housing sector and its collection from the REHAB members has dropped significantly. The government would be advised to take some practical measures to help the housing sector cope with this sudden drop in sales because its impact on the overall economy is likely to linger for a while.

World Water Day 2007 will be observed today. This is an appropriate occasion to note that the scarcity of safe water and salinity in drinking water are the common phenomena in the coastal belt of the country.
   Take the case of Assashuni and Shyamnagor upazilas under Satkhira district. These twin problems have made the life of the people of these two upazilas miserable. The women, regardless of their social, economic or physical status, are the worst sufferers.
   The people of the area have been facing the hard reality of drinking saline water for decades. The situation has become worse with the introduction of shrimp farming and the consequent intrusion of brackish water far inside the coast.
   As a result, salinity has seriously affected ground water. Finding no alternative, most of the people in the area have now been using bacteriologically unsafe surface water.
   A team of the WaterAid Bangladesh conducted a sample study in these two upazilas to form a general idea of the problem and, particularly, to explore the situation of the women in daily life. The main objective of the study was to investigate the social and physical consequences in human body, especially the women, upon using saline water in daily life for a long period. Qualitative as well as participatory methods were used to conduct this study. The qualitative methods were used for gathering information including ‘key informant interviews, focus group discussions, case studies and direct observations. Six unions of Assasuni and Shyamnagar upazilas were selected, considering the high concentration of salinity (chloride) in useable water.
   During the focus group discussions, a total of 297 participants said that they had been using saline water for the last 20 years as the surrounding water bodies were affected by saline intrusion due to shrimp cultivation. They have generally been using saline water for all purposes. There are, however, a few exceptions in the case of drinking water.
   Social consequences: As an obligation from the family, women and adolescent girls are usually required to collect drinking water from special sources for which they need to spend 3 to 4 hours a day. So they do not have enough time, scope and energy to carry out other household duties like cooking, bathing, washing clothes, taking care of elders or patients etc.
   When they go out for collecting water, women and adolescent girls are sometimes harassed by boys and men. The women and girls therefore feel uneasy and threatened while collecting water from distant sources.
   The skin of adolescent girls becomes rough and unattractive due to the use of saline water. Men from outside the area therefore do not show their interest in marrying these young girls. Even within this area, the girls from the poor families are neglected by the rich families.
   Economic loss: When a poor family cannot afford to collect water due to sickness or because it does not have any member in the family to do the job, they have to buy water from water vendors at Taka 10 per pitcher. It is very difficult for them to spend Taka 300 per month for drinking purposes as their monthly income varies from Taka 500 to Taka 1500 based on geographical location and scope of work. For that reason sometimes they use saline water for drinking purposes also. It is important to note that females are the prime consumers of saline water within their family.
   Agricultural consequences: Over 30 per cent of the net available cultivable lands of Bangladesh are located in the coastal areas. But it has been observed that all the coastal cultivable lands are not being utilised for crop production, mostly due to soil salinity. Increased soil salinity limits growth of standing crops and affects overall crop production in the one hand and makes the affected soil unsuitable for many potential crops, on the other. Soil salinity has been considered as a major constraint to food grain production in coastal areas of the country.
   Physical difficulties: Every person is suffering from one or more saline water-related diseases. It is found that women and adolescent girls are affected by gynaecological problems by using saline water during menstrual management.
   A very painful scenario came up during discussions when participants were explaining their bitter experiences about menstrual hygiene management. They said that saline water creates painful situation during menstruation. The used clothes become hard after drying which creates discomfort when used next and also causes adversities in health. More use of the same hard clothes (due to saline effects) creates injury in genital area, and sometimes it causes over bleeding.
   A common phenomenon of females in menstrual hygiene practices in this area is sufferings from infection which causes some difficulties in regulation of menstruation, uterus infection and other difficulties.
   At present a number of NGOs have been working in the area and they have tried a number of alternative options. The pond-sand filter method has so far been found quite effective. However, it is not available in all places.
   The author is a programme officer of WaterAid Bangladesh.

KHANAQIN, Diyala province: Four years after the US and British troops invaded Iraq the country is drenched in blood and its people full of fear. Iraqis often have a look of half-suppressed panic in their eyes as they tell how violent death had touched them and their families again and again.
   ‘I have fled twice in the past year,’ said Kassim Naji Salaman, a burly driver in dirty brown robes, as he stood beside his petrol tanker outside the town of Khanaqin in central Iraq this week-end. ‘I and my family used to live in Baghdad but we ran for our lives when my uncle and nephew were killed and we moved into a house in the village of Kanaan in Diyala.’ Salaman hoped he and his family, all Sunni, would be safer in a Sunni district. But almost everywhere in Iraq is dangerous. ‘Militiamen kidnapped my brother Natik, who used to drive this tanker, and forced him into the boot of their car,’ he continued. ‘When they took him out they shot him in the head and left his body beside the road. I am frightened of going back to Kanaan where my family are refugees because the militiamen would kill me as well.’
   Iraqis expected their lives to get better when the US and Britain invaded with the intention of overthrowing Saddam Hussein exactly four years ago today. They were divided on whether they were being liberated or occupied but almost no Iraqis fought for the old regime in 2003. Even his own Sunni community knew that Saddam had inflicted almost a quarter of a century of hot and cold war on his own people. He had reduced the standard of living of Iraqis, owners of vast oil reserves, from a level close to Greece to that of Mali.
   No sooner had Saddam Hussein fallen than Iraqis were left in no doubt that they had been occupied not liberated. The army and security services were dissolved. As an independent state Iraq ceased to exist. ‘The Americans want clients not allies in Iraq,’ lamented one Iraqi dissident who had long lobbied for the invasion in London and Washington.
   Guerrilla war against the US forces by the five million-strong Sunni community erupted with extraordinary speed and ferocity. By the summer of 2003 whenever I went to the scene of a bomb attack or an ambush of US soldiers I would find jubilant Iraqis dancing for joy around the pools of drying blood on the road or the smouldering Humvee vehicles. For Iraqis every year has been worse than the last since 2003. In November and December last year alone some 5,000 civilians were murdered, often tortured to death, according to the UN. This toll compares to 3,000 killed in 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. Many Iraqis have voted with their feet, some two million fleeing––mostly to Syria and Jordan–– since President Bush and Tony ordered American and British troops across the Iraqi border four years ago today.
   So dangerous is it to travel anywhere in Iraq outside Kurdistan that it is difficult for journalists to provide evidence of the slaughter-house the country has become without being killed themselves. Blair and Bush have long implied that the violence is confined to central Iraq. This lie should have been permanently nailed by the Baker-Hamilton report written by senior Republicans and Democrats which examined one day last summer when the US military had announced that there had been 93 attacks and discovered that the real figure was 1,100. In other words, the violence was being understated by a factor of ten.
   Diyala is one of the most violent provinces in Iraq. It used to be one of the richest with rich fruit orchards flourishing on the banks of the Diyala river before it joins the Tigris south of Baghdad. But its sectarian geography is lethal. Its population is a mixture of Sunni and Shia with a small Kurdish minority. For at least two years it has been convulsed by ever escalating violence.
   It is impossible for a foreign journalist to travel to Diyala from Baghdad unless he or she is embedded with the US forces. I knew, having made the journey before, that it was possible to get to Khanaqin, in the Kurdish controlled north-east corner of Diyala by taking a road passing through Kurdish villages along the Iraqi side of the Iranian border.
   We started in Arbil, the Kurdish capital, and drove through the mountains to Sulaimaniyah three hours to the east. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, arranged a guide who knew the road to take us on to Khanaqin the following morning. We drove out of the mountains through the Derbendikan tunnel and then followed the right bank of the Diyala river, swollen by torrential rain, until we got to the tumbledown town of Kalar. It is important here to turn right over a long bridge across the Diyala because the next town on the road, Jalawlah, is contested between Kurds and Arab Sunni. The road then goes in the direction of the Iranian border until it reaches Khanaqin which is under PUK control.
   What would have happened to us if we had gone on to Jalawlah became clear when we met a tribal leader from the town called Ghassim Mohammed Shati. Asked about the state of security in Jalawlah he said: ‘The centre of the town is safe enough but my father and brother and aunt were murdered on the outskirts in March 2005.’
   Shati, who was also a police captain, was looking for help from the mayor of Khanaqin, Mohammed Amin Hassan Hussein who seemed unable to provide it. Surprisingly the tribal leader did not favour just shooting the insurgents who had killed his relatives. He said; ‘The only solution is to give employment to the police and army officers who were sacked and now support al-Qaeda. If they get jobs they will stop.’
   Everybody agreed that the situation in Diyala was worse than ever. Col. Azad Issa Abdulrahman, the gloomy looking chief of police for Khanaqin, said that the provincial capital Baquba with a population of 250,000, though only 30 miles from Baghdad, and another large town called al Miqdadiyah were under the control of insurgents. ‘The government only controls a few of its own buildings,’ he admitted. The insurgents say they are setting up the Islamic emirate of Diyala.
   Earlier this month the US, with much fanfare, sent 700 soldiers from the 5 battalion of the 20th infantry regiment to Diyala to restore government authority. It fought a ferocious battle with insurgents in which it lost two armoured ‘Stryker’ vehicles. But, as so often in Iraq, in the eyes of Iraqis the presence or absence of American forces does not make as much difference to who holds power locally as the US military command would like to believe. Supposedly they are supporting 20,000 Iraqi security forces, but earlier this year it was announced that 1,500 local police were to be fired for not opposing the insurgents. At one embarrassing moment US and Iraqi military commanders were claiming at a video-link press conference that they had a firm grip on the situation in Baquba when insurgents burst into the mayor’s office, kidnapped him and blew it up. Power in Diyala is fragmented. As in the rest of Iraq it is difficult to know who is in charge. Often it is local political or military warlords whose allegiances are multiple. For instance, the Fifth Division of the Iraqi army is in Diyala province but is largely Shia. It was Shia soldiers manning checkpoints or Shia Mehdi Army militiamen wearing military uniforms that Salaman, the Sunni petrol tanker driver, was chiefly frightened of encountering.
   Iraqis like him face terrifyingly numerous threats. Pointing out that he was now the sole bread earner for 18 women and children because so many of his male relatives had been killed Salaman said despairingly: ‘I can’t even visit the village where they live because soldiers or militia or just men in masks might kill me. I don’t even know how to send them money’ He said the problem was that the army and police were all on one side or other of the sectarian or ethnic divide. He did not expect things to get better.
   The Iraqi government, whose ministers issue optimistic statements about the improving state of their country, when on visits to London or Washington carries surprisingly little weight outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Often its interventions do nothing but harm. For instance, the main source of employment in Khanaqin is the large border crossing from Iran at Monzariyah. Cross border traffic provided 1,000 jobs. But the government has closed the crossing point and the road that used to be crowded with trucks a few months ago is now empty.
   Another sign of diminishing government control is that no rations have been delivered in Diyala for seven months. Some 60 per cent of Iraqis depend on cheap government subsidised rations. But these no longer arrive because those delivering them say it is too dangerous to do so. This is understandable enough since the drivers of trucks containing the rations are often deemed to be collaborators by insurgents and shot to death. In Salamaan’s village of Kanaan five men were burned to death for the crime of guarding two petrol stations.
   A difficulty in explaining Iraq to the outside world is that since 2003 the US and British governments have together produced a series of spurious turning-points. There was the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, the supposed handback of Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004, the two elections and the new constitution in 2005 and––most recently, the military ‘surge’ into Baghdad. In all cases the benefits of these events were invented or exaggerated.
   After Sunni fundamentalists blew up the golden-domed Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February 2006 central Iraq was torn apart by sectarian fighting. Baghdad broke up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni and Shia, which fired mortars at each other. Government ministries, if controlled by different communities, fought each other. The Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150 people from Sunni-held Higher Education Ministry and killed many of them.
   For a brief moment last November after the mid-term elections in the US and the Baker-Hamilton report it seemed that the US was going to start negotiations with its myriad enemies in around Iraq. But in the event President Bush refused to admit failure. Some 21,500 troop reinforcements are being sent to Baghdad and Anbar province to the west.
   So far there is little sign that the ‘surge’ will really change the course of the war in Iraq. For the moment the Shia militias have stood down but Sunni bombings continue. ‘The Shia have stopped killing Sunni but the Sunni have not stopped killing Shia,’ one government official told me. ‘If this goes on and the Sunni political leadership do not denounce them there will be an explosion of sectarian hatred even worse then before.’
   Diyala, its once prosperous fruit-growing villages now becoming heavily armed Sunni or Shia fortresses, is a symbol of the failure of the occupation that began four years ago. From an early moment it was evident that only the Kurds in Iraq fully supported the US and British presence. The Sunni were always going to fight it and the Shia would only play along with it so long as it served their interests. The biggest political change in the last year is that a majority of the Shia now support armed attacks on US-led forces.
   The invasion four years ago failed. It overthrew Saddam but did nothing more, It destabilised the Middle East. It tore apart Iraq. It was meant to show the world that the US was the world’s only super power that could do what it wanted. In fact, it demonstrated that the US was weaker than the world supposed. The longer the US refuses to admit failure the longer the war will go on.
   CounterPunch, March 20, 2007. Patrick Cockburn is the author of ‘The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq’, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.

Tough laws to combat financial crimes

Tough laws to combat financial crimes are not enough. There must be people who understand financial transactions and can detect and prosecute financial crimes.
   We have already seen the result of a series of so-called crimes of market crash of 1996 languishing in the courts of law. Neither the prosecution nor the accused understand what it is all about except that it was the biggest cover-up in our history.
   Unless laws are properly framed, tough law will become an instrument to prosecute people one does not like. Of course, this is not democratic but who says that our past politicians were ever democratic!
   Imtiyaz Husain
   Gulshan, Dhaka

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