Secularists And Jinnah’s 11th August Covenant

There is no more a sacred covenant than this speech by the founding father, statesman, law-giver and philosopher in chief , Mr. Jinnah, for this country and it spoke clearly, undeniably, incontrovertibly, clearly not vaguely that religion would be separate from the state and that religion would be the personal faith of an individual. I’d like to add that there are 30 odd other speeches of Jinnah which also speak of an inclusive democratic polity unfettered by priests with a divine mission but 11th August is the most important speech because it is spoken to the constituent assembly which was about to start framing the constitution of Pakistan. This is a solemn promise and should have the status of a sanctified compact between the state of Pakistan and all its people. It is this compact that the honorable justices of our Supreme Court should have considered when they chose to spray the judgment against NRO with Islamic injunctions

By Ishtiaq Ahmed

No ideological tendency in Pakistan identifies itself with the August 11 speech of Jinnah with greater enthusiasm than the secularists. Among them are included the marginalised leftists, oppressed minorities, retired senior bureaucrats and radical intellectuals. Both Marxist and liberal versions of secularism inform their thinking. The secularists are divided on many things, but agree that the secular nature of the Quaid’s message is unequivocal and incontrovertible. Their lament is that his unworthy successors broke a sacred covenant of equal rights bequeathed by the Founder of Pakistan.

It is interesting to note that the Communist Party of India supported the demand for a separate Pakistan and passed a resolution in 1944, associated with a leading theorist of the Party, Dr Adhikari, in which the demand for Pakistan was described as a popular movement of the Muslim masses for national self-determination. Consequently Communists of Muslim background were advised to join the Muslim League. The Muslim League which had hitherto been emphasising the religious differences between Hindus and Muslims to justify the two-nation theory added from 1945 onwards radical slogans and arguments which portrayed the struggle for Pakistan as a class struggle of impoverished Muslims against Hindu and Sikh moneylenders and capitalists.

Some leading landlords who sympathised with Communist ideas such as Mian Iftikharuddin and Mumtaz Daultana became top leaders of the Muslim League in the Punjab. Daultana later changed course in 1953 when as chief minister of Punjab he promoted the anti-Ahmadiyya movement to bring down the weak central government under Khwaja Nazimuddin in the hope of himself becoming the prime minister. In any case, it is generally acknowledged that communist rhetoric played a noteworthy role in popularising the idea of Pakistan..

Most Muslims of undivided northern India were either peasants or artisans. There was also a powerful Muslim landlord class everywhere and a small stratum of professionals or gentry, but industry, commerce and banking were almost entirely in the hands of Hindus, Sikhs and the tiny community of Parsees. The reason why Muslims have been slow or resistant to capitalism has still not been properly investigated and theorised, but in the context of colonial India class and religious cleavages coincided rather well to portray the creation of a separate Muslim state as a panacea to all the ills afflicting the Muslim community.

However, once Pakistan was established, hostility towards communism became a centrepiece of state policy. Conservative ulema particularly attacked communism as a Godless creed. Thus, for example, in 1948 when dockyard workers in Karachi went on strike Shaikh ul Islam Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani gave a fatwa that in Islam there was no right to strike and those who incited Muslims to go on strike were wrongdoers. However, the real blow was dealt with the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case of 1951 in which a number of officers of the Armed Forces and leaders of the Communist Party of Pakistan were accused of plotting to overthrow the government. They were tried in a special court and some of them sentenced to prison terms. In 1954, the Communist Party was banned. That virtually crippled the Marxist left.

Radical nationalists of Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP often invoked the August 11 speech. Their complaint was that the centre betrayed the original idea of a secular, federal Pakistan.. Mian Iftikharuddin’s Lahore-based English-language newspaper, The Pakistan Times, became a powerful voice of secular and rationalist ideas in Pakistan until the 1958 military coup of General Ayub Khan muzzled it and ultimately confiscated it. Among senior bureaucrats, Masud Khaddarposh was an eminent supporter of Islamic socialism and of a secular state. He wrote the famous dissenting note against the Sindh Hari Commission’s report, taking up cudgels on behalf of the Sindhi tenant cultivator as against the overall pro-landlord tone of the report.

But the most powerful secularist challenge in intellectual terms came during the period of General Zia ul Haq (1977-88). It was launched by no other person than the former chief justice of Pakistan, Muhammad Munir. In his book, From Jinnah to Zia, (1978), Munir referred to the August 11 speech and asserted that reasons for the creation of Pakistan were social and economic. Jinnah wanted to create a secular state. Munir described the ascendance of the theocratic vision of the state as a ‘quirk of history’, alleging that the ulema who had opposed the creation of Pakistan had subsequently become its ideological custodians and thus subverted the original vision on which Jinnah wanted to base Pakistan.

The author argued in support of secularism by quoting a famous saying or hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), “When I enjoin something respecting religion receive it but when I counsel anything about the affairs of the world, I am nothing more than a man” (Mishkat Book 1, Chapter VI, 145-6). Munir remarked that this saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) clearly showed that he did not have authority over matters relating to worldly affairs and that in fact his statement introduced secularism in Islam.

In general, Munir adopted the technique of contrast to argue that a modern democracy and an Islamic state based on the dogmatic stance of the ulema cannot be reconciled into a coherent ideological formula. He also took issue with modernist Muslims who assert that an Islamic democracy can be a proper democracy. For him if democracy was to be practised it was imperative that religion and state be kept separate. He argued that a democracy functions when the following conditions are fulfilled: universal adult franchise, periodic elections, two or more political parties, an educated electorate and a transparent government. Besides these political prerequisites, society is based on values such as equality, freedom, tolerance, social justice and equality before the law. Munir referred to the writings of the erstwhile fundamentalist thinker of the Indian subcontinent and of Pakistan, Abul A’la Maududi, and of Ayatullah Khomeini of Iran, both of whom affirmed that an Islamic state cannot be a democracy based on popular will.

The resurrection of the August 11, 1947 speech in recent times, therefore, opens the scope for the secularists once again to assume the intellectual initiative in Pakistan. This can be done only by intellectuals committed to a democratic, egalitarian and free Pakistan..

First Published In The Daily Times.

Child Soldiers Global Report

The minimum voluntary recruitment age was 17, but training requirements meant that under-18s did not take part in active service. In a situation of continuing violence and unrest, armed groups, including those carrying out suicide attacks in Afghanistan, continued to recruit and use children.

Context:

There were increasing calls for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law and for the withdrawal of the military from politics, particularly following President Musharraf’s failed attempt to remove the chief justice of the Supreme Court in March 2007. The government remained reliant on political support from the Islamist political parties.2

There was an escalation in violence and unrest in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in the province of Balochistan and in Gilgit-Baltistan, while violence continued in parts of Sindh, Punjab and North West Frontier province (NWFP).3 In some tribal areas – South and North Waziristan in particular – the government reached “peace” agreements with pro-Taleban insurgents which effectively allowed them sanctuary and to set up quasi-governmental structures, collect taxes, impose their “penal code” and exercise quasi-judicial functions.4

Armed groups seeking secession of parts of Jammu and Kashmir from India to Pakistan continued to be active in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (known as Azad Kashmir), although less overtly and in fewer numbers.5

The government took some steps to address religious radicalism, particularly after bomb attacks in the United Kingdom in July 2005 by bombers, some of whom had spent time in Pakistani madrasas (Islamic religious schools). Hundreds of members of religious groups and religious school students were arrested, and the government announced that all foreign students at religious schools would be expelled and that such schools needed to register. However, after protests by religious groups these directions were not fully implemented.6 In July 2007 government forces stormed the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) madrasa complex in Islamabad which had been taken over by militants seeking to impose sharia law in the city.7

Government:

National recruitment legislation and practice

The 1952 Pakistan Army Act allowed compulsory military service to be introduced in times of emergency, but this provision had not been used. Under Article 39 of the 1973 constitution, “The State shall enable people from all parts of Pakistan to participate in the Armed Forces of Pakistan.” The Pakistan National Service Ordinance of 1970 stated that officers and jawans (soldiers) could be recruited between the ages of 17 and 23, and had to have at least a year’s training before taking part in active service.8

Candidates for a regular commission in the Pakistan Army could apply from the age of 17. Officer recruits received two years’ training at the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) in Abbotabad, while ordinary soldiers received around one year’s training. Recruitment information indicated that the authorities would lower the minimum age requirement by between three and six months in “special deserving cases”.9 Statistics on the number of under-18s serving in government armed forces were not available.

Military training and military schools

A number of cadet colleges admitted children from the age of ten, but pupils could choose whether or not to join the armed forces after completing their schooling. The majority of graduates from the Military College, Jhelum, a residential school and college educating around 500 cadets and run by the Pakistan Army, entered the PMA.10 The Military College and cadet schools were reported to attract students because of the high quality of education that they offered.11

Children in the justice system

In December 2004 the Lahore High Court revoked the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000 which established certain protections for children within the criminal justice process, including defining a child as a person below 18 years of age; providing for special juvenile courts; regulating arrest, bail and probation; and prohibiting the death penalty and the use of fetters and handcuffs. The Lahore High Court held that the JJSO unduly privileged juveniles and argued that it was necessary to retain the death penalty for juveniles in order to deter crime. Although the JJSO was temporarily reinstated while an appeal remained pending as of mid-2007, the JJSO remained largely unimplemented. As a result children continued to be treated on a par with adults within the criminal justice system12 and subjected to widespread abuses in detention,13 and continued to be sentenced to death and executed.14

Armed Groups:

The Taleban and other armed groups such as Hizb-e Islami and al-Qaeda were widely believed to be active in the tribal areas of Pakistan, regrouping and rearming, and a few thousand non-Pakistani insurgents were believed to be operating in these areas.15 The government continued to deny allegations that it or its intelligence services (the Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI) were providing direct support to the Taleban. There were, however, credible allegations that in Waziristan and other border areas Pakistani and Afghan Taleban leaders were training suicide bombers for operations in Afghanistan.16 A UN report in September 2007 found that Pakistan remained an important source of human and material assistance for the insurgency in Afghanistan generally and suicide attacks in particular.17 Those trained for suicide attacks included children (see below).

Madrasas served as an alternative to the failing public school system in many areas for those unable to afford private education, and also attracted those seeking religious instruction for their children. Many madrasas failed to provide an adequate education, focusing solely on Islamic studies, and there was no regulation or oversight of the education given in numerous unregistered madrasas. Some madrasas reportedly continued to promote religious radicalism and violence, and were used for military training, although madrasas were not the sole recruiting grounds for insurgents and the majority were not involved in militancy.18

There were reports that in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, following the October 2005 earthquake, some armed groups were involved in establishing schools, and anecdotal evidence that they were recruiting children.19

In July 2007 it was reported that a 14-year-old boy was returned to his family in Pakistan after being recruited from a madrasa in South Waziristan, trained and sent over the border to carry out a suicide attack on a provincial governor in Afghanistan, where he was detained by security forces before he could carry out the attack. The boy reportedly alleged that at least two other boys from his madrasa had been indoctrinated to carry out suicide attacks.20 Another report indicated that in towns on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal belt children aged between 11 and 15 were being recruited from schools by pro-Taleban insurgents and trained in Afghanistan as suicide bombers. Young boys were reported to have been lured by the promise of adventure and sacrifice, but reports also indicated that there was a degree of coercion and that parents and teachers feared retaliation if they prevented children from going.21

One suicide attack by a child took place in Pakistan. In September 2007 it was reported that a suicide bomber aged about 15 or 16 had blown himself up in the town of Dera Ismail Khan in NWFP, killing himself and 17 others, in the context of a wave of attacks by pro-Taleban militants in the area following the July 2007 siege of the Lal Masjid.22

A number of children were caught up in the siege of the Lal Masjid. Many were young girls and boys who were students at the two madrasas associated with the Lal Masjid. Those carrying and using weapons were reported to be students over the age of 18.23

In July 2007 a national child rights organization expressed concern about the recruitment and training of children and their training and preparation for military action and conflict. In urging the government to ratify the Optional Protocol and take action to protect children from recruitment it referred to unconfirmed reports of the involvement of children as young as 15 in political violence in Karachi in May 2007, as well as at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in July 2007.24

There were unconfirmed reports that armed Baloch nationalist groups and tribal leaders were using children as young as 14 in the ongoing low-level insurgency in Balochistan.25

Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR):

There were no government programs for the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of children involved in armed conflict, despite the recommendation which the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child made to the Pakistan government in October 2003, that it develop in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and international organizations a comprehensive system for the reintegration and recovery of children who had participated in hostilities.26

Developments:

International standards

Pakistan ratified the ILO Minimum Age Convention 138 in July 2006.

1 Constitution, Article 106, as amended in 2002.

2 International Crisis Group (ICG), “Elections, democracy and stability in Pakistan”, Asia Report No. 137, July 2007.

3 South Asia Terrorism Portal, Pakistan Assessment 2006, www.satp.org.

4 Amnesty International Report 2007.

5 Human Rights Watch (HRW), “‘With friends like these …’ human rights violations in Azad Kashmir”, September 2006.

6 Amnesty International Report 2006.

7 See, for example, “Police probe attack at Red Mosque”, BBC News, 28 July 2007, “Court demands Red Mosque answers”, 28 August 2007.

8 Second periodic report of Pakistan to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Doc. CRC/C/65/Add.21, 11 April 2003.

9 Pakistan Army, www.joinpakarmy.gov.pk/index.php.

10 Military College Jhelum, www.militarycollege.edu.pk.

11 Confidential source.

12 Amnesty International (AI), “Pakistan: Protection of juveniles in the criminal justice system remains inadequate” (ASA 33/021/2005), October 2005.

13 “Tragedy of Pakistan’s prison children”, BBC News, 6 November 2006.

14 Amnesty International Report 2007.

15 ICG, Pakistan’s tribal areas: Appeasing the militants, Asia Report No. 125, 11 December 2006.

16 HRW, The Human Cost: The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan, April 2007.

17 UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001–2007), September 2007.

18 US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006. See also C. Christine Fair, “Militant recruitment in Pakistan: a new look at the militancy–madrasah connection”, Asia Policy, No. 4, July 2007, http://asiapolicy.nbr.org.

19 “Education vacuum poses long-term threat to children”, IRIN, 5 June 2006; ICG, Pakistan: Political Impact of the Earthquake, Asia Policy Briefing No. 46, 15 March 2006.

20 “Boy forced by Taliban to become would-be bomber is pardoned”, Guardian, 16 July 2007.

21 “Recruiting Taleban ‘child soldiers’”, BBC News, 12 June 2007.

22 “17 killed in latest Pakistan suicide attack”, Agence France-Presse, 10 September 2007.

23 Confidential source, August 2007.

24 Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, “Ratification of Convention on Child Rights Sought”, news release, 24 July 2007, www.sparcpk.org.

25 Confidential source, above note 23.

26 Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of second periodic report submitted by Pakistan, Concluding observations, UN Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.217, 27 October 2003.

Behind the glitz

By Rafia Zakaria

Building towers is risky business. In fact, the very dynamics of the architecture of towers and their historical symbolism suggest acts of defiance. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, now the world’s tallest building, takes the act of rebellion against physical limitations to new levels — literally.

Over 100 storeys, it boasts the world’s highest swimming pool and perhaps as expiation also the world’s highest mosque. Its golf course requires over four million gallons of water a day. Last week, amid much fanfare, the legendary tower finally threw open its majestic doors to the public.

Previously known as Burj Dubai the structure was renamed Burj Khalifa in honour of the Abu Dhabi ruler and UAE president who had bailed out struggling Dubai with a sum of billions of dollars. Envisioned and designed by a Chicago firm, the Burj is said to have been inspired by the vision of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sky City which was to be built in Chicago. However, it was never realised as it lacked both the funds and labour. Neither of these were seemingly a problem in the construction of the Burj which employed thousands of labourers from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh for several years for its construction.

According to reports, the vast majority of these workers have never even been to the top of the building they spent years constructing. But not seeing the view from the top is hardly the biggest problem faced by those who constructed the Burj; there are allegations that many have died in the construction of the Burj. Such construction projects take a huge toll. Records kept by the Indian mission for only one year showed that nearly 1,000 Indian workers had died, more than 60 in accidents on the site. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi missions do not keep records of the many labourers who have died possibly deterred by the criticism of the UAE authorities. Based on estimates the total number of workers killed in such construction projects is believed to be well into the thousands.

Days after the opening of the Burj a UAE court absolved the president’s brother for the beating and torture — an event that was videotaped — of an Afghan grain merchant. Sheikh Issa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was recorded brutally thrashing the man, stuffing sand into his mouth, burning his private parts with cigarettes and beating him with a nailed board. The video, which is available on the Internet, shows the sheikh literally pouring salt on his bloody wounds.

The court that heard the case acquitted the sheikh on the grounds that he had been under the influence of ‘drugs’. Put simply, despite incontrovertible recorded evidence, the sheikh was simply too powerful to be brought to task for hurting a man who was in the Emirati scheme of things little more than a slave.

The inauguration of the tower and the acquittal of the sheikh is a lurid juxtaposition of the hypocrisy, gluttony and crude injustice that lies beneath a glitzy façade. None of the innovation or glamour is indigenous; the architecture is American, the designers European and the slave labour South Asian.

Only 10 per cent of Dubai’s population is indigenous and actually has some say in how the emirate is run. The rest, either labourers or the educated middle class from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, are only too happy to swallow their pride and meekly accept second-class status as gratitude for employment. The slave-like labourers languish in camps hapless and helpless at the hands of sheikhs and companies who may choose to abuse them at whim.

In the meantime, the lurid contrast of limitless wealth and gluttonous consumption is seemingly lost on middle-class expatriates in Dubai. The expat bankers, engineers and doctors who have got work permits to escape dim prospects in their own countries unquestioningly consume the capitalist wealth of Dubai without ever contesting the injustice of their own political silencing. They wander in the malls, stare in veneration at the towers and flaunt their designer trinkets at cousins and relatives left at home as markers of their economic superiority.

Never once do they ask what basis of justice allows a government to pay two people different amounts based on their nationality. Nor do they wonder at the justifications of virtual labour camps where workers toil for 18 hours a day and are not paid for months, conditions that would result in protest in any part of the developed world. Similarly, tourists from around the world visiting Dubai are happily duped by the fireworks, the pretty beaches and now the tall towers without taking a moment to question the inequity that fuels them or the injustice that makes them possible.

True, injustice exists everywhere and Dubai sustains Pakistan’s exported labour force whose remittances are crucial to the country’s economic survival. But it must be remembered that the case of Dubai is unique. There is no place in the contemporary West where workers may live and work and even be born and never have the opportunity to participate in the governance of the country.

Unless those who make up the expatriate labour force of the emirates are allowed a voice Dubai’s progress will continue to be a product of exploitation of poverty and need.

Indeed, if the world is revolted by reports of torture in Guantanamo, and campaigns to hold the US accountable, so too must it demand accountability for the sheikhs of Dubai without being duped by the luxurious façade of their towers.

The writer is an attorney and director at Amnesty International, US.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers here or use the "Reprints" tool that appears next to any article. Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. Order a reprint of this article now.

---

January 14, 2010

By SIMON ROMERO

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors strained desperately on Wednesday against the chunks of concrete that buried this city along with thousands of its residents, rich and poor, from shantytowns to the presidential palace, in the devastating earthquake that struck late Tuesday afternoon.

Calling the death toll “unimaginable” as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hédi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was feared dead.

And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble.

Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.

In the midst of the chaos, no one was able to offer an estimate of the number of people who had been killed or injured, though there was widespread concern that there were likely to be thousands of casualties.

“Please save my baby!” Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital’s chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. “There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”

Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staffs to send here, though the obstacles proved frustrating just one day after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit. Power and phone service were out. Flights were severely limited at Port-au-Prince’s main airport, telecommunications were barely functioning, operations at the port were shut down and most of the medical facilities had been severely damaged, if not leveled.

A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.

“We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, said in a telephone interview. “There is a wealth of resources out there, and everybody has the good will to go in and support the Haitian Red Cross.”

The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols.

“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.

Mr. Obama said that United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances. Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But he urged Americans to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.

“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.

Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water in Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured.

Supplies began filtering in from the Dominican Republic as charter flights were restarted between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.

Some aid groups with offices in Port-au-Prince were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.

Sixteen members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 other United Nations employees were missing after the collapse of the mission’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

Forty or more other United Nations employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by United Nations agencies. Ten additional employees had been in a villa nearby.

It was one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Mr. Annabi, a Tunisian, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.

The Brazilian Army said 11 of its soldiers had been killed. During a driving tour of the capital on Wednesday, Bernice Robertson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she saw at least 30 bodies, most covered with plastic bags or sheets. She also witnessed heroic recovery efforts. “There are people digging with their hands, searching for people in the rubble,” she said in a video interview via Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.”

Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.

When staff members tried to travel by car, “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”

Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding problem in Haiti, causing high rates of illness that put many people in the hospital. Providing sanitation and clean water is one of the top priorities for aid organizations.

More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through Tuesday night and into early Wednesday, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.

David Wald, a seismologist with the Geological Survey, said that an earthquake of this strength had not struck Haiti in more than 200 years, a fact apparently based on contemporaneous accounts. The most powerful one to strike the country in recent years measured 6.7 magnitude in 1984.

Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help.

In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.

The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside in a playground. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.

He continued, “And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified.”

Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail message to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. S O S. S O S ... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.

Simon Romero reported from Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Reporting was contributed by Marc Lacey and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City, Ginger Thompson and Brian Knowlton from Washington, Neil MacFarquhar, Denise Grady and Liz Robbins from New York, and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.

In Haiti earthquake coverage, social media gives victim a voice

With normal communications channels upset, social media has played a key part in news from Haiti – particularly at CNN

This Twitter image shows Haitians standing amid the rubble in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

With many of the official lines of communication down, user-generated content played an important role yesterday in spreading news about the Haiti earthquake. Social media partly made up for the lack of information from the affected area on what had happened and what was most needed.

Twitterfeeds gave an impressive picture of the ongoing earthquake, and the Guardian's live blog on the rescue mission used social media as well as information from other news organisations. The BBC also covered the event combining tweets from the area with the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince.

However, the news organisation with the most material on the quake at present looks to be CNN. It has seven reporters on the ground – but is still significantly enriching their work with social media.

"We immediately moved someone supervising social media and our iReports to the Haiti desk," said Nick Wrenn, vice president of CNN International Digital Services.

It's now almost two years since CNN decided officially that iReport – a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information – and social media should become a legitimate source for its newsgathering.

In the Haiti crisis, CNN has published a selection of social media material, making clear what isn't verified. This user generated content is set apart from vetted postings, which are labelled differently and used in the same way as any other verified source.

Despite communications being down in Haiti, by yesterday evening 218 quake iReports from Haiti were sent to CNN, with 17 being vetted by CNN, and additional 212 reports of missing loved ones, with 13 of them being verified, CNN said. Two of their iReporters did live interviews.

Missionaries, says CNN, shared some of the first images they saw of people affected by the quake, and the conditions they're in. Brian Cory, who CNN got hold of via iReport, connected the news organisation with his mother-in-law in Haiti, who took the photos.

Yesterday, CNN's iReport had 1.4 million page views, a 240% increase over an September-October benchmark; the usual traffic is between 200,000 and 400,000 page views per day.

Apart from news, the page devoted to the special coverage at CNN presents very prominently their user filmed iReports, as well as the possibility to report about and search for missing people; it also informs you about ways you can help yourself.

The traffic CNN produces with this strategy makes it obvious that today the kpb of a news organisation in case of a disaster is not only to report but also to connect. Giving the victim a voice, helping the victim finding relevant information, as well as informing the public but also providing them a possibility to connect with the victim and help.

Ten predictions for the 2010 economy

Will consumer spending move up and jobs grow apace in 2010? The answer depends on the economist you ask. A round up of the top predictions for the economy next year.

• 

People walk past a sign during the holiday shopping season in San Francisco, California, December 23. Will consumer spending move up in 2010?

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

By Mark Trumbull Staff writer / December 31, 2009

What would a new year be without a batch of predictions leading into it – especially when the economy is a top-of-mind issue?

Here's a gleaning of predictions from financial forecasters. They offer interesting and sometimes provocative views, and some of them will surely be wrong. If Michael Darda is right about GDP, then Gary Shilling will probably be wrong about Treasury bonds, for instance.

With that "buyer beware" label attached, here's some financial food for thought:

1. The recovery will be stronger than the consensus expects. Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn., is forecasting real growth in gross domestic product (GDP) to average about 4 percent for the six quarters that end in December of 2010, thanks in part to improved credit conditions. This also makes him an optimist on job creation. He says the US should start adding jobs early in the new year.

2. Consumer spending will grow about 2 percent. Asha Bangalore and other forecasters at the Northern Trust Co., say this isn't anything to write home about. "Consumer spending will continue to be constrained by sluggish labor market conditions, reduction in net worth, and tight credit conditions," they write. But it beats a decline in the arena that drives so much of economic growth.

3. Treasury bonds will perform well, but sell antiques. Economist Gary Shilling in Springfield, N.J., says the battered economy still faces deflationary pressures, because so much factory capacity is idle and so many people are out of work. He says reliable old Treasury bonds will do well as investors seek safety, as will some dividend-paying stocks like electric utilities. His "sell" list includes tangible assets from commodities to art and antiques.

4. Treasury bonds won’t perform so well. Many financial firms are predicting at least a modest rise in bond interest rates in 2010, as the recovery gains traction. A rise in rates tends to push down bond prices. The bear case for bonds: Governments will be issuing lots of new debts, while investors will be wary about rising rates and the rising risk of inflation.

5. Businesses will start investing ... a bit. Forecasters at IHS Global Insight say new factories aren't needed yet, in general. "But businesses are flush with cash, and we do expect increased spending on replacement investment to pull equipment purchases higher in 2010."

6. Commodity prices will move sideways. That's another opinion from IHS Global Insight, based on its view of 2.8 percent GDP growth for the world economy (and 2.2 percent for the US). Even with China revving up to nearly 10 percent GDP growth, the firm doesn't see another commodity boom getting under way just yet.

7. Central banks will remain in "accelerator" mode. Manoj Pradhan and fellow analysts at Morgan Stanley say the Federal Reserve and many central banks will focus for some time on continuing to provide monetary fuel for recovery from recession, such as low short-term interest rates. "We expect the BBB (bumpy, below-par, boring) recovery ... to keep the AAA (ample, abundant, augmenting) liquidity regime in place for a while," Pradhan writes. But he adds that inflation risks will begin to resurface in both developed and developing nations.

8. A bear market in gold? Maybe not. Economist Ed Yardeni says that gold, often viewed as a hedge against inflation, tends to move in tandem with government debt levels. So if the economy recovers, will that bode well for tax receipts and poorly for gold? Mr. Yardeni, who runs a research firm in Great Neck, N.Y., says not to worry too much about a sudden return to fiscal health. An omnibus appropriations bill for 2010 is laden with earmarks for new spending, he notes.

9. The US will outpace Europe and Japan. This forecast, from Moody's Economy.com, is based on expectations that the US recovery will gradually gather self-sustaining momentum, clocking 5 percent annualized growth by late 2011 and then retreating back toward a more typical 3 percent pace by 2013. Japan, by contrast isn't seen getting its GDP growth above 2 percent for four years.

10. The rest of the US should take a page from Pennsylvania. OK, this is an observation, not a prediction. But economists at Wells Fargo Securities note that America's jobs problem is not just one of quantity. It's also the structure of where the jobs are in the economy. Some 2 million more manufacturing jobs have disappeared during the recession, and may not be coming back. Pennsylvania is a state once rich in manufacturing jobs that has increasingly been flexible enough to add education service-sector jobs to offset its losses. "Labor market weakness will persist for longer than we would like, but adjusting to new economic realities will smooth the transition from recession to recovery," write John Silvia and his colleagues at Wells Fargo.

Obama's Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Graham E. Fuller

For all the talk of "smart power," President Obama is pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush. The realities suggest need for drastic revision of U.S. strategic thinking.

-- Military force will not win the day in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint.

-- The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban -- like them or not -- as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.

-- It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The "Durand Line" is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already inflamed Pakistan's 28 million Pashtuns.

-- India is the primary geopolitical threat to Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Pakistan must therefore always maintain Afghanistan as a friendly state. India furthermore is intent upon gaining a serious foothold in Afghanistan -- in the intelligence, economic and political arenas -- that chills Islamabad.

-- Pakistan will therefore never rupture ties or abandon the Pashtuns, in either country, whether radical Islamist or not. Pakistan can never afford to have Pashtuns hostile to Islamabad in control of Kabul, or at home.

-- Occupation everywhere creates hatred, as the U.S. is learning. Yet Pashtuns remarkably have not been part of the jihadi movement at the international level, although many are indeed quick to ally themselves at home with al-Qaida against the U.S. military.

-- The U.S. had every reason to strike back at the al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan after the outrage of 9/11. The Taliban were furthermore poster children for an incompetent and harsh regime. But the Taliban retreated from, rather than lost, the war in 2001, in order to fight another day. Indeed, one can debate whether it might have been possible -- with sustained pressure from Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and almost all other Muslim countries that viewed the Taliban as primitives -- to force the Taliban to yield up al-Qaida over time without war. That debate is in any case now moot. But the consequences of that war are baleful, debilitating and still spreading.

-- The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse as a direct consequence of the U.S. war raging on the Afghan border. U.S. policy has now carried the Afghan war over the border into Pakistan with its incursions, drone bombings and assassinations -- the classic response to a failure to deal with insurgency in one country. Remember the invasion of Cambodia to save Vietnam?

-- The deeply entrenched Islamic and tribal character of Pashtun rule in the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan will not be transformed by invasion or war. The task requires probably several generations to start to change the deeply embedded social and psychological character of the area. War induces visceral and atavistic response.

-- Pakistan is indeed now beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the U.S. Anti-American impulses in Pakistan are at high pitch, strengthening Islamic radicalism and forcing reluctant acquiescence to it even by non-Islamists.

Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world.

But U.S. policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch. As Washington demands that Pakistan redeem failed American policies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can no longer manage its domestic crisis.

The Pakistani army is more than capable of maintaining state power against tribal militias and to defend its own nukes. Only a convulsive nationalist revolutionary spirit could change that -- something most Pakistanis do not want. But Washington can still succeed in destabilizing Pakistan if it perpetuates its present hard-line strategies. A new chapter of military rule -- not what Pakistan needs -- will be the likely result, and even then Islamabad's basic policies will not change, except at the cosmetic level.

In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, U.S. forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency.

It would be heartening to see a solid working democracy established in Afghanistan. Or widespread female rights and education -- areas where Soviet occupation ironically did rather well. But these changes are not going to happen even within one generation, given the history of social and economic devastation of the country over 30 years.

Al-Qaida's threat no longer emanates from the caves of the borderlands, but from its symbolism that has long since metastasized to other activists of the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the Pashtuns will fight on for a major national voice in Afghanistan. But few Pashtuns on either side of the border will long maintain a radical and international jihadi perspective once the incitement of the U.S. presence is gone. Nobody on either side of the border really wants it.

What can be done must be consonant with the political culture. Let non-military and neutral international organizations, free of geopolitical taint, take over the binding of Afghan wounds and the building of state structures.

If the past eight years had shown ongoing success, perhaps an alternative case for U.S. policies could be made. But the evidence on the ground demonstrates only continued deterioration and darkening of the prognosis. Will we have more of the same? Or will there be a U.S. recognition that the American presence has now become more the problem than the solution? We do not hear that debate.

(C) 2009 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK; (TM) TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Graham E. Fuller is a former CIA station chief in Kabul and a former vice-chair of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is author of numerous books on the Middle East, including The Future of Political Islam.