Peshawar Bomb Blast

Volunteers rush an injured child to a hospital after an explosion in Peshawar

At least 101 people, mostly women and children, were killed and over 150 injured when a huge car bomb ripped through a crowded market here on Wednesday.

The blast triggered a huge fire which engulfed a number of buildings near the Meena Bazaar. A plume of dust and smoke billowed from narrow lanes of the market situated in the old part of the city.

The blast took place in two narrow lanes between Meena Bazaar and Kochi Bazaar frequented by women. A cotton warehouse in the market caught fire which spread to several buildings on the Cheri Koban road. A number of shops along the narrow road, vehicles and carts were gutted.

Most of the bodies were charred beyond recognition and till late night only 25 of them had been identified. About 70 of the dead are women and children. Scores of the injured are in a critical condition.

Fire-engines, ambulances and other rescue vehicles faced difficulty in reaching the scene because of congestion and narrow lanes. People were seen taking the bodies and the injured to hospitals in cars, rickshaws and even on motorcycles.

Many children and women trapped in the debris of several buildings were crying for help, but rescue workers could not reach them because of huge flames. A group of men trapped under the roof of a nearby mosque were rescued.

Rescue work was in progress till late night and workers were finding it difficult to remove the debris. It was feared that some people were still trapped in the rubble because rescue personnel had heard them wailing and crying.

All shops in the area were closed after the blast and people started searching for their relatives.
A crowd of people inside the trauma room and emergency hall of the Lady Reading Hospital made it difficult for medical staff to perform their duty.

Distressed people, including women, were seen searching for relatives in the hospital, but recognising them was difficult because most of the bodies were mutilated. Stench of blood and human flesh hung in the air in the hospital.

Ideas can win war

Now that the military has begun its Rah-i-Nijat operation in South Waziristan, the question has begun to be asked whether it will succeed. We will not know the answer for several weeks, perhaps not even then.

The real victory will come only when the people not just in the tribal areas but in all parts of the country decide that they have been misled by a small of group of extremists.

The people must make clear that they don’t see their country and religion being under assault by the West, in particular the United States, and that it is their own people who are attacking them. In addition to the use of military power, what is required is the use of people’s power. The war being fought in the hills of South Waziristan is not simply a military war; it is more a war of ideas.

There has been much reflection in the American press in recent days about the meaning and ends of war. This was prompted by the on-going review of the options Washington has in the war in Afghanistan. There appears to be consensus among the commentators that no matter what the American president decides regarding the course of the conflict, it will, from now on, be ‘Obama’s war.’

One analyst, Gordon M. Goldstein, writing for The New York Times, drew a number of lessons for the current president based on the experiences of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in conducting the American war in Vietnam. Kennedy chose the middle course, preferring to concentrate on building the capacity of the state to help the people who had turned to insurgency since they saw no other way to better their rapidly deteriorating economic and social situation. Johnson, on the other hand, was overawed by the military and opted for the military option.

What is the relevance of this debate in the United States for Pakistan’s policymakers as they conduct their operations in South Waziristan? There are several. Of these I would like to focus on the following three. First the civilians must provide credible leadership to this effort by the military. We know from our own history that the military cannot galvanise popular support when it goes into battle to protect the interests of the state.

There was great popular support for troops in the brief war with India in September 1965 but it could not be sustained when the politicians, led by the leadership that had come from the military, were not be able to credibly explain the purpose of the war and its aftermath.

Similarly, while the civil war in East Pakistan was provoked by the military, its aftermath had to be handled by the civilians. In the present context, we should recognise that a good start was made by convening a well-attended meeting of political leaders that authorised the use of force against the entrenched Taliban in South Waziristan.

Second, there has to be only one system of governance in one country. Pakistan allowed the Taliban to run a parallel government in the areas they control. The jihadists in the populous province of Punjab would like to do the same in the areas where they have influence. They will succeed only if the state abdicates its responsibility of providing basic services to the people. This should not happen if the institutions of the state are strong and the government has the resources to provide for the people. The cash-strapped government in Pakistan has to collect more resources to finance its operations and to use the money it spends effectively and efficiently. It is doing neither at this time.

Third, people have also to act. Let me quote at length from a recent article by the journalist Thomas L. Friedman who has written extensively on the developing world, especially on Muslim countries. ‘In places like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Pakistan you have violent religious extremist movements fighting with state security services. … And while the regimes in these countries are committed to crushing their extremists, they rarely take on their extremist ideas by offering progressive alternatives. And when these extremists aim elsewhere … these regimes are indifferent. That is why there is no true war of ideas inside these countries — just a war.’

This is a correct and insightful observation. ‘These states are not promoting an inclusive and tolerant interpretation of Islam that could be the foundation of people power,’ Friedman continues.

Pakistan, unlike the countries on Friedman’s list has had a ‘people power’ movement when the lawyers demonstrated that by acting with courage and resolution, they could bring about more than regime change. They could also force a strong executive to begin to show respect to the judiciary and its opinions. The same people power needs to be mobilised to rescue religion from the clutches of the extremists.

Those on the margins of Pakistani society have found leadership from the ranks of the people who, although basically illiterate and poorly informed, are able to compensate for their shortcomings by the extremely strong courage of their convictions. The lawyers managed to find leaders from their own ranks. The progressive elements within the Pakistani society must search for those who can lead them in a much-needed people’s movement in the war against extremism.

What is needed at this critical moment in the country’s history is a group of civilian leaders who can galvanise broad support for the difficult journey on which the armed forces have embarked. Also needed is an economic plan for building state institutions to deliver the appropriate services to the people in stress and also improve their access to basic needs. Finally the moderates in Pakistani society need to let it be known that they are not in agreement with the extremists in the way they interpret Islam, the way they see the functioning of the state and the way they would place Pakistan in the international community.

Scourge of child labour

With poverty on the rise, many families are forced to use the services of their children to survive.

Speaking at a workshop in Lahore, a Unicef expert placed the number of child workers in Pakistan at three million. Other sources have been quoting higher figures. Whatever the accurate statistics, there is no denying the reality that a shocking number of under-age children are working to earn a living for their families. Larger numbers are out of school. This is a pity when the country is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, there has been a law in place since 1991 prescribing stringent conditions for child labour.

The fact is that laws and legal strictures are difficult to implement when the socio-economic and political conditions do not contribute to improving the status of children. With poverty on the rise, many families are forced to use the services of their children to survive. Socially and culturally child labour has not been shunned — the number of young girls working as domestics is phenomenal and this fact finds general acceptance. Successive governments and political leaders have hardly regarded child labour as a major problem since they derive support from those who exploit children: landlords and business entrepreneurs who look out for cheap labour.Hence the problem continues to grow. Stop-gap measures have been adopted to discourage child labour but these haven’t made much impact.

It is important that a national strategy with the twin objectives of putting child workers in school and lending their families monetary support is drawn up. One approach would be to make it obligatory for employers to recognise their corporate social responsibility and provide schooling facilities to the children of their workers with every student being given a stipend. Other incentives can be found to make it worthwhile for families to send their offspring to school and pull them out of the workplace.

Peshawar takes yet another hit; 15 dead

A suicide car bombing devastated the Crimes Investigation Agency (CIA) centre in Swati Gate area, near Peshawar Cantonment, on Friday, leaving 15 people dead.

Three policemen and two girls were among the dead. The blast, which took place at about 12.45pm, destroyed the front of the CIA centre and damaged a two-storey mosque on its premises.

Three of the people killed were identified as Manzoor Hussain and his daughters Aasia and Mashal. One of the daughters was a schoolteacher. Hussain was a retired administrative officer of a government college in the Cantonment area. A grade-II student, identified as Shakeem Khan, was also killed in the blast.

The Bomb Disposal Unit’s in charge, AIG Malik Shafqat Mehmud, told reporters that it was a suicide car bomb blast and police had found a severed leg of the bomber. He said that 60-70kg of explosives, mixed with artillery ammunition, had been used in the blast. Engine and chassis numbers of the car were found from the scene.

Confusion surrounded the nature of the blast after city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan told journalists that there were two suicide bombers — one of them a woman accompanied by a man on a bike. The woman detonated explosives strapped to her body when police fired on the man, he added.

Police found an upper part of a female body and assumed that it was that of the suicide bomber, but later it was identified by relatives as one of the daughters of Manzoor Hussain, the man who died along with two daughters.

‘There was no female suicide bomber. It was a misunderstanding,’ SP (Cant Circle) Nisar Marwat said. An investigation was being carried out, but police suspected that it was a suicide car bombing, he added.

The dead policemen were identifies as Amir Nawaz, Ahmed Khan and Zeeshan. DSP Pervez Khattak suffered injuries.

The in-charge of Lady Reading Hospital’s trauma centre, Dr Sahib Gul, told Dawn that 10 of the victims had been identified. Four of the injured, including a police constable, were in serious condition.

Gulbarg police said that 24 people had been injured. An army post and a residential colony for army personnel are located 100 yards away from the CIA centre, which also has offices of the anti-car lifting cell.

Residents said that thick smoke had covered the entire area and they heard gunfire before the blast. It was the fourth suicide blast in the limits of the provincial capital over the past 20 days.
Twelve people were killed when a bomb went off on Fakhr Alam Road on Sept 26. Fifty-four were killed in the Khyber Bazaar blast on Oct 9.

A boy was killed in a car bomb blast at an officers’ block in Gulshan-i-Rehman Colony on Thursday. More than 80 people were killed and 250 injured in the four blasts.

Agenda behind terrorism

THE series of terrorist acts across NWFP and Punjab should be a wake up call for the state that its policies, such as they are, to fight this lethal menace in Pakistan are deeply flawed. The post-9/11 premature jumping on to the US bandwagon in a misdirected "war on terror" altered qualitatively the nature of the terrorist threat in Pakistan. Following the erroneous US lead, Pakistan's focus on a military-centric approach to fighting terrorism has only succeeded in generating more violent terrorism in the country, with new groups claiming centre stage like the TTP. The US drone attacks have hardly helped; nor has the growing chaos being caused by the US covert and overt intrusions in to Pakistan's internal affairs. Meanwhile, the government has failed to formulate a cohesive anti-terror policy in which the core should be a holistic socio-political-economic strategy supported by the state's coercive power. The immediate goal in any such asymmetric war has to be isolation of the enemy from the people who provide the shelter for the terrorists. Pakistan continues to fall in to the US-laid trap of using the military option alone. The push now is for commencing a full scale military operation in North Waziristan - at a time when the blowback from the Swat operation is being felt across the country.Meanwhile, the recent terrorist attacks reveal a new breed of terrorists who are well-trained and well-armed with highly sophisticated weaponry. Further, as the Interior Minister himself admitted, these terrorists are mercenaries, being paid for their dastardly acts. So there is no religious thread here at all. If one connects the dots, the pattern that is emerging is one where a deliberate trail of destruction is being created across Pakistan, which will create a situation desired in the US design outlined in a US Army Journal article entitled "Blood Borders" published in the wake of 9/11. Is it a mere coincidence that Quetta and Muridke have been targeted in the KLB Act and all religious groups identified by name but for the TTP? Is it also a mere coincidence that the new spate of terrorism has begun at a time when there is attention focused on the covert US operatives spreading across Pakistan; when the US is seeking to target Quetta with drones; when there is growing evidence of an Indian hand in Pakistan's terrorism? Perhaps the most obvious pointer to a larger hidden anti-Pakistan agenda behind the terrorism is the US pressure for military action also in southern Punjab. This is a recipe for civil war. Already the centre of gravity of the "war on terror" has been shifted, first from Afghanistan to FATA and now to the centre of Pakistan, Punjab itself. Unless the Pakistani state sees the larger picture, our detractors' plans will succeed.

Democracy under threat?

Is Project Democracy in trouble? Is the latest kerfuffle in civil-military relations, this time over the Kerry-Lugar bill, just another manifestation of the broken, chaotic decision-making process at the institutional level from which the system will soon move on?

Or is it another marker in deteriorating relations between the presidency and the army high command that are slowly edging towards the point of no return? When — if — the obituary of the Zardari presidency or government is written, it’s safe to say that the Kerry-Lugar fiasco will surely merit more than a footnote.

So which is it? Are we headed for bust and the derailment of the present phase in the transition to democracy, or even the transition itself, or is this what democracy in Pakistan is set to look like for the foreseeable future, a process characterised by brinkmanship without quite slipping too close to the edge of the cliff?

First things first: while the army high command is currently unlikely to bring a halt to the democratic process or unseat the present political dispensation, it would be foolish to think that it cannot or will not under any circumstances. Zardari and co clearly have some space to govern, but that space isn’t unlimited and its boundaries may be closer than imagined by the pro-democracy camp.

What’s particularly troubling about the Kerry-Lugar fiasco is how the army high command essentially came out and fired a warning shot across the government’s bow and then promptly retreated behind a wall of silence, leaving it to the government to clean up the mess with the Americans, the opposition and the public.

Since it’s difficult to imagine that the army was not aware of what was unfolding in the US Congress, the army’s tactics amount to a classic political ambush at home. The main cause for worry is not that the army would attempt a hatchet job at all — that our politics is often bare-knuckled is well known to our politicians — but that it would do so on an issue in which the government has invested so much and has little to no room to wriggle away or save face.

The bill was already passed by Congress by the time the army chose to pipe up and the government had already tried to drum up the aid package as its greatest foreign-policy success to date. Political opposition to the bill was always expected, but that’s the nature of our politics — automatically reject in opposition what you would likely do in government.

The army intervention, though, amounted to a kneecapping for the government; and without a doubt it will lead the most hawkish and paranoid in the government to wonder if a decapitation is next. The more reckless may even push for a strike-before-the-army-strikes counter-strategy.

Which brings me to the second point: Zardari must chart a new course from here. And that course must eschew confrontation with the army while at the same time reaching out to the political opposition more urgently.

When a grenade of the kind lobbed by the army lands in the court of someone as constitutionally powerful as Zardari, there is a mighty temptation to return the favour. Turning the other cheek does not come easily to anyone with the hubris to imagine they can run a country like Pakistan. Nor is turning the other cheek really advisable when your tormentor may in fact want to slap you into submission or worse.

But Zardari is not just another president in the country’s tawdry political history; he is the custodian of the transition to democracy and on his shoulders therefore rests a very heavy burden.

Like him or hate him — and it is apparent that there are many, many in the latter camp — focusing on Zardari the politician, president or person misses the larger point, that he is uniquely placed to give the country what it so desperately needs: democratic continuity.

Zardari’s democracy will necessarily be ugly, scandal-plagued, tawdry even. Part of the blame for that must lie with him, but there is also the fact that he is a creature of his environment, and the politicians in the Class of 2008 aren’t the most savoury of characters.

Yet, whatever the sins of this government, present and future, nothing will come close to the damage caused to the prospects for democracy if Zardari fails to ensure democratic continuity in the short term and a democratic transfer of power in the medium term.

The country will never, ever come close to addressing its fundamental problems if it does not settle on one framework of governance, one set of rules for how the state is to be organised and run.

To believe the army has the solutions is to believe in a fairytale. And to believe the army at least has the ability to ensure the security of the state and its people and therefore must influence the state’s policies or at least set its parameters is to ignore the fact that some of the greatest threats to national security in our history have been created and exacerbated by the army itself.

So what Zardari must do is stop the fresh incursions into political terrain by the army. Whether it is the army’s intention or not, the fact is that a year and change into the transition to democracy, army intervention in controversies such as the Kerry-Lugar bill and the restoration of the deposed judges is chipping away at the fragile wall that is keeping the army out at the moment. That wall needs to be strengthened, but in a shrewd way. Directly confronting the army while Zardari’s flanks are exposed by his personal unpopularity risks bringing the wall down altogether.

So what can Zardari do? Win back the PML-N. A unified political front would work to Zardari and his government’s advantage in two ways. One, it would reduce the intra-political pressure his government is under. Two, a stronger political front would mean the army would need to be more careful about its political forays.

Ah, but how can he trust the PML-N? Isn’t it not-so-secretly hoping for mid-term elections? Wasn’t Shahbaz Sharif caught powwowing with Kayani recently? All true, and Zardari probably can’t trust the Sharifs.

But Zardari also needs to quietly assess who poses the bigger threat to his party and its future. Between the PML-N and the army, the PML-N is from a structural point of view weaker while the army is only temporarily weakened by its tarnished political credentials. And in the democracy stakes, the PML-N cannot shut out the PPP, only the army can.

Again, it’s not clear if the army is interested in forcing change at the moment. But it is clear that the fragile wall against possible army intervention is being eroded. And in a place like Pakistan, a civilian leader ignores such a development at his peril.

Pakistan successfully tests Tsunami warning system

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), under a UN-backed initiative, successfully tested the effectiveness of theIndian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWS) at the southern coastal line of Thatta in Sindh.

The testing was followed by a rescue drill for evacuating coastal area residents from the most vulnerable to safer places, establishment of relief camps and damage assessment practices.

The exercise to test the warning systems and overall preparedness of nations in the region, was supposed to simulate the magnitude 9.15 quake that struck off Aceh on Dec. 26, 2004, setting off a devastating tsunami.

Hundreds of people living in coastal areas including main city of Ketibandar participated in the rescue drill while it was followed by a capacity building and awareness activity for local disaster management authorities, volunteers and media persons.

Briefing the media here on Friday, NDMA Director Preparedness and Mitigation Amir Muhiuddin said the exercise, conducted in collaboration with UNESCO, helped increase preparedness and improve coordination throughout the coastal region. He added that it provided an opportunity for the Indian Ocean countries to test their operational lines of communications, review their tsunami warning and emergency response standard operating procedures, and promote emergency preparedness.

He said the simulated tsunami will be extended in real time across the entire Indian Ocean, taking approximately 12 hours to travel from Indonesia to the coast of South Africa.

He said the exercise also provided an opportunity to test national standard operating procedures and the operational lines of communication between the NTWCs and JMA and PTWC.

Several member states have indicated that they intend to conduct the exercise through community level, including limited evacuation of selected coastal communities.

TB ravages HIV/Aids patients: WHO

The World Health Organisation warned that progress in tackling tuberculosis was far too slow, as it doubled its estimate of the ravages the disease is causing among HIV/Aids patients.

Some 9.27 million people contracted TB in 2007, an increase of about 30,000 over the previous year mainly in line with population growth, according to the WHO’s annual report on tuberculosis control.

They included some 1.4 million people with HIV/Aids, compared to an estimated 600,000 in 2006 reported last year.

More than one death in four — 456,000 of the 1.75 million tuberculosis deaths recorded in 2007 — is now thought to involve an HIV/Aids patient.

‘These findings point to an urgent need to find, prevent and treat tuberculosis in people living with HIV and to test for HIV in all patients with TB in order to provide prevention, treatment and care,’ said WHO Director General Margaret Chan in a statement.

However, the report reiterated that there were severe shortcomings in tackling tuberculosis and coordinated care for both diseases largely due to feeble heath care in the developing countries that are the hardest hit.

Just one in seven HIV patients get vital preventive treatment for TB, said WHO HIV/Aids director Kevin De Cock.

Overall, more than one third of tuberculosis cases are not diagnosed, leaving many out of reach of treatment and, crucially, increasing the risk of spreading the contagious disease, according to the UN health agency.

While the overall rate of TB infection fell in three years to 139 cases per 100,000 people, the improvement was too slow, said Mario Raviglione, the agency’s anti-tuberculosis chief.

’We are talking about less than one per cent per year, which will get us to potentially eliminate TB in a very distant future: we are talking centuries if not millenia in a way,’ he told journalists. The growth in the estimated impact on HIV/Aids patients was largely down to better data and understanding.

’The revision is illustrative of the fact that people living with HIV have a risk of developing tuberculosis that’s 20 times greater than HIV negative people,’ said De Cock.

Despite progress in testing TB patients for HIV in Africa, the combination of poor diagnosis, rising drug resistance and the evidence of the impact on highly vulnerable HIV/Aids patients have heightened alarm among health experts.

Detection of the highly contagious disease has stagnated after a sharp improvement nine years ago, while the impact drug resistant strains of the TB bacteria has grown to infect an estimated 500,000 people.

Just one per cent of them receive treatment and 150,000 of them die, according to the WHO, which regards resistance as the ‘achilles heel’ of the anti-TB drive.

‘The scale-up of interventions to deal with multidrug TB is not at the pace we would like to see and is far from the targets that have been established,’ Raviglione said.

Furthermore, 10 per cent of them were almost incurable extra-resistant strains (XDR-TB) that are now found in 55 countries.

The WHO is gathering the 27 countries that account for 85 per cent of multidrug resistant cases of tuberculosis — including India, China, Russia, South Africa and Bangladesh - for a meeting in Beijing on April 1.

‘You could be in middle of a drug resistant TB epidemic and not even know about it,’ De Cock pointed out.

Fighting Hunger

THE fight against hunger is being lost. Today, there are over 1 billion hungry people around the globe. The alarming thing is that this number continues to increase. Given this backdrop, the scourge's extreme form that prevails in a number of African countries where food shortage has been a source of bloody riots and has provoked armed conflicts could rear its head in other parts of the world as well. The recent global food crisis that affected a heavy toll all around should be a wake-up call, to say the least. Already there are estimates that the crisis would worsen in the days to come. So there should be no dithering on this count. Though Pakistan, which lies in one of the world's most populous regions, has been hit hard, the leadership at the helm remains indifferent. The skyrocketing price of the food items has pushed millions into hunger and poverty. Admittedly the government has faltered on a number of fronts. For instance, it gave a carte blanche to the wheat and sugar mafia to manipulate prices. Likewise, there is also no mistaking the reality that the hoarders are not reined in. Such a shoddy performance could hardly be expected to guarantee food security. There is also a perception that agricultural potential of the country in terms of food security has not been fully developed. Despite having an irrigation system that is one of the best in the world, we still have to import a number of foodstuffs. Among other things, one cannot help but hold the food ministry and the departments working under it responsible for the dismal picture. They are simply blind to the situation faced by small landowners, which form a big chunk of the farming community. Even basic issues, like high price of the inputs, shortage of seeds and fertilisers during the crop season, remain un-addressed. How in such circumstances could the sector be expected to produce sufficient food? Undoubtedly, the country is in need of a Green Revolution. Food security would remain a dream otherwise.

Hunger pangs of a nation

During Ramazan the prime minister — in all seriousness — indicated his desire for the Pakistani nation to consume less sugar to help tide over the sugar crisis. It made one wonder which section of society he was addressing.

Was it the elite, the very inventors of the culture of extravagant iftars, for whom even during the worst national crisis it is business, rather pleasure, as usual? If the mid-income group was his audience then he should know that inflation has already shrunk their budget as they battle with job retrenchment and chronic price hikes.

Then there were the masses, often standing in long lines at the risk of being beaten and humiliated to buy a few kilos of sugar, so their large families were not deprived of one of the few remaining pleasures of life, a cup of sweetened tea. Many of these people live close to or below the poverty line and can only afford one meagre meal a day. The World Health Organisation has identified hunger as the gravest single threat to public health in the world and research data from Pakistan indicates widespread malnourishment among the rural and urban poor. Children are at maximum risk because when food does not meet the caloric requirements of the growing body it can cause long-term nutrient deficiencies, which at first manifest themselves as low energy and later can lead to multiple health complications if left unattended.

Malnourishment in the adult workforce results in poor health that keeps workers from playing an effective role in the country’s development. Undernourished women pass on the effects of malnutrition to the next generation when they give birth to infants that start a new life with multiple deficiencies.

Roti, kapra aur makan (food, clothing and shelter), promised so often to the people of Pakistan, is not just an election slogan but a right. According to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, every person has a “right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food”, as well as the “fundamental right to be free from hunger”. Just as it is the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens from external threats, the same is true of internal perils like food insecurity.

Governments that prioritise the welfare of their people employ maximum resources to ensure that food is available for purchase. During times of crisis they intervene to ensure food security for their citizens. States commit themselves to long- and short-term policies and allocate funds to increase agricultural yield through scientific research and technological intervention.
The availability of safe and healthy seeds is closely monitored. States also study the fine balance between cash and food crops to make sure that food needs are adequately met. Law-enforcement agencies and legislative mechanisms ensure that profiteers and food cartels do not monopolise the food supply.

In Pakistan, citizens faced with food insecurity have so far heard only empty promises and seen ad hoc arrangements while a comprehensive blueprint to eradicate food vulnerability from the state has yet to be shared with an increasingly anxious population. On the contrary, fears that the government is leasing millions of acres of cultivable land to Gulf-based multinationals for corporate farming has raised many questions for Pakistan’s food sovereignty and ecology.

The head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that the controversial rise in land deals of millions of acres by rich governments and corporations in developing and underdeveloped countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies could create a form of neo-colonialism, with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

The track record of corporate farming is not as good as some government officials would have us believe. Financial clout and lack of local guidelines for land acquisition usually make it possible for big corporations to take over prime land. This leaves the poor farmers with less productive land to meet the food needs of the country and can endanger the long-term food sovereignty of impoverished host nations.

Corporate farming, driven as it is by profit motives, has in the past shown little regard for environmental concerns and in fact caused irreversible environmental damage to leased land and its environs. With huge funds at their disposal, corporations find it easier to monopolise the water supply and other resources, thus depriving neighbouring farms of their rightful share. These are some of the many factors that can cause social and economic disempowerment of poor farmers who form the backbone of Pakistan’s agrarian system.

The food crisis Pakistan is facing can only be reversed with a fundamental shift in the way the state perceives food and its link with the nation. Food needs to be looked upon not as a profitable commodity but the right of the people. A well-fed and healthy nation will be better equipped to participate in the country’s sustainable development.

Today food prices have taken staples beyond the reach of the average wage earner and the people’s desperation to obtain discounted and free food is often seen in endless lines where they brave heat and hardship. The incident in Karachi where several women lost their lives in their attempt to receive food should be a wakeup call for the political leadership of Pakistan that the hunger pangs of the nation cannot be left unheard and unattended.