VIEW FROM PAKISTAN
'Invading' to regain one's own territory By Khaled Ahmed The state of Pakistan has perhaps finally reacted to loss of its territory to Al Qaeda with the military operation launched in Khyber Agency on June 28, 2008.
One says 'perhaps' because the 'political enclave' may decide to 'break away' and renege on the commitment made to the army that it will stand behind the operation.
Last time the army got involved in the Lal Masjid Operation the political party in power got divided over it, and Al Qaeda was able to isolate the commando group involved in storming the mosque in Islamabad and subject it a suicide-bomber attack with no one in Pakistan mourning for the martyred commandos.
The problem now facing Pakistan is that once a state tolerates loss of territory, getting it back is possible only with an invasion of the said territory.
The 'invasion' itself then begins to entail its own consequences, one being the hostile reaction of the population now living under another 'pax'.
Pakistan lost its territory to foreign invaders; now its army has to become an invader to get it back.
Commanders of the 'lost territory': Dr Farrukh Saleem ( The News , June 29, 2008) has outlined the extent of the lost territory around Peshawar: 'Haji Mangal Bagh Afridi controls most of what is west of Peshawar.
Dara Adam Khel, a mere 35 kilometres south of Peshawar, is controlled by Baitullah Mehsud's loyalists.
Charsadda and Shabqadar, both less than 30 kilometres north of Peshawar, are controlled by Commander Umar Khalid, TTP's (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) leader in Mohmand Agency'.
Outside the Peshawar region, there is more lost territory, and the operation will not be complete unless this 'hinterland' is won back too.
Dr Saleem writes: 'South Waziristan now belongs to Baitullah Mehsud.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the Taliban supreme commander in North Waziristan.
Commander Umar Khalid is the boss in Mohmand.
That's some 20,000 sq-km of physical Pakistan terrain'.
The Tribal Areas are bound to get whatever is left of Pakistan into trouble with the rest of the world.
Almost three 'theoretical models' of invasion have become applicable to the situation.
Foreign intervention or war of reprisal: 'Loss of territory' or 'loss of effective control' of the Tribal Areas lays Pakistan bare to invasion because of cross-border infiltration of Al Qaeda and its warlords into Afghanistan.
There is the first aspect of 'loss of sovereignty'.
JS Mill, whose theorising has contributed to international law, forbids invasion of a sovereign state aimed at making it internally benign.
All internal change, he thought, should be 'self-determined'.
But this ban becomes weak if a 'community' wants out of the sovereign system.
In Pakistan's case, the lost territory is becoming home to a growing community wishing to opt out of the benign state.
The next aspect is that of intervention after evidence of threat from a state to a sovereign territory outside becomes available.
This evidence is being carefully gathered and saved as a part of future case-making against Pakistan.
The third aspect is that of pre-emptive invasion, based on the observation that Pakistan, by reason of its loss of control, poses a future threat to the region.
One is not talking here of law but of practice.
One can see a regional consensus developing against Pakistan, counting within it states like India, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and even friendly Turkey.
Out of these, Russia will react to Chechen terrorists being trained and sent into Dagestan; Uzbekistan will react to IMU's terrorists being trained and sent to Tashkent.
China will possibly keep quiet but tacitly support a reprisal attack because of the training its Uighurs receive in Waziristan.
Mangal Bagh governs the 'lost territory': Paramilitary forces, whose personnel warlord Mangal Bagh used to take for ransom freely, moved on June 28, 2008 into the Khyber Agency in the neighbourhood of Peshawar and destroyed the warlord's house and made his 'hundred-thousand strong' army flee from its strong-hold.
What started three years ago and swelled into a near autonomous state is finally being challenged by the state of Pakistan.
It will be adjudged to be a late operation by historians and blame will be apportioned to the rulers of the day.
Warlord Mangal Bagh fled to Tirah, the high altitude valley that Pakistan was ever proud of calling a tribal no-man's land.
He became the ruler of Khyber after killing those who resisted him.
He got his income by imposing heavy fines on the local inhabitants for petty neglect of pities and began recruiting his army.
The syndrome that surfaced in Khyber is the same as appeared in South Waziristan and Swat: intimidation followed by 'empowerment' of those abandoned by the state of Pakistan as soldiers and suicide-bombers of Islam.
When his 'government' became too big for Khyber's capacity to generate revenues to pay for it, Mangal Bagh descended on Peshawar, cherry-picking rich parties in borderline Hayatabad for extortion, then threatening the rich of Peshawar into paying him big cash.
The snowballing of his business of death gave him the charisma he needed.
As he killed innocent people in the Agency, people owing allegiance to his 'Islamic order' increased by the day in the NWFP and in other parts of the country.
He began courting the TV channels when he saw that the rest of Pakistan too was ready for the plucking.
Establishing a state for Al Qaeda: A hundred years ago a water-carrier Batcha Saqao arose in Afghanistan, holding aloft the banner of Islam, and actually toppled the throne in Kabul to establish his rule there.
The only difference today is that in Pakistan, 20 years of jihad, allowed by the state itself, has softened it for adventurists.
The sacrifice made by Pakistan for jihad was not spiritual but political: an unwise abdication from its internal sovereignty.
Jihad brought Al Qaeda to Pakistan as the generals sought 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan.
The warlords of the Tribal Areas gain sustenance from the umbrella control of Al Qaeda which can supplement the income of anyone who has exhausted his capacity to live off the retreating authority of the state and the helplessness of the citizens the state has abandoned.
There are other more lethal 'losses' to consider, however.
What all these Al Qaeda warlords - who call themselves the Taliban - know may not be a part of our consciousness.
They know that they have conquered the minds of the rest of Pakistan and its political elite through their methods of intimidation.
Baitullah Mehsud suspended all peace talks with the army and declared that he will attack Sindh and Punjab.
The politicians cringed.
They will have to decide whether to support the government in this action or hang on to the reprieve they won earlier this year by dismissing the war in the Tribal Areas as 'not our war' and by focusing on the lawyers' movement where they even swore to lay down their lives for the sake of democracy in Pakistan.
In a way, leaders are leaders today because they live under the 'pax' of Al Qaeda.
Will the army be stabbed in the back again? The possible response will be patterned like this.
The politicians and the TV channels will disapprove of the military operation and will expect that as Baitullah Mehsud strikes in Punjab he will let them off the hook because of their 'neutrality'.
The basis of this disapproval will be their interpretation of the operation, which will go like this: the Americans have imposed another war on Pakistan and the PPP government has succumbed to it and is now guilty of killing innocent people.
The national 'reneging' on the operation might come in the middle of July when the PPP and the PMLN move towards their 'divorce' on the issue of the judges.
By then Mr Nawaz Sharif will have seen the lay of the land in the post-operation reactions.
There will be the All-Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) threatening to start its own Long March inclusive of violent dharna .
More importantly, there will be the lawyers' movement to be watched for its potential for the kind of violence its leader Mr Aitzaz Ahsan has vowed during his tour of the United States.
A 'divorce' will benefit neither the PMLN nor the PPP.
But it will benefit Al Qaeda.
Both parties are firmly grounded in popular support.
The PPP alone might find the weight of 'national disapprobation' too much to carry on its shoulders.
On the other hand, if the PMLN were to come to power after a mid-term election, the challenges it will have to face and overcome will be unprecedented, making it virtually impossible to rule without becoming unpopular.
And after both the PPP and the PMLN come to grief because they could not pull together, the vacuum will be filled by Al Qaeda.if an international invasion to 'save Pakistan' has not happened by then.
-(Courtesy: The Friday Times) There's life after HIV/AIDS By Anjulika Thingnam Samom Sorokhaibam Thoibi Devi or Thoibi, as she is called, can understand the anguish of Rani, 36, an AIDS widow who until a short while ago struggled to earn a living for her three little ones by selling 'pakoras' (fried savouries) by the roadside.
Thoibi, 36, is an AIDS widow, too.
With two young children and no family to call her own, she had long been a victim of the stigma and discrimination that comes with the illness.
But since 2005 she has been trying to better the lives of others like her, serving as the General Secretary (GS) of the Manipur Network of Positive People (MNP+) in Thoubal district unit.
But Thoibi's life as an AIDS widow has been traumatic to say the least.
This is her tale.
"When I learnt that my husband, Ibosana, was hooked on drugs, I had an argument with him.
Subsequently, our quarrels would become violent," recalls Sorokhaibam, who, as a young bride worked as a weaver and farm labourer to support her husband and family.
Thoibi and Ibosana got married when they were 19.
Due to the frequent heated arguments their marriage went through a rough patch and Thoibi chose to go back to her maternal home.
But, she soon returned as her husband was ailing and needed care.
"We lived in a room in Imphal (state capital), and rented out cycle rickshaws for a living.
For a while we were happy.
But then he had a relapse...
it was around the time I was expecting my second child," she recalls.
The couple decided to return to Wangjing, in Thoubal district, only to discover that Thoibi's brother-in-law had usurped their land and house.
It was with local community intervention that the couple was able to build a new house on the land.
Unfortunately, despite wanting to make a fresh start in their home, Thoibi's troubles continued to dog her.
Ibosana was plastering the bamboo walls of their new home with straw and mud when he fell seriously ill.
A visit to the Voluntary Counseling and Test Centre (VCTC) at RIMS hospital in Imphal - where the couple went for testing - confirmed his HIV-positive status.
Shockingly, Ibosana concealed Thoibi's status from her and continued to have unprotected sex with her, beating her up if she declined.
"I refused one night...
he beat me so badly that my kneecap was fractured.
Fed up with life, I tried to hang myself but I couldn't even stand up due to the pain in my legs," she recalls.
In the midst of the domestic crisis, her in-laws decided to boycott the couple.
With no support, Thoibi was left to care for the ailing Ibosana and make ends meet.
The familial - and even societal - discrimination lasted much after her husband's death.
Ibosana died when he was just 26.
"I was so traumatised by the stigma that accompanied my husband's death (in April 1998) that I couldn't bring myself to step out of my own house...
and within its four walls I was losing my mind and strength," recalls the widow.
"One day I was cooking in the kitchen and my two young daughters were studying by my side.
Suddenly, one of Ibosana's cousins barged in and dragged me out by the hair, abusing me - all because someone mentioned my name in a family argument.
Yet, the degree of suppression I had endured had sapped me of the courage to defend myself.
I once again tried to kill myself," she says.
Her daughter's cries alerted everyone and Thoibi's life was saved.
She was then accused of trying to defame the family by trying to take her life.
But it wasn't as if they were helping her to live either.
"I did manual labour for about three years after my husband's death to feed my family.
On one side of my house was Ibosana's younger brother and on the other was his cousin's house.
Both families were on bad terms with each other.
They didn't speak to me either," she says.
In 2001, three years after her husband's death, Thoibi took the test once again and was declared HIV-positive.
On the advice of the counsellors at the test centre, she began interacting with the MNP+ head office in the Yaiskul area of Imphal.
Meeting up with other women helped her come to terms with her situation.
Yet, the discrimination and accusations continued, with her in-laws maligning her character.
"When I went for Indian Network For People Living with HIV/AIDS (INP+) programmes, my husband's relatives accused me of going to search for a 'son', meaning that I was prostituting myself.
I thought disclosing my status would make things better.
But things only worsened.
They banned me from taking water from the family pond, stopped my thoroughfare through their courtyard and even threw the empty medicine bottles lying around at me.
They said I intended to spread my sickness to their children," she narrates.
Undeterred, Thoibi began to organise awareness programmes in Thoubal, encouraging HIV-positive women to come out in the open.
Thoubal with a total land area of 514 sq.
kilometres and a population of 41,149 (2001 Census) stands second to Imphal (Imphal east and Imphal west districts) in the HIV-positive sero-surveillance tally with 2,309 cases as per the February 2008 Epidemiological Analysis report of the Manipur State Aids Control Society (MSACS).
The total number of HIV-positive people in Manipur is 28,917.
Largely a result of Thoibi's mobilisation, MNP+ Thoubal now has 230 women among its members who are over 400 in number.
Thoibi has individually approached and coaxed AIDS widows to declare their HIV status, join the network and learn to relive their lives.
Exemplifying the impact of Thoibi's efforts is Rani, who is now an executive board member of MNP+ Thoubal and an outreach worker for the Access to Care and Treatment (ACT) Project of Action Aid, an NGO.
It was on Thoibi's insistence that she disclosed her status and joined the network.
When she was selling 'pakoras', Rani's daily earnings were only around Rs 100-200.
Now, she draws a monthly income of Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 (US$1=Rs42).
"Today, my eldest daughter has completed her high school.
That, for me, is achievement enough," says Rani proudly.
"The fact that I have been able to help other women like me...
is what makes me the happiest," says Thoibi, who is also joint-secretary and state women coordinator, Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), Manipur.
The network has representatives from nine districts in the Manipur and Sugnu area.
Thoibi has also aided many other women to become self reliant.
As the GS of MNP+ Thoubal, she has been running income generation programmes - like food preservation, weaving, embroidery and traditional mat weaving - for HIV affected and infected women.
Most women previously used to work in Self Help Group (SHG) units, but as they found the fare to and from the unit an additional burden, now they are encouraged to work from home.
Thoibi also contested for 'panchayat' (village council) elections last year but lost by a minuscule margin of 14 votes.
She says, "Nothing pleases me more than the fact that I am helping others to realise that there is life after HIV/AIDS." -(Courtesy: Women's Feature Service) ATMA comes calling By Anju Shalla 'Anjlal' To ameliotrate the condition of its farmers, the government of J&K from time to time tries to introduce novel plans and programmes at the grass root level.
If it was T&V in the late eighties, this time it is ATMA - Agricultural Technology Management Agency.
If Trainings and Visits programme was to teach and impart latest technology to the farmers, this new concept seems all about managing that technology.
Expectedly the experts have realised that 20 years of T&V are long enough of time to dessiminate technology from lab to land, hence a need for its management now.
After loitering from door to door with all those D-plots, minikits, polyhouses, schemes for pump sets the field functionaries i.e.
JAAS of Agricultural department can now boast of spreading latest scientific technology and innovations about farming to every nook and each corner of Jammu province.
Today every farmer knows about fertilizer close, hybrid variety, timely sowing and line sowing; the peasant who knew only "Goli khad" can now exactly call its chemical name.
The concept of "off-season" vegetables and flower cultivation giving better returns has finally made in-roads into their scheme of things.
In a nutshell, methods and means of latest agriculture know-how seemingly has travelled far and wide.
What is needed now is to manage this technology in earnest manner so that an poor farmer reaps its harvest to the greatest possible extent.
ATMA to me is the real answer for this purpose.
Those researched and worked over this concept have done a tremendous task and devised a multipronged and multifarious strategy to tackle farmer's problems at his/her field itself.
It is in this backdrop that three districts viz Jammu, Doda and Rajouri have been selected for the implementation of this programme in the first phase on a trial basis.
The satisfactorily results of these trials/experiments, as and when comes, can be extended to each and every household of rural Jammu.
The first step in the implementation of this programme is the collection of basic data from the selected villates on the basis of which future plans and projects can be made for the over all development of that particular village.
For this a thorough survey is to be done about that particular piece of land in terms of its geographical area, total no of families, no of farm families, cultivable area, cultivated area, fallow land, forest land, pasture land, soil type, no and type of holdings, literacy rate of people, road connectivity, market facilities, transport facilities etc.
is to be gathered.
Not lagging behind has to remain horticulture, animal husbandry and veterinary, floriculture, forestry departments, sericulture etc etc a la! every single department has to contribute towards the formulation of village devleopment plans.
In other words, all the departments have to revolve around Agriculture Department as it peg.
Hence co-ordination and cohesion between all the sister concerns can be deemed as other name/meaning of ATMA.
In this connection, a training programme was organised by Department of Agriculture at Krishi Bhavan, Talab Tilloo in which all the subsidary wings too participated.
The programme was conducted to train all the concerned officials regarding collection of data for the purpose.
Participating in the training I felt little disappointed as the resource person from SKUAST-J seemed little less prepared for the occasion.
The Valley of questions fired by the learners were hardly replied to the satisfaction.
My intention here is not to criticise the trainers but to lay emphasis that such wonderful programme needs much more seriousness and sincerity on the part of higher officials lest it too gets lost into oblivion like all other programmes.
If the basic exercise of survey and sampling is even 98 percent accurate (20 percent margin of error can be expected in such large hush-hash) only then "need based" and "true to requirement" plans can be chalked out.
It is never the plan which lacks the "soul", but always it is the implementation which brings with itself the differences and disparities and hence finally the abortion of scientific creativity.
I'd like to request all those connected with this programme to put their bit whole heartedly and honestly so that a golden opportunity for the farmers is not lost.
At the same time I'd request Dr.
Gupta the National Resource Person, ATMA to come up with minutest details regarding ATMA through his writeups in different news papers so that officials like me are well taught.
Remember its just the beginning; we've to carry the mission of "farmer upliftment" to new heights and ATMA can be a stepping stone in this direction.
So let's see ATMA come calling and hope we all especially the officials of Department of Agriculture are fully trained and versed to reply to its calls.
*(The author is a freelance journalist and an official in the Deptt.
of Agriculture presently posted in Sub.
Gwynne Dyer Column Malaysia: Deja Vu all over again Reading the first reports about the accusations against Malaysia's opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, I had to check the date at the top of the page.
Has there been a time-slip? Is this file ten years old? For Anwar to be accused of sodomy again, ten years after he last challenged the position of Malaysia's prime minister and ended up in jail for sodomy (a crime in Malaysia), stretches the notion of coincidence to the breaking point.
Ten years ago the prime minister was Mahathir Mohamad, the long-ruling autocratic leader who had made Anwar his deputy prime minister.
The two men fell out over economic policy and Anwar's too-obvious ambition, so he was charged with corruption - and, for good measure, with sodomy.
His credibility had to be destroyed, and so a former employee was persuaded to lay a complaint against him.
Anwar is a married man with six children.
That does not mean that he could not be guilty of homosexual rape, but there were many questionable elements of the case, including the fact that he was beaten almost to death by the national chief of police in person after he was arrested.
Nevertheless, Anwar was convicted and sent to prison.
His political career seemed over.
Mahathir finally retired at the age of 78 in 2003, and the courts overturned Anwar's conviction for sodomy the following year.
He was freed from jail, but because the corruption conviction was not also quashed, he was still banned from running for office for five more years.
The opposition coalition had come to see him as a leader, however, and his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, became the head of the opposition in parliament.
Then, early this year, Malaysian politics went into overdrive.
In the March election, the ruling National Front lost the two-thirds majority in the national parliament that it had held for the past forty years, emerging with a narrow majority that could easily crumble if only a couple of dozen of its members defect to the opposition.
As they well might, given the way Malaysian politics is played.
Both the ruling National Front and the opposition alliance led by Anwar are coalitions of parties representing Malaysia's three main ethnic groups, Malays, Chinese and Indians.
To some extent they are just the "ins" and the "outs" - many leading members of the opposition coalition, like Anwar himself, once belonged to the National Front, but were disappointed in their ambitions - but some of the opposition parties also want to overthrow Malaysia's entire ethnic settlement.
The dominant population in most of what is now Malaysia is the Malays, a seafaring people who converted to Islam in the 15th century.
Under British rule, however, huge numbers of Chinese and Indian workers were imported - and their descendants now account for 40 percent of the country's 26 million people.
The immigrants quickly came to dominate the economy, while the Malay majority remained mostly rural, less well educated, and much poorer.
Malay resentment erupted into bloody race riots that almost tore the new country apart in 1969 - and so the New Economic Policy of 1970 gave preference to Malays for government jobs and contracts, university places, and business licenses.
Malaysia has prospered greatly since then - but the National Front that was created to preserve this deal was always in power, and the country was not really a full democracy.
Much time has passed, however, and last March's election showed how much has changed.
The new state government in Penang cancelled the Malay preference rule as soon as it took power last March, and in Kuala Lumpur last month Anwar Ibrahim claimed that thirty National Front members of parliament were ready to defect to his coalition, which would give the opposition a majority in the national parliament.
Moreover, the legal ban on Anwar's participation in public life expired in April, and he was about to seek a parliamentary seat in a by-election.
He might have been prime minister by September.
It would have been a revolution in Malaysian politics.
Then suddenly last week, a 23-year-old man who volunteered to work for the opposition during the election earlier this year, and then became an assistant to Anwar, accused him of sodomy.
Anwar immediately took refuge in the Turkish embassy, fearing that the next step would be assassination.
Anwar left the embassy again after getting a promise from Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that he would not be harmed, but he could be arrested at any time.
The National Front government, even if it did not set the whole thing up, certainly plans to let it play out.
When Badawi was asked what he thought about Anwar's denials, he said it "was common for an accused person" to claim he was innocent.
This is a very dangerous game.
The blood and fire of 1969 seem far away from the prosperity of modern Malaysia, but it was the pro-Malay preferences of the 1970 deal that made it stable.
Now that deal has to be reshaped into something less unfair to the minorities.
Malaysia can do it the easy way, or the hard way.
It may choose the hard way.
*(Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries).
Do no harm By Suhail Masoodi Some time back I attended a seminar organised by "KOSHISH" a local NGO on community care or institutional care for orphans.
As a student of this sector I was expecting to learn new things on this important topic from the esteemed speakers, but alas that didn't happen.
While listening to many speakers on the subject I understood we have to do a lot of home work before we engage with it seriously.
It has been rightly said "little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
A superficial knowledge about things will not help us to achieve the mission of helping orphans.
One may be the jack of all trades but surely one cannot be the master of all.
We can speak for hours and hours on a topic, but without any proper expertise one cannot do justice to it .In the American medical system there is term called "Do no harm" which means if you do not have expertise on a particular subject, you can sometimes do harm unconsciously.
We in Kashmir mostly do harm without having an understanding of the concerns which we seek to address.
Here I am not going to talk about our medical system, but our NGO system, where we call ourselves, professional social workers, development experts, child rights experts, human rights experts or what not, without having any proper training in these fields.
ÿIn any intervention, lack of proper expertise often leads to more harm than good.
The manifest example of this kind could be found during 2005 earthquake, where we created a begging culture in the earthquake affected areas by making people habitual of taking relief.
I remember a day in the aftermath of the earthquake when I was coming down from Kamalkote Uri, a girl hardly 7or 8 years old waved at me.
I asked my driver to stop the car.
No sooner had we stopped, she forwarded her hand for relief (relief melay ga).
I was shocked to see a young girl turn to begging in the wake of relief efforts carried out by Kashmiri civil society.
Later I was to encounter many a young beggars in the same area.
A new and young breed of beggars had cropped up after the quake affected areas had been swarmed by troupes of NGOs to undertake relief operations.
Back to the earlier point of community care or institutional care, I heard speakers arguing whether we needed to support orphans in their respective homes or in orphanages.
Most of the speakers supported community care and argued that they (orphans) should be kept in their homes where their needs could be taken care of.
I find myself in agreement with the same argument, but the question that arises is do we have resources to support an orphan at his/her home? Is our society capable of catering to the needs of orphans? Technically, if a child has lost only one of his or her parents, he or she is not an orphan.
Only if he/she has lost both of his or her parents then only he/she is called an orphan.
Since ours is a patriarchal society, the male being the head of the family, if some body lose his/her fatherÿ he/she ÿis called an orphan.
If the same kid has lost his or her mother, he or she would not consider an orphan.
So to define it more clearly it is a matter of economics and social system.
The classification may be seen to hinge more on economics than on any other criterion since most of the orphans come from poor family backgrounds and their mothers tend to be usually housewives and illiterate.
So, only financial assistance to these kids will not solve their problem.
We need to take a family as unit and support the whole family rather than an orphan in the family.
Because supporting only an orphan in a family will not help us to reach our goal.
Moreover, we need to build a community based system, where educated people from the adjacent localities will make regular visits to these families to check the progress of the kids.
It has been observedÿ those orphans who are being supported in their homes usually lack the literacy culture as the families are not educated.
So members of our society can fill this gap by making regular visits .
Some people argue that there are more number of orphans in Chechnya, Palestine and many other conflict-hit areas than Kashmir .Why then orphanages were not created in these places? The answer is simple, the countries like Palestine, Chechnya etc are much ahead of us in literacy, economic development and community care.
Their average literacy and average household income is much higher than ours.
So they didn't have to negotiate huge problems regarding handling these kids .In Palestine or Chechnya, a motherÿ is largely able to provide all sort of necessary assistance to a child, be it in terms of education or in any other critical realm but same couldn't hold true for mothers of Kashmiri orphans.
As we have seen in our orphanages most of the kids are from very poor households' .The ones who have better economic conditions live in their homes.
One of the biggest draw backs of our NGO system is: while making strategies for projects and programs we look at symptoms and not at the problems.
We want quick fix solutions to every major problem .We are not able to develop goal and time bound strategies for our projects.
We don't look at projects critically.
Besides our own drawbacks, NGOs accept whatever project comes from their donor agencies, irrespective of whether the program can be fruitful at the ground level or not.
Most of the times projects and strategies are formed in Delhi, Europe or the U.S devised for their own local settings and implemented in toto in Kashmir.
The organisations should have a bottom up approach, but in Kashmir we tend to take a top down approach.
Projects should be formed and implemented at the grassroots level.
It is the people on the ground who understand the needs and problems of the locals in a better way than somebody located thousands of miles away and largely unaware of the socio-economics dimensions of a far away region.
Most of our NGOs fail to develop a sustainable program strategy, proper exit strategy, good planning, and clear cut field domain of work.ÿ ÿ There is no transparency of funds in NGO sector in Kashmir.
Hardly any NGO makes their monthly and yearly expenses public.
No doubt NGOs are answerable to their donors, but they are answerable to the target group community as well.
Target group here does not mean if an NGO is working in Uri, they are answerable to the people of Uri only, but they are answerable to the whole Kashmiri community.
Inspite of their drawbacks there are agencies like Vigilance, Crime Branch and other organisations to monitor the functioning of government departments, but we do not have any such independent organisation to monitor the functioning of NGOs.
Be it local, Indian or an international NGO, we need to build a system where functioning of all organizations can be checked to ensure transparency and accountability.
We have seen surveys done by some Indian and international NGOs in Kashmir which are totally distorting.
Conflict and peace-building are being sold to gain personal interests.
For example, according to a survey done by an International NGO, 50 percent of youth in district Anantnag are drug addicts.
What is the authenticity of the survey? On the basis of samples collected in few villages one cannot make sweeping generalisations about one of the most populous districts of the Valley.
Surveys are being done to fetch more and more money from donors.
Some believe there are one lakh orphans, some contend that there are fifty thousand orphans in Kashmir and some claim the number of orphans to be around 2 lakh.
We don't know the authenticity of these reports.
There are thousands of NGOs in Kashmir, majority of them have been created by government or government run agencies.
These so called NGOs supposedly fetch money for the development of Kashmir .Where is this money going? Nobody seems to know.
Most of the times money is donated for the Kashmir region as it is the worst conflict hit as compared to Jammu and Ladakh regions.
But unfortunately people running these NGOs ÿinvest this money for the development of Jammu and Ladakh regions.
Problems don't end here.
Some NGOs even go further, spending hefty amounts of money on various research and development projects which don't yield any effective results.
The position of many orphanages in Kashmir is somewhat similar.
They too are not ready to share their expenditures.
Moreover, if you are a Kashmiri you are not allowed to meet orphans in most of the orphanages in Kashmir.
However, people visiting from foreign countries are welcomed in these orphanages by their managers.
SUGGESTIONS: In Kashmir NGO culture is very nascent and people are not much aware about their scope, functioning, roles, source of funding etc.
So civil society needs to come forward and define the scope and functioning of NGOs.
It has been seen mostly after the 2005 earthquake that most of the NGOs are being dubbed as Christian missionaries, which is not true.
There is no doubt there may be NGOs which aim to spread Christianity, but not all the NGOs can be bracketed in the same category, as has been perceived by most of our maulanas.
Most of the times government funds meant for development are lapsed because projects proposals do not justify the purpose and equally fail to justify the outcome of the program /project.
A government official disclosed in a workshop organized by IMPA for the capacity building of NGOs, that thousands of project proposals are rejected as they are not written professionally.
So we need to train people in Project designing, Monitoring and evaluation to reach our goal effectively International and national NGOs need to build capacity of local NGOs to pay the way for local people to change their lives according to their wishes and needs.
It is the local people who understand the situation in a better way.
We have seen in the ÿaftermath of the 2005 earthquake some NGOs distributing lipstick, mineral water and other luxury items in Tanghdar, Kupwara.
So to start work in a particular area or region, we have to have a good knowledge of the culture, topography, demography, social inhibitions.
Without keeping these factors in mind we would end up harming a community instead of helping them.
We need to have goal oriented and time bound projects and programs, which will help us to check whether we are reaching our goals in stipulated time or not.
We have seen some international NGOs working here from last one or two decades without ÿproducing any substantial results.
ÿNGOs need to be time bound and specific.
Many NGOs are shifting from one sector to another.
Some times NGOs consider themselves parallel to the government.
It is not easy to replace the government.
Even if it is, one should not try to.
Otherwise they tend to overstretch their domains and as a result they are not able to do justice with the particular issue.
A biggest example of specific and goal oriented project undertaken can be that of Mohammad Yunus who established Grameen bank (an organisation established for the sole purpose of providing micro-credit loans to poorest of the poor in Bangladesh).
Yunus gave 27 dollars to 42 hardworking skilled people to start their business, with an agreement that they will pay him back.
It was not a big deal for Yunus to donate this money to these poor people but he didn't want to build a begging culture, unlike most of our NGOs.
After many disappointments from different quarters, he planned to establish his own bank and thus he laid the foundation of Grameen bank on October 2nd, 1983.
Grameen bank works now in more than 46,000 villages, through 1,267 branches and over 12,000 staff.
The bank lent more than 4.5 billion dollars.
They have now started giving loans to beggars to help them come out of begging and start selling things.
Had Mohammad Yunus switched from one project to other he would not have reached anywhere.
So our NGOs need to be focused to reach their goals.
We need to develop the strategy to be effective in our work in a way so that we are not doing harm unintentionally.
Conclusion There is no doubt that there are some NGOs in Kashmir who have been doing a commendable job for the upliftment of the needy ones in our society.
Some NGOs have played an important role for the rehabilitation of earthquake affected families in different parts of Valley.
NGOs in Kashmir have been working in odd conditions, under the threat from many sides in the conflict.
At the same time many NGOs have been hijacked by different people and organisations to further their personal interests.
It is high time that NGOs in Kashmir work more positively, transparently and with a clear cut strategy so that people will not look at them with suspicion and stop giving this noble profession a bad name.
Some NGOs in Kashmir are known for money swindling, nepotism, shady, unproductive what not.
Hope they would turn a new leaf and prove to be agents of a positive and dynamic social change.