Public sector and corruption: Who should be accountable?

 Thursday, 21 February 2019 

Member of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption Neville Guruge said 25% of the 1.5 million public servants in Sri Lanka were corrupt and that their malpractices were going on unchecked due to the lethargic attitude of the other 75% who only boast about their honesty.

Addressing a seminar at the Gampaha Yasodara Balika Vidyalaya organised with the view to create awareness among the principals and the teachers on the endeavour to create a just society, he mentioned only the countries that eradicated corruption could achieve their development targets. He further emphasised the importance of principals and teachers to create a just society inculcating the social values to avoid corruption. 
Today we observe one of the biggest problems in Sri Lanka is many public officers do not know their responsibility or do not take the responsibility which they should take. The other set of officers do not understand neither their responsibility nor the accountability.

I think Neville Guruge was talking about the 75% who only boast about their honesty is falling to the category two. I think this is the extremely dangerous one more than the corrupt officers. Albert Einstein once said: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”



Who are the senior officers? 

The Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) is the key administrative service of the Government of Sri Lanka, with civil servants working for both in the Central Government as well as in the Provincial Councils. It was formed as the Ceylon Administrative Service (CAS) in 1963 as the successor to the Ceylon Civil Service which was abolished on 1 May 1963.

Based on the British Civil Service, the SLAS is the permanent bureaucracy that helps the elected officials on day-to-day functions of the Government. They are selected, promoted by the Public Service Commission. But top positions in the Government such as Permanent Secretaries are appointed by the President, in theory on the recommendations of the Public Service Commission.

A Permanent Secretary is the top bureaucrat of the Government Ministry and is responsible for the day-to-day functions of the ministry whereas in theory, the minister is responsible only for drafting policy. The head of the SLAS is the Secretary to the President.

A Chief Secretary is a Special Grade officer of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service in the provinces which is equivalent to a Permanent Secretary of the Central Government known as Chief Secretary. There are nine Chief Secretaries, one for each of the nine provinces.


How do we produce senior officers? 

Back in the day, most university graduates dreamed to join the Administrative Service which was considered the most sought-after career prospect which was only available to the brightest of the batch.

This group of people is vested with the power and the authority to manage the highest positions in the country who should be held accountable to the citizens of the country. Is this happening today? Apparently not.
If we take the Singaporean example, they started as a third-world country far below us and gone up to the first-world now. The good leadership made Singapore disciplined and economically established over the last few decades.

Today, they are one of the most credible countries in the world and there too the recruitment to the administrative service is similar to that in Sri Lanka where the best of the best is selected form the local universities.


What went wrong in Sri Lanka? 

It is evident that most of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service officers up to now are the products of our local universities under our free education system. Their expenses were borne by the people of Sri Lanka. Citizens of the country expect them to give something back to the country in terms of providing an efficient and honourable service back to them.

The officers joining the Sri Lanka Administrative Service too should understand that they have a moral commitment to serve the people in a better manner to improve their quality of life.

At the last Independence Day speech, the President stated the efficiency of the 1.6 million government servants are only 30%. He said at least this should turn to 70%. The biggest grievance from the officers’ side has always been that the politicians interfere with their jobs. In addition to political interference, inadequate facilities, poor salaries, corruption and bribery infests the entire public sector.

However, if the public officers have no initiative from them to improve the country by doing an efficient honourable job, there is no hope of improvement in the economy of the country or their own betterment in terms of better facilities and salaries.


Recent case study 

The Director General (DG) of the Sri Lanka Customs was one of the credible Sri Lanka Administrative Service officers. She was a graduate of the University of Jaffna and a holder of two Masters Degrees from the Universities of Peradeniya and Rajarata. She was a Special Grade Officer of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service who has served as the Additional Government Agent and the Government Agent of Vavuniya.

When she was appointed to this position, there were concerns on how she can handle this complex institute. She proved herself to be a competent person, taking the right decisions at the right time. She developed goodwill among the staff, Chambers and the other business institutions deal with the Customs. Took strong decisions even to the extent of sacking the corrupt officers at Customs who were involved with various corruptions.

At the time she was removed due to alleged political interference from the DG position, all customs unions with the support of all the trade chamber came forward to protect her. This is a good case study, if a good officer has done a straight job, the people of the country will come to protect such good officers. Finally, the same Minister who proposed the removal proposed the withdrawal of the removal too.


Corruption

Corruption has become very complex today due to various local and global reasons. The World Bank and Transparency International view corruption as the use of one’s public position for illegitimate private gains. According to the International Chamber of Commerce the greatest impact of corruption is on the poor people who are least able to absorb its costs.

Transparency International – Corruption is increasingly cited as a reason for withholding foreign aid or debt relief. If a country’s inability to pay interest on its loans is due to its leaders siphoning off national earnings into their own bank accounts.

Transparency International further explains the cost of corruption as follows. Corruption impacts societies in a multitude of ways. In the worst cases, it costs lives. Short of this, it costs people their freedom, health or money. The cost of corruption can be divided into four main categories: political, economic, social and environmental.

On the political front, corruption is a major obstacle to democracy and the rule of law. In a democratic system, offices and institutions lose their legitimacy when they’re misused for private advantage. This is harmful in established democracies, but even more so in newly emerging ones. It is extremely challenging to develop accountable political leadership in a corrupt climate.
Economically, corruption depletes national wealth. Corrupt politicians invest scarce public resources in projects that will line their pockets rather than benefit communities, and prioritise high-profile projects such as dams, power plants, pipelines and refineries over less spectacular but more urgent infrastructure projects such as schools, hospitals and roads. Corruption also hinders the development of fair market structures and distorts competition, which in turn deters investment.

Corruption corrodes the social fabric of society. It undermines people’s trust in the political system, in its institutions and its leadership. A distrustful or apathetic public can then become yet another hurdle to challenging corruption.

Environmental degradation is another consequence of corrupt systems. The lack of, or non-enforcement of, environmental regulations and legislation means that precious natural resources are carelessly exploited, and entire ecological systems are ravaged. From mining, to logging, to carbon offsets, companies across the globe continue to pay bribes in return for unrestricted destruction.

When we study the recent story of Makadure Madush, his involvement with drugs, great relationships with politicians and the artists of Sri Lanka tells us a dark story of the kind of things happening similar to the most corrupt countries.

There is no doubt that the lower growth rate prevailing in Sri Lanka at present mainly due to political uncertainties and corruption. This leads to lower the foreign direct investments which we really need at this hour to move the country forward. Even in South Asia we are doing far below the potential. We should be very sad and shamed about our performance having such talented educated people in Sri Lanka and yet having a bleak future as a country due to corrupt politicians.

If we study our present debt situation, we have to understand all kinds of corruption finally become a burden to the society and the people in the country.


Who is responsible?   

There is no doubt from the head of state of a country that every citizen is responsible for the country and its economic and social status.

According to the President’s website, his introduction is as follows. President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka – Pallewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Yapa Sirisena, known as Maithripala Sirisena, is the 6th Executive President of Sri Lanka. He was born on 3rd September 1951 to a middle-class farming family. He joined mainstream politics in 1989 and has held several ministerial portfolios since 1994.

He is the President of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), he was the longest serving General Secretary. He was selected as the Common Candidate of the Presidential Election to be held on 8th January 2015, where he won the support of the people of Sri Lanka to change the regime to build a better governance and an economically prosperous Sri Lanka for everyone.

In the website, it further explains that Maithripala Sirisena is a rare breed of a gentleman politician in today’s political landscape, a politician with an impeccable track record, untainted by either violence or corruption. Maithripala is a political leader with a genuine national appeal. The son of a farmer, he had practiced a brand of centrist, moderate and clean politics, which characterises the best in Sri Lanka’s political culture.

The general public of this country has a big question today. Is the President doing what he has promised the people of this country before he came to power? Has the key promises in his manifesto to minimising corruption, uplift economic development, establishing law and order, better media freedom, upholding democracy been realised over the past few years? Has he lead by example to drive this country into a nation of Good governance (Yahapalanaya)?

Secondly, Sri Lanka Administrative Service officers, as the most responsible stakeholders, should manage the country by providing decent and efficient work rather than giving excuses to the people. If this happens, there will be some light at the end of the tunnel. 





(The writer is an Economics Hons Graduate from the Sri Jayawardenepura University, Immediate Past President of the International Chamber of Commerce and the Vice President of the Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industries Sri Lanka.) 

SL should consider its retirement policy - Demographist

PANEETHA AMERESEKERE- FEB 22 2019

As life expectancy increases, it is worth reconsidering retirement guidelines, a World Bank (WB) article released on Wednesday (20), quoting Former Chair of Demography at the University of Colombo, Professor Indralal de Silva said.

A woman in Sri Lanka lives to about 79 years, while men live to about 73 years and if people retired between the ages of 50 and 60, they could expect to live close to two decades without a salary, the article on its website and further quoting de Silva said.

Meanwhile, the WB said that in some cases the average pay-out from EPF might only yield an income of about Rs 2,650 per month (below poverty line) over a 23-year life expectancy at retirement age of 55 for men and Rs 2,130 per month for women, who can retire at 50 and have a longer life expectancy.

This scenario is further complicated when you consider the informal sector, affecting the estimated 61 per cent of Sri Lankan workers who are employed informally, it said.

The WB further said that though a Government pension scheme exists, it however remains insufficient to meet the needs of pensioners.

The situation is further compounded by the fact that the island’s population pyramid no longer resembles a pyramid, but a rectangle, the WB said.

Explaining further, the WB said, Sri Lanka is confronting a profound demographic shift due to falling fertility rates and rising life expectancy. The base of the population pyramid–consisting of young people–is shrinking, while the number of elders is growing. By 2050, it is projected that the proportion of the elderly (23 per cent) will surpass that of the youth (17%), the WB said.

‘The pyramid is losing its shape’, the report quoting the author of the Sri Lanka Development Update and the Senior Country Economist for Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Fernando Im said.

‘Compared to its peers, Sri Lanka has reached an advanced stage of this demographic transition’, he said.

Closed Al-Aqsa gate reopens old Palestinian wounds in Jerusalem

Recent tensions over al-Rahmeh Gate have brought back to the surface long-standing Israeli-Palestinian feud over the religious site

Israeli policemen detain a young Palestinian demonstrator after protesters tried to break the lock on a gate at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City on 18 February 2019 (AFP)

By 

Zena Tahhan

 in 

Jerusalem-

 21 February 2019 

Tensions have risen once again in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, as the status of a long-closed gate to the religious site has sparked renewed fears among Palestinians of Israeli attempts to change the status quo.

Members of the Waqf  - the Islamic endowment in charge of the holy site - opened the al-Rahmeh Gate to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on 14 February and prayed in the area.

Israeli forces responded on Sunday by sealing the gate with iron chains. Palestinian worshippers and activists reacted by breaking the newly placed chains and organising prayers outside the al-Rahmeh Gate in protest.

In confrontations that have ensued since Monday, Israeli forces assaulted several people at the scene and arrested at least 19 - the majority of whom have been released with bans on returning to Al-Aqsa for at least two months.

Israeli forces removed the chains a day later, but the Gate remains closed. Palestinians have since continued to pray outside al-Rahmeh Gate.

Israeli border guards patrol an entrance to the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem's Old City on 19 February 2019 (AFP)

“Israel seeks to turn al-Rahmeh Gate into an abandoned area with a view to facilitating the annexation process,” Palestinian Authority Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Adnan al-Husseini, a newly minted member of the Waqf, said on Wednesday.

For many Palestinians, particularly Jerusalemites, Israel’s response was yet another provocation in the highly sensitive issue of control over the religious site - amid broader Israeli claims to sovereignty over all of Jerusalem.

Expanded Waqf council

While Israel wrested control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, the Hashemite kingdom has nonetheless retained control over the Al-Aqsa compound itself through the Islamic Waqf that administers the holy site.

Israel, however, controls all areas outside the compound as part of its annexation of East Jerusalem, where the Old City lies.

On 14 February, the Jordanian government agreed to expand the number of members in the Waqf administrative council from 11 to 18, for reasons that remain unclear.

The newly expanded council headed that same day to the al-Rahmeh Gate, which has been closed off by Israeli forces since 2003.

“We went in to renovate – the hall had been abandoned for ages and there was decay from the rain,” Ekrima Sabri, the head of the Supreme Islamic Committee and new member of the Waqf, told Middle East Eye.

“After that, we decided to pray. The Israeli reaction was that we prayed without their permission, so they placed iron chains,” he added. “We are praying in our mosque. We have every right to pray on every inch of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.”

Ziad Ibhais, a researcher on Jerusalem, says that the developments in the last week were about a show of power.

“Israel intended to send the message it is the only legitimate and supreme authority in Jerusalem, even though it is the Waqf that is responsible for the administration of Islamic holy sites in the city, as per international law,” Ibhais told MEE.

Reclaiming a deserted gate

In the saga of Israeli-Palestinian tensions at Al-Aqsa, al-Rahmeh Gate has its own history.

Bab al-Rahmeh Gate, whose name means Gate of Mercy, is a large hall that is part of the bigger Bab al-Dhahabi, or Golden Gate.

Al-Rahmeh once led to the vast courtyards housing the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It lies on the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and is registered under Waqf lands.

During the Ottoman period, the gate was closed off from the inside and the space was subsequently turned into a hall. A centuries-old Islamic cemetery sits just outside, where the graves of two of the Islamic prophet’s companions lie, making it religiously significant.

A map of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound - also known as Haram al-Sharif - as of 2017. Al-Rahmeh Gate is part of the Golden Gate (MEE)

For decades, the Islamic Heritage Committee of the Al-Aqsa Mosque used the Gate’s hall as offices and for hosting religious classes as well as activities for the community. But in 2003, Israeli police closed the gate from the outside, claiming the association was linked to the Gaza-based armed resistance group, Hamas.

In subsequent years, the gate was opened only once a year for students of the Al-Aqsa Sharia School for Girls, to sit their high school matriculation exams due to a lack of space.

“What we meant by praying there was that we want to start using this hall as it was used in the past – for teaching, for praying, for religious activities,” Sabri said.

In 2017, the Israeli Magistrate Court in Jerusalem ruled that the hall had to be shuttered indefinitely, in response to a request from the head of police, Roni AlSheikh.

“The Palestinian street in Jerusalem is waiting for an opportunity to bring the issue of Al-Aqsa back into the frame,” Hanadi Qawasmi, a journalist from Jerusalem, told MEE. “Every time there is momentum in the people’s commitment to defend Al-Aqsa, Israel tries to consolidate and intensify its control.

“It’s not about an iron chain that didn’t make any real difference to the situation,” she added. “It’s about the people’s right to use al-Rahmeh Gate.”

Site of tensions

The fear of an Israeli plan to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews has lingered in the Palestinian subconscious since 1967.

Under international humanitarian law, an occupying power is forbidden from making any changes that would permanently alter the nature of the territory. Israeli control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, also violates several principles under international law, which outlines that an occupying power does not have sovereignty in the territory it occupies.

However, Israel demolished an entire Palestinian neighbourhood – the Moroccan Quarter in the Old City - immediately after the 1967 war to make room for a large plaza adjacent to the Western Wall at which Jews could pray.

'We have every right to pray on every inch of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound'

- Ekrima Sabri, former grand mufti of Jerusalem

In the years that followed, Israel began facilitating the entry of non-Muslim visitors to the Al-Aqsa compound, abiding by Jordan’s request to limit the number of groups and to ban certain Jewish fundamentalist groups.

Jewish Israelis believe that the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound stands atop where the millennium Second Temple once stood, and some far-right Israeli activists have advocated for the destruction of the Al-Aqsa compound to make way for a Third Jewish Temple.

In 1982, Jewish American-Israeli Alan Goodman, who had links to the violent pro-settler Kach movement, entered the compound with an automatic rifle and fired indiscriminately inside the Dome of the Rock, killing two Palestinians and wounding nine others.

In 1990, an Israeli group known as the “Temple Mount Faithful” entered the compound and attempted to place a cornerstone for the Third Jewish Temple, sparking confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces. The latter used live ammunition, killing more than 20 Palestinians and wounding at least 150.

Six years later, the Israeli government authorised the opening of a tunnel to the Western Wall, under the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound. Ever since, Israel has been sponsoring archaeological digs in the vicinity of the mosque operated by Jewish settler groups.

Amid an atmosphere of bubbling anger and a failed peace process, late politician Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa compound in 2000 unleashed the Second Intifada. The uprising, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, lasted five years and led to the killing of more than 3,200 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

In this context, and with the backdrop of dozens of settlers entering the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on a daily basis under the protection of soldiers, Palestinians believe they have cause for worry.

More recently, the 2017 order to indefinitely close al-Rahmeh Gate came only a few months after a popular Palestinian uprising against the installation of metal detectors and surveillance cameras at the entrance to the nearby Lion’s Gate.

Israel installed the cameras and turnstiles after a deadly gun battle on 14 July in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in which three Palestinian citizens of Israel shot and killed two Israeli policemen before being themselves shot dead.

For weeks, thousands refused to enter the compound and resorted to praying on the streets of the Old City in a protest of civil disobedience.

Israeli forces later removed the cameras and metal detectors - a success in the eyes of many Palestinians.

‘Inevitable’ escalation?

Khadija Khweiss, a prominent activist from Jerusalem, believes the al-Rahmeh Gate developments are just another sign of Israel trying to impose its hegemony on the site.  

“We fear that Israel is trying to use al-Rahmeh Gate to turn into an access point for settlers to raid Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the long run,” Khweiss told MEE.

“Israel is on the side of the settlers, and we are afraid that they will be able to exploit their government to achieve their goal of dividing al-Aqsa,” she added.

Israel imposes restrictions on which Palestinians can and cannot enter the compound.  

Israeli limits Palestinian entry to the site through its separation wall, which has cut off the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem.

Palestinians pray near al-Rahmeh Gate in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on 20 February 2019 (AFP)

Of the more than three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, only those over a certain age limit are allowed access to Jerusalem on Fridays, while others must apply for a hard-to-obtain permit to enter.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers and religious activists have increasingly been able to enter the compound, as restrictions on non-Muslim prayers at Al-Aqsa have been significantly less enforced by Israeli forces.

On Thursday, Palestinian media reported that more than 100 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa compound under military protection, with some performing prayers near al-Rahmeh.

“If we’re comparing 2015 with 2018, you will find a huge difference in the way that Israeli police deals with settlers wanting to enter Al-Aqsa mosque compound,” said Qawasmi, the journalist from Jerusalem.

“In the past, the Israeli police would allow groups of at most 10 people at a time. Today, groups of at least 25 settlers come in because they feel secure,” she continued. “The Waqf guards used to be able to object and have some control over the situation, but today they get threatened by the Israelis.”

In the past few years, Waqf guards have regularly been arrested by Israeli forces for confronting settler groups at Al-Aqsa - with many of them receiving temporary bans on returning to the religious site.

Ibhais, the Jerusalem-based researcher, said he believes it is not long before matters flare up once more.

“As long as the occupation intends to change the status quo and impose its control over Al-Aqsa, things will inevitably escalate. And as long as al-Rahmeh Gate remains closed, the situation will escalate, whether now or later.”

Gulf leaders praise Israel ties in closed-door meeting

Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. (US Department of State / Flickr) 

Tamara Nassar Power Suits 20 February 2019

Gulf officials showcased their hostility towards Iran and their affection for Israel at the Warsaw conference hosted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office leaked and then deleted a video of a closed-door meeting at the conference showing officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates spewing invective against Iran and defending Israel.

Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa downplayed Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

“We grew up talking about the Palestine-Israel dispute as the most important issue,” he said in the video. “But then at a later stage, we saw a bigger challenge. We saw a more toxic one, in fact the most toxic in our modern history, which came from the Islamic Republic, from Iran.”

UAE foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that “Every nation has the right to defend itself when it’s challenged by another nation,” when asked about Israel’s military attacks on Syria.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir blamed Iran, not Israel, for the plight of the Palestinians.

“Who is supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad and undercutting the Palestinian Authority?” he said, “Iran.”

While Gulf officials were making those comments on stage, Netanyahu was sitting in the audience.

There were no representatives from Iran or the Palestinian Authority at the conference.

Netanyahu returned to Israel boasting of the “unfathomable” friendly atmosphere he encountered in the Polish capital.

The prime minister told Israeli journalists that Arab leaders are more concerned with enmity towards Iran than they are with the Palestinian question.

Oman’s overt gestures

During the conference, Oman’s foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah met with Netanyahu.

The Israeli government and media circulated a video showing Oman’s foreign minister arriving through the parking lot entrance of a Warsaw hotel for a secret meeting with the Israeli leader.

Netanyahu told bin Alawi that he speaks not only on behalf of Israel, but on behalf of “many people in the Middle East” in thanking Oman for its move towards normalization with Israel.

Bin Alawi also met with Israel’s former foreign minister Tzipi Livni at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

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10:41 AM - Feb 15, 2019

Livni has evaded legal proceedings in several countries in recent years in connection with war crimes in Gaza.

Last October, Netanyahu visited Oman in the most visible sign of Israel’s normalization of ties with Arab states with which it has no formal relations.

Bin Alawi nonetheless tried to downplay Oman’s brazen embrace of Israel.

“There is no normalization, but there is a continuation of the search for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue. As I mentioned, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state is a prerequisite for any normalization or any future relationship between the Arab region and Israel,” he said during a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

Yemen’s public rejects normalization

During the Warsaw conference, Khaled Alyemany – the foreign minister in the exiled Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that are waging a war that his killed thousands of civilians in Yemen and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis there – was seated next to Netanyahu.

When Netanyahu’s microphone malfunctioned, Alyemany loaned him his.

Netanyahu then “joked about the new cooperation between Israel and Yemen,” according to Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, who enthused about the moment on Twitter.

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New Taliban political chief to miss upcoming peace talks with U.S. envoys

FILE PHOTO: Head of Political Office of the Taliban Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanakzai attends a conference arranged by the Afghan diaspora, in Moscow, Russia February 5, 2019.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

Jibran Ahmad, Abdul Qadir Sediqi-FEBRUARY 21, 2019

PESHAWAR, Pakistan/KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan Taliban leaders said on Thursday that their new political chief will not be attending peace talks with U.S. envoys due to take place in Qatar next week.

U.S. officials had been keen to negotiate with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, hoping the Taliban’s co-founder and military veteran would add momentum and have the clout to discuss tough issues surrounding the end of America’s longest war.

But senior Taliban leaders said Baradar would not be travelling to Qatar, citing different reasons including problems obtaining travel documents as well difference among the leadership over his precise role in the talks.

Baradar was released from a Pakistani jail in October and his appointment was widely seen as marking a new push by the Taliban to emerge from the political and diplomatic shadows.

Baradar, who earlier led the insurgent group’s military operations in southern Afghanistan, was arrested in 2010 by a team from Pakistan and U.S. intelligence agencies. A co-founder of the movement, he was a close friend of the reclusive late Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, who gave him his nom de guerre, “Baradar” or “brother”.

“Actually Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar wanted to go to Qatar and personally head the peace talks but due to a host of reasons, he would not be able to travel to Qatar and participate in talks,” one leader told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Taliban spokesman Sohail Shahin said earlier this week that he was unable to say whether Baradar would be attending.

JANUARY TALKS

The last round of talks ended in Qatar in January with both the hardline Islamist movement and U.S. special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad hailing progress after a longer-than-expected six-day session.
U.S. officials familiar with discussions said they were hoping to get more details over fresh assurances from the Taliban that they would not allow Afghanistan to be used by groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State to attack the United States and its allies - a key demand by Washington.

The timing of a ceasefire and the withdrawal of foreign forces remain sticking points, while Washington is also pushing the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.

The movement has so far boycotted the government, saying it is a puppet of the United States - a position that has alarmed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Another Taliban official said they were not expecting breakthroughs in the coming talks, adding that they also wanted to discuss the exchange of prisoners and lifting bans on the movement of Taliban leaders.

The Taliban side will continue to be headed by lead negotiator Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, a figure who has been increasingly active diplomatically and who recently met Afghan opposition politicians in Moscow.

 

The movement earlier announced that its team would meet U.S. negotiators this week in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, as well holding talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. The meetings did not take place for reasons that remain unclear.

Staging near daily attacks against the Western-backed Afghan government and its security forces, the Taliban contest or control nearly half of Afghanistan and are widely seen as more powerful than at any time since being toppled from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

The United States has nearly 14,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of a U.S.-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan defence and security forces as well as a separate counter-terrorism effort.

Additional reporting by Rupam Jain in Kabul; Writing by Greg Torode; Editing by Frances Kerry

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

A prelude to the creation of Bangladesh

by Anwar A. Khan- Feb 21, 2019

Feb 21, 2019

The 20th century is a remarkable story of progressive accomplishments against overwhelming odds everywhere in the world including Bangladesh.The events of 21st February 1952 in Dhaka, and elsewhere in the country, provided a basis for an understanding of the direction our struggles against the Pakistani colonial rule. The intense emotion and mobilisation that accompanied the brutal murders of revered Salam, Barkat, Jabbar and some other mortalsopened another significant chapter in resistance politics against the Pakistani tyrannous rule. For most of the students, joining the fermentation to fight against an unjust political system became the ultimate goal for our people then.

This signalled some other significant features of the post-1952 phase of intense struggle to generate defiance and stimulate the development of more mass movements in future. In early 1971, our people’s central task was to deploy mass scale of people against the Pakistani military government in a credible revolutionary offensive. Each people reiterated and refined the demands for rights and freedom and built support for the cause of establishing Bangladesh.

The Language Movement of 1952 is the fledgling mass movement of people ofall classes and religions that could herald a people’s movement truly independent of nationalism and Bengali, being our state language.Each generation of us faces a different set of economic, political, and social conditions. There are no easy formulas for challenging injustice and promoting democracy. But unless we know this history, we will have little understanding of how far we have come, how we got here, and what still needs to change to make Bangladesh more livable, humane, and democratic.

The course of our movements explores the history, sociology, and politics of Bangladesh’s struggles for freedom and social justice. The organising class puts more emphasis on how to aspects of fighting for social change. The bottom line for course is to encourage students to see themselves as potential history-makers, by learning from the past and learning the skills and analytic tools to help mobilise people for action now and in the future.

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. But we can be prideful and joyful especially because of our triumph or success in our just cause. 21st February, 1952 is a milestone in our history of struggles to establish Bangladesh and Bengali language as our state language.

21st February has taught us that this struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

In everyday parlance, that sometimes the time was ripe for movements to emerge, to grow, and to bring about change. Ultimately, movements are about real people making choices about how to use their time, talents, and resources. Our great leaders and patriotic people did the right thing at the right time to throw away the yoke of the roughshod Pakistani rule which persecuted us for more than two decades. Howard Zinncompetentlysaid, “Freedom and democracy does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice.”

Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. All our struggles were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of them are epoch-making.

A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilise, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience. All our mass movements are politically aggressive. And that’s why, we achieved success every time.

Mass movements are kindled into existence by unique combinations of outraged public opinion in the movement’s core values, political opportunity and aggressive leadership. The absence of any of these can prevent a mass movement from materialising, but in our movement of 21st February in 1952, the seeds of something may have been sown to eventually emerge Bangladesh as a new independent and sovereign state in 1971.

Mass movements are based on widely held beliefs, reinforced by dense communications between peoples. Mass movements are nurtured and sustained not just by vertical communication, between leaders and various places of a boundary line, but by lots of horizontal communication among the movement’s wider acceptance by mass people. This horizontal communication serves to reinforce the common people’s support and the movement’s core values. It emboldens both political people and ordinarily non-political people to engage in personally risky behaviour in support of the movement’s core demands, and builds support for this kind of risk-taking on the part of those who may not be ready to do it themselves.

Those progressive mass movements were built in that era of sprawl and locked down media monopolies and the organisers developed and deployed alternative communications strategies to get and keep the movement’s message into a sufficient number of ears to sustain its influence and momentum. No mass without masses and no movement without youth. Mass movements don’t happen without masses. A mass movement whose organisers cannot fill rooms and streets, and sometimes jails on short notice with ordinarily non-political people in support of political demands is no mass movement at all. Organisers and those who judge the work of organisers must learn to count. 

A progressive mass movement is inconceivable without a prominent place for the energy and creativity of youth. The movements in 1952, 1962, 1966 and 1969 for the upright causes of our people were spearheaded, and often led by young people. Any mass movement aiming at social transformation must capture the enthusiasm and energy of youth, including the willingness of young people to engage in personally risky behaviour. A mass movement consciously aims to lead politicians, not to be led by them. Mass movements are civilly disobedient, and continually maintain the credible threat of civil disobedience. Bangladesh’s people remain in remarkable, consistent agreement on political issues, a shared commonality of views that holds strongly across lines of gender and age. A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. It makes politicians into followers. It truly happened in our country.

Sadly, the born of Pakistan consisting two Provinces – East Pakistan and West Pakistan in 1947 appears to have been a false dawn. Because we, people of Eastern Province,constituting54% of Pakistan’s total populationwho continued to be considered as second-class citizens for more than two decades by the West Pakistani rulers.Because the government machinery including banking and financing were generally controlled by West Pakistanis and discriminatory practices very often resulted. Bengalis found them excluded from playing the significant role despite we were Pakistan’s majority population.

One of the most divisive issues confronting Pakistan in its infancy was the question of what the official language of the new state was to be. Pakistan’s first Governor-GeneralJinnah yielded to the demands of refugees from the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrated to Pakistan, who insisted that Urdu be Pakistan’s official language. Speakers of the languages of West Pakistan–Punjabi, Sindhi, Pushtu, and Baluchi–were upset that their languages were given second-class status. In the-then East Pakistan, the dissatisfaction quickly turned to violence. The Bengalis of East Pakistan constituted a majority (54 percent) of Pakistan’s entire population. Our language, Bangla (then commonly known as Bengali) has different script and literary tradition.

Jinnah visited East Pakistan on only one occasion after independence of Pakistan. He willy-nilly announced in Dhaka that “Urdu shall be the state language of Pakistan”which was not accepted by our people and it encountered serious resistance from us. On 21stFebruary,1952, astrong-boned demonstration was carried out in Dhaka in which students demanded equal status for Bangla. The police reacted by firing on the crowd and killing two students. A memorial, the ShaheedMinar, was built later to commemorate the martyrs of the language movement.

Awami League headed by BangabandhuSheikh Mujibur Rahman had always been an ardent Bengali nationalist. He began to attract popular support from Bengalis in the-then East Pakistan. He put forward his Six Points that demanded more autonomy for the Provinces in general and East Pakistan in particular. He was arrested in April 1966, and soon released, only to be rearrested and imprisoned in June the same year. He languished in prison until February 1969 as the main accused of the Agartala Conspiracy Case.

Pakistan’s Punjabi dominated army in search of the elusive purity and to perpetuate its hold on power structures encourages the majority Punjabi population in its misadventures. In pursuit of power, the bogey of threat from India was conjured. In schools children were indoctrinated to hate Bengalis. Therefore, the genesis of the Pakistan’s Fault Line lies in the diabolically engineered mindset that created multiple fault lines and conflated into one deep and divisive nature of politics and abominable demeanor toward the Bengali people. They always artfully used our Religion-Islam to affright us. The February 1952 movement by our people aimed to establish Bengali Language as one of the state language in Pakistan and very soon it transformed into a mass movement and it rose to its peak on 21stFebruary of the same year.

It will not be exaggerated to articulate that Ekushey February (21st February) role-played as one of preludes to the creation of macrocosm for establishing Bangladesh. The first major setback to Pakistan occurred 24 years after inception when it lost 54% of its population in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and almost half of its territory in 1971. Their foxy use of religion could not act as effective glue due to the insatiable avarice the Pakistan’s Punjabi Army displayed in its refusal to share legitimate power with the eastern wing.

With millions of refugees pouring into India in 1971, Pakistan made its position in East Pakistan untenable, and India was compelled to initiate positive action at our call and in support of our just cause. Indian Army promptly withdrew from the soil of Bangladesh from the miseries and atrocities being perpetrated by the western wing of Pakistan on its own people. Thus Bangladesh was born in bloodshed and came into existence on 16th December, 1971.In 1950s, Hans J. Morgenthau, the then Director of Center for the Study of American Foreign Policy at University of Chicago, in his book ‘The New Republic’ had observed, “Pakistan is not a nation and hardly a state. It has no justification, ethnic origin, language, civilisation or the consciousness of those who make up its population. They have no interest in common except one: dissembling fear of Bengali domination. Pakistan’s establishment, therefore, must realise that its possible vivisection, due to its flawed policies, dealt a fatal blow to the very so-called Islamic cause, that it purports to countenance and guide.

In 1966 the Bengali leadership of Awami League (AL) headed by MaulanaBhasani and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were treated badly by the Pakistani leadership and the Agartala conspiracy was unearthed flighty where India helped AL leadership to conspire to break Pakistan. However, no Bengali speaking people were found who could credibly stand as witness against the AL leaders held in prison in this matter. Therefore, Pakistani military rulers were forced to release SheikhMujib from confinement and Mujib declared 6-points for the equal treatment of East Pakistanis and the famous 6-points were incorporated in the Election Manifesto of AL for all-Pakistan based Nation Election held in 1970 and these 6-points formula became the focal point and MAGNA CARTA for the emancipation of the Bengali people.

AL could mobilise whole of the Bengali people to stand behind it and then the General Election of 1970 came where AL got absolute majority by winning 297 seats out of 300 seats and Pakistan People’s party headed by Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto got majority in West Pakistan, but not enough seat to become the Prime Minister since the population of West Pakistan was 55 Million and East Pakistan was 75 Million. Bhutto then started conspiring in collusion with the-then military president General Yahya Khan to make sure that BangabandhuMujib couldn’t form the government in the Centre and become the PM of Pakistan. This foolhardy decision of Bhutto and Yahya nexus was the last nail in the coffin of One-Pakistan with two wings (East & West). On the evening of 26th March 1971,Pakistani military arrested BangabandhuMujib and then started with their infamous genocide on un-armed civilians of the-then East Pakistan.

India was all along helping our Freedom Fighters (MuktiBahini) with all types of help, but covertly. When on 4th December 1971 Pakistan declared war on India and the people of Bangladesh, then only the Indian soldiers with their tanks and heavy equipments came to the help of our MuktiBahini who were fighting by their own till that date. After 12-days of fighting the Pakistani Army surrendered to the Joint forces of India-Bangladesh command.

21st February is a memorable day for people of Bangladesh. This is the day when, 67 years ago today, in 1952, the seeds of Bengali Nationalism and building of Bangladesh were sown. As a matter of fact, the majuscule 21st February Language Movement of 1952 acted as a prelude to the creation of Bangladesh. This is a solitary event in the world history that a sovereign and independent country was born in 1971 based on a nation’s mother tongue.Ekushey February (21st February) has taught us not to bow down to any sort of oppression. Let us pay our tribute to the fallen heroes of our Language Movement and the able leaders who did their best to the sacred cause of our people and mass people who actively participated in this august movement.

-The End –

The writer is a senior citizen of Bangladesh, writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.