Archive for August, 2007

Patchwork connections stretch across the divide

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

INDIA: 60th ANNIVERSARY

Six decades after the British partitioned Pakistan from India, families broken by the border struggle to stay in touch

The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, August 15, 2007
SONYA FATAH

Signpost

AMRITSAR, INDIA — For a long time after 1947, Karkar Singh’s mother and aunt sent news to each other through lovingly penned letters. Their homes were hardly 40 kilometres apart by road, but it would be four months, each time, before either received a response by mail. They kept writing, filling each other in on family news for 20 years, until the bonds began to weaken, the connection harder to sustain. Eventually, the letters stopped coming.

Mr. Singh’s mother lived in the village of Majhupura on the western edge of Indian Punjab, about 10 kilometres from the Pakistan border. His aunt and her husband, Karnal Singh, lived 30 kilometres inside what is Pakistan today.

Until 1947, when Pakistan was born, they lived close enough to visit regularly. But Karnal Singh, who worked as a driver at the Bata Shoe Factory, was reluctant to leave his job, his home and his land when the borders were drawn, cutting him off from his family on the other side.

The British exit from India, leaving behind two states – Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim Pakistan – sparked a mass migration of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, and Muslims from India, separating thousands of families.

As the two countries celebrate 60 years of independence, some of these long-standing ties endure, despite the odds, to keep India and Pakistan connected.

Mr. Singh, 60, made three arduous journeys to Delhi before securing a visa to visit his aunt and cousins in Pakistan. Eventually, with the purpose of visiting Sikh religious sites, he booked a train to Pakistan.

“I didn’t feel any differences between us,” he says of the reunion with his relatives 12 years ago. “Our language is the same; our feelings for each other were very strong.” The only difference, he said, was of diet. In Muslim-dominated Pakistan, his cousins eat meat. But that, Mr. Singh says, wasn’t a problem. “They cooked separately for me.”

While it has been more than 30 years since the countries last went to war, deep hostilities and suspicions linger. Since India’s then-prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, made peace overtures to Pakistan in 2000, a sometimes-rocky progression has been made toward relaxing the draconian laws that prevent person-to-person interaction.

While there has been an increase in trade and traffic and a greater exchange of ideas, most has happened at a government level or among the upper class. For those of modest means, reaching out has been more difficult.

Gardeep Singh, 55, of Todi Bind, five kilometres from the border, has travelled to Pakistan to visit his maternal uncle, who, like him, is a farmer.

Born in India after partition, he has made every effort to maintain ties with his family on the other side.

“We’re all Punjabis. They are one of us. Even though my mother and my uncle passed away two years ago, my heart wants to keep the ties. There is no difference between us,” he says.

His brother, Vasan Singh, 60, has not been to Pakistan. “It’s too much of a hassle,” he says, citing the cost and burden of travelling to Delhi for a visa.

Theoretically, people could maintain contact through phone communication, which has become much more accessible in recent years. But calling Pakistan is not always a good idea.

Mr. Singh says police interrogated his nephew when he called family members in Pakistan after returning from a visit five years ago. “We don’t call because we don’t want to be harassed.”

Some say the reason for police supervision is linked to the significant illegal border trade that takes place. Indian liquor passes into Pakistani hands in exchange for heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Almost everyone in the border area knows someone who has been involved in the smuggling trade. India’s border security force has cracked down, but the black-market trade continues, people say, in part thanks to corrupt officials.

People here say their relatives in Pakistan struggle to get visas to visit.

“Our relatives from Pakistan just don’t get visas to visit Punjab,” says Pacho Kaur, 60, whose brother lives on the other side. “They’ve never been here, they’ve never met our families. We don’t know why.”

Ms. Kaur’s brother lives in Lahore, where he drives a horse-drawn carriage. She has visited him many times, but can only apply for a visa every 15 months.

“It feels like I’m in the Punjab when I’m there. It feels the same,” she said, echoing the feelings of almost everyone else with family across the border. “All his children showed me so much love, my heart stayed there with them.”

After 60 years, a patchwork of letters, photographs and occasional visits has kept a generation of separated families connected. But in these villages – distant from the innovations of the Internet and e-mail – it’s hard to imagine how much longer the connections can hold.

“We’re poor, we have no connections, so we can’t get across and we can’t get visas,” says Kartar Singh, who lives in a small concrete house with baked mud floors and earns 3,000 rupees ($80 Canadian) a month working in a fabric printing factory. “The rich bend all the rules and make it, but we, with our families across the border, are left struggling to connect the past and the present.”

His son, Divender Singh, 25, doesn’t know if that bond is tangible. “We don’t know our cousins. We don’t recognize their faces. When we can’t meet them or talk to them, they are, more or less, dead.”

United they began

1940: India’s Muslim League endorses the idea of a separate Muslim nation.

Early 1947: Britain says it will leave India no later than June, 1948.

Aug. 13, 1947: Sir Cyril Radcliffe submits his partition map, demarcating the hastily drawn border between India and Pakistan that in some places cut villages, and even individual houses, in two along what became known as the Radcliffe Line. Sir Cyril’s justification was that no matter what he did, people would suffer. The division was done in secret, and no Indians were allowed to review it, since disputes likely would have arisen and delayed the partition.

Aug. 15, 1947: At the stroke of midnight, the country of Pakistan comes into being as an independent, largely Muslim state with East and West provinces separated by more than 1,500 km of Indian land. At the same time, India gains its independence as a secular Hindu nation.

1947-48: Many Muslims and Hindus find themselves on the “wrong side” of the border, and as a result, an estimated 14.5 million people cross to the other side. Hundreds of thousands of other people die in widespread communal bloodshed.

1949: The Awami League is established to campaign for East Pakistan’s autonomy from West Pakistan.

1970: The Awami League, under Sheikh Mujib, wins an overwhelming election victory in East Pakistan. The government in West Pakistan refuses to recognize the election results, leading to rioting.

1971: Sheikh Mujib is arrested and taken to West Pakistan. In exile, Awami League leaders proclaim East Pakistan independent on March 26, leading to a civil war. About 10 million people flee to India as troops from West Pakistan are defeated with Indian assistance. The new country is called Bangladesh.

Sources: BBC, Reuters

Popularity: 15% [?]

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Pakistan’s military is all business

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

ANALYSIS: NEW BOOK CHRONICLES GENERALS’ ECONOMIC MIGHT

As the political crisis deepens, a new book reveals just how powerful the generals really are. Sonya Fatah reports

– Trapped between international pressure to combat terrorism and domestic demands that he restore true democracy, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf came very close to declaring a national state of emergency this week.

It was the latest indication that his political fortunes have been in a freefall since a month ago yesterday, when he ordered the military to silence the rebellious radicals at Islamabad’s infamous Red Mosque. That battle left more than 100 people dead, including one of the mosque’s leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

In a Globe and Mail interview two months earlier, Mr. Ghazi offered an explanation for agitating against the state that went beyond religion. And while they would not endorse his actions, many Pakistanis would agree with his analysis:

“We feel that the system in Pakistan has completely failed. Nothing is working properly. … This system may be fulfilling an elite class of less than 1 per cent, but the majority of the people are suffering.”

The system he was criticizing is the subject of an explosive new book by Pakistani academic Ayesha Siddiqa. Called Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, it paints a picture of that “elite class” – military officials, retired armed-forces personnel, the civil bureaucracy, feudal landlords, media and business groups. Dr. Siddiqa takes readers into the murky labyrinth of the Pakistani military’s hidden wealth and power.

Imagine you’re a real-estate developer thinking of building a sprawling luxury residential complex in the leafy suburbs of Islamabad. You might get in touch with the Defence Housing Authorities. Need to buy tons of cement to get construction under way? Call Askari Cement Ltd. Need a loan? Insurance? Askari’s sister companies can cover you. Want to build a quality school in your new development? Try the Fauji Foundation.

What do these companies have in common? They’re all businesses built by a military that has insinuated itself in almost every aspect of the Pakistani economy. From cereal companies to major land holdings to cement and construction companies, the military and its civilian cronies have their hands in every pie, as Dr. Siddiqa details. Moreover, its financial affairs – known as “milbus” – are off the record. Pakistan’s defence budget is significantly higher than those of such sectors as education and health, yet it doesn’t even record its pension payments.

But Dr. Siddiqa, a defence analyst, has worked as head of research for the Pakistani navy – she knows the numbers because she had internal access to documents and records. She has detailed the incriminating facts she gleaned there, such as the military ownership of the National Logistics Cell, the country’s biggest freight company, or the four army-run foundations that conduct huge cross-sector projects, own significant assets and employ retired military personnel. Dr. Siddiqa also writes that 12 per cent of Pakistani state land is owned by the military.

Such information about Pakistan’s military economy, she suggests, explains a great deal about its struggling political state. The military is a monopoly with vested interests and searching for power in places such as Afghanistan, Dr. Siddiqa argues.

WHAT DOES A GENERAL

KNOW ABOUT EDUCATION?

The army’s economic empire is not news in Pakistan. It’s virtually impossible to meet someone here who doesn’t have a story about it – the former general who has won the contract to repave all pedestrian walking zones in Karachi, or the militarily connected journalist who just happened to come out ahead in the land “lottery” and came away with a lush, generous swath of property practically for free.

And as Mr. Ghazi pointed out in his interview, the current Minister of Education is a retired general. “What are his qualifications?” Mr. Ghazi demanded. “What does he know about education?”

Military influence extends into key political posts, beginning of course with President Musharaff, formerly General Musharaff. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, the country’s most important and strategic military partner, is a retired general, as is the head of the country’s National Accountability Bureau.

“They have their interests,” Dr. Siddiqa said in an inteview. “I’ve not suggested anywhere that they got into politics because of economic interest. They did because of their political power. Once they have it, now they are not going to leave.”

The subsequent “search for justice and better governance” has led to a mushrooming of alternative ideologies, Dr. Siddiqa said, leaving a door open for Islamists as well as secular critics of the government.

Mr. Ghazi’s father had good relations with Pakistan’s last military ruler, General Zia-ul Haq, and once worked for the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The land occupied by the Red Mosque was given to him by the government. For years, the family’s ties with intelligence services allowed them to pursue their own agenda, which partly explains why Mr. Musharraf took so long to act against them – a fairly typical pattern in the military’s push-and-pull relationship with radical Islamists.

“The Inter-services agency has an overt role in [the Red Mosque],” said Najam Sethi, editor of two English daily newspapers in Pakistan. “They were old buddies. But I think the ISI disowned them some time ago. Basically the ISI led these guys up a garden path and then as [the clerics] became bolder and bolder, they reached the stage where things had to be ended.”

Indeed, in 2004, Mr. Ghazi and his brother were accused of harbouring terrorists in the mosque. A rocket launcher was discovered in his car. The details of these episodes were recorded, but Mr. Ghazi was quietly let off the hook.

“The links with the military organization were clear even then,” said Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the Belgium-based International Crisis Group.

The military and radical Islamists frequently work together, she said. For example, during the October, 2005, earthquake that devastated northern Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and took more than 80,000 lives, well-organized teams of banned jihadi groups were the first to arrive on the scene and begin rescue efforts.

The Red Mosque’s Islamist leader has taken his extremism to his grave, but there are many more centres of extremism in the country. “We are not interested in personalities,” Mr. Ghazi said. “We are interested in systems. If Musharraf goes, another of his kind will come in his place.”

Indeed, despite the President’s sagging fortunes at the moment, a change in the system seems highly unlikely. Dr. Siddiqa estimates the wealth of the military at $20-billion and says military governments have run Pakistan for half of its 60 years, so the future looks bleak: “The bottom line is, the army doesn’t want any critical analysis, and the military is a very strong institution.”

With the people of Pakistan still out of the decision-making process and a weak leadership in place, the military continues to run the show. “The current leadership is elitist and people have no option. The military makes sure that it keeps the recyclable politicians in politics.”

Sonya Fatah is a New Delhi-based reporter.

The bestseller blues

Ayesha Siddiqa’s Military Inc. is a hit, but the controversy surrounding it has caused problems.

To begin with, a launch party planned for the prestigious Islamabad Club was cancelled abruptly. The publisher hunted for an alternative venue, but no major hotel would provide a home. Finally, a hastily arranged gathering was held at the home of a non-governmental organization.

“I really didn’t expect this kind of a reaction,” Dr. Siddiqa says over coffee in London. “I was expecting a little reaction, but last year Newline [an English-language monthly in Pakistan] ran an entire chapter of my book, and there was no response.”

But the book’s publication comes at a sensitive time, with President Pervez Musharraf under fire and many Pakistanis on the defensive. Dr. Siddiqa says she has lost friends because of what she has written and has even been suspected of treason.

An English-language daily reported that an Indian diplomat’s car was parked in her driveway, sparking a whisper campaign that accused her of being an agent for New Delhi.

Sonya Fatah

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Reluctant citizens gear up for first election

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

BHUTAN: TRANSITION TOWARD DEMOCRACY


The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 11, 2007
SONYA FATAH

THIMPHU, BHUTAN — Monarchies have inspired bloody revolutions, internal dissent and anti-royalist demonstrations. But not in the remote, Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Here, it’s the King who is trumpeting democracy and calling for a one-person, one-vote system.

So far, the citizens have resisted the call. The consensus among the Bhutanese is that democracy is a bad idea. Bhutan will become another India, people say, pointing to the host of internal conflicts in the neighbouring country. They also fear democracy might widen class differences and increase social conflict.

Under the benevolent eyes of the monarchy, peace has been Bhutan’s inheritance, they say.

Still, democracy is the King’s wish, and the reluctant Bhutanese are gearing up for their first general election.

Bhutan’s transition toward democracy was led by former king Jigme Singe Wangchuck as part of a plan to develop and modernize Bhutan. He stepped aside in December, making his eldest son, Oxford-educated Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, King.

It was the father who first determined that Bhutan would turn toward democracy, and speculation on the reasons for his decision includes the self-destruction of the Royal Family in nearby Nepal and the rise of a Maoist guerrilla movement there. Early in his reign, the Royal Family of neighbouring Sikkim was overthrown after India stirred up trouble among Sikkim’s Nepalese population. Bhutan’s Nepalese community, many of them living in refugee camps, has reason to resent the existing powers in Bhutan.

The country is also largely rural — the majority of its people are farmers — and although its development has been impressive over the past 40 years, with increased life expectancy, literacy and income, the country will have to face more complex challenges as time goes on.

Bhutan has been making baby steps away from absolute monarchy for years.

“Democracy is not a new concept,” said Lily Wangchuck, who heads the governance unit for the United Nations Development Program in Bhutan. “That’s a Western perception. There has been an unprecedented process of decentralization over the last four decades.”

Devolution of monarchial power began in earnest in 1981 for this country of fewer than 700,000 people. People elect their own village and town representatives, but those votes are cast on a one-household, one-vote basis. A council of ministers, appointed by the King and handpicked from Bhutan’s civil service, took over the handling of daily government affairs in 2001.

But this time out, in elections scheduled to be held in two rounds in February and March — academics from the University of Canberra and the Australian National University helped to set up the election process and the shape of the government that will follow — the individual right to vote will be embraced for the first time.

The idea isn’t appealing to most people — yet.

“We like only the monarchy,” said Kinley Chuki, 18, who is getting a diploma in education and helps run the family-owned general store on the main street in Paro. “If democracy comes, we will become like India.”

Bhutanese feel that the monarchy has been a force for stability and unity. They have awful tales to tell about the “former times,” a general reference to the turbulent period that predates 1907, the year the monarchy was born.

Ms. Chuki’s grandmother, Nimdem, 80, who spent most of her life picking apples in an orchard near Paro, says she fears democracy will create greater class cleavages.

“Under democracy, only upper-class people with backgrounds will be successful.”

Citizens have been slow in engaging in the nascent political process, even the creation of parties to vie for votes has been a struggle.

A former minister and the brother of Bhutan’s queens — four sisters who are married to the former king — lead the People’s Democratic Party. Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuck and six cabinet ministers resigned to contest elections, a move widely seen to bring legitimacy to the election process, but one that has also brought dissatisfaction as would-be candidates, having given up their jobs, find they have been sidelined by political candidates.

This year the government held two rounds of mock elections to prepare voters for the real thing. Still, the Bhutanese are struggling to understand the process and its purpose.

“The King’s concern is to develop Bhutan, which is why he is asking for democracy,” said Pema Gyeltshen, 49, a junior high school teacher in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, who also sells prayer flags at a monastery. “But hardly 50 per cent of the people know what democracy is.”

Not everyone is afraid of a future in a democratic Bhutan. For students like Ugyen Tenzing, 24 and Tenzing Dorji, 25, graduates of Bhutan’s only degree college, political change is healthy.

“People haven’t recognized it yet but democracy is a good thing for people because they can participate in a democracy,” Mr. Tenzing said.

The country, romanticized by many as the “last Shangri-La” on Earth, also has its skeletons.

Many fear that democracy will result in accusations of human-rights violations against the country’s Nepalese population.

The Bhutanese-Nepalese, known as the Lhotshampa or southern Bhutanese, came and settled in the southern part of the country in the early 20th century.

In the 1980s, a new law required all Bhutanese to wear their national dress at public and official events, to school and at work. Nepali, which had been introduced as a language in schools around 1950, was cut from school curriculums.

Many Nepalese saw this as a direct threat to their inclusion in Bhutanese society.

An exodus of Bhutanese-Nepalese occurred between 1988 and 1993 after a series of brutal acts, including rape and murder, were committed against the southern Bhutanese, many of whom still live as stateless people in camps on the Nepal side of the border.

There are no human-rights groups in Bhutan at the moment but that, like many other things, is likely to change when the first Bhutanese-elected government comes to power next year.

For Dorji Wangmo, 24, and a graduate of Sherubtse College, reform in Bhutan is inevitable.

“There is no choice. Change had to happen. That is the future.”

The little kingdom

Bhutan is a tiny, remote and impoverished kingdom nestling in the Himalayas between its powerful neighbours, India and China. Almost completely cut off for centuries, it has tried to let in some aspects of the outside world while fiercely guarding its ancient traditions.

The Bhutanese name for Bhutan, Druk Yul, means Land of the Thunder Dragon, and it only began to open up to outsiders in the 1970s.

The Wangchuck hereditary monarchy has wielded power since 1907. In December of 2006, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck succeeded his father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who came to the throne in 1972 at the age of 17, assuming the title of Druk Gyalpo or Dragon King. Concerned with the spiritual as well as material well-being of his people, he promoted a concept known as gross national happiness.

Bhutan’s ancient Buddhist culture and breathtaking scenery make it a natural tourist attraction. But tourism is restricted. Visitors must travel as part of a prearranged package or guided tour. Backpackers and independent travellers are discouraged.

King Wangchuck has gone to great lengths to preserve the indigenous Buddhist culture of the majority Drukpa, who have a common culture with the Tibetans and other Himalayan peoples.

National dress is compulsory — the knee-length wrap-around gho for men and the ankle-length dress known as the kira for women.

But by the 1990s, attempts to stress the majority Buddhist culture and the lack of any political representation had led to deep resentment among the ethnic Nepali community in the south. Violence erupted and tens of thousands of Nepali speakers fled to refugee camps in Nepal.

Television was introduced only in 1999, because for years Bhutan had a deliberate policy of isolation, fearing that outside influences would undermine its absolute monarchy, freedom and culture.

The state-run Bhutan Broadcasting Service launched the first TV service as part of celebrations surrounding King Wangchuck’s silver jubilee. The launch marked the end of a general ban on television.

Radio broadcasting began in 1973 and the first Internet service was introduced in 1999.

Media freedom is restricted by the government. There are no private broadcasters, but cable television is said to be thriving with rival operators offering dozens of channels.

Source: BBC

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