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THE Awami League-led government, it increasingly seems, has somehow been convinced by its New Delhi counterparts that there is benefit for Bangladesh to be had from the construction of the Tipaimukh Dam/s on the river Barak. Ever since the Indian high commissioner disclosed late last week India’s plan to go ahead with the construction of the dam, at least three members of the cabinet said Dhaka would not oppose the project if it benefits Bangladesh. The commerce minister, Faruk Khan, as usual, came up with by far the strongest hint that the government may have been already convinced that dam could after all benefit, and not harm, Bangladesh, when he told journalists on Tuesday that ‘those who are talking too much against construction of the dam are talking without knowing anything…’ He did say the government ‘will soon send a delegation comprising experts and parliamentarians to see what is going on there and how it will benefit Bangladesh.’ That is, however, hardly reassuring.
   It would indeed be interesting to know who the commerce minister was accusing of ‘talking too much… without knowing anything’; after all, the individuals who have been at the forefront of the ever-intensifying wave of opposition to the Tipaimukh project are mostly experts with years of experience under their belts. Interestingly still, many of them are Indians. They are unanimous in their conclusion that the Tipaimukh Dam/s would wreak an environmental disaster of an unimaginable magnitude and adversely affect millions of people on either side of the Bangladesh-India border who rely on the Meghna river system for their livelihood. Needless to say, their conclusions are based on an ever-growing pile of scientific evidence.
   The benefit that the government may be envisaging, i.e. import of electricity generated from the dam, could turn out to be a chimera. In an article published in New Age on May 21, Dr Solbam Ibotombi, who teaches earth sciences at Manipur University and is a staunch critic of the Tipaimukh project, writes that ‘the dam was originally conceived to contain the floodwater in the Cachar plain of Assam but, later on, emphasis has been placed on hydroelectric power generation, having an installation capacity of 1,500MW but only firm generation capacity of 412MW.’ If so is the case, what percentage of the 412MW of electricity the government expects to import from India, which is no less electricity-starved than Bangladesh, and at what cost? As argued by Ibotombi and other Indian experts, the cost involved here is not just the cost of electricity but the irreparable economic and environmental damage that the project is likely to cause.
   When there is a growing body of scientific evidence as well as strong opposition within India against the Tipaimukh project, the argument put forth by the commerce minister and some of his colleagues, i.e. there may be benefit in the project for Bangladesh, can hardly be construed as being a product of naivety and inadequate knowledge. In fact, given the Indian government’s perceived predilection for the Awami League, it could very well be construed as the government’s willingness to submit to Delhi’s plans. Here, the credibility of the government is not at stake alone, the livelihood of millions of people in India and Bangladesh is as well. The ministers in question would surely have done a great service to the country and to themselves if they took the pains to gather the details of the dam project and also go through the scientific evidences that point at the potential economic and environmental damage that the Tipaimukh project would cause. If they had, they might have thought twice before suggesting that Bangladesh is likely to benefit from the project and that the critics of the project are ‘talking too much… without knowing anything’.

Time for earnest actions to
mitigate power, water misery

LIFE in the cities is becoming increasingly difficult amid repeated power failures and acute shortage of water supply, so it was reported in New Age on Tuesday. The situation, as the report indicates, is set to become worse in the days to come. However, thus far, the government is yet to show any sign that suggests that it is concerned. There is still to be any suggestion from the government as to how it plans to mitigate water and electricity crisis.
   Although power cuts and water crisis are recurrent problems, little is done to redress them. Every government blames its predecessor for not enhancing power generation capacity or not commissioning new water treatment plants. However, inefficiency and bureaucratic red tape seem to be the biggest hurdle in this regard. For example, according to the New Age report, the WASA plans to procure 200 more generators to tackle the power crisis and ensure smooth water supply but it will take the agency at least a year to procure and set up the generators.
   The authorities must realise that people’s patience is indeed running out. People realise that the problem cannot be resolved overnight and are willing to endure but they deserve to be provided with a clear-cut government plan with regard to improvement of the situation. Regrettably, instead of outlining such a plan and trying to make best use of the available resources, the government has thus far employed the sadly familiar tactics of coming up with one excuse after another and blaming its predecessors.
   Indeed, the current power and water crisis has not befallen the nation all of a sudden; it is the consequence of years of negligence. However, the crisis cannot be wished away, nor would the people’s misery. The government should, therefore, start acting and acting fast. True, the mess cannot be sorted out overnight but the sorting out should begin right now.

WRITING on Pakistan as it goes through one of its most brutal periods is not my cup of tea. I do not claim to be an expert on Pakistani affairs, either. However, my comments are based on personal experience analysed through the prism of social science. I had the opportunity to serve in one of the most prestigious – and internationally acclaimed – medical universities in Pakistan for about four years. Those were tumultuous four years – the tragedy of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the world’s lone superpower occurred during those four years. I was there when the innocent Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl was brutally slaughtered in the port city of Karachi by so-called Islamist ‘militants’. I was fortunate to watch the drama of yet another coup by the Pakistan army that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power replacing – as always – a democratically elected government. The subsequent ‘charm’ offensive of the general, for some the architect of the Kargil war, during his visit to India – talking to journalists and newspaper editors as a peacenik – was also fascinating to watch. Coming from Canada with almost twenty years of professional work experience, the Pakistan sojourn was indeed a learning experience for me.
   The Taliban are in the news these days. Their brand of obscurantist Islam overtaking a large swath of northern Pakistan has suddenly become a worry for the world. The Taliban, created by the United States with massive influx of resources, both financial and logistical, in direct collaboration with the Islamist dictator General Zia ul Huq of Pakistan and the Pakistan army, were hailed by President Ronald Reagan as warriors of freedom and independence comparable to George Washington and his forces in the US liberation war. Even the books meant for the Taliban were reportedly printed in the United States. Since the idea was to use these ‘freedom fighters’ against the ‘godless’ Soviet Communists in neighbouring Afghanistan, the books had to glorify the obscurantist Wahhabi Islam, guerrilla war, ambush, suicide bombing and all other forms of violence. Jihad was the name of the game.
   I remember Afghan Mujahideen leaders travelling to Canada almost every month during the 1980s to recruit young Muslim fighters. With full knowledge of the authorities, they would visit mosques, present the then Afghan war as the only living jihad that all Muslims must participate in. Vulnerable young Canadian Muslims of Pakistani, Egyptian, Algerian or Jordanian extract would be lured to the jihad. They had no problem in travelling to Pakistan for training and subsequently to Afghanistan. Of course, Saudis and other Middle Eastern monarchies – the United States seem to love Muslim kings, sheikhs and military dictators of all kinds – also poured in billions of dollars. Now the US is hunting these jihadists that they trained and indoctrinated. It is like trying to kill the very Frankenstein that you have painstakingly created.
   Well, that’s a different story. Let’s get back to Pakistan. Once in Pakistan it becomes clear within a few months that it is not a country that was created for the people of Pakistan. It becomes abundantly clear that Pakistan was created to be ruled and dominated by the military. Almost all corporations and quasi-governmental organisations are headed by ex-army officers. Army-run businesses abound – from contracting agencies to insurance companies. According to a recent research by Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, Pakistan army controls a large chunk the country’s economy (Military Inc. 2007). The foreign policy of the country is also largely dictated by the army. As Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Bajpayee were trying to make peace and slowly address the Kashmir issue, the Kargil fiasco was staged to scuttle the peace move. Without Kashmir burning, the reasoning goes, the Pakistan army would find it hard to justify all the national resources that it gets year after year. Needless to say, the army needs the Islamists to keep Kashmir burning.
   However, it is not just the army that defines Pakistan. It is also the feudal landlords, with their own culture, traditions and, most importantly, version of Islam that define Pakistan. These landlords, spanning mostly Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, own not only vast tracts of land but also the poor peasants who cultivate the land. These peasants are serfs in the tradition of the European feudalism of the Medieval Ages. I was told that in some cases a newly wed bride of a peasant must spend the first night with the landlord. In much of northern Sindh and southern Punjab, there is another tradition among some of the feudal landlords – to marry their sisters to the Holy Qur’an. Once ‘married’ to the Qur’an with an elaborate ceremony, they are supposed to spend the rest of their lives in reading the holy book. And the landlords could continue to enjoy their fiefs without having to give any share of the land to their unfortunate sisters. What sort of Islam is this? Since landlords do it, this utterly distorted ‘Islamic’ custom is often imitated by the serfs – the peasants serving the feudal lords.
   Soon after my arrival in Pakistan a strange thing happened. A married woman seeking legal assistance to gain divorce (or at least physical protection) from her abusive husband was gunned down while talking to her lawyer in the lawyer’s office. It was in the city of Lahore, the so-called progressive capital city of Punjab – the heart of power in the country. And the lawyer was none other than the sister of a world renowned human rights advocate who also serves as a United Nations rapporteur on human rights. Apparently, the victim’s mother came to the lawyer’s office and brought with her a hired gun to assassinate the woman in order to ‘preserve the family honour’. As she was entering the lawyer’s office the guard apparently stopped her and asked her to go upstairs alone. However, she pretended to be frail and unable to negotiate the stairs without the help of her accompanying male relative. Once upstairs, the assassin did his job and shot the victim at point blank. Once the job was done, the mother and her accomplice calmly went down and disappeared. It was truly a shocking story. The day after, TV and newspapers did not hesitate to make it leading front-page news.
   However, I was doubly shocked when the news did not raise any interest among my university colleagues. Life went on as usual in the university campus. Subsequently, it was reported that the parents of the victim just returned from Hajj and that the mother is a physician – a gynaecologist to boot. The father is a rich businessman and in interviews with the news media they blamed the lawyer for brainwashing their daughter with the western idea of divorce. The matter was raised in the national assembly and in the senate. However, no resolution could be taken as the feudal lords and their followers who dominate politics in Pakistan could not decide whether this brutal assassination was justified by Islam as a means to protect family honour. Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister of the day, currently the most popular politician in Pakistan, obviously could not take a decisive stand.
   It should be noted that I had the opportunity to visit Pakistan in 1970 – in the dying days of Pakistan – as part of a delegation of students from East Pakistan brought to West Pakistan by the then Pakistan Council to promote ‘national integration’. We experienced warm reception by ordinary West Pakistanis in all provinces. In Swat, as I fondly recall, small shop owners often refused to take money from their ‘Bengali guests’ for cold drinks or snacks. In the University of Punjab and again in the Agricultural University in Peshawar we were warmly received by the professors and students alike. The political scene at that time – as we were heading towards a violent confrontation and break up – was dominated by feudal lords and their military-business cohorts. Except in the North West Frontier Province, politics was the exclusive domain of the big landlords, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto included.
   When I found myself in Pakistan again – after a long twenty-eight years – it was shocking to see the same feudal lords and their cohorts dominating the politics and power in Pakistan. Since it were the same family names, one could tell that the sons and cousins and nephews – and in a few cases daughters – replaced their so-called illustrious fathers or uncles. In other words, while in Bangladesh the newly educated middle class in the form of lawyers, teachers and small business people came to rule politics – I am referring to the Bengali political class right before and after the liberation war – the western wing of the then Pakistan never experienced such a social transformation.
   Needless to say, along with politics the feudal lords – often in collusion with army generals and industrialists – also dominated the economy and religious/social sphere. Consequently, the generals never questioned the legality of private jails maintained by most of these big landlords to punish their recalcitrant serfs or peasants and the landlords never challenged the generals for the not-so-infrequent disappearance of out-of-line journalists, teachers, artists or otherwise non-conformist professionals. Abduction of a defiant journalist or artist and their subsequent disappearance, therefore, never became a political issue. I was told that often a candidate in an election would receive a visit from one of the agencies to explain why it is ‘dangerous’ to be a candidate. In such a case, someone’s political ambition must take backseat to the wise counsel of the agency.
   In the NWFP and in other tribal areas throughout the north and the north west of the country, carrying a loaded gun is a common sight. For a male adolescent, having a gun is a rite of passage to adulthood – being socially recognised as a man. Keeping a beard is also common across the tribal belt and in much of interior Sindh and Punjab. It is, therefore, a misnomer to equate a bearded gun-wielding male with a Taliban. Not surprisingly, the American air attacks seem to end up killing more civilians in both Afghanistan and Pakistan than the Taliban. However, it is likely that their (meaning the Taliban and common bearded men) knowledge and/or interpretation of Islam is largely indistinguishable. As the Taliban do not like girls’ education, most fathers in a large swath of tribal Pakistan would not even admit that they have a daughter to a survey questionnaire or interviewer. Girls and women are pushed to the interior of the house so much so that they seldom venture out without veil and without the company of a male companion. The social value accorded to a girl is so low that often family disputes are settled by giving an underage (often as young as ten years of age) girl in marriage to an elderly man from the other party. It seems that violently distorting the fundamental values of Islam and yet claiming to be a true follower of the religion has become a common practice in Pakistan. The Taliban took such misinterpretation of Islam to the most reprehensible level.
   Pakistan’s problem, it is abundantly clear, did not start with the Taliban. Pakistan’s real problem is a leadership deficit that plagued the country from its birth. Soon after its creation, the very people that opposed its birth, took over the country and ran it like a fiefdom. The feudal landholding class with their representatives in the military (especially the upper hierarchy of the military), the civil bureaucracy (again, the upper hierarchy) and the big industrialists wrestled control of Pakistan as soon as its founder – Muhammad Ali Jinnah – died prematurely and suddenly in 1948. This feudal-military-bureaucratic-industrial complex proved to be so powerful and ever conniving that Pakistan never had the chance to emerge as a state in the real sense of the term. Consequently, the idea of citizenship – encompassing all segments of the society – never developed.
   Pakistan, in other words, could never embrace diversity – ethnic, religious, socio-economic – that must be the foundation of any modern state. It was born with at least five distinct ethnic nationalities – Bengalis, Balochis, Sindhis, Punjabis and the Pushtuns. Only one of them captured and continued to dominate the political, social and economic life of the newly emerged Pakistan. Continued discrimination, abuse and finally a brutal attack verging on genocide forced the Bengalis to take up arms and achieve independence through a liberation war. The spatial separation between East Bengal and the seat of Pakistani repressive power (in the western wing of the country) made it possible for the Bengalis to achieve their dream. However, other ethnic nationalities are not that lucky. Balochis, Sindhis and the Pushtuns had been fighting for their rights within a united Pakistan. However, none of them got their ethnic national identify recognised. The Pakistan state responded to these ethnic demands with brutal repression, air strikes and, quite often, with assassinations of ethnic leaders. Baloschistan, over the years, has turned into an open battlefield between the armed-to-the-teeth Pakistan army and the nationalists. Perhaps the Pushtuns faced the most brutal repression – they never even got a province in their own name. The Pakistani ruling elite prefers to keep the name North West Frontier Province, given by the British colonialists, to refer to the piece of land inhabited by the Pushtuns. No one – from the non-violent Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan down to present day Pushtun leaders – could change this colonial mind-set of the Pakistani ruling class.
   The present-day Taliban movement is largely fuelled by this Pushtun alienation. Sadistic violence of the Taliban must not obscure the fact that at the core is also a rebellion by the long discriminated and brutally repressed Pushtuns. The Afghan war is also a by-product of Pushtun alienation. Unfortunately, neither the Americans nor the Pakistani ruling class realise or understand this critical Pushtun dimension of the larger Afghan-Pakistan war. From 1971 onwards Pakistan army had been an army at war against its own people – Bengalis, Balochis, Sindhis and now the Pushtuns. Clearly war is not going to solve the problem. Ideologies tinged with nationalism can neither be won by force nor suppressed for too long. Pakistan is a classic example of a state that fails to understand, appreciate and cherish ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. Not surprisingly, it finds itself on the verge of being a failed state in a modern pluralistic global village.
   Views expressed in the article are exclusively those of the author