C M YK
Sunday, 16 - 22 MARCH, 2014
cover story: hung out to die
The reign of death in Thar
A lot of lives of innocent children would have been saved if their plight had come to public notice in January
InayaTullah ruSTamanI The writer is a Hyderabad based freelance columnist and teaches English at a college.
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OrE than 200 children died in Thar over the last three months. And this month alone, 60 more have lost their lives. News of these deaths hit the headlines only last week, which means nobody was listening to the sobs of mourning mothers all this time. Even the deaths of around 140 children during January and February could not move the hearts of insensitive and indifferent lawmakers in the area. It seems the People’s Party has no set procedure to judge lawmakers’ performance. This is one reason lawmakers from Thar took no pains to keep aware of the pain and suffering of people in their constituency. Even the media was busy elsewhere, fully engrossed in the Sindh cultural festival and talks between the government and the Taliban. The people of Thar continued to be ignored. When the media did turn its attention to Thar only this month, it appeared as if the tragedy had developed overnight. It seemed the media positioned itself to play the role of superman and savior, coming to the aid of Tharis when the rest of the world ignored them. A lot of lives of innocent children would have been saved if their plight had come to public notice in January. Such loss of life is criminal, and unpardonable. There seems little humanity left in the lawmakers and bureaucrats of Thar. They hoarded wheat out of greed and let poor people, especially children, die. My heart weeps, and head hangs in shame, when in shame when I see lawmakers using this tragedy for photo opportunities and uploading them on twitter. They have learnt nothing from this disaster. Firstly, it was the bureaucrats of Thar who did not declare emergency despite the deaths over the last three months. They showed callousness and indifference by not attending to the needs of starving children. Then the lawmakers of the area followed the same path of negligence, and turned a blind eye to the plight of the people. They should have taken the issue up with the Sindh CM and initiated a rescue plan on war footing. There is extreme poverty in Thar, which is why people there cannot fight for their rights, and are condemned to food shortage, contaminated water, and poor health. Last year I met a young Thari boy in Hyderabad. He was happy because he worked as a cook and drew a monthly salary of rs4000. He said he regularly sent all his earnings to his father back home. The federal and provincial governments have no strategy for poverty reduction. According to the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) report, Clustered Deprivation, prepared with the financial and technical assistance of United Nation Development Program, there are 58.7 million people below poverty line in the country. Balochistan tops the poverty index with 52 per cent of its households below the poverty line, followed by 32 per cent, 33 per cent and 19 per cent respectively for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sindh and Punjab. In Punjab, rajanpur is on top of the list with 44 per cent households falling below the poverty line.
04 www.pakistantoday.com.pk
Pakistan Meteorology Department is being blamed for not informing Sindh government for no rains in Thar. Luckily, Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) has warned in advance about a severe water shortage in Karachi with the start of March. The director KWSB said the water shortage has developed due to less rains and little water in Hub Dam. The Sindh government has no plans for the moment to meet this water scarcity in spite of having been forewarned. The Sindh Government and the media have come into full action after the tragedy in Thar. The sudden media hype over Thar and the hysteric behavior of some columnists in their write ups are not justified at this stage. Such acts can be taken as an attempt of political exploitation of Thar issue. One wonders why the Sindh CM is being asked to resign when there were no such demands from the Punjab and KPK chief ministers after the Dengue disaster and DI Khan jail break. The provincial government’s poor track record is no secret, but the CM was the first to admit bureaucratic negligence. However, he will have to go one step further and demand resignation from the area’s lawmakers. A huge number of funds have been promised by the federal and provincial governments along with private stakeholders to lessen the pain and plight of Tharis. Fair and transparent distribution of the donations and funds to the affectees would be a huge challenge for the Sindh government in the face of dysfunctional and corrupt bureaucrats and feudal-minded lawmakers. Thar is the least developed district of Sindh and it needs development on immediate and permanent basis. Tharis need to be employed by the government and private sector stakeholders in order to control poverty there. There is need of a comprehensive poverty alleviation strategy to save the entire country from turning into Thar. g
Tharparkar allows religious lobby another foot in the door
Are they just lending a hand, or also playing politics as usual?
Shahab Jafry The writer is a Lahore-based journalist and can be reached at jafry.shahab@gmail.com
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eligious parties have traditionally played a leading role in disaster management. Their volunteers were prominent in bringing relief to the needy after the ’05 earthquake and floods in recent years. But as they help with the Tharparkar famine, there are concerns that the government is leveraging them not only to hide its own incompetence, but also to portray a soft image of the religious-right as a calculated part of its controversial ‘counter-narrative’ to militancy. A number of factors justify these concerns. One, the scale of the tragedy exposed the government’s inability to both prevent and handle such disasters. And having more hands, especially such, helps hide its shortcomings and infuse religious fervour in the relief effort, which usually sits well with people. Two, the prime minister’s peace initiative has drawn criticism for overaccommodating the religious lobby, even militant factions. By highlighting their welfare credentials, the government is feeding its own counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, which revolves around allowing more mainstream space to the lobby instead of restricting its influence. Three, this legitimisation of non-state actors, especially recognised enemies of the state, triggered a media frenzy, allowing them deeper penetration into civil society at a time when a bulk of the population still does not appreciate the fine line between religious orthodoxy and militancy. Again, their relief effort will blunt criticism from secular circles and help tilt the larger narrative in favour of the government’s position. And four, the situation is complicated by allegations that the official machinery deliberately allows religious outfits a leading role, often by facilitating them more than other, more secular charitable organisations.
SOCIAL CONTAGION “This accommodation leads to a vicious cycle”, said Dr Khadim Hussain, an Islamabad based analyst and managing director of the Bacha Khan Educational Foundation. “These organisations expose state institutions as ineffective when it comes to catering to people, and then use their position of strength to strike against the state itself”. Dr Hussain believes the government actively facilitates religious organisations to assume the lead role in crisis situations, and does not extend the same help to NGOs and secular organisations. “I can speak from personal experience from Swat, Noshera and Charsadda floods, and also from the ’05
earthquake”, he said, adding that “it is clear that the government always promotes religious groups in such situations”. This, he says, is leading to “social contagion”, with the government itself promoting forces that are eroding its authority. Initially, the arrangement arose from three levels of failure in the official machinery. Firstly, local district level bureaucracies have long been incompetent, and needed all the help they could get. Secondly, security services are usually stretched, and need time to mobilise, and religious organisations, with official help, are able to respond more quickly. And thirdly, the central government, especially the interior ministry, caught in logjams of its own, is able to win crucial brownie points. “But continuing with this arrangement now is dangerous”, added Dr Hussain. “These heroics win these organisations more adherents, more donations, and more volunteers. And we all know where they are used now. This must stop immediately”.
EATING INTO THE STATE There are also concerns that the official narrative will now incorporate this softer side of religious outfits and extend the argument to the controversial madressa reform issue. “This is a very disturbing phenomenon”, said Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, analyst, writer, and author of the controversial bestseller Military Inc. “You will now see them appreciated as major welfare organisations, and the establishment will also put a positive spin on other prominent features of theirs, like the madressas, highlighting benefits they bring to a deprived society”. This helps keep these elements active and relevant. And as the government uses them to justify its own conservative leaning, they are also kept operational, ready for future strategic, especially military, use. But giving them increased influence at a time when religious circles are backing anti-state insurgents, and calling for Taliban/al Qaeda like shari’a across the country, is seen as a self-defeating strategy by secular groups, amounting to a steady surrender of the state. “These groups appear during crises because they are allowed to. The argument that nonconventional means must be resorted to when the civil machinery breaks down is flawed. It is the army’s primary responsibility, according to the constitution, to respond to national disasters and emergencies. And the military is fully capable of dealing with such situations’, said Dr Siddiqa. The army must also take the lead role because it is the institution most invested in by the state. And instead of propping up non-state actors to meet state crises, the government should empower relevant disaster management arms of the civil bureaucracy. “But the way the government is propping up the far right in spite of its risks, and how the media is giving it continued primetime space, it seems they are facilitating hardliners eat into the power of the state”, she added. Ironically, this behind-the-scenes maneuvering is being played out amidst the suffering of Thar’s innocent victims, who would struggle to make sense of the insurgency, much less understand how they are being exploited. The government is already guilty of allowing hundreds of children to die of hunger, even as its warehouses overflowed with rotting grain. In not being able to provide quick remedy, it lost even more credibility. But if allegations that it is using this opportunity to play politics in another extremely sensitive area prove true, it will be responsible for creating a crisis in which its preferred religious lobby will play a leading role, but not one of crisis management. “The way this government is acting, it seems bent upon chopping off its own feet, and the whole country will suffer for it”, concluded Dr Hussain. g