Ceasefire in Lebanon: Sooner Or Later?

The ceasefire agreement in Lebanon has many holes in it sufficient to drive many Israeli tanks through. This agreement is clearly a diplomatic slight of hand. Everyone thinks they got something from the agreement, but clearly there is no teeth, no enforcement provisions, and parties involved, especially Israel, will do whatever they want until the peacekeeping force is in place.
Israel for it's part is grabbing the high ground all over south Lebanon anticipating an extensive mop up of Hizbullah fighters while the peacekeepers get organized. Then, if necessary, the Israelis will put peacekeepers at risk to gain sometime to complete their mission to wipe out Hizbullah south of the Litany River. While the "ceasefire" will be accepted Monday by the Israeli government, in actuality, it's days if not weeks away.
Jerusalem Post

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701 Friday evening, calling for a cessation of hostilities between Hizbullah and Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will recommend to the cabinet that it accept the UNSC resolution at its weekly meeting Sunday. The agreement was expected to go into effect by Monday morning.


However, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman told the UNSC that unless the means to enforce the resolution were to be defined, "We will be back [in the UNSC], if not in a week, then in a month or a year." He warned that Hizbullah would be embolded by the United Nations' lack of decisiveness and would undoubtedly be resupplied with even more deadly weapons.


The resolution authorizes the deployment of 15,000 UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon in support of Lebanese army forces, which are to move into the region and replace Hizbullah in parallel with a withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel is not required to withdraw until the deployment of UN and Lebanese forces begins.

Reuters.com

Hizbollah said on Saturday it would abide by any U.N.-backed ceasefire in Lebanon, but would resist Israeli troops expanding their offensive in the south. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shi'ite Muslim guerrillas, said Hizbollah would cooperate with Lebanese and U.N. troops due to be deployed in south Lebanon under a Security Council resolution adopted on Friday to end the month-old war. "Once there is an agreement to stop the hostilities or the military operations, the resistance will abide by it," Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast on Hizbollah's al-Manar television. But he said Hizbollah had the right to resist any Israeli soldiers who remained on Lebanese soil.


Despite the U.N. resolution's demand for a "full cessation of hostilities", the Israeli army pushed deeper into Lebanon and air strikes killed up to 20 people on Saturday. Helicopters lifted hundreds of Israeli troops into the south as part of an expanding offensive launched even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has backed the U.N. vote. Olmert was expected to ask his cabinet to approve the resolution on Sunday. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the final resolution was a victory for Lebanese diplomacy.


[...]Israel's top general said the offensive would go on until it was clear how any U.N.-backed ceasefire would take effect. "We will continue to operate until we achieve our aims," Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz told reporters.


Bush said the U.N. resolution aimed to "stop Hizbollah from acting as a state within a state, and put an end to Iran and Syria's efforts to hold the Lebanese people hostage to their own extremist agenda".


French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy made clear in an interview with Le Monde newspaper that the mission of the larger UNIFIL would not include disarming Hizbollah by force. "We never thought a purely military solution could resolve the problem of Hizbollah," he said. "We are agreed on the goal, the disarmament, but for us the means are purely political."


[...]Relief officials said Israel was still denying permission for aid convoys to reach distressed civilians in south Lebanon.


[...]At least 1,061 people in Lebanon and 124 Israelis have been killed in the war that began after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

The winds are changing in Israel. The right-wing continues to push for a costly war. However, public opinion is waivering, clearly not wanting to sacrifice casualties for an unwinnable war. Perhaps they are beginning to recognize they can no longer dominate their neighbors if their neighbors can't control their own population.
Irish Independent

AFTER four weeks basking in almost unwavering public support, Ehud Olmert yesterday awoke to a fusillade of criticism from the Israeli press. Opinion polls questioned the Israeli Prime Minister's handling of the Lebanon war and one front-page headline even demanded: "Olmert must go."


Hawkish generals had reportedly been pressing a reluctant prime minister to mount a larger offensive to the Litani river, even as diplomats talked of reaching the basis of a negotiated solution. Mr Olmert and his military commanders were attacked from the right for putting their faith in airstrikes to stop Hizbollah's rocket attacks instead of flooding Lebanon with troops early in the campaign, and by others for planning a huge escalation that would probably incur hundreds of troop casualties.


A poll in 'Haaretz' newspaper found only 48pc of respondents were satisfied with Mr Olmert's performance - down from 75pc. Only 20pc believe Israel is winning the campaign.


This was directly contradicted by another poll, in the rival 'Yedioth Ahronoth', which found that 66pc believe that Mr Olmert has performed well and 78pc think that he was right to go to war, rising to 87pc among the country's Jewish majority.


Crucial to Mr Olmert's future is who will be able to claim they won after the fighting ends.

British Thwart Terror Plot

Dubya has got us tramping all over Iraq, and sending bombs to the Israelis to bomb the Lebanese to the stone age and the terrorists are organizing in London. Al Qaeda and its pretenders are our enemy, not the Iraqis or the Lebanese. All we are doing is recruiting more suicide bombers by killing women and children in Iraq and Lebanon.
WaPo

British authorities said today they had disrupted a "major terrorist plot" to blow up passenger flights between the United Kingdom and the United States with liquid explosives, prompting a full-scale security clampdown at U.S. and British airports and a cascade of delays in trans-Atlantic flights.


London's Deputy Police Commissioner, Paul Stephenson, said 21 people had been arrested in London and in Birmingham, England, after a months-long investigation into what he said was a plan for "mass murder on an unimaginable scale." Peter Clarke, chief of the London police department's anti-terrorism branch, said the investigation reached a "critical point" last night, requiring immediate disruption of the plot, the arrests and the imposition of heightened security measures.


[...]British authorities said the threat involved terrorists who aimed to smuggle liquid explosive material aboard airplanes in hand baggage, including timers and detonators that could be assembled in flight. In July 2005, terrorists attacked London's subway and bus system with bombs made of acetone and peroxide mixed in plastic containers. Those attacks claimed 52 lives and injured hundreds of others.


Reid said the operation was aimed at bringing down "a number of aircraft" -- reportedly at least ten -- "through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life." The plot, he said, "was a very significant one indeed." Chertoff said the plot, which he described as "sophisticated," was indicative of an al-Qaeda operation, but, he said, U.S. and British officials "cannot yet form a definitive conclusion" about al-Qaeda involvement. Chertoff said the attackers planned to carry explosive material and detonation components on planes "disguised as beverages, electronic devices and other common objects."


[...]American held three London-bound morning flights, one each from Chicago, Boston and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. To balance those cancellations, the airline also dropped three afternoon or evening flights scheduled to travel from London to those U.S. cities, Hotard said.


In Northwest Washington, a tight cordon of police security was thrown up around the British Embassy compound on Massachusetts Avenue.

Partition of Iraq?

Doublethink Dubya and his band of idiots continue to chant "We are going to win!" while the Iraqis are facing the facts. It's time to talk about partition in Iraq.
Los Angeles Times

Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.


Shiites have long advocated some sort of autonomy in the south, similar to the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave in the north, with its own defense forces and control over oil exploration. And the new constitution does allow provinces to team up into federal regions. But the latest effort, promulgated by Cabinet ministers, clerics and columnists, marks the first time they have advocated regional partition as a way of stemming violence. "Federalism will cut off all parts of the country that are incubating terrorism from those that are upgrading and improving," said Khudair Khuzai, the Shiite education minister. "We will do it just like Kurdistan. We will put soldiers along the frontiers."


The growing clamor for partition illustrates how dire the country's security, economic and political problems have come to seem to many Iraqis: Until recently, the idea of redrawing the 8 1/2 -decade-old map of Iraq was considered seditious. Some of the advocates of partitioning the country are circumspect, arguing that federalism is only one of the tools under consideration for reducing violence. But others push a plan by Abdelaziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. Hakim advocates the creation of a nine-province district in the largely peaceful south, home to 60% of the country's proven oil reserves.


Sunni leaders see nothing but greed in the new push — the Shiites, they say, are taking advantage of the escalating violence to make an oil grab. Iraq's oil is concentrated in the north and south; much of the Sunni-dominated west and northwest is desolate desert, devoid of oil and gas. "Controlling these areas will create a grand fortune that they can exploit," said Adnan Dulaimi, a leading Sunni Arab politician. "Their motive is that they are thirsty for control and power."


Still, even nationalists who favor a united Iraq acknowledge that sectarian warfare has gotten so out of hand that even the possibility of splitting the capital along the Tigris, which roughly divides the city between a mostly Shiite east and a mostly Sunni west, is being openly discussed. "Sunnis and Shiites are both starting to feel that dividing Baghdad will be the solution," said Ammar Wajuih, a Sunni politician.


Critics scoff at the idea that any geographical partitioning of Sunnis and Shiites will make the country safer. Some observers warn that cutting up the country's Arab provinces into separate religious cantons would be as cataclysmic as the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947.

It is very likely the ethnic cleansing will begin in earnest all over Iraq. Millions of people will be immediately at risk because they happen to live on the wrong side of the partition. And as you can see in the above map, there are a lot of key areas under dispute. The migrations and killings are just beginning. Civil war is just around the corner.
However, Turkey will be very concerned about a Kurdish state on it's borders, especially one that includes Kirkuk, a major oil center. The Kurds claim it as it's capital. While there remains a diverse mix of ethnic residents, Turkman represent a large minority. They will be supported by Turkish special forces already in Iraq in position.
The Kurds have the most effective fighting force in Iraq second only to the US. They will not let go of their hold on Kirkuk without a Turkish intervention, no one else has any hope of stopping them. And the Turks have threatened to do just that.
The only hope for Iraq is for it to retain a veil of federalism to hold the country together, however tenuously, with resource sharing with the Sunni minority. The likelihood of success seems quite remote.

Israelis Sack Military Commander in Lebanon

Israel sacks it's Lebanon military commander. The Israeli public buys the logic that obliterating Lebanon is justified. Though a few Israelis see that this was an unnecessary war.
WaPo

Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, was named "to coordinate the Israeli army's operations in Lebanon," according to a statement. It said top army officials retained "complete confidence" in Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's Northern Command, who has led the assault on Hezbollah since it began July 12.


But some Israeli television reports described the arrival of Kaplinsky, who had previously commanded Israeli forces in the West Bank and Lebanon, as "an impeachment" and said it was the first time since 1973 that the top command had been reshuffled during a war.


Although the Israeli public has strongly backed the four-week air and ground campaign, criticism had recently begun to mount about the way it was being conducted. Commanders have said the assault is aimed at pushing Hezbollah away from the border to prevent it from launching rocket attacks on Israeli towns, but the group has carried out its deadliest barrages of the war in recent days, including attacks that killed 15 civilians and soldiers Sunday. More than 160 rockets were fired at northern Israel Tuesday, though no deaths were reported.

The Radicalization of the Muslim Streets

Moderate voices such as Juan Cole and Jamal are becoming increasingly shrill and radical in their repudiation of Israel and the Bush Administration as well as the hands off treatment in the US press. There silence on the facts is deafening. But the world is increasingly enraged.
Opinionated Voice

This was one authors response to Israel’s violent expanse into the Middle-East which has is being ignored by the West. The invasion itself is a serious breach of international law, and major war crimes are being committed as it proceeds, which some say is motivated by oil. Accordingly, many Muslim scholars and politicians have urged Arab and Islamic states to cut ties with Israel in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples currently under seige.


Another strategy would be to withhold oil from the West until appropriate action is taken to ensure a ceasefire. A strategy that probably won’t be used as the House of Saud has just about got as far as sending “salutations to the resistance of Lebanon”. When will the oil-rich rulers of the Middle-East stop worryng about maintaining their profits and start worryng about their brothers that are dying?

The government of certain western countries are indeed ignoring it all. The US press is talking about victims at least, more than they did for Fallujiah. But they aren't talking about the stunning facts about the million refugees, nearly one thousand dead and thousands injured, $20 billion damage, all to root out two to three thousand fighters?? Crazy ideas like these start making more sense. "Paranoia strikes deep" : Stephen Stills That is frightening indeed.
Many other countries, including Muslim countries are giving little more than lip service to calling for a cease fire. A former religious teacher of Osama bin Ladin is calling Hizbullah the "Party of Satan" and forbiding prayer for them.
So far only Iran has called for an oil embargo.
I have to wonder if the US and Israel are hoping for a Shia-Sunni war, thinking that is the only way to take down Syria and Iran a notch or two. The US sometimes appears to be switching sides in the Iraqi conflict, taking on the Badr and Sadr coalition that holds power and hunts Sunnis.
There is a loose cannon in the US White House.
But the most cynical view of all comes from Newsweek. As this author sees it, Israel is willing to flirt with genocide to beat a new attitude into the Lebanese.

It’s a strange sort of deterrence that demands repeated wars. Nonetheless, Almog does have a point. Destruction and bloodshed can change a nation’s attitudes. Germany and Japan emerged from World War II ready to reconsider their futures—but that was after most major cities in both countries had been razed, millions of their people slaughtered and the traumatized survivors left starving in the rubble. By historical analogy, then, Israel might succeed in changing the Shia mindset, might succeed in provoking a sea change in Lebanon's politics. But only if Israel is willing to commit destruction in Lebanon on a World War II city-busting scale.


So the Lebanon campaign has, I would argue, brought Israel face to face with the appalling logic of deterrence by conventional means. There is an historical precedent: ancient Rome. Rome, too, had a strategy of deterrence by cost. To work, Rome found, the cost had to be horrifying. In a struggle lasting 120 years, Rome fought three wars against Carthage, its main rival in the Mediterranean. The great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, even penetrated northern Italy and inflicted on Rome a defeat of strategic proportions at Cannae. Rome realized that only total destruction would end the contest: Scipio took Carthage, slaughtered most of its inhabitants and sold the rest into slavery, razed the city and sowed its fields with salt. Scipio’s savagery did actually deter, over the next several hundred years, other ambitious Mediterranean powers. It failed, however, against the Germanic tribes that ultimately swarmed across Rome's frontiers. Why? Because they, like Hizbullah, were nonstate actors.


That leaves me to contemplate Yasir Arafat’s comment when the 1973 war ended with the Egyptian Army surrounded in the Sinai and the Israelis at the gates of Damascus. “You forget,” he told me after I remarked that a military solution didn’t look too promising for the Arab nations. “The Crusades took 200 years.” What time frame is anyone contemplating here?

Who will win in a 200 year conflict? The people with the least to lose. As I said before, the rules of war have changed. The US and Israel are living in the dark ages of the 20th century when might meant right.

Israel Bombs Civilian and Infrastructure Targets

Israel claims it's attacking Hizbullah targets in south Lebanon. In fact they are specifically attacking civilians and infrastructure with the result of impoverishing the Lebanese people. One million have been left homeless, certainly one thousand dead and thousands maimed and injured, overwhelmingly civilians.
All this is justified by rooting out 2 or 3 thousand Hizbullah fighters?
This is typical even of US mainstream press coming out Lebanon.
WaPo

The nine ambulances were parked outside the Lebanese Red Cross. They couldn't leave -- neither by the road north, which was bombed, nor the road south, which was shelled Monday. Blasts thundered across the Tyre sky, and rumors flew with almost equal vigor: No one could walk outside after 10 p.m., no one should stand in the street in groups bigger than three.


That left Qasim Chaalan, a gentle Red Cross volunteer, with a problem: He had promised to take Khadija Tajj al-Din, a 74-year-old woman, in an ambulance from the Jabal Amel Hospital to a school where her relatives had sought refuge, a trip of a couple of miles.

Juan Cole has increasingly harsh words for the Bush Administration, along with many others.
Informed Comment

Human Rights Watch investigations do not bear out the excuse that the high civilian casualty rate is because of Hizbullah hiding among civilians:

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.

[...]Just from observing eyewitness news accounts from Lebanon, I had come to the same conclusion. The Arab American Institute condemned the Bush administration for its insouciance over the Qana massacre. The Israelis have done $2 billion worth of damage to Lebanon. I guess that is fair, one billion for each soldier captured by Hizbullah.

Worse yet, other formerly moderate Muslim voices, such as here, have become increasingly radicalized and shrill about the civilian casualties.

The Case For Impeachment

Judiciary Committee member Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), has not had much luck getting his Republican collegues to pay attention, so he rallied an effort of committee Democrats and their staff to put together a comprehensive report of what appears to be a systematic effort of the Bush Administration to circumvent law, the constitution, and any sort of accountability for these actions with the intent to justify the war in Iraq with exaggerated and false information, punish whistleblowers protected by law, commit torture, and engage in systematic violation of civil liberties for American citizens and non-citizens alike.
Conyers is no long calling for impeachment. He says in a quote in an article at TPMmuckraker

"We're not trying to play Department of Justice or prosecutor. We're trying to put [these charges] on the record before too much other history blurs this," Conyers told me. "[We are] making sure that what we see as at least a couple dozen violations of federal statute do not go unnoticed. . . . We're trying to make sure that we have the fullest record of this, so that this won't be the work of industrious historians ten years from now."

Here you can find the full report. Here is an excerpt from the summary:
The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance: Final Investigative Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff

In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration; and approved domestic surveillance that is both illegal and unconstitutional. As further detailed in the Report, there is evidence that these actions violate a number of federal laws, including:

• Making False Statements to Congress, for example, saying you have learned Iraq is attempting to buy uranium from Niger, when you have been warned by the CIA that this is not the case.


• The War Powers Resolution and Misuse of Government Funds, for example, redeploying troops and initiating bombing raids before receiving congressional authorization.


• Federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, for example, ordering detainees to be ghosted and removed, and tolerating and laying the legal ground work for their torture and mistreatment.


• Federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals, for example, demoting Bunnatine Greenhouse, the chief contracting officer at the Army Corps of Engineers, because she exposed contracting abuses involving Halliburton.


• Federal requirements concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence, for example, failing to enforce the executive order requiring disciplining those who leak classified information, whether intentional or not.


• Federal regulations and ethical requirements governing conflicts of interest, for example, then Attorney General John Aschcroft ’s being personally briefed on FBI interviews concerning possible misconduct by Karl Rove even though Mr. Rove had previously received nearly $750,000 in fees for political work on Mr. Ashcroft ’s campaigns.


• Violating and the Fourth Amendment, for example intercepting thousands of communications “to or from any person within the United States, ” without obtaining a warrant. The Stored Communications Act of 1986 and the Communications Act of 1934, for example, obtaining millions of U.S. customer telephone records without obtaining
  a subpoena or warrant, without customer consent, and outside of any applicable “emergency exceptions.


• The National Security Act, for example, failing to keep all Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “fully and currently informed ” of intelligence activities, such as the warrantless surveillance programs.

This Administration Hides It's Incompetence Behind Secrecy

This Administration has pretty effectively destroyed the credibiilty of the President in classifying anything that makes them look bad or may lead to being held accountable. Finally GOP Senators are noticing.
New York Times

The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee lashed out at the White House on Thursday, criticizing attempts by the Bush administration to keep secret parts of a report on the role Iraqi exiles played in building the case for war against Iraq. The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said his committee had completed the first two parts of its investigation of prewar intelligence. But he chastised the White House for efforts to classify most of the part that examines intelligence provided to the Bush administration by the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group. “I have been disappointed by this administration’s unwillingness to declassify material contained in these reports, material which I believe better informs the public, but that does not — I repeat, does not — jeopardize intelligence operations, sources and methods,” Mr. Roberts said in a statement issued Thursday.


One completed section of the Senate report is said to be a harsh critique of how information from the Iraqi exile group made its way into intelligence community reports, said people who have read the report but spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still classified.

The most basic human right

rama
Background
“A very creditable achievement, of which you can be justifiably proud.”
Thus concluded Dr Yusuf Samiullah, Engineering Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK govt, in late-1997. He had just completed an inspection tour of environmental improvement works in slum clusters of Howrah, the historically neglected, and now-blighted industrial city across the river from Calcutta, India.
This work was done through a community-based pilot project. The objective of the project was to initiate and demonstrate community participation in taking up much-needed local environmental improvement tasks; and to derive lessons on the opportunities and difficulties confronting such efforts, so as to enable appropriate re-structuring of municipal infrastructure projects.
This pilot project was being taken up as the concluding part of the work of the Social Development group within the Calcutta Environmental Management Strategy & Action Plan (CEMSAP), a project of the state govt. of West Bengal in India, supported by the DFID. The role of the project’s social development group had been to study the impact of environmental degradation in metropolitan Calcutta on the poor, low income and vulnerable sections; and to develop strategies and action plans to address their environmental needs and priorities within city environmental improvement programmes.
The group was instrumental in emphasising that lack of access to adequate supplies of drinking water, compounded by highly inadequate sanitation, was the key environmental problem confronting Calcutta. It was pointed out that the impact of this fell disproportionately on the poor and low income. And that this was a result of the overall disempowered status of such communities. A Community Environmental Management Strategy and Programme was therefore developed and written, which called for the re-design of conventional civic infrastructure projects so as to integrate active participation of the affected communities and their grassroots organisations. The pilot project in Howrah slums was an important means towards taking such action to the ground. Three wards under the Howrah Municipal Corporation, with large slum populations, were assigned for conducting the project.
Several months before his inspection visit, Dr Samiullah had attended a meeting with councillors and officials from Howrah, and community representatives, to discuss plans and procedures for taking up the pilot project in slum neighbourhoods. Impressed with the enthusiasm and promised cooperation of the councillors and community representatives, Dr Samiullah gave his approval to the proposed project and increased its budget to Rs 1 million.
Over the next 7 months, an intensive process of grassroots action was taken up. Community-level meetings were organised, with poor households, local youth and neighbourhood organisations. Local volunteers were deployed in a range of functions. And ultimately, a number of tubewells (hand-pumps) were installed, a tubewells maintenance squad was organised, broken drains were repaired, and several toilets were constructed. And with the toilets lies a tale.
Service latrines
A ‘service latrine’ is a toilet that has to be manually cleaned out, by lowly sweepers. This is an arrangement that was widespread in old towns and cities across India. The image of a person carrying a basket of excreta on his / her head – had been the subject of a call to conscience by Mahatma Gandhi. But it was only in 1986 that the govt. of India finally enacted a law banning such ‘manual scavenging’. Local bodies had to ensure the implementation of this and a programme was subsequently initiated to provide a subsidy for the conversion of service latrines into sanitary toilets.
In 1993, the welfare ministry (which was responsible for enacting and implementing the Act) undertook a survey of the extent to which the law had been implemented in all the states of India. It was found that even the Chief Secretaries of many major states in the country were unaware of the existence of such a law.
The govt. also introduced a programme to be implemented through the urban local bodies to subsidise the conversion of these service latrines into sanitary toilets. This had been implemented for several years in Howrah. However, there were severe shortcomings in implementation. Service latrines continued to be in use on a massive scale in Howrah, with all the attendant adverse environmental health risks to the community and the conservancy workers (apart from the violation of the latter’s human dignity).
The problem was that in many cases, there were a large number of people using the service latrine. In the slums of Howrah, a plot would typically house 15-20 households, and over 100 persons would be using the latrine, typically a hole in the floor of a small raised cubicle-shed. The govt. subsidy scheme was, however, designed keeping a single (5-7 member) household in view. Septic tanks either did not exist, or were non-functional. The slum plots were congested with the hutments, leaving no spare space. Hence service latrines simply continued to exist and be used.
In some of the worst areas, the service latrines made the neighbourhood extremely foul and dangerous. These were the areas where the incidence of water-borne and gastro-intestinal diseases was high, with high infant mortality and morbidity.
Not surprisingly, it was emphasised by the slum communities and the councillors that proper toilets were the most vital need of the people.
Building cooperation, building toilets
To carry out the pilot project, a team was constituted, under my charge in my capacity as social development coordinator of the CEMSAP project. A field office was set up. Prodyut, a political activist cum social worker from the project area, with strong local roots and contacts, was employed to supervise field activity. Two social development professionals were recruited to handle the documentation and administrative aspects. And a couple of students were assigned field liaison tasks.
As coordinator of the pilot project, I was a possessed soul. After a tour through some of the slum localities, where one had to literally walk over a slush of excreta – I felt a flush of awakening. I felt my moment had arrived. While anybody would run far away from and shun such places – except if they had to live there – I decided to remain there, and address this problem of service latrines, come what may. I felt thrilled by the challenge. The apparent insolubility of the problem, its neglect, the foul environment, the revulsion of officials and authorities to engage with this, the unending rebuttals of habitual prejudice- and conflict-oriented perceptions – one of my senior project colleagues had opined “Decent people don’t go to Howrah” – all this only strengthened my resolve. I became completely alienated from the society and city I had been part of. Everything took on a mystic and mythic aura in my consciousness. The poor slumdweller living amidst excreta became my Daridra Narayan, God in the garb of the poor. I had found my God, in the shit. I had found the meaning and purpose of my life. And nothing was going to stop me. And Prodyut was there beside me, to help me in my work.
Problems, options and priorities were discussed with communities, their elected municipal representatives and Corporation officials. Assumptions and habitual perceptions – based on the existing corrupt and insincere institutional culture – were directed at me as coordinator. But I discerned and cut through all this, with my resolve, commitment and energy. The work was too serious to be left hostage to anybody. The project team was reorganised, and local community volunteers were taken on against a stipend.
The technical solution, under the circumstances, was a twin-pit latrine. This meant knocking down the existing toilet structure, cleaning up the spot, constructing two large, deep brick pits and erecting a multi-seat toilet shed block over the pits. The excreta would flow to one pit; the honey-combed brickwork would enable the liquid matter to be absorbed in the soil. After a year’s use by the dwellers, the first pit would become full. The excreta would then flow to the second pit, while the first pit would remain unused, awaiting organic decomposition of the excreta. After another year, the matter in the first pit would become inert soil, which would be removed and the pit’s re-use begun. The soil would be removed by the dwellers and used or sold as compost. And the second pit would then remain disused for a year; and so on. As the plot was very congested, space had to be created to accommodate the two large pits (needed because of the large number of users). Some huts would have to be shifted.
But it was found that it was clean toilets that the people wanted more than anything else. When it became clear to them that the project team did really intend to construct proper toilets - and had no other agenda besides this – they were prepared to do all they could to get this.
Meetings were held with all the households in each slum plot. Cost estimates were prepared for the proposed sanitary toilets. Households committed voluntary labour for the work and its monitoring. The landlord (principal tenant actually) was asked to contribute Rs 5,000 towards the total cost of each unit. A memorandum of understanding was drawn up and signed by the landlord and head of each household, and counter-signed by the local ward councillor. Local contractors were selected through public tender to carry out the work.
The pilot project budget covered the entire cost of constructing the toilets. But the govt. subsidy, of Rs 5,000 per unit, was to be retained by the project team; and this amount together with the landlords’ contributions was to be used to construct more toilets.
Over a period of less than 3 months, 10 toilet blocks were constructed spread over slum pockets of two municipal wards of Howrah. The maximum cost of a unit – under the eagle eyes of the project staff and slum households - was about Rs 22,000.
The lives of hundreds of people had been positively transformed. And very foul spots, in the midst of the metropolis, were rehabilitated. These toilets are all still in existence, in perfect condition, kept spotlessly clean by the proud slum households.
Howrah Pilot Project
But the story does not end there.
I had been commissioned to undertake research and write an article for a UK journal. As the subject of the article, I decided to focus on the existing degraded situation in a large Muslim slum within the pilot project, and outline a vision for community-led redevelopment. I saw this as a good opportunity to root myself in a specific place, and devote myself to actually initiating long-term community action, instead of thinking about such matters, or researching or writing about it. I worked on this simultaneously with the pilot project, employing slum youth to assist in field surveys and to lay the ground for a long-term intervention.
The pilot project was over and the field office was wound up. All the engineering works were completed on time, using every penny of the allocated budget to do as much as possible.
Inspired and spurred by the success of the project and the bonds of cooperation built up with the slum communities, Prodyut and I formed an independent organisation, Howrah Pilot Project (HPP). This would be based in Priya Manna Basti in Howrah, a century-old jute workers’ settlement, that was now home to some 40,000 people, mainly from labouring, Urdu-speaking, Muslim households. From here we would work with the slumdwellers, as concerned and capable citizens, to rebuild the city from the grassroots. HPP would be an organisation whose existence and work was sustained by civic and community consciousness and ownership.
The fee I received for my article provided the start-up fund for the newly-formed HPP to take up its work. I was also awarded a year’s fellowship which enabled me to devote time to the HPP.
Eliminating service latrines
This was August 1997, and the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. I felt that the best way to commemorate the occasion and to pay homage to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, was to work to eliminate service latrines from the slums of Howrah. We had after all found and demonstrated the solution to this apparently insoluble problem, which affected thousands of people, and was responsible for severe environmental health risks. I felt like a scientist who has made an earth-shattering new discovery, expanding the frontiers of knowledge and transforming human life. (As a 11-year old, I had read with rapt awe Eve Curie's biography of Madam Curie which my mother had presented on new year's day in 1972, with the inscribed exhortation: "Go through this book like a book worm & may it inspire you to great deeds.")
Through my close association and collaboration with specialists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who had also been part of the CEMSAP project, I was asked to join an international research study on environmental health and the urban poor, looking at Howrah slums. The research budget for this was provided to HPP and with this a full-fledged community empowerment programme, focussing on poor women and children, was initiated in PM Basti. The objective – to nurture and build grassroots capabilities and institutions to lead community upliftment and slum redevelopment.
A service latrine elimination programme was also developed by Howrah Pilot Project. Surveys were conducted in slum pockets. Plot-level meetings with households were organised. It was explained that though the pilot project was over, after the successful demonstration of the conversion of service latrines into sanitary toilets, it was now necessary to enable other similar slum households to also avail of this opportunity. The cost factor was explained. With the necessary cost likely to be about Rs 22-25,000 (in the maximum users case), and Rs 5,000 coming from the govt. subsidy and another Rs 5,000 from the landlord, the remaining Rs 12-15,000 would have to be contributed by the user households. It was suggested that this could be through a credit-financing arrangement with a housing finance company. Each household would begin paying something like Rs 50 per month immediately after the toilet was constructed, and repay for about 15 months.
After substantial effort, a leading housing finance company agreed to support this scheme. The loans would be in the name of Howrah Pilot Project, who would take responsibility for the whole venture. Through the CEMSAP project, I had become acquainted with some of the senior officials of the metropolitan development authority. Hence approval of the metropolitan development authority – who would sanction the release of the govt subsidy - was also obtained. They agreed to make available the subsidy for ten toilet units at a time, in advance, provided the programme was approved by the Howrah Municipal Corporation.
The scheme was detailed and submitted to the Howrah Municipal Corporation. One ward was to be taken up for complete elimination of service latrines in slums. And that would enable an appropriate city-wide scaling-up subsequently. HPP would take up, using its own resources, the crucial community organising role. A request was made to the Corporation for early release to HPP of the subsidy due for the 10 units constructed under the CEMSAP pilot project (as earlier authorised and agreed to), so that the work could be started.
A saga of inaction
Nothing happened.
Despite repeated efforts, over many months, and letters and meetings with officials – the service latrine elimination programme was a non-starter.
Much later, it became clear that this had been simply sabotaged by people within the Corporation. There was a happy and neat arrangement between officials and contractors, to appropriate the subsidy. A bogus toilet would be built – which would be non-functional immediately after. The subsidy was then approved, released and pocketed.
The subsidy for the 10 toilets constructed under the CEMSAP pilot project – remains unpaid. For several years HPP retained the landlords’ contributions, awaiting the Corporation’s approval and payment. Finally this was spent on its other community activities.
After about a year’s inaction, another attempt was launched. A proposal was submitted to the state environment department, in response to its public advertisement inviting proposals from NGOs for environmental projects. Based on the self-financing scheme developed earlier by HPP, this proposal requested modest support to HPP to organise the beneficiary communities, and more importantly, sought the environment department’s influence upon Howrah Corporation to initiate the programme.
Nothing came of that either. Notwithstanding Dr Yusuf Samiullah’s congratulatory feedback, with which this account began. Perhaps it had all been too easy then, happened merely because that was a govt. project and municipal involvement had been formally arranged.
Yet another effort was made a year later, with letters being sent to the 40-odd local bodies within metropolitan Calcutta, offering assistance in taking up service latrine elimination in their respective areas. There was no response, except from a small municipality. When we went there for a discussion, we were ultimately told: we are already doing all that’s necessary, there’s no poverty here, try elsewhere.
The story doesn’t end there either. Much water has flowed under the Howrah bridge since then. In early 2000, after severe flooding in slum neighbourhoods because of the choking of a major high drain in south-central Howrah, HPP initiated a community-led programme to clean and maintain the high drain. Detailed surveys were undertaken, with invited professional specialists assisted by local people. The approval in principle was obtained from officials in the govt. of India, as well as a UN agency, to support such a programme. However, the formal proposal for this support would have to be made by Howrah Corporation.
That is yet to happen. The high drain remains choked. When the situation became critical, some patchwork cleaning was done by the Corporation. A sanitary engineer invited by us who inspected the choked high drain told me: in any civilised society, if this kind of thing existed, it is sufficient basis for an arrest warrant to be issued against the mayor for criminal negligence leading to avoidable deaths and suffering. But here, such things are “normal”.
Conclusion
These are only a few examples from Howrah Pilot Project’s experience of the long, unending experience of denial and disregard from institutions that poor slumdwellers face.
But the work of HPP through its centre in Priya Manna Basti continues. Talimi Haq School, a non-formal school for poor and working children, was started in 1998 and this continues. (Talimi Haq means "Right to Education" in Urdu; and also "Truth is Learning". Al-Haq is one of the names of Allah.) In 1999, the school received a special award as a ‘school that cares’ under the aegis of a city newspaper. In 2003 and again in 2004, children from Talimi Haq School participated in an internet communication project on nature with children from schools in the UK . That enabled them to make many visits to the nearby Botanical Gardens (near the eastern end of the Grand Trunk Road).
A women’s spice-making enterprise has been successfully established, which today supplies a range of specialist spices or masalas (like biryani and chaap masalas) for export to America, Europe and Japan. A few slum youth, boys and girls, have gone through an intensive process of skill and leadership development and grown and matured as human beings. A number of volunteers from Calcutta have worked for varying periods and had a rich, transformative educational experience. A lot of goodwill has been created. The work has inspired similar grassroots efforts in other slum localities of Calcutta and Howrah. The whole programme is managed by trained community-based volunteers and its modest fund requirement are met through donations by the founders and other well-wishers, and occasional small grants.
The endeavour continues. The whole experience has been rich in learning for those involved. HPP is a live laboratory, to yield strategic, experience-based action knowledge on poverty and slum community development.
The CEMSAP pilot project had changed my life and Prodyut’s – but I had been personally reluctant to take this up, because after my failed experience of trying to work with others for social ends, I had implicitly slipped into a loner mode. Thus though I was constantly concerned about social questions, I didn’t actually have any truck with anyone, except inside my heart. In the planning phase of the CEMSAP project, I was working closely with other colleagues, but this was like a partnership, and the work was of an intellectual nature. But now, in the absence of anyone else being available to do this, I had to take up leadership and management of a concrete set of activities at the grassroots, and reach out to and relate in differing ways with diverse people. The crossing of the river, and going to Howrah – transformed my life, something I could never have even imagined just before that. Yet this was only something residing deep within me, the plaintive plea of my soul, that the Almighty entrust a poor Muslim child to me, to love and nurture.
Prodyut and I resolved and committed ourselves to devoting ourselves through HPP to PM Basti, come what may. Our early achievements through the pilot project looked on hindsight to have been deceptively easy. All the struggles during that short venture could not compare with the unending ordeal of institutional disregard that the HPP experience had been an apprenticeship and a harsh trial in. Working in a poor, degraded slum in Howrah, controlled by criminalised political cadre - patience, adaptation, and swallowing of pain is taught continuously.
An honest, selfless, idealistic, sincere social interventionist – is an aberration and a caricature in such an area of darkness. Poverty, conflict, social and environmental injustice – all degrade the human fibre, revealing man’s ugliest facets. But amidst poverty can also be found simplicity, trust, beautiful dreams and aspirations, and goodness, a fertile soil to plant and nurture a small sapling of conviction and responsibility. HPP is a small, quiet, cheerful island of hope in PM Basti.
Postscript
The right to defecate is perhaps the most basic human right, after the right to life. In an urban setting, life requires toilets. And human dignity calls for a hygienic, sanitary toilet. As a woman explained, if one had no food to eat one could go out and beg for some food; but could one beg for a toilet? Not having a decent toilet – made life a never-ending nightmare. Most of all for women. But evidently this is not at all a concern for many. They can carry on, regardless. While human dignity is abused, and little children die.

The Changing Rules of War

For millennia, the strength and weapons of the opponent in war usually made the difference. But, two times in the past 50 years, the most powerful military nation in the world has been fought to a standstill by rag-tag insurgents using easy to obtain reliable weapons, in particular, the Kalashnikov automatic rifle and the rocket propelled grenade. Now battle field rockets, a weak, unreliable weapon that has been in use for two thousand years, have been more successful than every before.
Now, the notorious army of the Israelis is suffering a similar fate for the second time, in the same country with the same foe. They hope that by destroying infrastructure, the means to fight back and killing and razing all buildings in a buffer zone along the border, they will prevent Hizbullah from firing it's rockets at them. They forget that they did the same thing in 1986, and by 2000, nothing was changed, Hizbullah was stronger than ever. Within five years, Hizbullah armed itself in unprecedented ways.
Modern countries are not willing to pay the price of war. Fanatics are. That is the reason that they will always win. Vietnam fell. Iraq will fall into civil war and fragmentation. Hizbullah will become the most powerful political force in Lebanon. They will rearm someday and send even more effective rockets into Israel. Fanatics are willing to sacrifice generations of their own people to the cause. Modern democracies shudder under a few casualties and the scream of incoming rockets.
The only way to defeat the fanatics is to deprive them of their basis of support. We must win the hearts and minds of the people of Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, all over the Middle East and south Asia if we hope to prevail. Bombing a country to the stone age won't help, it just delays the battle to the next generation and radicalizes the population to accept decimation to win. We in the west can not win that kind of battle. We are unwilling to accept the casualties of hand-to-hand combat every foot of the way and grinding oppressive occupation with a constant and increasingly effective insurgency.
WaPo

The strategy of Israel's (and America's) enemies today is to lure the military superpower into a protracted conflict. To accept the bait, as the Israelis did in assaulting Lebanon and as America did in Iraq, is to risk stepping into a trap. As Lawrence Wright says in his new book, "The Looming Tower," the master of this approach is Osama bin Laden: "His strategy was to continually attack until the U.S. forces invaded; then the mujahadeen would swarm upon them and bleed them until the entire American empire fell from its wounds."


The Israeli and American resolve in this grim summer of war should be: No more falling into traps. In the age of missiles, there's limited value in a "security fence" or "security buffer." The evidence grows that you can't achieve real security without negotiating with your adversaries, and you can't succeed in such negotiations without offering reasonable concessions.


For the Arabs, the opportunity of 2006 lies in the surprising success of Hezbollah and its leader, Hasan Nasrallah. Their resistance on the battlefield makes them more dangerous adversaries -- but also more plausible negotiating partners. Little in Nasrallah's past suggests that he will use his new stature and confidence to encourage indirect negotiations with Israel, but, as 1973 reminds us, the aftermath of war
can produce big surprises. U.S. officials recognize that Nasrallah is likely to emerge as the strongest political force in Beirut, and they hope he will make strategic choices that will build a stronger and more stable Lebanon.


This war is opening a door: Will the combatants have the good sense to walk through it? Will America have the guile to help them?

Snubbing Rice's initiative for Cease Fire, Olmert Will Widen Ground War

A forty-eight hour cease fire is supposed to allow civilians to escape. But of course there are no passable roads left and the young and infirm have no way to do so. So there will be more civilian casualties. While the number is at over 500, time will find many more under the debris.
Rice adds lip service to cease fire talks, while Israelis call up more troops. I suspect Olmert knows he has Bush in his pocket, that Rice won't get support from the President.
WaPo

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed Monday that there "will be no cease-fire in the coming days," and his top security officials unanimously approved a widening of Israel's military operations on the ground in southern Lebanon after a four-hour meeting that ended early Tuesday morning, government officials said.


The decision followed Israel's agreement Sunday to suspend air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours. About 12 hours after the suspension took effect, Israeli planes launched strikes in support of ground operations near Taibe. Israeli officials said they reserved the right to continue attacks to prevent an immediate threat. [Israel launched airstrikes against southern Lebanese border villages early Tuesday, hitting Bayyada and Mansoureh, the Reuters news agency reported, citing Lebanese security sources.] Hezbollah launched only four rockets into northern Israel on Monday, police and military officials said, a day after firing more than 150.


Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned to Washington Monday evening after vowing to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution this week aimed at ending the fighting. State Department officials traveling with her said the resolution would include a cease-fire and the "nearly simultaneous" deployment of international troops to a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Oil Blackmail Around the Corner?

Here is a scenario that I don't think too many people are thinking about. The tide of dissent within Arab countries will make it impossible for them to ignore Lebanon. Another oil embargo, orchestrated by Russia and Iran, even without Arab participation, would kick off a world wide recession.
PINR

As the war between Israel and Lebanon escalates, growing regional and world outrage may increasingly be channeled toward the United States -- the only country that has influence over Tel Aviv. This may encourage the world's three largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, to significantly reduce oil exports in order to increase pressure on Washington to rein in Israel's military actions. An oil export embargo undertaken by just Russia and Iran, which together account for 20 percent of the world's oil exports, would be much more effective at extracting a major policy change from the Bush administration than Syrian and Iranian missile strikes against Israel.


Economic data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on July 28 showed that economic growth in the United States is weakening. Because excess oil production capacity does not exist anywhere in the world, a coordinated reduction of oil exports between any or all of the world's largest oil exporters of just five percent would quickly send international oil prices toward $125 per barrel. An increase in oil prices of this magnitude could be expected to push the United States economy into recession. With the November mid-term Congressional elections in the United States approaching rapidly, those countries opposing Israel's military actions may soon act to cut oil exports and effect political change in the United States, touching off a global recession in 2007.

Israelis Massacre Women and Children

Civilians continue to died in disturbing numbers, truly becoming the pawns of Israel's and Hizbullah's war in south Lebanon. And Hizbullah is winning the hearts and minds of much of the world by appearing to be the brave victims standing up to the Israelis. Clearly, Lebanese civilians mean nothing to Israel or Hizbullah. They are simply cannon fodder in psychological warfare. Israel has miscalculated. They may win this battle, but they are losing the war and dragging the US through the blood.
AFP

Fifty-two people have killed, more than half of them children, in an Israeli air blitz on the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering outrage around the world and warnings of retribution for Israel's "war crime."


US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose latest Middle East mission was thrown into turmoil by the attack, she was "deeply saddened" by the loss of innocent lives and said it was time to "get to a ceasefire" in Lebanon but stopped short of calling for an immediate halt to hostilities on Sunday.


The raid on Qana, which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped under the rubble, was the deadliest single attack since Israel launched its devastating war on the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah 19 days ago. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime," demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh said had killed 750 people.


An AFP count has put the death toll at more than 500, while the United Nations has said around one third of the casualties were children. The 15-member UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting on the conflict later Sunday, with France circulating a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.


Israel expressed "regret" over the civilian deaths and ordered an inquiry but said it had warned residents to leave and pinned the blame on Hezbollah for launching rockets from the village. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was in "no rush" for a truce and told Rice that Israel needed 10 to 14 days more to continue its offensive against the Hezbollah, an Israeli government official said. In Beirut, a mob of angry demonstrators smashed into the UN building as thousands took to the streets in protest while Hezbollah and the ruling Palestinian Islamist militant movement Hamas both vowed revenge. "This horrible massacre, like the others, will not remain unpunished," said Hezbollah, which has fired off waves of rockets against northern Israel since the onslaught began.

Israel and Rice offer little more than lip service to the issue of massacring civilians.
WaPo

Rice will abandon her Middle East negotiations at least temporarily to return to Washington Monday, U.S. officials said Sunday. Rice will shift her diplomatic efforts to the United Nations, aides say. The U.N. Security Council is planning an emergency session this morning. "Her intention is to move to get this thing done in the Security Council," a senior State Department official traveling with Rice told reporters traveling with her.


Earlier, at a hastily called news conference, Rice said she was "deeply saddened" by the "terrible loss of life" and insisted the United States was working harder than any party to try to achieve a ceasefire. Rice said she learned of the attack during a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and reiterated U.S. concern about Israel's attacks on civilian targets -- a common refrain during Rice's diplomacy, reflecting U.S. frustration with Israeli targeting.

"Concern", "saddened"? I'm outraged the Bush Administration drags us through responsibility for some of the worst atrocities of the Israelis.

US Moving Towards Target for Both Sides In Civil War Iraq

Here is what our "allies" in Iraq think of us these days.
Los Angeles Times

In a sermon rich with bloody imagery and religious struggle, an influential Shiite Muslim cleric Friday condemned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's trip to Washington this week as a betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to his people at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aggressors.


Sheik Aws Khafaji intertwined the bloodshed in Iraq and Lebanon, calling it a design by Christians and Jews to defeat the Muslim world. He criticized Maliki's speech before the U.S. Congress and asked: "What forced you to eat with the occupiers? Is that your reward? You know more than anybody else that the car bombings, terrorism, explosions and bloodletting in Iraq are under the protection of Zionist-American plans."

Shia resistance to American troops is growing, according to US military leaders.
AFP

Bomb blasts echoed around Baghdad as sectarian death squads pursued their bloody work and the US military warned that it was facing stiffer opposition in formerly cooperative Shiite areas.


The US troops' most deadly foe remains Sunni insurgents -- four marines were killed in the mainly Sunni province of Anbar Thursday -- but the coalition is now drawn increasingly into clashes with powerful Shiite militias.


This trend is all the more ominous given that US commanders have decided to put around 4,000 additional troops into the mainly-Shiite capital to try to halt a surge in murderous bomb and gun attacks by rival sectarian gangs.

The US military's target in Baghdad includes the Shia death squads led by Iraqi government Interior Dept run by Badr Corps, and increasingly supported by Sadr's Mahdi army. But the Bush Administration insists it's not a civil war.
Newsweek

By most benchmarks, as one well-briefed Western analyst in Baghdad tells me, Iraq slipped into civil war "a long time ago." Some observers insist that the scope of the violence hasn't reached critical levels yet. U.S. and military officials in Baghdad admit that "tit-for-tat killings" are occurring, but on a limited scale. But what is "limited" about an estimated 6,000 civilians killed in May and June alone, according to a recent United Nations report on Iraq's violence? Or that some 27,000 Iraqi families had registered for relocation since February, according to reports from the Ministry of Displacement and Migration?


Bodies have been piling up at the Baghdad morgue at a clip altogether in line with an escalating civil war: 1,068 in January of this year; 1,294 in March; 1,595 in June. Altogether, the U.N report suggests that as many as 14,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the beginning of 2006. The vast majority of those deaths have been the result of "insurgent, militia and terrorist attacks ... with an increasing sectarian connotation." As a point of comparison, in the first years of Lebanon's civil war, when 1,000 dead per month made headlines, most people believed the conflict would be resolved quickly. But two years later, at the end of 1976, 35,000 people had died and everyone recognized that civil war was in full swing.


Politicians have artfully dodged the civil war question with fanciful language, calling it "sectarian conflict" or "civil strife." One senior Iraqi official went so far as to say "the language isn't important." Isn't it? The evasiveness calls to mind the politically correct characterization of the Balkan civil war as a "war of aggression." Or, more ominously, the shameful refusal on the part of the U.N. and the Western powers to recognize the Rwandan genocide for what it was. Only after the Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis with machetes did it become politically acceptable to begin using the term genocide. Civil wars don't just start in one day.


To be sure, it would be wrong to say that all of Iraq is at war. The Kurdish north is, at least for the moment, quiet and relatively stable, a world apart from the chaos of Baghdad. Similarly, much of the south is spared the ethnic hatreds and tensions of Baghdad. The Iraqi Army even took full control of one of the southern provinces recently, a fanfare of celebration for the Shia majority that lives there.


But for months, Sunni families have been fleeing the militia-dominated death squads in the nine Shia provinces of the south, heading north to Baghdad or other friendlier areas, leaving homes and friends behind them. And in the Sunni western desert, Shia are hated even more than the Americans. They are seen as purveyors of an Iranian agenda and accomplices in the despised American occupation. These facts lead to a simple conclusion: where there is even the slightest potential for sectarian conflict in Iraq these days, war on the very fabric of Iraqi civilization erupts. MORE

Some Republicans are been speaking out with courage about the Bush disaster.
WaPo

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) offered a sharp critique of U.S. Mideast policy yesterday, saying the United States must engage Syria and Iran and warning that a close alliance with Israel must not come at the expense of relations with the Arab and Muslim world.


Hagel, an iconoclastic Republican who has been considering a presidential bid in 2008, said lasting peace in the Middle East and security for Israel will come only from a regional settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a process he suggested has been neglected by the United States in recent years. "Look at where we are in the Middle East with no process," the senator said in an address at the Brookings Institution. "Crisis diplomacy is no substitute for sustained, day-to-day engagement."


Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has been critical of U.S. policy toward Iraq, also spoke soberly about the challenges ahead in that country, where he said there was "little good news." "America is bogged down in Iraq, and this is limiting our diplomatic and military options," he said. "The longer America remains in Iraq in its current capacity, the deeper the damage to our force structure, particularly the U.S. Army."

Bush Admininstration Leads a Media Circus to Support Continued Bombing in Lebanon

Bush has taken to his white horse in an apparent peace making role. This seemingly high road move is an orchestrated stall tactic to allow Israel to continue it's campaign of destruction in south Lebanon while minimizing the perception of US culpability. It may work in the US, but no where else. We are witnessing a media circus designed to maintain a modicum of credibility for the Bush Administration with the US voter. More doublethink from the Dubya.
International Herald Tribune

President Bush, vowing to turn conflict in the Middle East into a "moment of opportunity" for broader change, said today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be dispatched to the region on Saturday with a plan for a multinational force that would help Lebanon's army take over from Hezbollah in the southern part of the country. Mr. Bush spoke this afternoon at a press conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who called the conflict a "complete tragedy" with innocent Lebanese and Israeli lives lost, people displaced, and a "terrible setback" for Lebanon's democracy.

WaPo

En route to a new round of Middle East negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that she was encouraged by Hezbollah's general agreement to disarm and accept an international force in Lebanon, which she called a "positive step" that also strengthens the Lebanese government in the elusive search for a cease-fire. "Obviously we are all trying to get to a cease-fire as quickly as possible, so I'll take this as a positive step," Rice told reporters on her plane flying from Malaysia to a refueling stop in Qatar. "I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together."


Hezbollah signed on to the proposal "in principle" after negotiations Thursday with the government of Lebanon. But Hezbollah held out the caveat that more talks will be held after agreement is reached by the U.N. Security Council on an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and Lebanese government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.

• The central element --- and deal-breaker -- is disarmament of Hezbollah. But this does not have to happen before a cease-fire or even soon, U.S. officials say. The goal is to get a formal commitment and to outline arrangements, possibly to eventually bring members of Hezbollah's militia into the Lebanese Army reserves or in another capacity and to get their arms into a government-controlled depot.



• A large, robust and well-armed international force will deploy to initially help with humanitarian relief and refugees, but ultimately retrain and back up the Lebanese Army as it deploys throughout the country for the first time since the civil war erupted in1975, U.S. and European officials say.



• The release of two Israeli soldiers, whose abduction on July 12 triggered the crisis. Up in the air is still the prospect of an eventual release of some Lebanese or Palestinian prisoners held in Israel jails, European officials say. Hezbollah officials said a long-sought prisoner swap was its goal in kidnapping the Israelis. This kind of "no-deal deal," in which one side releases prisoners, claiming there was no deal, is followed by the release of prisoners by the other side at a later date.



• A sensitive issue still up in the air is the fate of Shebaa Farms, the last remaining disputed area on the border, say U.S. and European officials. It is on the corner of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which occupied it in the 1967 war. The United Nations considers the area Syrian territory but Hezbollah claims it for Lebanon, which Syria once -- but only once -- endorsed.



• A massive humanitarian effort and a donors conference are to be organized as quickly as possible to get Lebanon back on its feet. U.S. officials are deeply concerned about Lebanon's already troubled economy deepening the political and military instability.

This isn't a real proposal, it's designed to be rejected by the parties involved. Israel would never agree to Hizbullah fighters in Lebanese uniforms on it's border. Although Hizbullah has agreed in principle to disarming, they understand this is a stall and stand to benefit from the continued bombing. Syria has a veto also about the Shebaa Farms. The proposal for an international peace keeping force will take months to implement. Deployment will not happen until the fighting stops. That isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Meanwhile Israel rejects even a humanitarian ceasefire.
ABC News Online

Israel has rejected a call by the United Nations (UN) for a 72-hour pause in fighting in southern Lebanon to allow humanitarian aid to get to trapped civilians. The UN says the temporary cease-fire is also needed to enable relief workers to evacuate elderly, young and wounded people.


But Israeli Government spokesman Avi Pazner says the halt is not necessary because Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor to and from Lebanon. Mr Pazner says Israel is not blocking aid from reaching south Lebanon. "The problem is completely different," he said. "It is Hezbollah which is deliberately preventing the transfer of medical aid and food to the population of southern Lebanon in order to create a humanitarian crisis, which they want to blame Israel for." Senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir says a truce would be dangerous for his country. "We cannot accept a cease-fire with Hezbollah because this terrorist organisation would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone," he said.

This is so much war propaganda. While it's true that Hizbullah stands to gain from every civilian killed by Israel aggression, they aren't pullling the trigger. The scale of the damage tells all.
New York Times

The United Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been displaced, a giant number for a country of 3.5 million. “The scale of the problem is of an unbelievable proportion,” said Sami Haddad, the Lebanese minister of economy. “We have between 20 and 25 percent of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope with that?”


There is a nationwide problem of buildings and public works. The Lebanese school system is filled with people seeking shelter, according to Mr. Haddad, and school begins again in two months. With the vast scale of the destruction, even if the war stopped now, the country would still face a housing shortage for 100,000 to 200,000 people whose homes have been leveled, he said.


[...]On his two-hour drive, he saw several large convoys of refugees, all with white flags fluttering from windows. One had stopped in a grove of trees after having reached a relatively safe area. He asked the people where they were going. They said they did not know. “People seemed dazed,” he said. “Somebody crying. Somebody laughing for no reason.”


In the Tyre district, 67 villages with a population of about 275,000, less than a third of the population remained in the area, according to the mayor’s office. But in the past two days, between 600 and 700 cars have come out of the villages and now the count may be even lower.


In the early days of the conflict, a number of civilian vehicles were destroyed in attacks, mostly by Israel, so refugees began to move in convoys of dozens of cars. Early this week, two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances were destroyed in a missile attack in the village of Qana, wounding six people. An American visiting relatives in Lebanon was hit by rockets as he was trying to park his car in front of his family’s house to evacuate with a convoy arranged by the American Embassy.

Israel argues that Hizbullah hides behind civilians, justifying making nearly a million Lebanese refugees, and ultimately a quarter million homeless. Seldom do you find estimates of Hizbullah strength. Just how many fighters are there?
GlobalSecurity.org

The State Department’s 1993 report on international terrorism lists Hizbollah’s “strength” at several thousand. Hizbollah sources assert that the organization has about 5,000-10,000 fighters. Other sources report that Hizbollah’s militia consists of a core of about 300-400 fighters, which can be expanded to up to 3,000 within several hours if a battle with Israel develops. These reserves presumably are called in from Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs. The number of members involved in combat activity in southern Lebanon is under 1,000. But it has many activists and moral supporters. After the Israeli withdrawal Hizballah reduced the number of full time fighters to about 500, though estimates range from 300 to 1,200. There are also several thousand reserves, but these lack training or experience. Hizbollah’s militia is a light force, equipped with small arms, such as automatic rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and Katyusha rockets, which it occasionally has fired on towns in northern Israel. Hizbollah forces are shown on television conducting military parades in Beirut, which often include tanks and armored personnel carriers that may have been captured from the Lebanese army or purchased from Palestinian guerrillas or other sources.

Surely Hizbullah exaggerates their numbers. The most reasonable number is the one thrown around loosely in the press, several thousand. Several thousand Hizbullah militia members have fought the famous Israeli Army to a standstill for 2 weeks. It's not by military means it survives. Israel is unwilling to take the casualties needed to defeat Hizbullah on the ground. So they instead bomb from afar, feeling killing nearly 1000 civilians, maybe 10% are Hizbullah, to save Israeli Army casualties, driving nearly a million Lebanese from their homes and destroying the homes of maybe a quarter million.
Where in the world are these numbers justified? Truly, Israelis are willing to fight Hizbullah to the last Lebanese citizen. Killing maybe 10 civilians for every Hizbullah fighter is justified?
It's not justified, and Israel, the US and the War on Terrorism will pay for it in the next generation. Hizbullah is the new hero of the Palestinian cause. Even Al Qaeda recognizes it has formidable competition.
New York Times

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.


Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.


The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.


An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.


[...]The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish. “If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.” The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.


[...]There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.


But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960’s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.


Egypt’s opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.


An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.


After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.


“People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped,” Mr. Negm said in an interview. “I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: ‘Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!’ ”


In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders. “Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona, and public behavior also, to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states,” she wrote in an e-mail message posted on many blogs.


[...]Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah’s rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight. Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians. Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name. “It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine,” he said. “Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine.” Mr. Zawahri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. That was rather ironic, since previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiites Muslim as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.


But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. “Everyone will be asking, ‘Where is Al Qaeda now?’ ” said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists. Mr. Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah. “Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?” Mr. Rabbani said. “In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs.”

Now, it would appear that rumors that the Israelis want to settle with Hamas appears to have some truth to it.
Los Angeles Times

Israeli tanks pulled out of the Gaza Strip early Friday morning, ending an incursion that began Wednesday and left 30 Palestinians dead and a trail of damaged homes, crushed cars and uprooted trees. On the eastern edges of Gaza City's Shaaf district, deep trenches of churned earth surrounded by newly pockmarked buildings clearly showed the path taken by an estimated 50 Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers. "This used to be all olive and fruit trees," said Shaaf resident Yusuf Hamad, pointing to a wide patch of barren earth. The incursion targeted orchards used by militants for launching rockets over the border, the Israeli army said. Within hours of the tanks' withdrawal, the military wing of Islamic Jihad launched several rockets that landed near the southern Israeli town of Sderot and wounded two children, an Israeli army spokesman said.


Three Palestinians were killed Friday, including a 13-year old boy, and a man died of wounds incurred Thursday, bringing the total toll to 30 dead and at least 75 wounded over the last three days, medical sources said.

Israel Bites the Hand That Feeds It

Israeli Justice Minister shows just how much they believe they have a free hand from the Bush Administration to bomb Lebanon. The State Department is quick to deny this, but clearly Israeli Cabinate feels entitled to bomb.
BBC

The US state department has dismissed as "outrageous" a suggestion by Israel that it has been authorised by the world to continue bombing Lebanon. "The US is sparing no efforts to bring a durable and lasting end to this conflict," said spokesman Adam Ereli. Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon made the suggestion after powers meeting in Rome refrained from demanding an immediate ceasefire.


UK PM Tony Blair has arrived in Washington for talks on the crisis. His meeting with US President George W Bush comes amid growing pressure for the UK and US to join calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.


[...]In Israel, few people still speak of being able to neutralise Hezbollah, our correspondent in Jerusalem Katya Adler says. Instead Israel speaks of trying to establish a "secure zone" empty of Hezbollah fighters north of the border with Israel.


The Israeli government's announcement that it is calling up three divisions of reservists - said to number between 15,000 to 40,000 - suggests it is preparing for the possibility of a protracted war, our correspondent says.

Hizbullah May Succeed in Joining With Hamas Against Israel

Palestinians in Gaza are singing the praises of Hizbullah. Some Hamas leaders are expressing interest in negotiating with Israel only with Hizbullah at the table. Israelis are talking privately about settling now with Hamas to divide the causes. Abbas, now out of the lime light, is quietly attempting to broker a peace that now may be a long ways off.
Hizbullah has strengthened the hand of Hamas politically by sacrificing the blood of it's own people in south Lebanon. And public opinion in Islamic countries world wide swings to the "heroic Hamas". Hizbullah may well force the US to show its hand and prevent it from any brokering role in the Middle East because of it's carte blanche support for Israel despite 600 innocent civilian deaths in Lebanon.
Quite a sophisticated political hand if it works: "Bomb us into the ground and we'll return, stronger than ever!" The US and Israel maybe politically out of their league. We'll see.

Newsweek

As Hizbullah was holding its ground in southern Lebanon, Arab public opinion seemed to be coalescing around the group. At least some Israelis and Americans were beginning to wonder whether it might be a good idea to make a separate peace with the Hamas leadership in Gaza—attempting to break the tightening bond between Hamas and Hizbullah by working out a prisoner exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza. Indeed, such a deal seemed more likely today as Abbas told reporters that Shalit’s release may be imminent. Meanwhile, Hizbullah is still holding two other Israeli soldiers after capturing them in a July 12 cross-border raid that precipitated Israel’s attack on the group.


A senior Israeli security official, who did not want to be identified discussing sensitive negotiations, told me that he thought it was "in everybody's interest to sever as many connections as possible [between] Hamas and Hizbullah. Whatever we can do to weaken these ties makes sense." Daniel Kurtzer, who up until about a year ago was the U.S. ambassador to Israel, agrees. "I would do that deal first," Kurtzer told me. "You cannot, under any circumstances, allow Hizbullah to deliver Shalit."


[...]Some Hamas leaders were wary of striking a deal. "Nobody wants to negotiate without Hizbullah," says Mahmoud Musleh, a Hamas parliamentarian in Ramallah. "To do it in isolation would be a betrayal." When I finally tracked down Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister who has been in hiding since Israeli aircraft leveled his Gaza City office, he didn't seem eager to negotiate separately with the Israelis. Hizbullah's performance in Lebanon was "impressive," Zahar said, looking a little worse for the wear in a brown pinstriped suit. "I'm not talking about good or bad.

Eritrea Sending Military Supplies to Islamist in Mogadishu

The contest in Somalia has turned regional with Eritrea supporting the Islamists in control of Mogadishu. This is indeed a concern because Eritrea has bested Ethiopia in the battlefield on a number of occassions. It's also interesting that the EU doesn't trust Ethiopia in it's support of the interim Somali government.
WaPo

A cargo plane landed in the Somali capital Wednesday, and the interim government said it was carrying Eritrean weapons and supplies for a rival Islamic militia.


Residents reported seeing a medium-size aircraft with no recognizable markings land at Mogadishu's old international airport. The plane was only the second to land at the airport since the Islamic militia reopened it days ago.


"The plane was carrying antiaircraft missiles and other weapons donated by Eritrea to the Islamists," the deputy prime minister, Ismail Mohamed Hurre, said from Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of the capital and the base of the fragile interim government.

Disasters – natural & man-made

Editor's Note: This is the inagural post of a guest author rama from Calcutta, India, whose sensitivity to social justice issues and beautiful writing style inspired me to ask him to join Shining Light when the India government blocked access to Blogger. That problem has since been resolved, but I'm happy that rama has taken me up on my offer anyway! Welcome him warmly!
Natural disasters may strike a people, but its impact depends upon the existing situation within society. In that sense, the fundamental causes of the resultant devastation have to be found within the functioning of society, government and institutions, and in social relations. Undertaking a post-disaster rapid damage assessment mission enables such issues and factors to be highlighted. This note is based on such a study (undertaken by TARU) across the cyclone-affected region of Orissa in eastern India, three weeks after the cyclone disaster of 29 October 1999.
Rehabilitation is therefore essentially a process of awakening to the critical necessities for building a humane, just, and sustainable society. A natural disaster could serve to initiate a process to address long-neglected matters. Rehabilitation could act as a means for renewal of a moribund society. Pro-poor economic and social development in Orissa, has been at the best of times a significant challenge. These events could provide the impetus to accelerate this process.
The question of distributive justice
Unless there exists an independent mechanism of ensuring distributive justice and organising villagers at the grassroots-level, available resources would simply enrich and empower those already well-off and powerful.
Left to governments alone, the rehabilitation would be ineffective at best, and disastrous at worst. Given the inherent tendency towards self-interest in government and institutions, both the above aspects, i.e. the flow of resources from a civic response, and the empowerment of poor villagers to benefit from the rehabilitation process, should therefore be seen within an essentially civil society intervention. The challenge of rehabilitation is principally a challenge for the affected people, for the people of Orissa, and the people of India, rather than being a challenge only for the panchayats (village councils), the block development offices, the state government and the central government.
The survey of cyclone-affected villages only served to highlight the endemic nature of poverty, mal-utilisation of resources, environmental degradation, and social conflicts – even without any cyclone risk. That this is the situation in a region that is considerably better endowed, in socio-economic, infrastructural, communications, financial and institutional resources - than the interior, hilly areas of northern, western and southern Orissa, inhabited by indigenous peoples - is something meriting reflection. The coastal region, and in particular some of the affected areas like Jagatsinghpur, Erasama, Baleshwar, dominate and powerfully control social, economic and cultural life, decision-making and resource flows in Orissa. But as the survey reveals, this region is also with its deep stratifications, leaving large numbers of people at the margins of survival, with a precarious hold on the necessities for bare existence. Natural disasters may have devastating consequences. But even without them, a slow but nonetheless devastating process is at work.
The significance of these districts also means that, given that even the non-poor, reasonably well-to-do have been hit, e.g. by house, crop and livestock loss, there is likely to be a flow of resources for rehabilitation. Since such flows must ulimately also be formally governed by principles of just distribution, the potential exists of using the post-crisis situation to put in place forces enhancing distributive justice, and using the flow of resources to begin the process of long-term socio-economic empowerment of the hitherto marginalised. Such an opportunity would not be there in a pre-disaster situation.
Across the surveyed areas, it was found that access to institutional credit is virtually nil for the common villager, and there is continuing reliance on usurious money-lenders. With house rebuilding and restoration of livelihood (agriculture, fishing) being the crucial rehabilitation tasks, and both requiring credit, it is not realistic to expect that this credit flow will happen of itself.
Role of governmental institutions
The complete absence of any sanitation arrangements whatsoever in the Sandakut settlement in Paradip (which, had come up only about 30 years ago), which is after all a developed, important urban area, is a telling indicator of the state of affairs before any cyclone. This settlement is recognised, albeit informally, by the Notified Area Committee. Regularisation of the settlement, provision of basic civic amenities and facilitating improved house construction - are all tasks that could well have been taken up, without involving much resources. In fact, they could well have been taken up within the context of a larger commercially attractive and public revenue fetching self-financing scheme. But this is not within the set of priorities or capabilities of the authorities.
However, all these tasks require their involvement, and thus the formal power of the relevant institutions only serves to hold development hostage to an administration that is, quite typically, apathetic, incapable and corrupt.
The role of the state is not simply to secure the interests of the most needy and vulnerable. The state’s financial allocations should more realistically be seen in terms of enhancement of the overall economic development of a region. The nature of such economic development - the extent to which its benefits are concentrated in a few hands or is widely distributed – is the crucial issue. Principles of distributive justice demand that the state must not be a means for the enhancement of the stakes of one relatively secure section at the expense of another more vulnerable one. And, it is ultimately the rural poor who provide labour, the basic source of food and incomes creation in a capital-scarce rural environment. Their further immiserisation would only have serious long-term consequences on agriculture.
To assume that the inertia will be broken because of the cyclone disaster, and will be replaced by sustained dynamism, to address matters that were consistently neglected earlier, would be unrealistic.
But even if a committed, dynamic administration were to do its utmost, in terms of mobilising financial resources and initiating various measures, nevertheless, at the levels of the hamlet or village, the village council and the block, there are persons, functionaries, formal representatives, contractors, traders and businessmen, landowners, groups, families – who dominate and control decision-making and resource flows. In some places, and at times, their role in affecting the quality of living of the poor and vulnerable may even be quite positive.
On the whole, however, the situation is that the ordinary villagers, landless agricultural labourers, marginal farmers, fishermen, are completely immersed in simply struggling to eke out a marginal existence, often on a day-to-day basis. They do not possess the basic economic security, education, social exposure, awareness and confidence necessary to secure their just share of whatever rehabilitation assistance is forthcoming. Their typical attitude is to get whatever little they can, and since they have to continue living in that environment, and have a predominant focus on survival, rather than on rights, justice, ethics, governance, they would prefer to accept their lot. This might still result in some resources flowing towards them. Such people form the overwhelming majority of the affected population.
Since such people are already living on the margins of survival, and the cyclone has disrupted this very rudely and rendered their situation even more precarious. The issue here is of ensuring maximal flow, out of a limited fund. Unless an all-out effort is made to stand by this section, and work with them to draw maximal assistance from all quarters to ensure they gain a somewhat stable foothold - there is every likelihood of famine-like conditions visiting the affected areas in the coming months.
If this were to happen even as some relatively affluent, and considerably powerful people enhance their stakes further, quite apart from the ignominy of this, is the fact that their stranglehold over resources and their flow and utilisation would have become fiercer still – with severe and deeply negative socio-economic consequences. In that sense, the natural disaster could be seen as having been merely a detonator of even greater devastation.
The significance of the issue of transparency can be illustrated with reference to the survey finding that in all the affected villages visited, even a month after the disaster, most villagers were ignorant about the financial assistance to be paid. Some had heard that it would be between Rupees 500-2,000, elsewhere people mentioned figures of Rupees 20,000 – 30,000. In a post-disaster context, it is essential that steps are taken speedily, expeditiously, with certainty and transparency, so that basic objectives are not impeded or thwarted by vested interests.
If transparency can be ensured, the potential exists to mobilise a large quantity of voluntary labour – the ultimate source of wealth creation in a humble village – in a post-disaster scenario. Food-for-work or wage employment schemes could be used to leverage voluntary labour, for a transparently leakage-proof collective benefit. This can happen at the level of one labourer, and at the level of the village as a whole. Those workers will be chosen for a day’s job who will give half a day’s labour in the week, say, to build a cyclone shelter. This should not then mean that there can be an equivalent leakage from the financial allocation for the shelter, but that existing resources can go further. Similarly, a job can be allotted to that village which provides the largest volume of voluntary labour (relative to its population).
Stakeholders
The challenge is this: rehabilitation, and disaster preparedness or mitigation, ask for things to happen, which tended, by design, not to happen earlier. Things as they existed, worked to keep such people in their precarious situations. Is it reasonable to expect that the cyclone would have brought about a complete change of heart, all around? To the extent that this happens, it is a very positive factor for the rehabilitation. But more practically, it is necessary to bring in something that will work as a powerful means of introducing transparency into the rehabilitation process. This will be aided by new guidelines, procedures, mechanisms instituted by an administration committed to speedy rehabilitation of the vulnerable. But the fundamental need is for something more that just such measures. The villagers need an ally, against exploitation, beginning with their own selves first.
This cannot be a government functionary – since this role does not form the job description of anyone in the administration now. Also, government is seen by different people and groups in different ways, which may not coincide with the role needed.
In some of the affected villages there may be local youth associations, some of which may occasionally be active, for public purposes. Others may be largely of a cultural or recreational type. Typically, these are not well-resourced, active or presently capable for a major development and justice facilitating role. On the other hand, many of these organisations may provide the initial persons for organising villagers for rehabilitation.
The role of village council and ward members also differs, in terms of awareness, commitment, integrity, transparency, vested interests, conflict-generation or conflict-resolution, capability and effectiveness. But it can definitely be said that this level of governance is not managed by the vulnerable sections, in their interests. The functioning of the present structure, at best results in an indirect trickle-down of opportunties to such sections. Sometimes, they may represent a well-entrenched interest group unto themselves, not averse to intimidation and violence to secure their objectives.
Role of NGOs
There are people whose present role may seem to be quite close to the kind of grassroot level empowerment role that is needed. NGOs, for instance. They are therefore a valuable resource. However, the survey indicates that the presence of capable, empowered, committed NGOs at the village level across the cyclone and flood affected areas - is very marginal. The reasons for this have to be probed. Were not the conditions of the marginal people of coastal Orissa precarious enough, and their numbers large enough to merit intervention, in the pre-cyclone scenario? Would there be a change of heart, all of a sudden? If so, is this a positive factor for the rehabilitation? But it may also prompt some thought on whether there may be other, less noble objectives motivating the sudden intervention.
There is a need for an assessment of the actual capabilities, background, proven experience, skill-levels of NGOs, rather than merely assuming that anyone claiming to be an NGO has the wherewithal to do the requisite work. At a village level, NGO involvement ultimately involves their field staff. More often than not, this level is staffed by youths for whom this is a job, in the absence of any other. They may not necessarily have the motivation, aptitude or personal qualities appropriate to a grassroot development worker. At the very least, they may be a redundant; at worst, they may even create deep damage in the village community.
Where would the large number of requisite village-level staff come from, in the NGOs, who may get involved in the rehabilitation effort? NGOs are by and large supported by project-based grants, mostly foreign. Some of them may have a long-term programme focus based in a specific region. Some of these organisations may have the capability based on their action experience to play a valuable resource role, for instance in training and guiding village staff.
Across the affected region, the survey revealed that villages could benefit significantly with some fairly straightforward measures being taken – such as a small sluice on a water channel to control inflow of saline water. Many villagers know this, some have even gone so far as to have made some efforts to get this taken up, but to no avail. It is reported that there are over 27,000 registered voluntary organisations in Orissa. The state also features in the priority areas list of many international lending, aid and donor agencies. So why does the vacuum remain?
The need for an agency
So we arrive at the apparently absurd need for someone, present for a significant period of time, at the village level, who is more concerned about the vulnerable villagers’ survival and upliftment than they themselves are. And this someone has to be above any personal stake in the resource flow – since direct or indirect control over resources is what all the forms of power ultimately imply. In short, this person or group has to be trustee, of the power of the villagers’ own awareness, intelligence, unity, organisation, initiative and labour, which they can then use for their own betterment.
There is no agency, at present, that matches this description. But this is the most critical requirement, based upon whose presence everything else can happen, (provided resources are forthcoming). In this context, reference may be made to the Nehru Yuvak Kendras. Wherever they exist, in the affected zone, they could play the requisite grassroot-level facilitative role.
Essentially the necessary agency has now to be created - an independent, voluntary, civic movement, of grassroot workers, professionals, experts and specialists. Setting up the structure of such a movement, making the network linkages, and training and ongoing guidance for a cadre of village rehabilitation workers – emerges as the most crucial and strategic requirement for a just and effective rehabilitation programme.
A volunteer worker would be based in an affected village for a considerable period of time – at least one year. He or she would operate within a group of hamlets / villages. At one level this person would interact with the villagers and especially the vulnerable; at another level, with resource persons, experts, professionals. Such workers and specialists would be mobilised from across the country, as part of a special civic mission for rehabilitation and rural reconstruction, beginning in the affected coastal belt of Orissa.
The initial focus of this movement would be to begin the work, on a demonstrative and action-learning mode, in a number of selected villages. This approach would then be sought to be propagated across the entire affected zone.
Local factors
The survey also revealed that the plight of the Scheduled Castes sections in the affected villages was, almost uniformly, the worst. At the same time, it was also clear that a positive process of social integration has been taking place in rural society, with an erosion of prejudicial attitudes (e.g. regarding using common water sources).
Travelling within a short span of time, across a wide band, also enabled discernment of subtle differences and variations across regions. These differences could be related to environmental, economic, social, institutional and even circumstantial factors. Thus, there are regions that are relatively well-developed, in terms of irrigation facilities, commercial agricultural returns, off-farm diversification; there are regions which are significantly lower in social development terms, measured for instance by school attendance. There are places where after a modicum of economic development, a saturation point has been reached, and migration is growing.
Each place has to be understood in terms of its specific situation within an overall human development frame. A general prescription applied mechanically across the entire cyclone-affected region will mean that the potential is lost of utilising the rehabilitation process to begin addressing long-term issues of sustainable livelihood.
Resource flows
If available resources could flow to the vulnerable, the rehabilitation process could be a means for them to begin rising above their previous marginal existence. Conversely, in a limited resource scenario, the ‘law’ of self-interest pursuit, on the part of anyone other than the vulnerable, will work to push the vulnerable to starvation and destitution. And the ‘self-interest’ of the vulnerable, even as articulated by them, may not really be in their interest. For instance, a villager would not like to overtly offend a powerful man. Nor does he want to have to wait very long for getting something. He is completely outside the framework of seeking to obtain justice or redress through the formal channels. So he is quite willing to pay a commission to a sarpanch (council head) for some disbursement.
The amount in question may not make an immense difference to the villager. But the aggregate of such amounts, with that one person, and over all such persons across the entire affected region - would work out to quite a enormous sum, which, since it can apparently be spared by the villager, and of course, is in no way due to the people getting it, could instead have been invested in much-needed rural infrastructure, which would enhance the livelihood prospects of all.
But public works involve significant leakages, and result in shoddy constructions. And life goes on, notwithstanding this. A natural disaster visits and causes extreme devastation in such a scenario. So, by the same logic, one arrives at the need for ensuring flow of the maximal resources, to the absolutely vital investment areas, and through a mechanism involving the vulnerable beneficiaries themselves. The number of intermediaries, between the source of funds, and the beneficiaries, should be zero - except for entities that function like a dynamo-engine, enhancing the quality of the rehabilitation process, the rate of fund flow, distributive justice, attention to the specially vulnerable etc.
The specially vulnerable
The psychological impact, on those in the worst-affected areas, who have been witness to the harrowing drama of losing their kin, could be serious. Compounding this is the practical dimension, of bread-winners and able-bodied men having been killed. Thus, the final human impact has really to be sensitively assessed at a family-to-family level, and the rehabilitation process, at a village level, has to be dove-tailed with the family-level observation and remedial measures. For instance, priority would have to be given to families who have lost their able-bodied men – since they do not have the male member even to go out to find work, while in another family, whose men are alive, they can at least go out to find work even if they are deprived because of the special favour shown to the other. However, typically, far from receiving special attention, the more vulnerable family would be the one trampled in the rush of many, all needy in a broad sense, for limited resources.
No special attention is being given yet to the question of health conditions of women and children. Many children would be severely malnourished.
There are reports of young girls having been sold into prostitution. Similarly the issue of sexual abuse of young girls, who are exposed and vulnerable after their houses have been destroyed and men have gone out to get relief materials or for work.
Human nature would also reveal that the ones rendered most vulnerable, would show tendencies to prefer continuous patronage, rather than seeking to attain rapid security and stability through utilising the available benefits, their own intelligence and effort. This has to be dealt with, sensitively.
There would also be many whose situation simply calls for continued assistance, over a long-term, before they can attain some stability. A young widow, with infants. An elderly or infirm person, straddled with some of the surviving family children. The ways of sustaining this pose a tremendous challenge for micro-level intervention, in terms of resource identification, harnessing and multiplication.
The ultimate concern of the administration is to see that, in the records, tasks have been completed. Requirement was assessed, and communicated. Allotments were made. Disbursement was made. What actually happens to the villager, day by day, over the coming months and years – does not feature in this. The pain of her painful existence is not felt.
In any village, there exist structures of kinship, community, and compassion, which work to ameliorate poverty and resource scarcity. This would work to ensure that the most vulnerable, do also get attention. But these tendencies are severely strained in a post-disaster scenario, when everyone is quite badly affected. Also, this cannot be expected to be sustained, and that too at a higher level, over a long period.
Conflict, cooperation
It should be realised that the flow of resources occasioned by the rehabilitation effort will be accompanied by the emergence and growth of conflicts, as different interest groups seek to obtain a stake for themselves. This can have a deeply negative and long-term socio-economic and environmental effect.
It was found that people who have been badly affected seem to be in a state of shock, just trying to get from relief whatever they immediately need, while those less or not affected are busy obtaining as much as they can. Approach roads to some of the areas are lined with children, women and old women stretching out their hands to passing vehicles with distressing pleas. One can understand that the post-cyclone relief milieu is like a heaven-sent opportunity to extract as much as possible to improve their admittedly not so comfortable situation. Similarly, some of the affected villagers have also started exploiting the post-cyclone situation, e.g., selling vegetables at exorbitant prices. In some of the areas, looting and other serious anti-social activities took place, suggesting that besides some criminals, some of the local villagers may also have indulged in this.
Conflict and cooperation are both present at the village level, emerging at different times, under different circumstances. Thus, villagers across the surveyed villagers spoke of the spirit of cooperation, unity and selflessness that was exhibited in the midst of crisis. Limited foodstuffs were pooled and shared, with priority being given to small children, the aged and infirm. But the same villagers also speak of the exploitativeness of some now, for instance by charging exorbitant prices for vegetables. In Ganjam district, a few kms south of Gopalpur town, a rice mill owner reported that his badly damaged mill was looted by people from a nearby village.
Such acts of looting in the immediate aftermath of the disaster suggest the prior existence of serious conflict between the parties in question. Such currents will be operative during the rehabilitation process. Discerning such currents at a village level, resolving conflict and enhancing cooperation, is part of the rehabilitation challenge.