Barrister Harun ur Rashid

President Karzai of Afghanistan received one of his political great surprises when he could not count on support of parliament for approval of his cabinet team. Out of 24 nominees, only 7 nominees received approval and 17 others were rejected. President Karzai is expected to submit new nominations for the 17 posts in the cabinet.
   The Afghan constitution, framed under the influence of the US, requires that cabinet members of the President must have the approval of the elected parliament. This is obviously a measure to check the untrammeled powers of the President.
   Five of the most prominent and successful ministers-defence, interior, finance, agriculture and education- were endorsed by the parliament for a second term.
   On 9th January 2010, President Hamid Karzai sought Parliament's approval for his new cabinet a second time dropping all those whose nominations were defeated by lawmakers in the first attempt a week ago. Again 7 nominations were rejected out of 15.. Karzai cannot nominate twice the same candidate again. He is in deep trouble politically.
   This demonstrates that the members of parliament cast their vote based on merit, not based on tribal, or ideology or factional interests, according to Kabir Rangbar, an independent MP from Kabul.
   This time the members of parliament exercised it with relish to show President Karzai that parliament has also " political teeth" to gnaw power of the President which he wielded it since 2001.
   Why did the parliament reject the nominees? There are many reasons but some of them deserve mention as follows:
   Karzai , although elected as President, lost his credibility because of the elected tainted by fraud. The former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith drew attention to fraud in elections that returned Karzai for a second term. He has accused Karzai of being elected through a landslide of fraudulent votes, many produced in "ghost polling stations" which Galbraith tried to have shut down.
   the former UN envoy has launched a withering attack on President Hamid Karzai's latest effort to reinvent his government, saying the shake-up would do little to ameliorate the country's worsening crisis.
   Karzai's unveiling of his new cabinet follows intense international pressure on him to reform a government he has packed for the last seven years with warlords and regional and ethnic power brokers who have shored up what little authority he has in the country, largely centred on Kabul. Significantly, Karzai has retained as a cabinet member the notorious warlord Ismail Khan while excluding any members of the opposition.
   Afghan political analyst Waheed Mujda, who said that, despite the alterations, "we do not see new figures or faces in this cabinet to give us any expectation for a major change for the country's future". Instead, observers suggested that many of the new figures in the cabinet appeared to be proxies for powerful Afghan figures, a view that is endorsed by Khaled Pashtun, an MP from Kandahar.
   Parliament was not consulted during the nomination process and many of them lacked the professional backgrounds necessary to do the jobs. The vote is against Karzai choices pure and simple.
   Karzai has concentrated power in Kabul and decentralization of powers into provinces was not adopted. The provincial governors of 34 provinces are now appointed by the President. There seems to be opposition to the concentration of power in Kabul. People are keen to see devolution of powers to provinces. Afghanistan is a mountainous country and people live is remote areas from Kabul and the need for strong elected local government is imperative.
   It has been reported widely in the foreign media that corruption and bad governance are the hallmark of the Karzai government. Karzai's close relations including his brother (Ahmad Wali Karzai) have allegedly amassed vast fortunes under his rule.
   The Karzai government's inability to establish its writ in the countryside has resulted in a Taliban surge and extremist violence has transformed Afghanistan and the tribal areas bordering Pakistan have converted into the epi-centre of regional and global terrorism.
   It is reported that Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament from Kabul said that nominees who represented political parties were not endorsed because they were perceived as partisan and not independent. She said: ' I hope it will be a good lesson for President Karzai that when the issue of reform comes, he is not alone; the members of parliament really want reform. It was the moderates and technocrats who got the vote of confidence".
   Some MPs differ and they say ethnic politics were also in play in opposing the nominees and Fatima Aziz, a Tajik MP from Kunduz was of that view and was disappointed that several nominees from minorities has failed.
   Alex Their, the Director of Afghanistan-Pakistan programme at the US Institute of Peace, a research group based in Washington reportedly said : "The significance of the rejection has to do with politics and Karzai's failure to build a cabinet that spoke to a wide spectrum of people and also with the weakening of his political machine."
   The unity of all ethnic tribes in Afghanistan is an absolute necessity. Afghanistan can be considered a country of minorities as there is no group serving as a majority. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group followed by Tajiks as the second largest group, then Hazaras, Uzbeks tied for third, followed by the Aimak, Turkmen, Baluch, Nuristani and other small groups.
   Since 1978 until this day, several distinct phases are identifiable in recent Afghan history that singly and collectively contributed towards the unending turmoil in the country. In a cause-and-effect like manner each phase prompted a reaction and ushered in the next. Thus the coup of Apr 27, 1978 instigated the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country from Dec 29, 1979 to Feb 15 1989.
   The decade-long struggle against the Soviets was a decentralized conflict, fought in many theatres through approximately 647,500 square kilometres of rugged terrain. There was no central figure around whom the people could rally. The nationalist upsurge that normally accompanies a successful freedom struggle was, therefore, absent from Afghanistan.
   In 1996 the Talibans ( Pashtuns) came to rule and they made a political mistake in harbouring Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden who is believed to have been the mastermind of 9/11 in America. They were ousted by American invasion and Hamid Karzai was installed as President.
   The writer is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.

^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE

A Pakistani view of India
and its neighbours

Tariq Fatemi in Islamabad

The past 60 years have shown India's tendency to throw its weight about and browbeat its neighbours. With those that are bigger and more powerful, India tends to adopt a moralistic and intellectually superior tone, as noted by some American leaders. With its smaller neighbours, it does not hesitate to take off its gloves.
   Of course, we are no paragons of virtue either, and in many cases, it has been our own arrogance and folly, more than Indian machinations, that have contributed to our failures and losses, whether in view of the East Pakistan debacle or the Kargil adventure.
   It had, however, been expected that with the restoration of a democratic dispensation in Pakistan and with virtually all major political parties committed to establishing a cooperative relationship with India, New Delhi would engage in a comprehensive dialogue aimed at resolving the differences that have plagued ties between the South Asian neighbours.
   The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 angered the Indian government, which thereafter had to cater to massive popular outrage. The consequent decision to suspend the dialogue with Pakistan was understandable.
   Since then, the Pakistani leadership has been engaged in a major effort to convince New Delhi that it was sincere in its desire to cooperate with India with the common objective of confronting the extremists. In fact, the most remarkable thing was the near unanimity with which the Pakistanis not only condemned the Mumbai attacks, but also acknowledged that their country needed to take concrete steps to assuage India's anguish.
   None of this, however, appears to have had much impact on the Indian establishment. Even the expectations raised at the Gilani-Singh meeting in Sharm El Sheikh were snuffed out when Manmohan Singh's colleagues publicly expressed their misgivings.
   Then again, while Singh's statement last October in Srinagar that he was not setting preconditions for the dialogue had raised fresh hopes, it did not indicate anything new, for he placed his readiness for talks in the context of Pakistan being able to create an environment conducive to negotiations. His pronouncement neither accompanied nor followed any move to re-engage Islamabad. Instead, Delhi declined to respond to the road map for resuming talks that Pakistan had conveyed to Indian officials.
   This led many to believe that Prime Minister Singh's remarks in Srinagar were merely meant to coincide with US Secretary Hillary Clinton's visit to Pakistan, as well as his own visit to Washington a few weeks later.
   In the meanwhile, the Pakistanis kept pleading for the resumption of dialogue, while the Indians continued to rebuff these offers. The Indian foreign minister ridiculed even the offer of back-channel exchanges. It was then that realisation dawned on the Pakistani leadership that the country's repeated requests were becoming demeaning.
   Be that as it may, India appears to have raised the ante, with the Indian army chief Gen Kapoor remarking that the possibility of a limited war in a nuclear overhang is still a reality, at least in the Indian subcontinent.
   What has been particularly galling is the failure of the Obama administration to act on its seemingly wise policy pronouncements during the election campaign. Instead of encouraging India to reduce its presence in Afghanistan and ceasing to stir up trouble in Balochistan, the US appears to have gone along with Indian allegations, agreeing to inject into the US-India joint statement a provision to work jointly to deal with terrorism emanating from India's neighbourhood.
   This was strange, coming from an administration that had publicly expressed a desire to promote Indo-Pakistan normalisation and to work for the resolution of the Kashmir problem.
   The Indian army chief's latest statement in which he spoke of his army's capacity to fight a two-front war has evoked great surprise and disappointment. But while it conveyed hostility and belligerence, his words are neither realistic nor achievable as India does not have the capability to successfully initiate its much-heralded cold strategy, much less wage two wars against two neighbours simultaneously.
   This does not mean, however, that we can dismiss these statements as mere rhetoric. It could be more evidence of the increasing inclination of the Indian forces to have a role in the India-Pakistan equation.
   According to some observers, there has been a slow but perceptible change in India where an increasing number are reported to have insisted on being given more than merely a hearing on issues relating to Pakistan, especially Siachen and Sir Creek. The Indian armed forces have gradually come to believe that given the growing challenges that India faces both domestically and on its frontiers, a more visible role for it is in order.
   Another important factor is the newfound confidence acquired from the special relationship that the US has so eagerly conferred on India, not only as its strategic partner, but also as a potential counterweight to China. No less important could be the growing influence of rightwing parties and religious groups that want India to adopt more nationalist policies vis-a -vis its neighbours.
   Whatever the reason, our leaders should not react in haste or with similar belligerence. What must be avoided at all costs are provocative steps, such as refusing to cooperate against the militants or brandishing nuclear assets.
   Instead, what is required is a dispassionate analysis of what these signals portend for Pakistan and sensitising our friends to Indian actions. While we must not be distracted from the objective of seeking a peaceful resolution of our differences with India, we must not show undignified haste towards that end.

^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE

Admin. must work without fear or favour

Dear Editor:
   Newspapers report said police arrested Taslima Khanam Akhi, secretary of Kushtia Town Mahila Awami League (AL), with an AK-47 assault rifle (developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov) and 82 rounds of bullets while she entered Bangladesh from India.
   Amirul Islam, Kushtia district AL secretary said, Akhi is a former Commissioner of Kushtia Municipality's Ward No. 8. Police also arrested her four associates and recovered one AK-47 rifle, one shot gun and 66 rounds of bullets, 6 mobile phone sets from their possession from the microbus at Barkhada Trimohini area in Kushtia. After the arrest Akhi was expelled from the Awami League. A few days ago the district admistration of Chittagong recovered from the unauthorised possession of A. B. M. Mohiuddin Chowdhury, Mayor, Chittagong City Corporation and others and handed over it to its real owner Parika Rani Barua and others as per verdict of the court. Magistrate Md. Moniruzzaman led the operation and recovered it from the market. Mayr Mohiuddin is a veteran Awami League leader. Some Ward Councillors of Chittagong City Corporation and some city Awami League leaders opposed the raid. But they were assaulted by the local people. Though the Awami League is in power Mayor Mohiuddin and city Awami League leaders could not prevent the Magistrate for conducting the operation. The recovery of property from the unauthorised possession of a veteran Awami League leader and her associates with arms prove that the administration can take its own course. If they desire they can work without fear or favour.
   The administration cannot ignore their responsibility to protect the lives and property of the people. They should take effective steps for it. They should not be biased. They should work independently. We hope the district administration will not be influenced by the influential quarters and will continue work as per law in the public interest.
   AMK Chowdhury,
   Narayanganj.

Dear Editor:
   During the BDR mutiny in Feb 2009, other than Army officers three civilian outsiders were killed and each family got Taka 2 lakh in comparison to Taka 10 lakh got by each family of Army officers. My question is, as a citizen as per constitutional rights whether value of innocent civilians was one-fifth of the army officers. Compensation should be equitable.
   Dr Azizul Karim,
   GP,Australia
   drmohammadkarim@gmail.com

---

Bangladesh-India relations

Dear Editor:
   As our prime minister visited India, some of the issues could be sorted out by the leaders of both the countries in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding. Bangladesh and India have cultural and historical links. Most of the times the governments of both the countries maintained friendly relations. However, the following unresolved issues, among others, between these two great neighbours needed to be addressed promptly in an equitable, fair and just way for continuing and further cementing that relationship.
   Bangladesh has promptly implemented the accord and transferred Berubari to India long ago. India should also honour their part of the agreement and transfer Tinbigha corridor and others to Bangladesh without any further delay on any pretext.
   There is need for taking measures at the highest level in India for the immediate stoppage of killings and harassment of Bangladeshi people by their Border Security Force.
   A bilateral meeting should be organised at the highest level to decide about the Tipaimukh Dam project in Monipur in India in order to ascertain if this will adversely affect Bangladesh as well as a large part of north eastern India. It should also be emphasised that India need to share all data with Bangladesh relating to the proposed construction of dams on rivers in India, which flow downstream into Bangladesh.
   Considering the curvature and special geographical features of the Bangladesh shores, India should be persuaded to accept Bangladesh proposal of applying equitable principle for the determination of maritime boundaries of the Bay of Bengal under the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea.
   Though the visit is over I hope both the governments of India and Bangladesh will rise to the occasion and bring about necessary changes in their approaches.
   Nuruddin Azam,
   Australia.
   Email: nuruddin_azam@yahoo.com

---

One year of Awami League rule

Dear Editor:
   It is worth questioning how the Awami League (AL) govt. performed during the last one year.
   1.Do we have the right to information? If yes, call spade a spade. No yellow journalism please.
   2.Why no autarky but wastage of public money and misuse of govt. transports?
   3.Why occasional price rise of rice, lentil, potato and sugar?
   4.What have been the performances of the Ministry of Commerce and TCB?
   5. Why illegal toll collection on roads, highways and building construction and clashes over tender submission?
   6.Why do the flood, cyclone and river erosion- affected people continue to suffer for indefinite period?
   7. Why do not Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Leader of the Opposition Begum Khaleda Zia meet with each other?
   8.Wither 'Din Badaler Pala' the pledge of the AL for Charter of Change?
   9.Whatever have been the circumstances the greatest failure of Awami League Govt. is electricity, load- shedding and frequent change of clock.
   10.However, the greatest success of Awami League Govt. was distribution of textbooks to school boys and girls on the eve of New Year 2010, a few days before completion of one year of Awami League Govt.
   O. H. Kabir,
   Dhaka.

---

Archaeological dates have to be exact

Dear Editor:
   Archaeologists focus their interest on the material remnants of cultures. Anthropological and archaeological dates have to be exact. The age of the land does not denote the age of a civilization built on it later. This write-up refers to Omar Khaled Rumi's article on Wari-Bateshwar. It began with the title of his article, Wari-Bateshwar: A 15,000-year old civilization (Holiday, 27 November 2009). In the first sentence, he dated Lalmai-Mainamati a 20,000-year old place. The information given by the author is subject to examination. The Homo sapiens were hunter gatherers 20,000 years ago and 15,000 years ago; they did not live in built houses or settlements let alone build monuments. Archeological evidences of first human settlements come from Catal Huyuk (Chatal Hayuk) in present-day Turkey, Euphrates-Tigris Valley in Iraq and Jordan River Valley; none older than 10,000 years. The writer says that human settlement 'probably started off' 10,000 years ago; can he then claim Bangladesh to be the oldest seat of civilization?
   The writer rightly says the punch-marked silver coins from the time of Mourya rules found at the site dates Wari-Bateshwar at 4th-3rd centuries BC which contradicts his title date. Jain icons would concur to this dates. Mainamati relics of a Buddhist monastery have been dated 7th-8th century AD, as is the Paharpur monastic complex. This further highlights his conceptual confusion. He should take note that 15,000-year old land at Wari Bateshwar contains archeological relics very much older than the 20,000-year old Lalmai Hills where Mainamati archeological relics are at least a millennium younger. Banglapedia noted C-14 date of Wari at 5th century BC, that is even older, but nowhere near as old as Rumi thought. Given the importance of the topic of Rumi's essay there should not have been editorial oversight.
   Dr Aziz Islam,
   Rossmoyne,
   Australia 6148.
   Email: m1islam@iinet.net.au

---

New Year pessimism

Dear Editor:
   The general elections are being held at regular intervals, but the political culture is not improving. It indirectly means that the feedback from millions of voters have no democratic effect on the ruling political regimes.
   Our political culture has become stale, due to domination by two parties, who believe in dynasty rules. It means living in the past, instead of looking forward. The party comes first; and the democratic gestures have second priority. Coming into power is the main goal.
   The parliament is in limbo, being boycotted by the Opposition; claiming democratic rights. This boycott by the successive Opposition parties has turned into an ignoble culture. This posture is very much evident in the Third World; and in the newly emerging nations.
   Cultivating democratic principles politically is a tough job in the LDCs. The leadership cannot reach higher levels, due to negative economic attractions. Internal democratic modes are not cultivated inside the political parties. The umbrella effect is very much evident.
   Almost one half of the voters are illiterate, and live at or below the acceptable economic level. Hence political exploitation is the norm. The office bearers hold the advantage and leverage, as breaking the law and rules have become the norm. This is due to political sycophancy to sustain the dynasty regimes.How to get out of this bottomless pit?
   A Mawaz,
   Dhaka.

^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE