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Ten-in-one Endangered gender |
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Marching
orders
Pakistan’s
N-stockpile
Changing
times
Drugs for guns Perils of a “look
away society” Inside Pakistan
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Ten-in-one THE champion of technological success on a “shoe-string budget” has done it again. By successfully launching 10 satellites in one go on a PSLV rocket, ISRO has further reinforced PSLV’s record as a reliable, low-cost launcher in the international launch market. PSLV C-9 took off on Monday carrying two Indian satellites, the second edition of CARTOSAT, similar in capability to the first, and the first of a series of Indian mini satellites, called the Indian Mini Satellite (IMS)-1. The other eight satellites were very small systems, belonging to several foreign universities. With the capability for such simultaneous launches, ISRO has been able to offer customers like universities a reliable, cost-effective way to get their projects into space. PSLV has already launched 16 satellites for international customers and PSLV C-8, the earlier flight, was entirely commercial, with no Indian payload. While CARTOSAT-2A weighed about 690 kg, IMS-1 weighed about 83 kg. The total weight of the nanosatellites was about 50 kilograms, and six of them were clustered together as NLS-4, developed by the University of Toronto, Canada. They were individually built in Japan, Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. NLS-5, the seventh satellite, was also built by the University of Toronto while Rubin-8, the last was built by Cosmos International, Germany. These satellites will explore various satellite technologies, including nano-technologies. CARTOSAT, with its high-resolution cameras, will aid detailed urban and rural mapping, and there is a large demand for such data from across the world. IMS-1 also has remote sensing cameras, with new, miniaturised sub-systems. With such a multi-system payload, separation and placement of each satellite in the desired orbit was a critical and precise operation. It was carried out accurately, to the delight of scientists and customers alike, and will form a basis of confidence for future multiple launches. PSLV itself is proving its reliability with every launch, and the new, core-alone configuration is also working well. While it is used mostly to launch satellites into polar, sun-synchronous orbits, it was also used to place Kalpana-1 in a geo-synchronous transfer orbit, and will be used later this year for India’s first lunar mission, by launching the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. That will further enhance PSLV’s attractiveness in the launch market.
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Endangered gender PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh has made an emotional plea to save the girl child. The “proud” father of three daughters has urged every citizen to come forward and empower the girl child in all possible ways. As he has rightly pointed out, the empowerment of the girl child should begin at home. It is a matter of national shame that the number of girls born in India has been declining. The number of girls for every 1,000 boys slipped nationally to 927 in 2001, from 962 in 1981. Punjab has one of the worst records of only 798 girls. Haryana is marginally better at 819. Even the national Capital registers only 868 girls for every 1000 boys. The Prime Minister has focused on the mindset issue, which is the fundamental cause of this gender problem. There is no doubt that oppressive patriarchy and bias against girls account for the declining sex ratio, making women more vulnerable. Attitudinal change takes time and until that happens, the one tangible method of combating this ‘inhuman, uncivilised and reprehensible act’ is to enforce the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques Act rigorously. We have the law but there has been few convictions under it. With technology becoming cheaper, ultrasound machines, used by unscrupulous doctors and technicians to tell parents the gender of the unborn child, are spreading wider. The machines themselves are not to blame. When used properly, they help save lives. However, the misuse of this technology must not be allowed and those responsible for misusing it must know that they can face the full might of the law. The birth of a daughter is both a victory against prejudice and the beginning of a life-long struggle against negative mindsets. When girls are born, they face discrimination — in matters of education, food, security and much more. Societies and civilisations are judged by the way they treat their women. We in India must jointly fight to remove the blot of killing our unborn daughters lest we should stand condemned — in our eyes, and those of the world.
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Marching orders THERE are people who never repent, and also never learn. Mr KPS Gill stepped headlong into that category by sitting Nero-like while the hockey empire he headed burnt like Rome around him. The men’s team failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics for the first time in the history of the games and women’s team also missed the Olympics berth. Surprise of surprise, he did not wake up even when his secretary-general K. Jothikumaran was found giving berths in the team after receiving bribe. Anyone else in his place would have resigned on his own after the sting operation owning moral responsibility, but not Mr Gill. Worse, the Punjab “supercop” even tried to defend the indefensible. Union Sports Minister M S Gill advised him to quit but that, too, fell on deaf ears. So did the threat of the International Hockey Federation to deprive India of the right to host the 2010 World Cup if it did not clean up its act. Under the circumstances, the Indian Olympic Association had no option but to disband the Indian Hockey Federation and send Mr Gill and his coterie packing. Mr Gill should have known what was coming and should have resigned gracefully, but that was not to be. He has only diminished his own stature by this resistance. One just hopes that the extreme step of the IOA will help revive the fortunes of hockey in India. A similar suspension took place in 1974 and that certainly brought about a lot of improvement. One heartening sign is that the five-member selection committee that has been constituted comprises only former Olympians. One hopes that the ad hoc panel which will run the affairs of the IHF now will also be equally professional. Now that hockey has reached its nadir, it should be managed by men who are truly in love with the game, not retired bureaucrats who grab all positions only for the sake of prestige and influence.
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The most important thing when you are ill is to never lose heart. — Vladimir Lenin
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Pakistan’s N-stockpile A traumatic
scene opens up. From a silent abettor of Pakistan’s nuclear strivings in the eighties and early nineties, American policy-making has made a sharp u-turn. It has become jittery over the fate of the Pakistani nuclear stockpile and wants to position itself in the role of a policeman watching over Pakistan’s nuclear weapon facility. Why has this happened - what has brought about this sharp juxtaposition? Most important of all is the question: can the US force itself on Pakistan in this role of a nuclear policeman? We have here the proverbial riddle wrapped in an enigma. In attempting to answer these questions, much of the hyperbole surrounding Pakistan’s nuclear capability has to be pruned. Pakistan, it has to be recognised, is in an early stage of acquiring nuclear capability. It cannot, on the strength of its indigenous capability, construct and sustain advanced nuclear projects such as power reactors. Pakistan’s nuclear establishment is heavily dependent on foreign collaboration to build and operate such projects. How then has Pakistan been able to build and run the complex nuclear project, the Kahuta centrifuge uranium enrichment facility? Thereby hangs a tale - the A. Q. Khan story. Dr Khan, a competent nuclear metallurgist who worked for three years at the British-German-Dutch centrifuge enrichment plant at Almelo in Holland, was able to build a small-scale centrifuge uranium enrichment facility at Kahuta entirely based on clandestine imports, outside the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s meagre infrastructure. Dr Khan was able to copy the Almelo plant’s design that he stole while quitting - displaying considerable ability as an organiser and nuclear metallurgist. Himself not a physicist, Dr Khan used the knowledge of the centrifuge plant’s design and working during his three-year job at Almelo in Holland. Thus, the Kahuta centrifuge plant was not the product of Pakistan’s indigenous nuclear knowhow. The Kahuta story has been kept a secret because it involved clandestine nuclear equipment imports on a massive scale - including basic material such as high quality maraging steel used in a centrifuge plant, which Pakistan is unable to make on its own. Even nuts and bolts of the centrifuge plant cannot use inferior steel. These clandestine imports were from nuclear industries of leading Western countries. Germany, perhaps, topped the list. An entire plant that makes uranium hexaflouride - the basic material for Kahuta - was smuggled out from Frankfurt airport, in parts. Says a BBC report: “Several German companies deceived the authorities and clandestinely exported to Pakistan vital and specialised instruments required for its nuclear programme… Tonnes of sensitive material, which could easily be used to manufacture nuclear bombs, were sent by these companies - which made millions of dollars in the process - to Pakistan through the Frankfurt airport unchecked by the authorities.” Involved were not only billions of dollars but breaking all stringent laws prohibiting nuclear material trade. Dr Qadir Khan, of course, got the fullest backing from the Pakistan government, with the State apparatus at his beck and call. But this was not enough - without a benign attitude on the part of Western powers, particularly the US, a project based on massive high-end nuclear equipment imports could not fructify. What is more: the Kahuta plant’s sustenance, replacing wear and tear and obtaining recurring inputs, including maraging steel, even centrifuges needing replacement, required continued clandestine imports. This could be possible only if the US turned a blind eye on these clandestine operations; in fact, it gave its tacit acceptance. Precision and quality needed in running a high-technology plant such as that at Kahuta cannot be maintained without imports from Western countries. Help from China will not do. This is possible only if the US continues permissibility. Take this away, and the Kahuta plant can come to a grinding halt. Such is the backdrop against which the latest American demand for overseeing Kahuta and allied nuclear operations - including existing weapon stocks - has to be viewed. The new Pakistan government is in a fix. Even before the Musharraf chapter winds up, a decision on the new set of American demands, with nuclear issue in the forefront, has to be taken. Acceptance of the American demands means open intrusion into Pakistan’s sovereignty. President Musharraf had been warding off American pressures by assuring strict vigil over Pakistani nuclear facility and the fissile uranium it produced. Also accounting the weapon stock in hand. Since President Musharraf had the Bush administration’s confidence, he could manage to get away with relatively mild, non-intrusive measures to keep Washington informed about Pakistan’s nuclear assets and operations, without direct US policing. Now, with the new elected political set-up in place, with the prospects of President Musharraf’s exit from the seat of power, Washington has decided not to risk a slippage where doubtful elements — even jihadis -- could penetrate the nuclear core. Negotiations on US demands with the new political dispensation — the PPP, Mr Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League and particularly the Fazlur Rahman group -- may not be focused. A meeting ground will not be easy to discover. On the other hand, outright refusal to countenance US demands by the new political dispensation can lead to a total breakdown of the Pakistani government apparatus. A halfway house will have to be sought. Perhaps the American posture may enable the retention of President Musharraf as a buffer. However, it remains to be seen if Mr Nawaz Sharif and the very large anti-Musharrraf lobby that has come into being in Pakistan will reconcile itself to such a compromise. What is more, the new American demands on stationing its armed personnel on parts of Pakistan’s territory will hurt national pride among large segments of the populace and the intelligentsia in Pakistan. A grim scenario for Pakistan appears to be unfolding. Perhaps this is a second chance for President Musharraf to re-enter to stave off a national catastrophe. If that be so, it will be an uneasy reprieve. Even if the new political dispensation accepts such a halfway house solution, it is doubtful if it will be able to deliver. For, the new political dispensation in Pakistan itself lacks calibre, is fragile and as yet not fully
welded.
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Changing times See
you”, “Bye”, “Take care”, Or the less frequently heard, “Ciao”, pronounced “Chow”, are the modern equivalents, among young and old, of the former “Good-bye”, “Till we meet again”, or “Happy Days”. I have heard other parting words. Way back in the mid-30s one often said “Ah-be-seen-ya”, a distortion of Abyssinia, to which African country Mussolini had sent his armies, undeterred by the Great Powers of the time, to unseat the Emperorar Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah and direct descendant of King Soloman. Or one heard young people saying “See you later, alligator.” To which our present young people’s rejoinder might well be “Childish, yaar. Moronic!” And I, hearing someone say, “Ciao” could pretend to be just that and direct him or her to the nearest chop-suey joint. Slang words, jargon, limericks and graffiti in any age tend to be coloured by important events of the day, at home and abroad. Close on the heels of the Abyssinian affair came the great royal romance in Britain, the love story of the century. I happened to be in England at the time as a student before and after the abdication, when Edward VIII’s dilemma was being hotly discussed in every pub in the land. It was in the “gents” of one of these that I read the following words scribbled on the wall: “Shades of night were falling fast/When through an Alpine village passed/A long, low Buick painted black/With Mrs Simpson at the back.” Came the War and, with it, a spate of jokes designed to boost the morale of a beleaguered people whose houses were being pounded nightly by Goering’s Luftwaffe. “Keep yer ruddy chin up, mate” said the Cockney to his pal on parting from him at the “local.” After Pearl Harbour, came the Americans, distributing largesse in the shape of candy, cokes, cigarettes and US dollars. They also introduced to us that useful vehicle, the jeep, in regard to which the popular saying became, “Look before you jeep, lest you be yanked into maternity.” It was intended to serve as a warning to those young women, mostly in uniform, who showed a preference for American hospitality in their leisure hours. Do I hear a shocked feminine voice saying, “But, how stupid! Didn’t their mothers teach them
anything?”
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Drugs for guns Russian
gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain are buying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns. Smugglers told The Independent how Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug lords at a bazaar near the old Afghan-Soviet border, deep in Tajikistan’s desert. The bazaar exists solely to trade Afghan drugs for Russian guns n and sometimes a bit of sex on the side. The drugs are destined for Britain’s streets. The guns go straight to the Taliban front line. The weapons on sale include machine guns, sniper rifles and anti-aircraft weapons like the ones used in the attempt to assassinate the Afghan President Hamid Karzai last weekend. “We never sell the drugs for money,” boasted one of the smugglers. “We exchange them for ammunition and Kalashnikovs.” The drugs come mostly from Helmand, where most of Britain’s 7,800 troops are based. The opium grown there is turned into heroin at factories inside Afghanistan, sold into Tajikistan and smuggled to Europe. The guns are broken down into parts, smuggled back into Afghanistan and delivered to the Taliban. One kilogram of heroin can buy about 30 AK-47 assault rifles at the bazaar. Nato claims the Taliban get between 40 and 60 per cent of their income from drugs. The smugglers’ claims suggest the real cost could be far higher. The smugglers described a bleak village with no homes, hidden in the desert near the border. Inside open-air courtyards up to 300 shopkeepers sit in small booths. They act as agents of the Russian mafia who supply the guns and spirit the drugs away. The Afghans are agents of corrupt officials in their government, said a mid-level lieutenant Daoud. Around them lurk Tajik prostitutes, selling themselves for a few scraps of surplus heroin. “They will do anything. They just want some heroin and we always have some spare,” said another smuggler. We interviewed three smugglers in the lawless border areas north and east of Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan, as well as a Taliban go-between who was visiting from Helmand. Speaking from his headquarters in Kunduz province, Daoud said Afghan smugglers lug sacks of grade-A heroin across the river Oxus, which marks the Tajik border. They drive pick-ups as far as they can, take motorbikes where the cars can’t go, and finish the journey on foot. “We leave early in the evening and get there around 9am the next day,” he said. “There aren’t even any tracks because we never ride the motorbikes to the same place twice,” he said. The heroin is harvested from opium farms across Afghanistan and taken to factories in the remote Pamir mountains in the Badakhshan region, where it is turned into heroin. It takes about 15kg of opium to make 1kg of heroin, said Daoud. From Badakhshan it is brought west to Kunduz, for the trip to Tajikistan. The weapons follow similar routes, but in the opposite direction, south and east to the fighting. “We are like a company,” said Daoud. “We have some big sponsors who support us in the government.” A kilogram of the best Afghan heroin is worth £ 600 in Afghanistan. It is worth twice as much at the bazaar in Tajikistan. But rather than take cash, they take weapon parts, because they double their value in Afghanistan. An AK-47 assault rifle costs £ 50 at the bazaar. It is worth up to £ 100 in northern Afghanistan, and even more in the south and east where demand for guns is higher, because of the fighting. The Taliban go-between said fighters in Helmand expect to get six AK-47s for 1kg of good quality heroin, a similar number of rocket-propelled grenades or a dozen boxes of
ammunition. British special forces have arrested or killed drugs smugglers linked to the insurgency, alongside a secretive unit of the Afghan army called 333, but the bulk of the International Security Assistance Force is handicapped by its mandate which does not include counter-narcotics operations, unless they can be linked to the insurgency. The smugglers claimed they are “untouchable” because their bosses include cabinet-level officials in the government. British officials suspect senior government insiders are involved in the drugs trade,
but they have struggled to get the support from Mr Karzai, or the evidence, to arrest them. Opium production has soared since 2001. The head of British-led efforts to crack down on the crop, David Belgrove, said: “This proves what we and the rest of the international community have been saying. There’s clear
evidence that the drugs trade fuels the insurgency.” The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, the US general, Dan McNeill, pledged to take his mandate to the limit to target drug traffickers. But so far, the smugglers insist they are not feeling the pinch. Violence last year reached record highs, and the Taliban have launched two attacks in Kabul this year. “The heroin is what lets us fight,” said the Taliban go-between. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Perils of a “look away society” Austrians
have dubbed the pale grey, two-storey family home near the centre of this provincial town the “house of horror”. It is not difficult to understand why. In its cramped cellar, 73-year-old Josef Fritzl held his own daughter prisoner, beat her and raped her, fathering seven children with her over a period that lasted nearly a quarter of a century. Two of Fritzl’s sons, aged 18 and five, were freed from lifelong imprisonment in his cellar at the weekend. The retired electrical engineer has seven other children with his own wife. Police in Amstetten revealed the details of the case yesterday which they said had come to light after protracted questioning of Fritzl and his daughter Elizabeth, 42, who was first sexually abused by her father at the age of 11. Elisabeth Fritzl’s nightmare began in earnest at the age of 18 in 1984. Police said her father drugged and handcuffed her and then imprisoned in his cellar behind a steel door concealed in a narrow corridor. It was there that Fritzl subjected his daughter to a seemingly endless horror story involving incest, beatings and continuous rape. Police revealed that Elisabeth bore seven children as a result of being raped. Three were sent upstairs where they were “adopted” by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, who professed to knowing nothing about her husband’s incestuous relationship with her daughter. One of the three other children who were kept in the cellar died there less than a year after being born. Police said Fritzl got rid of the evidence by throwing the corpse into a furnace. All of the children were born in the dungeon without medical supervision. Fritzl managed to convince police his daughter had gone missing shortly after he abducted and imprisoned her in 1984. He was said to have coerced his daughter into writing a letter in which she claimed she was unable to cope with her life and had run off to join an obscure religious sect. Neighbours in Amstetten’s Ybbsstrasse, where the Frtizl house is located, reacted with disbelief yesterday. Maria, an elderly woman, said: “I just don’t believe it. They were nice people. I used to watch them taking their three children to school.” Classmates of Fritzl’s three “normal” children who lived upstairs told Austrian Radio: “The Fritzl girls and the boy always kept a bit apart in school. They kept away from the others and seem to lead separate lives.” Until this week, Austria’s most notorious abduction scandal had been the case of the Vienna schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held in a cellar beneath her captor’s garage for eight years before she escaped in August 2006. Media reports asked whether both the Kampusch and now the Fritzl case had exposed Austria as a “look-away society”, whose citizens preferred to ignore the possibility of human suffering rather than investigate it. “I was railing against the neighbours in the Kampusch case,” confided one businessman who lives near the Fritzl house. “Now I am in the same situation.” The Austrian daily newspaper Österreich agreed: “The whole of Amstetten should drown in shame,” the paper wrote in an editorial, “The neighbours have turned a blind eye.” And Der Standard insisted: “The whole community must ask itself what is really fundamentally going on.” By arrangement with
The Independent
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Inside Pakistan Those
endeavouring to save the life of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh, who has been on death row for 18 years, should not lose hope. According to a report carried in The Nation (April 29), his execution has been stayed for another 21 days “after former Prime Minister and PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif reportedly asked the government not to hang Sarabjit on humanitarian grounds. However, Sharif’s appeal comes with a rider. He has said Sarabjit should be released conditionally and in case concrete evidence is found against him, he should be sent back to Pakistan.” Besides this, former Pakistan Human Rights Minister Ansar Burney, who has taken up the cause of Sarabjit, is to meet President Pervez Musharraf soon to plead for the grant of pardon to the Indian national. However, hope lies in a campaign launched for doing away with death penalty. As The News said in an editorial (April 28), “The possibility of converting the death sentence into a life term is said to be under consideration, and indeed a draft is already with the Interior Ministry… But, of course, any decision to do away with the death penalty would have an impact far wider than the case of Sarabjit Singh. “According to Amnesty International, Pakistan, with at least 7,000 prisoners waiting to be hanged, has the second largest death row population in the world… The rising rate of crime in Pakistan indicates the death penalty has not had the deterrent effect that it is intended to serve. It is also true that those most often hanged are the poor….” ‘Minus two’ formula The judges issue is proving to be the most difficult challenge before the new government in Islamabad. If it is settled the way the legal fraternity and other supporters of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry want it to be handled, it may lead to upsetting the applecart of the PPP because of the National Reconciliation Order (NRO) factor. The NRO, designed to help Mr Zardari and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, to get rid of the corruption cases they had been facing, was part of a deal reached between the PPP leadership and President Pervez Mussharraf in 2007. If the deposed judges are reinstated in accordance with the “minus one” formula – making Justice Chaudhry ineffective or paving the way for his immediate retirement – Mr Zardari will be accused of having succumbed to pressures from the Musharraf camp. However, there is no other course that suits Mr Zardari. With a view to giving a new twist to the whole issue, the Zardari camp is reportedly working on a “minus two” formula – not only having a toothless Chief Justice but also a President reduced to a ceremonial constitutional authority. As The News says, this will also “fit in with the PPP’s promise to ensure parliamentary democracy”. That is why there is talk of a package being worked out at the behest of the PPP. According to The Nation, “Measures like cutting his (Chief Justice Chaudhry’s) tenure, which would hardly give the Chief Justice a year in office, are being cooked up. There is also a suggestion to clip his power to form the benches of the Supreme Court for the hearing of cases.” Plan for peace “There are early signs of peace descending on the restive north-west border region. Not only have clashes between the militants and the security forces almost ceased but travel to the troubled areas has also become possible and there are reports of war-displaced residents returning to their homes.” This is, in the opinion of Business Recorder, the result of a change in the NWFP policy of the new government. The Pakistan government is in the process of adopting a multi-pronged approach to establish peace in the restive region. This is contrary to the policy of the Musharraf regime, which mainly relied on the use of force. Khalid Aziz, head of the Regional Institute of Policy Research, Peshawar, says in an article in The News (April 28), “The government of NWFP proposes to place before the next session of the provincial assembly a comprehensive peace plan….The plan favours a multi-dimensional approach, instead of focusing only on a military solution. However, the success of this plan will depend on the implementation of a similar intervention in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas).” The peace plan aims at tackling militancy by addressing development-related and other grievances of the tribal people.
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