The New Nation - Internet Edition

The maritime boundary issue

OFFICIALS of Bangladesh and India have concluded a three-day bilateral conference in Dhaka. They discussed the issue of demarcation of the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, where the Talpatty island formed in recent years. The island is located beside the Hariabhanga river, which has changed its course over the years. The data on the flow of the river, the formation of the island, South Talpatty, the population living on the char plus its linkage with border of Bangladesh have been presented in the conference.

The authorities in India have reportedly adopted dilatory tactics for resolution of the problem. The issue was taken up at a bilateral conference in 1982, followed by the Dhaka conference that ended on September 17 last. The Indian officials attending the conference avoided giving their views on the progress of negotiations. No one knows when Indian authorities will join a bilateral conference on the Talpatty issue again.

The concerned official of the government of Bangladesh, of course, asserted that negotiations and conferences on the Talpatty zone would continue for settlement of the issue. The pattern looks like the dilatory tactics followed in respect of water sharing of the Ganges and other common rivers. The Joint Rivers Commission has not succeeded in reaching agreements to ensure equitable flow of water to the down-stream zones from common rivers. Even the demarcation of land boundary in some areas remains unresolved. That being, so, the sufferings of people living in the Talpatty island may continue. Settlement of the maritime boundary issue thus looks difficult. The government should take all measures to overcome this because maritime boundary should be drawn at the shortest possible time.

For sufficient food stock

ACCORDING to reports, this year's rice procurement drive is unlikely to achieve success. The government set a target of procuring 12 lakh tonnes of rice and three lakh tonnes of paddy from the domestic market. Four and a half months for the procurement was supposed to end by August. Later, on assessing the progress of the drive, the schedule was extended by another month. But so far only about 8,68,000 tonnes of grains have been procured. According to a senior official of the Directorate of Food, the present rate of procurement is seven thousand tonnes per day. If this rate continues, ten lakh tonnes of rice can be procured within the set timeframe. Ten percent of the mill owners do not supply rice to government even after the rate has been revised to Tk 29.25 per kilogram of rice. Rice mills owners association sources said they incurred loss of Tk 1.25 per kilogram by supplying rice to the government. However, one official, claimed that out of a storing capacity of 12.75 lakh tonnes the government now has 11.52 lakh tonnes in godowns.

But this quantity may not be adequate for food security as the recent flood caused damages to standing crops and delayed the Aman cultivation. According to a preliminary assessment, paddy, jute and vegetables on over 1,62,000 hectares in 23 districts have been damaged. More than two thousand hectares of transplanted Aman seedbeds were submerged for nearly ten days. Damage of seedlings would further delay replanting of Aman crops in many areas. The authorities should build a buffer stock of foodgrains through import. At the same time, measures should be taken right now to get the maximum yields from the next Aman and Ravi crops. Proper disbursement of inputs and agricultural loans should be ensured for this.

Revival of the same old politics!

M. Mizanur Rahman

Poet Goethe of Germany wrote in 'Foust', 'the Judge who cannot punish crime joins with the culprit in his court' from his outstanding perception of judicial knowledge and experience while he was working in the judicial department. This, might have been classic now. But in our practical life we cannot ignore this axiomatic saying. The mighty hands of devil or Saitan lay on all the greedy fellows who cannot check the temptation of earthly lust for wealth and power by which they wield all types of machination to preserve ill-gotten riches for personal appeasement. To them 'patriotism' or 'rendering service to the people' is simply the lip service. It's. money that matters a lot.

Since 1/11, the Anti Corruption Commission netted a lot of high profile criminals (in accordance with its own estimation) and followed judicial procliedings in which the people of Bangladesh aspired after a new hopes and aspirations to survive from the evil hands of the corruptible elements of the state. They thought the new beginning would usher in a new era in a life of a nation that was about to be plunged into the quicksand of the vilest corruption. Purging some corruptible elements the present caretaker government became popular overnight.

Erstwhile it is apparent from outward show ups of the ministers and members of the parliament of this one of the poorest countries of the world whereas they used to live the most aristocratic and rich ones beyond their personal source of income. They use very costly foreign cars and their other lavish expenses at the cost of poor people's exchequer do never show that they represent the poor. None of them look to be doing anything good to the people though they talk tall of the people's cause breathlessly in their showy and catchy oratory. They pledged sky-high plans and programmes and made them public but the results are hardly up to the marks. Most of their false promises frustrated the people. Their imprudent spending of the people's money does not come under the purview of audit and accountability. Anyway the caretaker government was highly appreciated by the people in general for taking appropriate action against them primarily.

However, time does not go always in line of ones' content. On the pretext of international price hike of essential commodities including the price of rice the greedy tradesmen of Bangladesh took the very opportunity to make the price of all commodities soaring to the highest market rates in which there had been no government control that gave a grievous shock to the nation all on a sudden and as such people became dumb founded and frustrated though at that time all types of sufficient essential commodities remained at stock of the traders in Bangladesh. Businessmen of all such essential commodities including foodstuff made fortune out of. the sufferings of the common people here. Even the neighboring countries at time were selling these commodities at the lowest price than that of our country. Had they not been affected so much so internationally? But they did not take their people to task. Probably the businessmen there must have the code of conduct and general ethics for their people. As they have also to live with their people.

However, the very impact of sudden price hike of essential commodities in Bangladesh fell adversely upon the government in power.

We the common people have always been the victims of circumstances. Here indecency is the decency's conspiracy of silence.

Now we all know that the general election is ensuing and time is running out while the present caretaker government has to step down after this election. There is a general apprehension of fear that those people charged sheeted for alleged corruption by the anti-corruption commission, now on bail, are supposed to appear in the coming election and if they grab the state power once again by any means then what would be the fate of the people in the long run? This question is being talked off everywhere and what would be the fate of the ACC after the revival of old go of politics? Should the common people suffer and be exploited as usual? These questions appear to be on the point of no return. If we become morally weak as a nation our freedom would ultimately be at stake. We should be aware of it at right earnest in right time.

The neocon realists of the Kremlin

Matein Khalid

The self-righteous swagger and reliance on brute force that so suffuses Putin's Russia has more than a passing resemblance to Dick Cheney's neocon hubris after the invasion of Iraq. The Kremlin, having humiliated Mikhail Saakas-hvili and smashed Georgia's armies has no time for the nuances of diplomacy or international law, just like Cheney and his neocon princes of darkness had only contempt for the United Nations as they rolled history's dice in Baghdad in the fateful spring of 2003.

It's a sad commentary on international relations that military prowess has become the ultimate currency of power in Washington and Moscow. But the realist school of international relations should have easily predicted Saakashvili's reckless gamble to rewrite the rules of the game in South Ossetia. Hafizullah Amin tried to accomplish something similar, by negotiating secretly with the Shah of Iran and the CIA station chief in Islamabad to disengage Afghanistan from the Soviet orbit in 1978. His double-dealing triggered the wrath of the Brezhnev Politburo, saw the Red Army invade Afghanistan and a Spetsnaz KGB death squad assassinate Amin in his Kabul fortress palace. As proven by Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, Poland in 1940, the Russian bear has never failed to growl when faced with secession or treachery in its self-detained imperial orbit.

Vladimir Putin is a lineal heir to the Romanov generals and Soviet commissars who built an empire so vast it straddled nine time zones. After all, the same ex-KGB colonel who hails the secessionists of Abkhazia and Ossetia did not hesitate to bomb the Chechens, who tried to secede from the Russian Federation, into the Stone Age, an act of cynical mass slaughter that cemented his power base in the Kremlin.

The masters of Russia have always been the siloviki the hard man of power without illusion, who act within the spectrum of realpolitik. When Stalin was weak, he allied with Hitler to overrun Poland. When the Red Army fought back the Wehrmacht from the suburbs of Moscow and Leningrad to the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Stalin did not hesitate to extend his imperial Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe. Law and morality played no part in his Darwinian world-view. "How many divisions has the Pope?" Stalin enquired after the Vatican condemned the Soviet-Nazi dismemberment of Poland. This was a sentiment that would echo decades later in the geopolitical calculus of Putin, Medvedev, Cheney and Bush.

It was reckless for the United States to arm so autocratic and impulsive a vassal as Sakashvili's Georgia, to promise Tblisi membership of Nato even as Moscow consistently hissed its outrage. Would the United States have allowed Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact during the height of the Cold War? It is a pity that US-Russian relations, so crucial to the preservation of international peace, have now fallen hostage to the rhetorical excesses of the US Presidential election. So McCain compares the Kremlin to Al Qaeda at the Republican convention, champions Georgian membership of Nato, resurrects the chilling language of Reagan's 'evil empire' in the 1980's. If President McCain supplies arms to Georgia, a rupture in Washington - Kremlin relations is inevitable. Thankfully, Barack Obama did not countenance the 'me too' hawkish rhetoric against the Kremlin at Denver. Obama probably grasped that fake bravado would expose the fault lines in the Democratic Party and the EU on the use of American military power abroad, let alone in the historic underbelly of the Russian empire. However, it is no coincidence that the Democrats have also felt compelled to buttress their national security credentials with tough guy interventions of their own - Kennedy's Bay of Pigs in Cuba, Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin, Carter's doomed Delta Force rescue in the Iranian desert, Clinton's bombings of Kosovo and cruise missiles attacks against Afghanistan, Sudan and Baathist Iraq.

Obama's temptation to be more royalist than the king in the debates, to out-hawk McCain, is eminently rational since the Republican nominee is a war hero who spent six years as a POW in a North Vietnamese jail, a former combat pilot who can appeals to the machismo of the frightened and insecure white working class. McCain has impeccable credentials to be commander in chief while America is at war while Obama has not. But if Obama succumbs to chauvinist Republican machismo, the fallout will poison US-Russia relations.

It is imperative that both McCain and Obama remember that President Sakashvili triggered the crisis when he ordered Georgian armies to invade the villages of the South Ossetian enclave. The Russian obligingly led him into a fatal trap and virtually wiped out his US supplied tanks, artillery, radar, missile batteries and armoured vehicles. After all, Medvedev's recognition of South Ossetia and Cheney's trip to Tiblisi only demonstrates that both Moscow and Washington have now decided to escalate their schiom. Inflammatory language, so instinctive to both Putin and Cheney, can be a lethal culdesac in international power politics. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, the Bush White House should speak softly since it does not possess a big stick to deter Russia.

It is ironic that the Israelis, not the Americans, have grasped the new realities of international relations created by Saakashvili's Ossetian gamble. While Mossad had earned millions of dollars selling aerial drones, radar jamming equipment and anti-tank missiles to the Georgians, Israel fears the wrath of Russia in the Middle East. Israel has publicly reassured the Kremlin that Mossad will no longer supply high tech arms to Tblisi.

The Israelis acted in the spirit of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who refused to declare war against Nazi Germany when Hitler's armies entered Prague that went on to become Czechoslovakia, 'a small country of which we know nothing'. But Sarajevo was also a small place of which we knew nothing, in August 1914 no less than in August 1991.

Let’s not inflict our ignorance on Islam

Samar Fatany

Nobody likes to argue or discuss serious subjects like local traditions and religious injunctions with the people one happens to meet in the departure lounge of an airport. But there are occasions when you feel drawn to an argument or debate against your best judgment, as I learned at the lounge of the Riyadh airport last week.

Most of the passengers at the airport were people going to Makkah to perform Umrah. Whether locals or those coming from abroad, men in ihraam and women in pure white garbs have always fascinated me. They are a reminder that although there may be a lot of evil people in the world, there are many more who are good. They come from far-away lands and endure all kinds of hardships to reach out to Allah and ask for His blessings and forgiveness and pray for the good of mankind. They also remind us (Saudis) of how blessed we are to be part of this holy land and be able to perform Umrah whenever we wish - especially when you are someone like me who lives in Jeddah.

Yes, we the people who inhabit this land are privileged. Should not this make us all the more responsible to honour the holy places and save Islam from those who distort it or misinterpret its teachings? My thoughts were running along these lines when three women wearing the niqab (full veil that left only the eyes uncovered) walked into the ladies lounge.

There were a few pamphlets on the table about Haj and Umrah and one of the women reached for one pamphlet and started reading it aloud. Apparently, they were going to Makkah for Umrah and wanted to know as much about the rituals of Umrah as possible. I could not help but listen to their conversation, with great interest at first and with a little bewilderment later. I guessed that the woman who was reading was the mother of the other two. She was eager to inform her daughters about the important rulings for women performing the Haj and Umrah. She stressed that one of the essential guidelines mentioned in the pamphlet was the need for women to cover their faces completely during Umrah and not to wear the niqab that shows their eyes through slits.

When I heard that, I could not keep quiet. I interrupted to say that this was not true and it is a clear distortion of all the religious teachings that I was taught and raised with and I indicated that I was born in Makkah and my uncle was one of Saudi Arabia's prominent judges and a scholar who taught in the Holy Mosque. As a little girl I used to accompany him on Umrahs. I know for a fact that women are forbidden to cover their faces during Haj and Umrah.

However, the mother pointed out that the author of one of the pamphlets too was a prominent religious scholar in Saudi Arabia. I urged them not to believe those who follow their own rulings and disregard the four Muslim schools of thought. The mother had no comment; however the girls answered me in a very friendly manner and said that people in the Makkah region have different beliefs and a lifestyle that does not compel them to cover their faces.

I argued that I respect their culture and their way of life; however, when it comes to religious teachings we should abide by Islamic rulings and not allow customs and traditions to disregard what is in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. I continued to argue my point with one of the women who was soft-spoken and a charming conversationalist. However, I was taken aback when she told me that she was a graduate of microbiology from the US. I could not believe that a woman with her educational background and her exposure to more advanced societies could cling to such rigid notions.

Although she was highly educated, she was blindly following the instructions of the hard-line religious scholars of her region that women should be completely veiled and that they should remain faceless even during Umrah and Haj when in fact, according to the Sunnah, a woman should sacrifice a lamb in atonement for the violation of covering her face. At this point, the elderly lady read another guideline that she thought was equally important for us to know. She said women should not wear white clothes during Haj and Umrah because that would be emulating the ihraam clothes that men wear during pilgrimage. This was another baseless fact. All of us, I said, including women from all over the world wear white clothes when they perform Haj or Umrah. It is a symbol of purity, nothing more. There is nothing wrong or indecent in sharing the white colour with men. Why should it be forbidden or frowned upon? Before I could hear their answer we had to leave the room, as it was time to board the plane.

I felt really sad and frustrated with these women who, no matter how educated, are still being brainwashed by hard-liners who want them to remain faceless and shrouded in black. I had dreams of a new generation of educated Saudi women who would lead the Muslim women and debate issues that promote peace and global prosperity, rather than indulge in superficial rulings that serve no purpose. We need moderate Muslim scholars to encourage Saudi women to contribute positively to the Saudi culture and to the image of the global Muslim society. This negative image of women who do not care to assert their identity has harmed Islam the world over.

Our scholars must give their blessings to allow Saudi professional women to be part of the international community and appear in proper hijab and be distinguished in adopting fashions that include contemporary, yet conservative, styles representing modest Muslim women. It is unfortunate that there are many in our society who criticise women who wear abayas that are more elegant. The official code of dress continues to be something that should be unattractive to look at. How sad! In my book and according to the majority of Muslim women in the world, this is totally un-Islamic. There are so many interpretations of what is appropriate for Muslim women to wear; however being faceless and shrouded in black should not be an option.

We need to correct the image of Saudi women who have unfortunately become the symbol of all Muslim women in the global community. We must put a stop to the wrong preaching and the brainwashing that goes on isolating Muslim women from the rest of the world. Our scholars must decide on a more appropriate dress code for the Saudi woman enabling her to lead and command the respect of all Muslims and help her assert her identity as an equal partner in the international community. The government must stop the distribution of these pamphlets that convey a distorted interpretation of Islam. The moderate and more enlightened scholars need to speak out against the preaching of scholars who issue baseless fatwas that are adopted by the masses in this country.

Many Muslims today hold it against us Saudis for spreading a rigid interpretation of Islam and influencing innocent and ignorant Muslims who are under the impression that Saudi scholars could never say anything that is wrong. It is time we addressed these issues before more harm is inflicted on Muslims and Islam.