The New Nation - Internet Edition

Caesarean money making

A HOUSEWIFE who was subjected to caesarean operation allegedly against her will at a clinic in Chapainawabganj has been struggling for her life. According to newspaper reports, Atia Parvin Rani was admitted with labour pain. Examining her a doctor informed that a normal delivery was possible and that no operation would be needed. But later the doctor performed the operation without permission. After the operation, her belly and uterus started swelling abnormally with severe pain. She was taken to another clinic in Rajshahi where doctors removed three bottles of decomposed blood, pus and other disposable fluid from her uterus. Rani's husband demanded arrest and punishment of the doctor for unauthorised operation and negligence to duty.

It is learnt that in a majority of cases at clinics and hospitals caesarean operations are preferred for deliveries even where normal deliveries are possible and safe. Allegations are there that a section of unscrupulous clinic owners encourage expectant mothers to undergo caesarean operations just for making money. They give pregnant women misinformation about their health conditions and persuade them to opt for operations.

Getting proper treatment is a fundamental right of every citizen. Such irresponsible treatment directly violates this fundamental right. Wrong treatment may lead to serious physical disabilities or even death of a patient. It is learnt that many private clinics lacking required facilities are operating without permission from the health ministry. The authorities must order for an immediate survey of those medical centres and close those that fail to fulfil requisite preconditions. Doctors found involved in unethical practices should be given exemplary punishment.

The right to information ordinance

PERHAPS the members of the incumbent interim government who have been responsible for the final draft of an important ordinance that would have far reaching impacts on good governance and democracy, did not think that they won't be able craft this piece of legislation with the stakeholders--specially the media-not taken into confidence. The members of the media have been very quick to reject wholesale the draft. Representatives of the media also minced no words in criticising the final draft and expressed indignation for the manner in which they were treated.

The media gave a set of proposals for incorporation in the final draft that would end the culture of secrecy and immunity of officialdom and require government offices to be obligated to divulge information to people in the latter's rightful interests. But hardly any of these suggestions from the media were found included in the final draft which means a complete snub for the media and an attempt to superimpose a legislation on people.

As has been explained by a leading journalist of the country, the proposed draft of the Right to Information Act (RIA), if it is allowed to be enacted, will only mean a sort of reappearance of the prevailing Official Secrets Act by reintroducing it in disguise when the objective of the RIA ought to be ending secrecy ad empowering the people with the right to know about many things done by the government-- veiled from their eyes-- and not in the real public interest. The media underlined how it fell far short of similar acts in neighbouring India, Pakistan and Nepal. The RIA in these countries expanded media's opportunities, rights and freedoms to investigate into almost anything. Thus, nothing short of substantial redrafting of this RIA will do, as has been emphasised by the journalists.

Would democracy work in Pakistan?

Maswood Alam Khan

The process of our cognitive impression, a part of our genetic behavior, is based on what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste---and what we read in newspapers and what we view in audiovisual media like televisions and the internets.

Whenever an impression is registered in our mind, a thread is immediately tagged with it; a thread that may take the shape or form of a symbol, a color, a song or even a fragrance. So, whenever we listen to a song threads relating the song and the accompanying experiences retrieve a sequence of past events from thousands of our separate memory shelves inside our brains and our mind travels back to ruminate over our old reminiscences.

Therefore, when we talk about Awami League the symbol 'boat' appears in our mind and 'a sheaf of paddy' waves at us when we hear about Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Whenever we read any news about Ethiopia pictures of hungry and emaciated people flash up in our minds and whenever we hear about a head of the government of Pakistan we are prone to visualize Ayub Khan, Yahia Khan, etc. in their khaki fatigues.

Governance of Pakistan for the last sixty-one years has been dictated by the country's army chiefs, halftime onstage and the rest offstage mostly based on their own versions of militarized democracy. The present democratically elected civilian government of Pakistan may be just an interlude between two military rules: one rule by General Musharraf that just ended on Monday, August 18 and the other, which may be in the offing, by a future General who has perhaps been watching the stage performance from the wings.

Coalition leaders, the vanguards of the PPP and the PML-N, who were always at daggers drawn, had for about nine years forgotten their old mutual rivalry for the interest of opposing their one common enemy General Musharraf, whose demise had been inevitable since August 7th, when the coalition leaders said they would impeach him.

Now that the General has departed the scene both the political parties have already started brooding over their old fetid sores and scores to settle. How the Pakistan government now deals with the General's succession---and whether it leads to a power struggle---is a looming question.

Pakistan, already weakened by Musharraf's mishandling of political, moral, religious, economic, diplomatic, military, and nuclear issues, may again be poised to plunge into deeper crises----crises that make military leaders in Pakistan caress their mustaches in the expectation of opportune moments to swoop in for a new phase of military rule.

Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape---more known by their acronym "SERE"---is a crucial program each and every soldier must learn during their training as a major focus, an integral part of war preparedness of an army.

A military trainer evaluates his soldiers' ability to participate in a war not only on their nerves of steel, but also on their SERE dexterity---a vital skill an escapee or an evader must use in an attempt to depart a battlefield in order to return to friendly lines when the chance to penetrate into enemy lines is slim or when the probability of being trapped by an enemy in a pincer movement is high.

So, in the event of staging a coup d'état military strategists before drawing a blueprint of ousting a civilian government first of all map out an elaborate diagram on how to evade and escape in case their plans are bungled. Without an escape route made easy and ready no military official is supposed to undertake an attack: any attack, whether it is an assault on the enemy line or a putsch to remove a civilian government.

General Musharraf of Pakistan perhaps did not draw an escape diagram nine years back as he ostensibly did not have any plan to remove the civilian government of Pakistan; rather his military colleagues extremely loyal to him had rejected the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's order 'to dismiss their respected chief General Musharraf'.

Soldiers spontaneously moved into positions around important government installations in Islamabad well before the general had returned to the country from a visit to Sri Lanka during the October 1999 coup. After a decade of inept, corrupt civilian rule, many Pakistanis welcomed the overthrow of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

"An army chief had thus become the state chief"---a traditional way of changing the government of Pakistan people the world over have been taking for granted for the last five decades.

Whether the exit door General Musharraf used on August 18 to leave his presidential office was diagramed in advance or not is not yet clear. But, there should not be any doubt in anybody's mind that General Musharraf, the former army chief and a key ally of USA in its campaign against terrorism, still has a few allies in the West. General Musharraf who once said that his khaki uniform was like his "second skin" may not be unpopular among those in army garrisons who were once commanded by him and who may still have some filial respects towards their former chief.

Soldiers of Pakistan army, including those who are presently guarding the former army chief-turned-president in his private residence, however, are well aware how valiantly General Musharraf fought during the 1965 war with India and how babyishly he wept after learning that ninety thousand Pak soldiers had surrendered to Indian Army on the day Bangladesh was liberated in 1971.

Like in any country of the subcontinent the spirit of camaraderie among soldiers was and will always be a firewall protecting a serving or a retired general, out of harm's way. No General, retired or active, was ever tried in a civil court of law in Pakistan and the possibility of trying him seems unlikely now that PPP is already in favor of not disturbing the General who intends to spend his twilight years at his luxurious home in the quiet suburbs of Islamabad.

Musharraf is intensely despised by Islamist militant groups like al-Qaeda and is widely unpopular among ordinary Pakistanis mainly for his sycophantic role to please USA by suppressing and oppressing the terrorists unleashed by Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan and its border areas.

After nuclear tests were carried out in 1998, during the Sharif government, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) imposed economic sanctions on Pakistan. When Musharraf came to power in the coup d'état the following year Pakistan was expelled from the Commonwealth.

With Pakistan economy getting inextricably compounded with problems many experts that time claimed Pakistan was already a failed state, as it was close to bankruptcy and investor confidence was at an all-time low.

But, after Musharraf promised support in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, international sanctions were lifted and Pakistan started regaining its lost strength. It was for Musharraf's stand against terrorists that the US government plunked down more than US$ 11 billion into Pakistan, though mostly for its military.

Musharraf was also widely credited with seeking peace with India. While lasting solution to the core dispute over Kashmir remains elusive, his dialogues with Indian counterparts dramatically reduced the chance of a cataclysmic future conflicts.

With inflation running at 25 per cent and the economy a shambles the question now for Pakistan is whether the departure of the president---who unlike most Pakistani politicians has never been accused of large-scale corruptions---will bring more stability to the country. It will be a major test for the governing alliance which has discredited itself in recent months by in-fighting and squabbling.

There is an advantage in a military rule a civilian government in a developing country however democratic will never enjoy: roars of guns. Of course, there is no denying the truth that people's power is supreme and no roaring gun can scare them, but only in cases where the majority of people are educated and people's representatives are honest and patriotic and the press which moulds public opinion are unbiased in the truest senses of all the terminologies: educated, honest, patriotic and unbiased.

Paradoxically, educated people, honest and patriotic political leaders and unbiased press are not quite palpable in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Mauritania where gun-toting khaki-fatigued forces play by their own rules and whims and are at the liberty of redefining political terminologies like democracy and franchise.

In a country like Pakistan people are politically very voracious and they are trigger-happy in following the agitated crowds chasing after a ruler portrayed as unpopular in the press. Getting carried away emotionally they set fire to state properties to steam off their anger and frustrations not realizing that their actions are self-destructive.

They will chant slogans for Islam and democracy at the top of their voice and will not hesitate to shed bloods in the process. But, democracy to the same people will mean far worse than autocracy whenever a bad economy hits their stomachs, no matter if their hardship is an inescapable resultant of any global mishap not under the control of their own government. Political as well as military leaders eagerly and hilariously wait for such moments of mass hunger pangs to capitalize on to serve their own individual agendas.

Democracy will not flower in Pakistan unless there is a visionary like a Mahathir of Malaysia is at the helm to captain the nation. Only a visionary, no matter whether s/he is a civilian politician or a general-turned-statesman, can ensure that the majority of people are educated and their representatives in the parliament are honest and patriotic and the press people who mould public opinion are unbiased with a view to preparing solid democratic foundations where the citizenry will never cower behind walls or under tables hearing the roars of guns fired from army garrisons.

The Caucasian challenge

Eric S. Margolis

IT'S not yet a return to the Cold War, but the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.

On 7 August, Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted to quit Georgia and rejoin Russia.

Saakashvili's decision was a disaster. Russia's 58th Army responded by routing Georgian forces and delivering a humiliating strategic and psychological blow to the Bush administration's efforts to expand American and Israeli influence in the Caucasus.

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin swiftly and deftly checkmated the United States on the Georgian strategic chessboard.

Saakashvili, fell right into Moscow's trap. Georgia and Russia have been feuding since 1992 over two Georgian ethnic enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The young, US-educated Saakashvili became Georgia's president in 2003 after an uprising, believed organised by CIA and financed by US money, overthrew the able former leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. I came to know and respect Shevardnadze in Moscow when he was Mikhail Gorbachev's principal ally and architect of Soviet reform.

Saakashvili quickly became the golden boy of US rightwing neoconservatives and their Israeli allies, who held him a model of how to turn former Russian-dominated states into 'democratic' US allies. Critics claim Saakashvili kept power by bribery and vote-rigging.

US money, military trainers, advisers, and intelligence agents poured into the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Israeli arms dealers, businessmen and intelligence agents quickly followed, reportedly selling $500 million of military equipment to the Georgian government - paid for, of course, by the US.

By expanding its influence into Georgia, the Bush administration brazenly flouted agreements with Moscow made by presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton not to expand NATO into the former USSR.

Russia's tough deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, sneeringly observed that Georgia had become, a 'US satellite.' Indeed it had.

Georgia provided the US oil and gas pipeline routes from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that bypassed Russian territory. Russia was furious its Caspian Basin energy export monopoly had been broken, vowing revenge.

Now that the Russians have checkmated the US and client, Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will likely move into Russia's orbit. The West backed independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia should have as much right to secede from Georgia.

In one swift blow, Putin thwarted Bush's clumsy attempt to further advance US influence into the Caucasus. He delivered a stark warning to Ukraine and the Central Asian states: don't get too close to Washington.

Putin put the US on the strategic defensive and showed that Nato's new eastern reaches - the Baltic, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Caucasus - are largely indefensible.

It's a good thing Georgia was not admitted to Nato. Is the West really ready to be dragged into a potential nuclear war for the sake of South Ossetia? Georgia is a bridge too far for Nato.

President George Bush, VP Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain all resorted to table pounding and Cold War rhetoric against Russia. McCain, whose senior foreign policy adviser is a neoconservative and registered lobbyist for Georgia, thundered, 'the US has important interests in Georgia.' Interests that are barely a few years old, senator. Russia's go back two centuries. The Caucasus is Russia's backyard. Imagine Washington's response if Russian troops were deployed to Quebec.

Hypocrisy flew thicker than shellfire. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, accused Russia of 'bullying' and 'aggression.' Putin, who crushed the life out of Chechnya, piously claimed his army was saving Ossetians from ethnic cleansing.

Bush and McCain demand Russia be punished and isolated. The humiliated Bush is sending some US troops to Georgia to deliver 'humanitarian' aid.

Equally worrisome, the US rushed to sign a pact with Warsaw to station anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft batteries, manned by US troops, in Poland. This response is dangerous, highly provocative, and immature.

The West must accept Russia has vital national interests in the Caucasus and the former USSR. Russia is a great power and must be accorded respect. The days of treating Russia like a banana republic are over.

The US's most important foreign policy concern is keeping correct relations with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at North America. Georgia is a sideshow.

Blast from the past and Russian hubris

Jonathan Power

KOSOVO, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya, the Bakassi Peninsular. All of them disputed territories but only one, the last named, a sizeable oil-rich wedge of land lying between Nigeria and Cameroon, has been taken to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for adjudication.

Why not the others? There is no good reason, apart from, in the latest situation, hubris on the Russian side and an inflated sense of self-importance on the Georgian side, partly because America has encouraged this.

Six years ago Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, confronted with growing tensions with neighbouring Cameroon over the Bakassi peninsular, long ruled by Nigeria, decided to resist the advice of his minister of defence, who pushed for a military solution, and to turn the dispute over to the World Court. Newspapers ridiculed Obasanjo, public opinion was nationalistic, but he held his course and did so even when the court ruled in Cameroon's favour. Bakassi is now being turned over to Cameroon.

Unlike South Ossetia there was something to fight over - large quantities of oil - but Nigeria swallowed its pride. This doesn't happen as often as it should, but it does happen.

It is often said that the twentieth century was the bloodiest century of mankind. It was. Nevertheless, there is another rarely told side of the history of the last century. The truth is that over a hundred years states committed themselves to a far more just, humane and peaceable world than their practice often suggested. Dorothy Jones in her carefully researched book, Codes of Peace, argues that there is a "hidden history" of the last century, ¨the record of an un-noticed breakthroughs in treaty-making when the great warrior states have adopted apparently minor stipulations that, in fact, represent agreement to significant restraint on their sovereignty."

The League of Nations rests in a perpetual historical cloud because of its failure to deal with Germany. But it did resolve the Aaland Island dispute between Finland and Sweden (which mattered as much at the time as Kosovo does today). Most notably, throughout an extraordinarily tense situation in 1935, an international military force kept order during the plebiscite that returned the Saar to Germany. (To gauge the passions involved, think not of South Ossetia, but of returning Ulster to Eire today.)

All these inflamed disputes were settled by arbitration. The vexed issue of the Aaland Island in the Baltic Sea led to one of the most carefully crafted of all international documents, one that has been drawn on over the years since as the template for resolving competing claims by neighbouring countries.

The Swedish inhabitants were demanding that they be allowed self-determination from their Finnish rulers. "To concede to minorities", the League"s eminent advisers concluded, "whether of language or religion, or to any fractions of the population, the right to withdrawal from the community to which they belong, because it is their wish or grand pleasure, would be to destroy order and stability within states and to inaugurate anarchy in international life."

This is why the British government supported, in the face of an outcry at home, the right of Nigeria to put down the revolt of the dissident state of Biafra in the 1960s. It is why the Big Five of the Security Council are united in accepting the territorial integrity of Iraq. And historians like to rub our faces in the fact that Hitler claimed with his invasion of Sudetenland that he was merely applying Wilsonian principles of self-determination for German minorities outside the Reich.

If the West had not pushed so hard for the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo, flying in the face of this long accepted wisdom, (with Moscow pushing the other way), Russia would not have found it so easy to justify its invasion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In this instance the course of international law goes against Russia. Georgia should complete its withdrawal and then challenge Moscow to refer their dispute to the World Court.

(Jonathan Power is a London-based commentator on foreign affairs)