SAJAforum

PAKISTAN: An "Impending Humanitarian Disaster"

That's what Audil Rashid and Mian Nazish Adnan sound the alarm about in the July 4, 2009 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, following their recent visits to camps set up to house internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the conflict zone in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. While Americans celebrate the Independence Day weekend with barbeques and fireworks, Rashid and Adnan paint a grim picture of the crisis in Pakistan:

From the very beginning it was evident that the government had underestimated the human cost of the military operation. As several camps were hastily set up to cater to the massive influx of IDPs, reports about the lack of even basic amenities in these camps began to emerge. Excessive heat (daytime temperatures soaring to 40°C and above), no electricity, food and water shortages, poor sanitation, and lack of proper health care are some of the immediate problems being faced by IDPs....

Lack of proper toilets and sanitation, unsafe drinking water, infrequent bathing, high air temperatures, inadequate disposal of solid waste, and the complete absence of a proper drainage system at the refugee camps are the main causes of worry for relief health workers. “This is the making of a disaster. These camps have been established on open tracts of land used for agricultural purposes. There are snakes, rats, and scorpions here. At night, when it is pitch dark because of no electricity, people sleep on the ground and are vulnerable to snakebites”, said M Idrees Mirza, a doctor who runs a private clinic in Rawalpindi city and is working voluntarily in the camps.

“Conditions in these camps make them perfect breeding areas for mosquitoes and many varieties of insects. In my opinion, there is a very high probability of an outbreak of any disease like mumps, measles, scabies, malaria, diarrhoea, polio, and leishmaniasis”, said another health worker working for a respected NGO who spoke to The Lancet on condition of anonymity. “We need medicines, doctors, and qualified health workers. And we need them urgently. Any delays might result in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”....

Eager to establish its writ over the Swat Valley, the government seems to have created a health crisis which it may not be able to overcome. [link; registration req'd]

Two letters in the same issue of The Lancet offer additional details. But as dire as the situation has become within the camps, K.M. Bile and Assad Hafeez note in one of those letters that the government camps house only 20 percent of the IDPs -- who may now total as many as 2.5 million individuals, almost half of them children:

Without counting the great costs to themselves, families in the local community are looking after more than 1·73 million people, in accordance with the local tradition of hospitality. Most displaced people have been accommodated within family homes; others are in schools, mosques, and other community buildings.... Although a proportion of host families are related to or friends of the displaced people, many have welcomed strangers. [link; registration req'd]

TV: Presidents Karzai and Zardari together on "Charlie Rose"

UPDATE: Video is available above and at this link; transcript of the interview is below.

 Chitra Wadhwani, supervising producer on the "Charlie Rose" show on PBS, sent us this alert:

President Hamid Karzai and President Asif Ali Zardari sit down together for an exclusive conversation with  Charlie Rose tonight.  This is the first time the leaders of these two countries have done such an interview.

Post your comments, please.

MEDIA: NPR's new Pakistan bureau (Q&A with NPR's Loren Jenkins)

In April, foreign correspondent Julie McCarthy moved to Islamabad to open NPR’s first permanent bureau in Pakistan, and found herself covering its latest crisis: the Taliban's incursion into the Swat Valley, and the creation of thousands of refugees.

The move by NPR follows the expansion of the New York Times South Asia bureau, and suggests that while some media outlets are cutting back their international coverage, others see the region as too big and complex to ignore or underplay. NPR's New Delhi correspondent continues to be Phillip Reeves--see our Q&A with him, after the Mumbai attacks. The Afghanistan correspondent is Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.

Prior to the move, McCarthy (photo credit Wen Wang) was NPR’s South American correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, covered the Middle East from 2002-2005, and headed the Tokyo bureau.

McCarthy’s seemingly fearless accounts cover the impoverished and hungry, and the politically powerful and affluent. Her coverage of the Asian economic crisis in 1998 resulted in an Overseas Press Club of America Award. She's also won a Peabody.

Here is some of McCarthy’s work starting with her most recent Pakistan stories (complete list here):

• Pakistani Civilians forced to Flee Swat Valley
• U.S. surprised by Taliban's land grab in Pakistan
• Taliban Exert Influence in Pakistan
• Venezuela-Columbia Conflict Put Region on Edge
• Catholic Church Losing Ground in Latin America
• Spiraling Food Prices Buffet Poverty-Stricken Haiti
• Palestinians Await Changes in Gaza
• Hamas' Political Clout Grows

Loren Jenkins, NPR’s Senior Foreign Editor, spoke to SAJAforum about the McCarthy’s move and the new bureau:

SF: What aspects of Pakistani news will the bureau emphasize in its coverage?

LJ: We will cover all aspects of Pakistan news that we judge might be of interest to our listeners -- political news, economic news, cultural news, etc. Obviously the Obama administration has made it plain that it considers Pakistan and Afghanistan part of the same foreign policy challenge and that will be an important--but not exclusive--focus of our coverage.

TV: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's "Children of Taliban"

A note from award-winning SAJA member Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (her site is below):

From: sharmeenobaid[at]hotmail.com

Dear Friends,

My new film Children of the Taliban: (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan802/press/press_release.html) airs on PBS Frontline World tonight (April 14th)  at 9 p.m.-
I hope you will be able to tune in.
All my best
Sharmeen

FRONTLINE/WORLD
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET on PBS

FRONTLINE/WORLD Meets Young Recruits to a Taliban Insurgency in Pakistan

As her country slips further into political instability, becoming perhaps the most volatile nation in the world, FRONTLINE/World correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy takes a dangerous journey along Pakistan’s fault lines, investigating the rising popularity of an insurgent new branch of the Taliban among members of the country’s next generation.

In “Children of the Taliban,” airing Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET on PBS, Obaid-Chinoy also tracks down the militants themselves, coming face-to-face with a man who boasts of recruiting young suicide bombers for the Taliban — some as young as five or six years old.

“Children are tools to achieve God’s will,” the Taliban recruiter tells Obaid-Chinoy in their highly charged meeting. “If you are fighting, then God provides you with the means. And whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it.”

CARTOON: Nick Anderson on Pakistan

This ran in the Houston Chronicle and other papers on March 27, 2009. Post your comments below. More on Nick Anderson's work at http://blogs.chron.com/nickanderson/

OBIT: Parveen Ali, victim of Binghamton shootings

I've honestly lost track of all the shootings that have happened in the last few weeks. I generally avoid following the coverage of mass killings unless it's something I need to know for work. But someone pointed out that one of the 13 victims of the Binghamton, NY shootings was a Pakistani woman, Parveen Ali.

Here's part of a write-up from PressConnects.com, a local news site. It's simply titled "Parveen Ali: From Binghamton and Pakistan; age 26":

Parveen is remembered in the community as a soft- spoken, upbeat person quick to offer help to anyone in need. She especially catered to her mother, while her brothers, Usman and Nader, worked and studied. The family is trying to bring the remaining two brothers and their families to America, too. The father of the family, Nosher Van, does not live in Binghamton.

"She was beautiful," said friend Semra Morina, a Bosnian refugee who worked with Parveen at Johnson Outdoors four or five years ago. "She was young, and she had hope."

And from the NYT:

Ms. Ali came to the United States from northern Pakistan seven years ago. Her brother, Nadar Ali, 24, said his sister hoped to become a teacher. “She was like a parent, like a friend,” Mr. Ali said. “She coached me to go to school, be successful, go to college, be someone.”

He and his sister were planning to visit Niagara Falls on Saturday. “Just to see it,” he said.

PAKISTAN: The press pushes back against the Zardari gov't (Q&A)

[A guest post by Maha Atal, who works for Forbes and blogs here.]

Once a week, I go to my grandmother's apartment to watch Pakistani TV stations via satellite. Like many Pakistani-American families, we have spent the past two years glued to our screens as lawyers, politicians and citizens agitated for the restoration of the judiciary, disbanded by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Meanwhile, just as Pakistanis were tuning in, Musharraf and his civilian successors increased regulation of the televised and print media. Journalists ventured onto new media platforms and my mother and I spent many hours following the protests on news websites like GEO.tv, and when these too were restricted, on social media platforms like YouTube. Sometimes, we saw content from activists who used the web to promote their cause; sometimes, we saw journalists wander into the fray to cover it, and occasionally, to insert themselves into the protests. Now that the Chief Justice and the judiciary system have been restored, I asked Ayesha Tammy Haq, host of 24Seven on BusinessPlusTV what the convergence means for Pakistan's Fourth Estate.

SAJAforum: In some sense, there have been two protest movements underway here, one to free the judiciary and one to free the press. But the line between them is pretty thin, since many journalists have been active cheerleaders of and participants in the lawyers' marches and rallies. Can you describe how this happened? 

HAQ: When this started [in November 2007], an independent press was a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan. We didn’t have a formal code of conduct yet. The journalists and young reporters who went out to cover the movement were sympathetic as they saw it as a force for change. The clampdown on the press brought them in to direct confrontation with the state hence their active role [in the events covered].

So the press became fairly partisan. During the marches, the producers would keep the frame tight so they never showed gaps in the crowd. People were killed in the streets in Karachi, but the media never showed the bad side.

The Daily Times did a whole series about whether the movement should be transitionist or transformationist. They became active participants not because they were marching with the lawyers but by using [their coverage] to shape government policy and saw this as their role. It was a conceptual movement.

Is there any concern about journalists giving up their objective stance to become newsmakers?

OBAMA: "Did you have something to do with that?"

Times Now correspondent Simrat Ghuman was "walking on air" after President Obama called on her to ask a question during his news conference at the G-20 summit in London. (Is it just me, or does that number seem to change every year, and entirely without warning?) Apparently, Ghuman was so high in the clouds that she couldn't help but interrupt Obama's answer:

QUESTION: Hi, Mr. President.

OBAMA: How are you?

QUESTION: Thank you for choosing me. I'm very well. I'm (inaudible) from the Times of India.

OBAMA: Wonderful.

QUESTION: You met with our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. What did you -- what are you -- what is America doing to help India battle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, your prime minister is a wonderful man.

QUESTION: Thank you. I agree.

(LAUGHTER)

I agree.

OBAMA: You know, did you have something to do with that?

(LAUGHTER)

You seem to kind of take credit for it a little bit there.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: We're really proud of him, so...

OBAMA: Of course. You should be proud of him. I'm teasing you. I think he's a very wise and decent man and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being prime minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world.... [link]

Must-see video of the entire exchange (including Obama's full response) is above, and the rest of Obama's answer appears after the jump. No word on whether Prime Minister Singh is now "walking on air" as well. However, the next time someone tells me that Sree Sreenivasan and Arun Venugopal are "wonderful men," I'll be tempted to interrupt and say "thank you."

Unfortunately, Ghuman's pride in her Prime Minister stole some of the media oxygen from the actual response to her own question. However, as the Associated Press notes, in his response Obama said that "in a nuclear age, at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, ... it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan."

HUMAN RIGHTS: Immigrant detainees die, then disappear

The New York Times has an important piece on its front page today, about immigrants who die while awaiting deportation, and how hard it is for outside groups to learn what happened--even the basic fact of the detainee's death. In one case, a Pakistani man named Ahmad Tanveer died in September of 2005, apparently because his chest pains went ignored. But his death was only discovered in the last few weeks. From "Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life is Buried, Too":

Even now, most questions about Mr. Tanveer are unanswered, including just who he was and why he had been detained. The rescue of his death from oblivion took a rare mix of chance, vigilance by a few citizen activists, litigation by the civil liberties union and several months of inquiry by The Times. Even as the newspaper confirmed Mr. Tanveer’s death with jail officials, and tracked his body’s path from a Freehold morgue to the cargo hold of an airplane at Kennedy Airport, immigration authorities maintained that they could find no documents showing such a person was ever detained, or died in their custody.

Not until March 20, in response to a new request by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, did the agency release an internal e-mail message acknowledging that the death had been overlooked. It issued a corrected list that now includes him — his first and last names transposed — among 90 people who died in immigration custody between Oct. 7, 2003, and Feb. 7, 2009.

The article quotes an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who claims that all detainee deaths have been made public. But that's promptly contradicted by the reporter, who lists other deaths that ICE hasn't. 

For more on this issue, visit Breakthrough's website.

PAKISTAN: Foreign Affairs online discussion about the future of Pakistan

A note from Gideon Rose, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs:

As you may know, we recently relaunched the Foreign Affairs website (www.foreignaffairs.com) with a variety of new online-only editorial features.  This week, the site is hosting a roundtable discussion on Pakistan, with half a dozen world-class experts debating who is in control there, what they actually want, and what Washington can do about the problem.  It's a fascinating look behind the headlines, required reading to understand the challenges the world faces from this troubled country, featuring:

Stephen Cohen (Brookings Institution)
Christine Fair (RAND)
Sumit Ganguly (Indiana University)
Shaun Gregory (University of Bradford)
Aqil Shah (Columbia University)
Ashley Tellis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

To follow the discussion, click here:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/roundtables/whats-the-problem-with-pakistan

To receive all content from the new Foreign Affairs website free in your inbox each week, sign up here:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/newsletters

Lots of interesting/provocative points being made in "What's The Problem with Pakistan?" - take a look. For this week, they have already done:

Tuesday: Who Rules?
Wednesday: The Military's Worldview

The schedule for the rest of the week - so tune in again:

Thursday: Washington's Choices
Friday: What Now?

Post your comments there - and below, please.