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THE High Court on Monday asked the government to set up food courts at every district headquarters within the next one year in line with the Pure Food Ordinance 1959, according to a report published in New Age on Tuesday. When delivering its verdict, the court observed that, as the government is ordained under article 32 of the constitution to ensure the right to life and liberty, and as the word ‘life’ means ensuring healthy livelihood, the government is constitutionally bound to ensure pure food for all. The ruling certainly marks a breakthrough in the fight against food adulteration and is thus welcome. The Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh also deserves praise for bringing the issue to the court’s attention by filing the public interest litigation writ in this regard.
   With the prices of essential commodities constantly on the rise and the purchasing power of the majority of the populace in decline, it is already a difficult proposition for most people in Bangladesh to manage decent meals for themselves and families. What’s worse, with the market flooded with adulterated items, they are not sure whether it is food or slow death that they are buying with their hard-earned money. Food adulteration thus constitutes a serious violation of human rights. That the market is glutted with adulterated food is not new as it has been going on for a number of years without being addressed properly by the authorities concerned, for no government in the past was serious enough to address the matter effectively. The court’s ruling essentially forces the government’s hands so as to ensure that such violation no longer takes place.
   However, it is pertinent to note that food courts, as and when they are established, could only provide the cure, so to speak; what the country also needs, given the fact that adulteration of food has become widespread, effective preventive measures. Here comes the question of strengthening the legal framework, including the consumer protection act, and its stringent enforcement. There has been much talk over strengthening of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution over the years; however, the institution remains a paper tiger in all practical purposes, hamstrung by personnel and logistics inadequacy. One hopes that the government will sincerely work towards its enhancement so that it can effectively spearhead the anti-food adulteration campaign in the country.
   What is equally important is creating awareness among the people against food adulteration. Most people do not realise that, as the court observed in its ruling, it is incumbent upon the government to ensure pure food for each and every citizen. Heightened awareness among the people can also become a strong weapon in the fight against food adulteration. Such an awareness campaign cannot be effectively carried out by the government alone; the media, both print and electronic, and different social, cultural and political organisations need to come forward as well. Here again, the responsibility ultimately lies with the government to orchestrate an effective campaign.
   Crucially still, the food courts need to be free from interference by any quarters. In the past, we have seen food adulterers slipping through the dragnet of law, either scot-free or with virtually token punishment. Hence, if need be, the Pure Food Ordinance should be upgraded, stipulating stringent punishment for such a grave offence. In the end, decisive preventive actions coupled with demonstrable punitive measures can help the country make a giant stride in the fight against food adulteration.

Pace of relief and rehab for
cyclone victims still dismal

CYCLONE Aila, which made landfall on May 25, may not have claimed as many lives as cyclone Sidr, for example, did; however, trying to gauge the extent of its devastation by the toll of human deaths would be a monumental mistake, a mistake, it seems, the government has committed. The tidal surge the cyclone whipped up – as high as 13 feet at some places – swept across a number of coastal districts, damaging vast tracts of standing crops and washing away livestock besides claiming human lives. Hence, in the aftermath of the cyclone, while reaching out to the hundreds of thousands of people marooned with much-needed relief materials – especially food, drinking water and medicine, was the immediate priority, the government should have also started working on the long-term rehabilitation of the affected populace.
   Regrettably, as reports in the national media indicate, in some pockets of the cyclone-hit region, people are yet to get the support they need for their immediate survival, let alone rehabilitation of their livelihoods. So poor has been the speed and poor the coverage of the government’s relief and rehabilitation efforts, the cyclone victims at some places seem to have resigned to the fact that they may have to fend for themselves as they start their life afresh. According to a report published in New Age on Tuesday, some people at Koyra upazila of Khulna, one of the worst-affected areas, have already started to sell their cattle and poultry birds at meagre prices for want of animal fodder and poultry feed.
   Hence, the government needs to intervene and intervene now. Here, it is pertinent to note that the government’s decision to not seek foreign assistance for relief and rehabilitation of cyclone victims, although some members of the cabinet earlier hinted that it would, is indeed commendable. The prime minister is right when she said that the government could tackle the post-cyclone exigencies with domestic resources and that foreign assistance would be sought for construction of embankments and shelter centres. Availability of resources does not seem to be the problem here, there mobilisation apparently is. Therefore, the government needs to immediately chalk out a comprehensive strategy, mobilise resources, and involve people from all strata as it goes about rebuilding the lives of the cyclone victims. Time is of essence here.

The US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, will tell almost anyone who asks these days that the Taliban have the momentum in Afghanistan. Under President Barack Obama, honesty is the best policy. That is reassuring.
   After all, the American public was led to believe in late 2001 that a ‘victory’ had already been achieved in Afghanistan when the Taliban were driven from power. That was – as we know now – just cover for the move into Mesopotamia.
   What is more worrisome, however, is another recent statement by Gates to The Wall Street Journal on the same subject. He said, ‘If they [American public] think we’re stalemated and having our young men and women killed, then patience is going to run out pretty fast.’
   There are a number of implications. First, the ‘bad guys’, along with Osama bin Laden’s trusted corps of advisors, are swarming in the valleys, hills and mountains of Pashtunistan this summer. A risk-averse, air-power-friendly US military has effectively surrendered the countryside over the past three years along the porous border. Calling this a ‘stalemate’ is to smear lipstick on a pig.
   If you doubt that, and you are a Caucasian, you might try taking a stroll outside the three-metre, sand-filled walls of any American base in eastern or southern Afghanistan. You’ll be abducted by armed men and whisked off to Pakistan in no time. An American-run radio station director in Paktika province told me that the Taliban are winning the war of ideas hands down against America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Taliban have ‘financial and economic means’, he said. ‘They can easily scare the people by killing or beheading them.’
   The insurgents have the momentum in Afghanistan. What could be worse is that the world’s most powerful military is worried that a petrified American public is about to draw the line on US casualties of war.
   Fortunately, the latter is a fallacy. Two Duke University political science professors, Christopher Gelpi and Peter Feaver, have exposed this red herring in a new book. In their volume, Paying the Human Costs, the two academics argue persuasively that – while the US public worries about wartime deaths, mostly its own – it is more wary of defeat and will support military operations as long as ‘victory’ is on the not-too-distant horizon. To be sure, it would be hard to say that the US military is ‘losing’ in Afghanistan since actual loses of life on the US side have been well under 20 per cent of those from Iraq.
   Right now, the hard cost of the Afghan war – 460 combat-related American deaths – is amazingly low in relation to most wars, particularly Vietnam, the Asian quagmire it is often compared to. That war counted 47,359 Americans killed in combat. (To put the eight-year Afghan war figure in another light, consider that in 2007, Los Angeles County had 712 deaths due to car accidents.)
   Although the US is not technically losing, it would be extremely hard to argue that Afghanistan’s safety has not been sacrificed due to the policies of a risk-averse American government. A basic premise of the US military’s own strategy is that ultimate success is gained ‘by protecting the populace, not the counterinsurgency force’. This principle is violated daily.
   The Pentagon’s high-tech-centric approach to the fight in Afghanistan has produced – since 9/11 – half a dozen gargantuan bases, with more on the way. These are little more than anachronistic monuments to the US military’s superior firepower. At Bagram and Jalalabad air bases, aerial drones, commanded by joystick pilots in the deserts of Nevada, circle and land. Invisible F-16s and F-15s lay figure-eight smoke trails in the blue skies above Tora Bora. At dusk, the snow line of the Hindu Kush is flush with Apache attack helicopters and larger Chinooks. None of them are the key to victory.
   In the last several months of living and talking to American soldiers and officers in the field, particularly along the eastern front, I have been impressed with their understanding of what it will take to win in Afghanistan. One enthusiastic young Southerner, Major Tommy Cardone, boiled it down to a useful campaign slogan, ‘It’s the people, stupid!” Indeed, I was left with the impression that the US military does have a strategy; if only the cautious generals and politicians in Washington will allow it to be implemented.
   To win in Afghanistan, the US military – and its Afghan partners – must follow best-practices counterinsurgency down to the last of Afghanistan’s 40,000 villages. Only by taking the fight – along with Afghan soldiers and policemen – to the countryside will the Taliban be isolated and excluded from what Chairman Mao Zedong once referred to as the sea of the people.
   A radical shift from heavy air-power to more foot patrols and more mobile bases is likely to bring with it far more bloodshed. The Taliban will attack American soldiers outside the wire when they feel threatened by their bold outreach efforts, but if the US’s intentions are to oversee development projects and provide security for the local population, they will be perceived – in the end – as protectors, not invaders and mere occupiers. As Cardone, on his second gruelling tour here, also told me, the best way to upset the Taliban is ‘to sneak into a village at night and have a cup of tea with the local elders.’ Apaches escorts are not required.
   There are signs that those working on the problem understand that Afghanistan is not – in essence – a shooting war. You have to deliver the goods and empower the young American and Afghan officers in charge. ‘It is necessary to kill some of the insurgents, but that is not sufficient for victory,’ said Brigadier General James C McConville, a hard-driving Bostonian and a former National Security Fellow at Harvard who heads up the embattled supply chain for eastern Afghanistan. ‘You need to get to the root of the problem: when you are a young lieutenant, you would not want to wait 30 days for ammunition, so you should not have to wait 30 days to implement a village project.’
   To be sure, any colonel or general hesitates and thinks twice when ordering soldiers into harm’s way. In this day of instant news flashes and journalists who keep running tallies, a colonel can be made to look foolish when even four or five US soldiers are killed in combat. But war is ruthless and victory is not for those who sit and wait behind three-meter walls or fly at 3,000 meters above sea level.
   As sure as Americans remain dismayed not to have captured Osama bin Laden, they still want the ‘victory’ that was once promised them in Afghanistan. Losing is not acceptable and even those on the left, who favour a withdrawal, are not willing to fathom (or even define) its genuine political costs to a leader they so admire.
   By the end of the summer, the US troop levels will be up to 70,000. Along with allied and Afghan security forces, the figure could rise to 200,000-220,000; still only about a third of the totals in Iraq.
   Nevertheless, as Michael O’Hanlon, a senior military analyst at the Brookings Institute, has noted: ‘A mini-surge won’t suffice as a strategy.’
   More troops are needed, but young platoon leaders in the field also need far more small-scale project money to help Afghan villagers see a future and isolate the Taliban. Big damns and major highways that go through third-party contractors won’t do the trick when it comes to reaching out to farmers and labourers.
   A drastic shift in American strategy requires a well-articulated stance from President Barack Obama. It must include a stentorian call for sacrifice and patience, the kind John F Kennedy knew how to deliver. As one young captain training Afghan soldiers told me, ‘At times, this is going to look very ugly.’ While Gates can get the soldiers and supplies to the battlefield, only a master of the bully pulpit can prepare the public for the inevitable hardships ahead.
   In the end, if counterinsurgency is done right, American taxpayers and patriots will willingly bear the price for peace in South Asia.
   Asia Times Online, June 3. Philip Smucker is a commentator and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle East.