From Kyoto to Jallozai
April 02, 2001
As unfettered free-market global capitalism continues to add to the world's poor and as power politics continues to make life more unbearable for the poorest across the world, the West has found another buzz word behind which to hide its increasing affluence. It is called compassion-fatigue. There is, therefore, no point in lamenting that a fraction of the billions spent annually in the USA alone on the cure and beauty-care (yes, shampooing, pedicure, dental care) of the pampered pet animals could go a long way towards lessening the indescribable suffering of the world's refugees.
The USA, so quick to assert its leadership of the "civilised world" by unleashing its awesome arsenal in the name of the world's well being, has walked out of the Kyoto agreement which it had helped craft and signed in 1997 -- promising thereby to scale down by 2012 the emission of heat-trapping green-house gases to below the 1990 levels. The agreement, now says Uncle Sam, is unfair as it lets the developing countries off scot free. Perhaps it does; and for some very sound reason too.
Among them, the fact that, with only 4% of the world's population, the USA emits a massive 24% of the green-house gases. It, therefore, shares that much responsibility for bringing global warming to an alarming point where it threatens to inundate islands and low-lying countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh. Why this volte face by the new US administration?
It wasn't a flaw in the US electoral system that had let President George W Bush scrape through to the White House against the wishes of the voting majority. That, in fact, is the way the system is designed -- to protect the interests of corporate America, says Professor Noam Chomsky. And, Bush Jr is already beginning to deliver -- having backed out of the promise to cut polluting emissions by the American electric-power plants before pulling the plug on the Kyoto Protocol.
That being so, and having vetoed a UN Security Council resolution proposing to send unarmed observers to monitor the violence in Israeli-occupied Palestine (where the Israelis have started shooting protesting Palestinians in the head rather than their legs), the US was quick to condemn the destruction of the giant Buddhas by the Taliban as a "crime against humankind."
But it wouldn't agree of course that threatening the existence of nations across the world simply to let corporate America rake in the windfalls attracts a similar, in fact greater, culpability. So also does its blind support for Israeli apartheid. And, so also the death of millions of Iraqi children and the deprivation of a whole generation due to the self-serving sanctions against their country.
The latest to taste the bitter fruit of the US-led pursuit of self-interest -- euphemistically called UN-sanctions -- are the seventy thousand Afghan refugees in the Jallozai "camp" on the Pubbi-Cherat Road in the NWFP. Ravaged by the drought and a war that the US, having abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet defeat, ostracised it after the advent of the Taliban and strangulated it in its fixation with getting Osama Bin Laden, refuses to help put an end to, their plight numbs the mind.
Sardar Najmus Saqib Khan, who visited the Jallozai camp, was devastated by the misery inflicted on the homeless by the dreadful condition in which they are struggling to survive. Never before, he says, had he realised what a great blessing the roof over the heads of his children is.
Having fled the drought, it seems ironic that a cruel blow should be dealt to the Jallozai refugees by the recent rains. This is how Sardar Saqib has described their ordeal:
"This camp was located in a Nullah. These 70,000 human beings mostly, women and children, were living (?) under 2000-2500 thin plastic-sheet covers (some like to call these "tents"). The sudden windstorm blew away the sheets and the heavy downpour washed away the so-called Jallozai Camp located in the Nullah."
"Womenfolk and children have been forced to take refuge in some mosques in a nearby (Shamshatu refugee) camp. Men have moved to the nearby graveyard. There seems to be no difference between the living and the dead. Families have been divided; disease and painful deaths are a daily occurrence. No Muslim or any other doctor has come forward to help."
"Anwar, it is pathetic and extremely heart-breaking to watch women and children desperately running to seek refuge in this open and barren area, when their plastic-sheet abodes were torn apart and suddenly flooded away. Their men, a spectacle of helplessness, bitterness and shame. This is extremely painful."
"Our indifference has manifested itself in many ways:
- Since the past few months, many children were "frozen" to death due to extremely harsh and cold weather.
-- Many women, old men and children have been inflicted by curable diseases and died.
-- Not even one meal was available to these Muslims since their arrival (past few months) -- our so-called value of sharing meals notwithstanding.
-- Not one Muslim or any other doctor came forward to help.
-- Drinking water has not been available–some Dutch NGO has been providing little water after a few days.
-- These 70,000 Muslims have not bathed in the past few months.
-- Seldom have human beings been reduced to such degradation as these people have been.
-- No government or any other organisation has come forward to help."
The list, Sardar Saqib writes, "could one and there still would be many things to tabulate. Some friends tried to talk to the owner of a nearby abandoned camp--but the owner wants money to house these desperate human beings. Anwar, never have I experienced such helplessness and desperation."
Some of these shattering facts have been reported in the press, the graphics being filled in by press photographs of delicate children exposed to the elements, amid mud and slush if not dust, staring vacantly at the cruelty around them or lugging survival items to their "homes." Their parents, mostly mothers, look on helplessly.
This indeed is humanity's worst hour, and it is happening in our own home. Far be it, though, for the captive visual medium to use its power to inform the people of the refugees' plight and motivate them to come forward and help. This rather blunts the edge of the tirade against Western profligacy hidden behind compassion fatigue. Besides, whatever its crimes, Uncle Sam is sending wheat for the Afghans and some western NGOs are also helping out.
The Pakistan government has its constraints, financial and other, in not "encouraging" more Afghans to come streaming in. But could that mean human beings can be left to die? Certainly not. An appeal needs to be sent out to the world, particularly, to the Muslim world, to help the unfortunate Afghans. The oil Sheiks can surely spare a fraction of the Almighty's bounty which they are frittering away even as millions of Muslims remain destitute--the Jallozai refugees being only the visible tip of the ice-berg.
But why blame others? What has our own affluent class done for them? Yes, a recent survey by the Agha Khan foundation had found Pakistanis to be among the world's most giving people. But the givers were mostly the poor, and they prefer to help those they know or give where they are certain their hard-earned money will not be siphoned off.
There is, thus, a crying need to motivate and mobilise the people to help the new wave of Afghan refugees -- and help them before those who have survived the ordeal lose altogether their dignity and honour. Sardar Saqib says he is organising relief, and trying to convince the neighbouring land-owner to stop asking for the moon and let the Jallozai refugees move from the precarious Nullah to his land.
Jemima Khan has also taken on the challenge. She visited the Jallozai "camp" and, naturally, came away traumatised. In addition to making a donation of 21,000 dollars, she says she will be sending food and makeshift shelter on Tuesday. She is also launching a fund-raising campaign and is looking for a reliable NGO to carry out the relief work. Given her influence and resolve, one can hope that the worst is over for the survivors in the Jallozai "camp." But the task is gigantic, and others need to come forward too.
The author is a freelance columnist
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