Thank you for visiting my journalism portfolio. Please note, this site has relocated to www.DeenaGuzder.com
I am updating this site less frequently than usual since I am currently working at Democracy Now!, the nation’s largest public media collaborative. My book, Divine Rebels, is now available on Amazon.com and a few other sites.
Published on Monday, May 9, 2011 by Click here to read this article on CommonDreams.org
Daniel Berrigan: A Lifetime of Peace Activism
According to prevailing wisdom in the United States today, the best way to eradicate the world of a hateful ideology is by deploying 80 commandos on the home of an unarmed suspect and murdering him on the spot. Yet, we already see the entirely predictable consequences of the Osama bin Laden raid. In Portland, Maine, a mosque was defaced just hours after the news broke of bin Laden’s death. The graffiti read, “Osama Today, Islam tomorow” [sic]. Less than a week later, any misconception that the so-called Global War on Terror was winding down was dispelled when a drone attack killed at least eight people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan. Meanwhile Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disingenuously conflated al-Qaeda with the Taliban and, with bellicose bravado, declared the U.S. would continue its war in Afghanistan. And, in Pakistan, hundreds of Jamaat-ud-Dawa activists prayed in Karachi for their new martyr: Osama bin Laden.Notes:
[1] Joe Sabia, “The Cornell Catholic Community is in Crisis” Cornell Daily Sun. September 23, 2003
[2] For more see Gary Smith, “Peace Warriors,” The Washington Post Magazine, June 5, 1988, W22. June 5, 1988.
Deena Guzder is an independent journalist who has reported on human rights issues across the globe. She is the author of Divine Rebels(Chicago Review Press 2011), which includes a profile of Daniel Berrigan. Please visit her website:www.DeenaGuzder.com
March 25, 2011 <<I co-produced this show>>
JUAN GONZALEZ: Today marks the centennial anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history and a seminal moment for American labor. On March 25th, 1911, nearly 150 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, died after a fire broke out at the Triangle Factory near Washington Square Park.
Only a year before the lethal fire, the garment workers of the city had protested for shorter hours, better pay, safer work conditions and the right to unionize. Tired of toiling for 13 hours a day for as little as 13 cents an hour, the workers called for a strike, emerging as leaders in what became the largest women’s labor walkout in American history. The factory owners hired thugs to suppress their action, but in the 11th week of the strike, the owners finally agreed to higher wages and shorter hours. They drew the line, however, at a union. Denied any collective bargaining rights, the Triangle workers were powerless to change the abysmal conditions in their factory: inadequate ventilation, lack of safety precautions and fire drills—and locked doors.
AMY GOODMAN: When a lit cigarette or match ignited a fire on the eighth floor of the building, flames spread quickly and trapped the women in a deadly inferno. Today we spend the hour looking back at the fire and its significance 100 years later.
We’re going to begin with an excerpt of a radio piece I produced 25 years ago, in 1986, along with Kathy Dobie. It was then the 75th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
PAULINE PEPE: I worked right near where the fire was. There was cutters there. They were cutting the material. And as soon as they were just going out, it was time to go home. It was 4:00 on Saturday.
AMY GOODMAN: Pauline Pepe is a 94-year-old survivor of the Triangle fire.
PAULINE PEPE: I saw the fire in the tables, where they were all full with lingerie material, you know, and that had come up in a flame. When I saw that, I ran out. I went to the door that was closed. I didn’t know that was closed. I went there, knocked on the door. Closed. I just stood there ’til they opened it. Forty people going down the steps, we all tumbling one right after another. And I saw people throwing themselves from the window. And as soon as we went down, we couldn’t get out, because the bodies were coming down. It was terrible.
KATHY DOBIE: The women that died that late afternoon were young Jewish and Italian immigrants. When the fire broke out, they tried to escape down the stairs but found the doors had been locked. The owners believed that, given the chance, workers would sneak out with stolen material, and union organizers would sneak in.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the women climbed onto the single fire escape. It collapsed. As onlookers watched, women fell nine stories to the sidewalk below. Inside the factory, the fire spread quickly, and with no exit left to them, the women climbed through the windows and leapt to their death.
While some union members walked in the vigil, others took buses to a Brooklyn cemetery, where seven unidentified Triangle victims lie buried. Union members paid their respects and read the stone marker above the women’s graves.
MONTAGE OF VOICES: ”In sympathy and sorry, citizens of New York raise this monument over the grave of unidentified women and children who, with 139 others, perished by fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Washington Place, March 25th, 1911.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: When the women realized the building was on fire, some rushed toward the open stairwell, but smoke and flames obscured their path. Hundreds of horrified onlookers watched as desperate factory workers leaped from the ninth floor windows, engulfed by flames. This is an excerpt from the new documentary Triangle Fire that aired on PBS’sAmerican Experience. It features dramatic readings of eyewitnesses of the fire.
NARRATOR: It had been less than five minutes since the first alarm, but more than a thousand people had crowded around the Asch Building. They watched as the firemen raised their ladders to their full extension. They barely reached the sixth floor, 30 feet shy of the trapped Triangle workers.
EYEWITNESS 1: [read by Frank Pando] People began to holler, “Raise the ladders! Raise the ladders!” We had the ladders up.
WILLIAM GUNN SHEPHERD: [read by Michael Daly] One girl climbed under the window sash. Those behind her tried to hold her back. Then she dropped into space.
EYEWITNESS 2: [read by Joe Lisi] I saw groups of women embracing each other and leaping to the sidewalk. The firemen were helpless. The nets were ripped from their hands. Many stooped and picked up the nets again with their hands bleeding.
WILLIAM GUNN SHEPHERD: [read by Michael Daly] The last workers were trapped against the blackened windows, burning to death before our very eyes. The glass they were pressed against shattered. Down came the bodies in the shower, burning, smoking, flaming bodies with disheveled hair trailing upward.
EYEWITNESS 1: [read by Frank Pando] The bodies lay there on the sidewalk, three or four high, burning. And we had to play the hoses on them.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Thanks to PBS’s American Experience for footage from the film Triangle Fire, which you can watch online at pbs.org.
<<More here . . . >>
<<My interview with Senator Chris Larson below>>
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Wisconsin Democratic Senator Questions Legality of Anti-Union VoteWisconsin Democratic Senator Questions Legality of Anti-Union Vote
SEN. CHRIS LARSON: I think a lot of what they’ve done is on the borderlines of what is legal. It’s definitely questionable democracy. What they’ve done is an embarrassment to our country and to our state. They’ve shut down—they’ve shut down the people, is what they’ve done.
You know, I can’t tell you how heartbroken I am that they would deliver this death blow to the middle class at a time where we’re trying to band together to get through this.
This is something where they—I’m actually in my car right now speeding as fast as I can to try and get to Madison to do something, anything. And it’s already passed. I’ve been driving for the last hour and since I heard news that this is what they were going to do. They didn’t give us a chance. They didn’t give the public a chance to actually do anything about it.
So this is something where every single one of those Republicans, all 19, I mean, they just signed their political obituaries. This is it. You know, they thumbed their nose at the people by shutting down the public debate three weeks ago. They shut it down after 17.5 hours. They shut down the legislative hotline because they got sick of hearing from people talking about this. Then they shut down the Capitol and locked everybody out. They shut down the public—the debate on the Assembly floor and jammed this through in the middle of the night before people have finished speaking on it. And then they took over our offices.
And then this, where, with no notice whatsoever, under the guise of the days before, where it looked like they were looking to compromise, they were looking at trying to negotiate, and instead they pull this. It’s an embarrassment to what our country is. And I think that they should—that these recalls just got a new wave of energy from everyone in our state.
COVER STORY, Issue 3, 2010, “Volunteer Values”: With the tenth anniversary of the ‘Year of the Volunteer’ coming in 2011, Red Cross Red Crescent magazine explores what helping others is really worth, how volunteers play a key role in attaining Millennium Development Goals and how the Movement needs to better protect and support those who give something for nothing. << Guzder co-reported this article from Pakistan >>
View PDF of entire article here: DG_RCRC
World leaders are counting on volunteers to help attain the Millennium Development Goals. But why then is the volunteer contribution so grossly under-counted? What can we do to support them?
When the torrential monsoon rains caused the Indus to break its banks and rage through northern Pakistan, Fawwad Sherwani, a 36-year-old Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) volunteer from Karachi, immediately joined the relief teams.
Working both in PRCS camps and in the Karachi ‘control room’, Sherwani helped assess the needs on the ground and communicate that to headquarters. He helped establish routes to get aid to victims via boats, jeeps and helicopters.
An experienced aid worker who has responded to earth-quakes, suicide bombings and cyclones, Sherwani doesn’t think too much about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when he puts on his Red Crescent vest and cap and rushes off to an emergency. He just likes to help people and, even though he doesn’t get paid, it’s his job, what he was trained for.
But as 2011 (the tenth anniversary of the first Year of the Volunteer) begins, global health and political leaders say the consistent efforts of volunteers such as Sherwani are critical to achieving global Millennium Development Goals, a series of eight development targets that governments have pledged to meet by 2015 (see box).
Take the case of polio. Health experts say that volunteer efforts — including the extensive networks of National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in countries such as Afghanistan and Nigeria — are one reason why the disease’s eradication is now in sight. The network allows vaccination programmes to go the ‘last mile,’ reaching deep into communities that are often hard for outsiders to access. During a measles campaign in Mozambique’s Nampula province, for example, Red Cross volunteers helped achieve a 97 per cent coverage rate, compared to 88 per cent in other rural areas (a critical difference when fighting diseases that develop resistance and spread quickly).
Volunteers are key
With only four years left before the 2015 MDG deadline, there’s still a long way to go. Even with polio, and the advances against measles, eradication is far from assured. On issues such as poverty and children’s healthcare, there are complex obstacles — natural disaster, desertification, armed conflict, global warming, urban violence, chronic food insecurity, financial crisis — that gets in the way.
With insufficient levels of government and private sector resources available and many challenges in accessing vulnerable communities, many are turning to volunteers as a key resource. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recently, “Achieving the Millennium Development Goals will require the engagement of countless millions of people through volunteer action.”
Because they are rooted in their local communities, Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers are able to bring vaccination, emergency relief or critical drug treatments even to areas of armed violence (Baluchistan province in Pakistan, in Somalia, or in remote areas of Afghanistan, where Red Crescent volunteers help deliver polio vaccine during prearranged ‘tranquility days’).
Volunteers also have a social impact, which is harder to quantify, but which contributes to community stability and recovery, particularly during conflict. A volunteer for the Red Cross of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrick Zaboninka Mayara travels by bicycle and on foot to deliver Red Cross messages that keep families in touch, sometimes reuniting children and parents separated by fighting.
In Beirut, Lebanon, Mohammad ‘Frisco’ Mansour teaches other youth volunteers how to use games and simulations to bring international humanitarian law and humanitarian norms to life for 8- to 18-yearolds. “They learn, through these games, that war needs to have limits and that humanitarian values are to be respected,” says the 25-year-old Lebanese Red Cross volunteer, speaking of the youth who attend the seminars. “Otherwise the pain will be too great to suffer and the price too high to pay.”
Often, volunteers give even when they themselves have their own needs. Volunteer Morlai Fofanah dedicates time to promoting non-violence and tolerance in rural communities in southern Sierra Leone. After a road accident damaged his spine while returning from a mission, this first-aid team member now does much of his volunteer work with the aid of crutches or a wheelchair.
Gaining access
Volunteers are also able to reach into pockets of poverty or vulnerable communities in developed or transitional countries. In the quiet countryside village of Rö, for example, just outside Stockholm, Swedish Red Cross volunteer Christina Lindholm organizes summer camps for caregivers whose partners are living with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, aphasia and multiple sclerosis. The camps’ activities and its social network contribute to improving health and reducing the vulnerability of both patients and those caring for them, according to studies by the Swedish Red Cross.
In the streets of Shenyang in north-east China, meanwhile, volunteers for a group called Fireflies (supported by the Red Cross Society of China) make house calls to HIV-infected patients who often cannot get healthcare through normal channels. “We can’t get operations in ordinary hospitals — very few places will provide treatment to HIV-positive people,” says Xiao Jie, who is himself HIV-positive. “People look at HIV sufferers as bad. They think that good people will not get this disease.”
Around the world, volunteers such as Fawwad, Christina, Xiao, Mohammad and Morlai are quietly having a powerful impact towards achieving the MDGs. But if we are to rely on these volunteers to help do what governments and the market economy cannot, what are we going to do to support and protect this vast, unpaid workforce? And if the volunteers’ efforts are so important, why is their contribution not even counted in most national measures of economic productivity and development?
If it isn’t counted, does it really count?
Like his volunteer colleagues in the HIV-support group Fireflies, Xiao Jie isn’t in it for money, or for any particular global agenda other than fighting HIV/AIDs in his community. When asked, however, he agrees his volunteer efforts for the group have a very real and quantifiable value: at least 1,000 renminbi (US$ 150) a month.
Like many volunteers, Xiao Jie is unsure about whether this kind of work should be reimbursed. On the one hand, it should be done by volunteers because they really want to do the work. But then again, people should be paid as it helps the government do its job.
Xiao Jie is not the only one to reflect on volunteer values these days. Indeed, there is a growing effort around the world to better quantify the volunteer contribution, which is largely left out of most countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) calculations or other key economic and development indicators.
“The problem is that often what isn’t counted, doesn’t count,” says Megan Haddock, project coordinator at the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. “In the traditional statistical model, the contribution volunteers make to the economy is absolutely zero. It’s simply not being accounted for.”
If economists, politicians, the media and average citizens don’t understand the contributions of volunteers or the input of non-profit organizations, to which they often belong, then support and legal protection for those efforts will remain weak, she says.
A recent Johns Hopkins study, based on data from 37 countries, found that indeed the volunteer contribution was grossly underestimated. Roughly 140 million people, or 12 per cent of the population in these countries, engage in some volunteer activity, according to the research. Together, they represent nearly 21 million full-time workers, making an economic contribution worth roughly US$ 400 billion annually. They also make up some 45 per cent of the non-profit workforce.
This volunteerism takes many forms. Mexico, for example, has a long tradition of informal volunteerism — it just doesn’t call it that. Voluntary acts of ‘solidarity’, as they are called, are simply considered part of life; they usually occur informally within communities and not in connection with any particular non-profit agency (though much of it may be church related).
Added up, however, the time spent by people doing various voluntary acts of solidarity comprises roughly 1.4 per cent of Mexico’s GDP, according to Jacqueline Butcher Rivas, who studies volunteerism in Mexico. Herself a volunteer, Butcher says a better understanding of this contribution could leverage greater investment and legal protection for volunteers. “This sector is greatly under-appreciated,” she says.
During the 2011 tenth anniversary of the Year of the Volunteer, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is hoping to highlight these issues. While it’s generally believed that its volunteer network gives the Red Cross Red Crescent unparalleled access, the Movement itself has not fully quantified the social and economic value of its volunteers — though many studies commissioned in recent years have tackled related issues.
In December 2010, the IFRC expects to release a study to help fill that knowledge gap. Following the methodology developed by Johns Hopkins and the International Labour Organization, the study surveys a representative sample of National Societies on the financial, economic and social contributions of volunteers.
In an era of increased competition for volunteers and their time, the IFRC hopes the data can be used to help National Societies garner more resources for volunteer efforts, inspire and recruit more volunteers, improve volunteer support systems and convince governments to enact stronger legal protections for volunteers.
The humanitarian shield
According to a 2009 report by UN Volunteers, Law and Policies Affecting Volunteerism since 2001, there have been about 70 new national laws or policies enacted to encourage or regulate volunteering in the last ten years. Burkina Faso, for example, created policies to promote volunteerism as a way to reduce unemployment through professional training and national service.
“There’s been a lot of progress,” says one of the report’s authors, Catherine Shea, vice president of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, based in Washington DC.
In 2001, when the Year of the Volunteer was launched, a lack of enabling legislation at the national level often stymied volunteerism. “Several countries’ employment and minimum wage laws failed to distinguish between volunteers and employees, making unpaid volunteer activity technically illegal,” the report notes.
The problem now is that not all the new laws are comprehensive or strong. In some cases, good laws are on the books, but the government is not acting. “There’s still a way to go,” says Shea. “It’s really important what happens after the law is enacted. Does the government really implement?”
Consider the case of Bolivia’s 2005 national volunteer legislation, which also highlights the dangers volunteers face. Violent political unrest in 2002 and 2003 led to the “mobilization of volunteers with Bolivia’s Red Cross and fire and rescue squads”, the UN report notes.
“At one violent protest, a volunteer fire and rescue worker, Daniel Manrique, was shot in the face. As a volunteer, Manrique had no insurance, no health coverage and no way to pay for the multiple medical procedures he needed.”
The resulting outcry led to demands for a national law, which gave volunteers’ extensive rights and protection. The effort lost momentum after subsequent elections and the provisions were never fully adopted.
The irony is that even while working to provide victims with shelter or basic medical services, the volunteers themselves don’t have access to healthcare or health insurance. In many countries, the cost is prohibitive or national laws don’t provide the framework for affordably insuring non-profit organizations.
While the IFRC’s volunteering policy calls for National Societies to provide “appropriate insurance protection”, the approaches vary widely throughout the Movement. The Swedish Red Cross provides accident insurance for its 40,000 volunteers, while other National Societies insure volunteers through an IFRC programme. When the earthquake hit Haiti in January, for example, the Haitian Red Cross Society was already preparing to adopt insurance for its volunteers. The IFRC then provided the insurance as part of its emergency response.
“The important thing”, says volunteer specialist Stefan Agerhem, seconded to the IFRC by the Swedish Red Cross, “is that if something goes wrong, the volunteer’s National Society takes care of him or her, whether it is through an insurance system or providing psychosocial support.”
To pay or not to pay
The issue is complicated by the fact that many volunteers are in fact paid per diems or small stipends aimed at defraying transportation expenses or a meal during the workday. In times of emergency, such as the Haiti earthquake, many volunteers are paid a small daily or weekly wage.
“For a major relief operation where you need to have plenty of hands available to do relief work, instead of just relying on a volunteer for a few extra hours a week, you need to engage the volunteers more seriously,” says Agerhem.
In this case, it’s critical that Movement actors understand and follow local labour laws. In recent years, there have been a few cases in which volunteers have taken their National Societies to court for not paying entitlements such as pension funds. Accident insurance might also be mandatory to people on the payroll.
The pay issue presents a dilemma, however. On the one hand, it potentially undermines the spirit of true volunteerism. On the other, it’s perhaps unreasonable to expect people to work 12- or 18-hour days bringing relief to others if the volunteers have no means of support.
As Haitian nurse and Red Cross volunteer Germaine Pierre-Louis (see profile) notes, it’s unacceptable to ask volunteers to spend all day working on food, health and shelter for others, when they themselves have no place to sleep.
“During the earthquake,” says Pierre-Louis, “the volunteers worked just as well as the professional humanitarian workers,” bringing the wounded to health centres and distributing food, hygiene kits and water. “They did a colossal job.” Pierre-Louis was frustrated that, at times, she had to lobby Movement colleagues simply to get tents for some of those volunteers, who themselves had also lost everything in the quake.
Dangerous work
In the end, no amount of laws, insurance or pay will protect or compensate volunteers for the dangers they face. Considering the environments in which many volunteers work, deaths are relatively rare. But they do occur.
In May 2009, for example, an Afghanistan Red Crescent volunteer was killed along with 13 others during an air strike by coalition forces reportedly attempting to target Taliban fighters. In March 2009, three Mozambique Red Cross Society volunteers were killed by an angry mob that mistakenly thought the aid workers were poisoning a water supply. And in January 2010, a volunteer with the Kenya Red Cross Society, Michael Wafula Sululu, was shot and killed by a policeman as he responded to the scene of a car crash. The policeman was subsequentlycharged with murder.
In theory, existing national, local or international laws should have protected these volunteers. In reality, there are no guarantees. New laws and insurance will only go so far. According to some volunteers, one of the most important things the Movement can do to protect volunteers is to remain steadfast to principles of neutrality and impartiality.
In the highly polarized Swat valley of Pakistan, where military forces and Taliban insurgents vie for power, volunteer Hashmat Ali says that the Red Cross Red Crescent’s commitment to neutrality is its greatest asset. “I feel safe volunteering with the Red Crescent,” explains Ali. “It does not get involved with all this politics business and that is its strength. This is why I will continue volunteering.”
Ali first encountered the Red Crescent after the 2005 earthquake when he helped German and Netherlands Red Cross workers distribute aid in farflung mountain hamlets. Continued collaboration led to the development of a medical clinic that now serves 100 to 150 patients each day in the Swat valley. According to Ali, the biggest contribution of Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers in Swat is decreasing the maternal mortality rate — which relates to the fifth MDG.
Ultimately, most volunteers say they will do the job — insurance, laws, tents, stipends or not. For Fawwad Sherwani, the call to volunteerism is not a rational calculation based on economic goals or global development agendas. “It’s a feeling,” he explains. “You cannot have as much happiness as when you help a person suffering and he says ‘Thank you’.”
This story was reported by Deena Guzder in Pakistan, Jean-Yves Clemenzo in Haiti,Robert Few in China and Malcolm Lucard in Geneva.
<<My interview with Nabeel Rajab excerpted below>>
“People Are Bleeding in the Streets:” Bahrain Police Wage Brutal Overnight Attack on Hundreds of Pro-Democracy Protesters
JUAN GONZALEZ: Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, a rolling rebellion continues to unfold across North [Africa] and the Middle East, often amid violent repression by state security forces. During an overnight raid in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, heavily armed riot police surrounded thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping in the central square in the nation’s capital. Without warning, police fired tear gas and concussion grenades into the crowd of pro-democracy activists that included women and children. The Associated Press reports four people were killed and hundreds beaten or suffocated by tear gas. Bahrain’s main Shia opposition group called the storming of the central square by police “real terrorism.”
Early this morning, Democracy Now! reached Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab. He spoke to us from outside a hospital where the wounded were being treated. It is very hard to get through to people in Bahrain right now. Rajab’s cell phone connection was poor, so listen closely.
NABEEL RAJAB: The past two days, people were protesting in Pearl Square, tens of thousands of people, children, men and women, calling for reform and democracy and respect for human rights. Unfortunately, today, morning, at 3:00, 3:30 in the morning, the riot police and special forces attacked the protesters. And many of the protesters, as you know, are children and old men and women and young people. So, among those people, we have many, many injuries. At least two dead confirmed so far, but we expect to see more.
And I see many injuries coming. The people are protesting outside the main hospital, which is Salmaniya Hospital, and were attacked 15 minutes ago. And I see a lot of doctors going out of the main Bahrain hospital to treat people in the street, as there are no places to get them in. And many, many of them are inside, so there is not enough space for them. So doctors are treating the people in the street. And I could see the trolley beds of the hospital taken out to the street to carry as many people as possible.
A lot of people—now, this woman is shouting here beside me. She’s saying, “We need blood! We need blood!” because a lot of people have lost blood. And [inaudible] front of hospital, tens of thousands of people are standing. They want to make sure that their children are not dead. A lot of injured people are still in the scene in the Pearl [inaudible] but cannot be carried because the government, they stopped all the ambulance to go inside. They stopped all the people to go inside to carry the injured people. So, a lot of people don’t know about their kids, don’t know about their people, if they’re alive or dead. So people here around me are crying, they are shouting, they say, “We want to see our children!” They want to go inside the hospital. Doctors are banning them. They say, “You can’t go. A thousand of people inside the hospital.” People in the street are bleeding in the street, and some doctors are treating them.
Governments and international governments and all international organizations should voice—we need to hear their voice at this moment—countries like United States, countries like England and Europe. I know how my country is rich. I know why I’m victim of being a rich country, that the United States and other European countries don’t want to make them angry, because as their interests, economic interests, and oil is low. But yes, but there are human beings here. They want to live like your people in the United States. They want to see democracy. They want to see human rights. They want to see that. So, if Barack Obama could come out and speak about other countries like Egypt and Iran, so he could speak about Bahrain. Especially we have more dead people here than they had in Iran, that he should come out and speak and say to the Bahrain government, they should stop this. Barack Obama and the United States are a very influential country here. They are the big brother here. They are the people who could voice. They are the people who could speak. But so far, unfortunately, we have not seen any positive statement made by the United States government.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab speaking to us from Democracy Now! just after Bahrain security forces attacked a gathering of sleeping protesters last night, killing at least four people, injuring hundreds, among them an NBC reporter.
by Deena Guzder
As the media coverage of more recent world events overshadows that of Pakistan’s unprecedented flooding in August 2010, the crisis is far from over. An estimated 1.4 million internally displaced people remain in refugee camps and informal settlements. TheUN World Health Organization reportsthat acute respiratory infections are on the upswing in northern Pakistan, while concerns persist over malaria and cholera near the Indus Valley. Relief workers are working tirelessly to provide food, medicine, and potable water but funds are drying up quickly. The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) recently called for a generous and swift international response to the $2 billion appeal for aid for Pakistan flood victims, which was just 34 percent funded. Besides tending to the immediate needs of displaced people, Pakistan is also struggling to rebuild its infrastructure. The floods damaged an estimated 5 million homes, submerged 5,000 miles of roads, and washed away 7,000 schools and 400 health facilities that will take years to rebuild. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank recently announced that the floods caused an estimated $9.7 billion in damage across the country.
As Pakistan struggles to remain afloat, American foreign policy certainly isn’t helping. Traveling from the southern tip of Karachi to the northern tip of Kohistan, I recently spoke with countless internally displaced Pakistanis about the epic floods, their government’s response to the tragedy, and America’s involvement in their country. Pakistanis consistently told me the U.S. cannot win their “hearts and minds” through a schizophrenic policy of distributing food with one hand, and arming drones with the other. Many said they are infuriated that CIA drones carried out 21 strikes in September — the highest number since the clandestine operation began six years ago — just a month after their country experienced the worst natural disaster in its recent history. “In the U.S., almost ten years ago, you experienced 9/11 but, here in Pakistan, almost every day we are experiencing 9/11,” said Hassan Ali Khan who works with a local grassroots nonprofit, Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation (OAKDF). Pakistanis such as Khan told me the drones are not only seen as unjust, but also as an act of American cowardliness (the pilotless planes are maneuvered with a joystick thousands of miles away) and imperial arrogance (nobody provides any justification, recourse, or reparations to the victims of the drone attacks). A recent public opinion poll sponsored by the New America Foundation and conducted in Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas in July confirms that U.S. drone strikes are deeply unpopular and likely to become even more unpopular.
True, the U.S. military is also trying to show its softer side by spending an estimated $216.5 million on flood aid and dispatching some 26 helicopters to evacuate trapped villagers throughout the rugged mountains and the Indus valley. From a strategic standpoint, the Americans hope their humanitarian cargo will change what another recent poll revealed: about 60 percent of Pakistanis view Americans as the enemy. However, America’s decision to drop food parcels from helicopters is not likely to wash away its history of propping up Pakistan’s dictators and deploying unmanned drones. Over and over again, Pakistanis told me that America’s foreign policy breeds resentment, fails to address the causes of extremism, and simply creates more anti-American militants. Mumtaz Tanoli of OAKDF says terrorism is rooted in the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. “The people are impatient with unemployment, poverty, injustice, and inequality,” he says. “The growing disparities, poverty and desperation are the roots of terrorism . . . Here, the opportunities are only for those with money or inroads in society and the rest feel poor and frustrated.” Tanoli left his job as a translator for USAID to work with OAKDF — a decision that cost him the coveted opportunity to obtain a U.S. green card and also slashed his salary by 90 percent. He says his decision was partly based on the sadness and uneasiness he felt while watching his USAID colleagues live opulently and wastefully. “The Americans were buying fancy waterbeds, but the locals had nothing,” he said. “How can you win people to your side that way?” Tanoli adds that the drones are only heightening sympathy for groups that fashion themselves as righteous underdogs standing up to American imperialism.
In a story that has received almost no attention in the United States, the U.S. military has infuriated the Pakistani public by allegedly breaching the Indus River and flooding a Pakistani village in order to protect a strategic airstrip used to launch unmanned drone attacks. Two prominent Pakistanis, Feryal Ali Gauhar — a human rights activist — and Ali Sethi — an author — have independently drawn attention to such reports. Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali similarly alleged that the Indus river embankments in upper Sindh was covertly breached to save the US-run Shahbaz Airbase at the expense of heavily populated Jaffarabad and adjoining districts. “I believe there was American pressure on the authorities to safeguard the Shahbaz airbase,” he told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper. Many Pakistanis also believe that U.S. forces supervising an airbase in the Jacobabad district of Sindh province denied permission for the airstrip to be used to deliver much-needed relief to submerged areas where 700,000 people were trapped. And according to the Guardian, U.S. soldiers in Chinook helicopters are generating additional ill-will during relief missions by donning helmets with patches that commemorate their fellow soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that are regarded as morally offensive in Pakistan as in much of the world.
Overall, the U.S. quest for the “hearts and minds” of Pakistanis seems like a dismal failure. Pakistan’s own government hasn’t fared much better; recent polls show that Pakistanis’ disapproval of President Zardari is at an all time high given his abysmally slow response in the days following the torrential rains. Some pundits have referred to the Great Flood of 2010 as “Zardari’s Hurricane Katrina,” especially after he was photographed lounging at his 16th century Norman chateau as 20% of his country was sinking. As the Pakistani commentator Tariq Ali notes, Pakistan’s ruling elite have failed to construct a social infrastructure for its people over the last 60 years and this failure has fostered widespread frustration. According to the UN Development Program’s 2009 Human Development Index, over a third of Pakistanis live in poverty, a situation comparable to Rwanda.
The hard hit northern regions of Pakistan are likely to provide fertile ground for rogue groups eager to exploit the flood tragedy to gain new sympathizers. These groups will probably make considerable inroads into society since the Pakistani government is seen as a lame duck and the U.S. is regarded as a foreign aggressor. However, as Rashida Dohad ofOAKDF notes, rural Pakistanis are rational actors, not marionettes of extremist groups. “The people are vulnerable and desperate but they realize that [extremists] who help them still have an agenda,” she says. Instead of forcing rural Pakistanis to choose between lives of poverty or allegiances with intolerant groups, OAKDF offers an avenue for reengaging in the political process and demanding that their government meets people’s basic human rights. The organization is asking the tough but important questions in wake of the flood: Will the Pakistani government subsidize food now that prices have skyrocketed? Will political leaders vote to levy a flood-relief tax on the wealthy to help rebuild the demolished homes of the poor? Will Pakistanis insist their government stops marching in step with the neoliberal dictates of the IMF and incurring more debilitating debt? Will political leaders actually invest in Pakistan’s infrastructure and reject bribes to rebuild bridges with sand rather than cement? Will the international community drop Pakistan’s debt, especially in light of Oxfam’s recent observation that the country is spending twice as much paying off debt than it receives in flood aid? Will the U.S. reevaluate its foreign policy and follow China’s example of investing in the country’s infrastructure? Will ordinary Pakistani and American citizens collaborate to build a robust peace movement that addresses questions of both economic and political justice – a movement that will force their governments to invest less in militaries and more in people?
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Deena Guzder, reporting for the Pulitzer Center
KOHISTAN AND SWAT VALLEY, PAKISTAN
The Great Flood of 2010: Pakistan’s Struggle to Stay Afloat
The roads snaking through Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province wax and wane, the route obscured by the record monsoon downpour that recently battered bridges and eroded pathways throughout this verdant northwestern region. In the district of Kohistan, the floodwaters surged over riverbanks, burst dams, and swallowed entire villages. Hundreds of thousands of mountain dwellers from these remote enclaves would have starved had not humanitarian workers quickly mobilized relief efforts. However, there is probably no place in the world where aid is more politicized than in Pakistan.
The Chinese ambassador to Pakistan recently traveled to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and expressed his condolences to those affected by the tragedy. His country is helping repair the battered Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan with China, and has already provided 320 million yuan ($47.1 million) worth of humanitarian supplies to Pakistan. Along with the Chinese, the Saudis have a strong presence here. As of September 17, Saudi Arabia had allocated $362 million for its Pakistani relief operation, more than any other country.
Many Pakistanis wonder if the floods will force the United States to reexamine its approach to their country. Will the U.S. follow China’s and Saudi Arabia’s lead by investing in Pakistan’s infrastructure, or will it continue its unpopular drone attacks and create more enemies? Already, the U.S. military is trying to show its softer side by spending an estimated $216.5 million on flood aid and dispatching some 26 helicopters to evacuate trapped villagers throughout the rugged mountains and the Indus valley. From a strategic standpoint, the Americans hope their humanitarian cargo will change what recent polls revealed: about 60 percent of Pakistanis view Americans as the enemy.
Pakistanis say the U.S. cannot win their “hearts and minds” through a schizophrenic policy of distributing food with one hand, and arming drones with the other. Many Pakistanis tell me they are infuriated that CIA drones carried out 21 strikes in September – the highest number since the clandestine operation began six years ago – just a month after their country experienced the worst natural disaster in its recent history.
“In the U.S., almost ten years ago, you experienced 9/11 but, here in Pakistan, almost everyday we are experiencing 9/11,” says Hassan Ali Khan of the Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation (OAKDF). A rare public opinion poll sponsored by the New America Foundation and conducted in Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas in July shows that U.S. drone strikes are deeply unpopular and likely to become even more unpopular. Pakistanis tell me they believe the U.S. has ulterior motives for distributing humanitarian aid. They note that Pakistan’s collapse would imperil the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and pose a risk of extremists tapping into the country’s nuclear arsenal.
America’s decision to drop food parcels from helicopters is not likely to wash away its history of propping up Pakistan’s dictators and deploying unmanned drones. Over and over again, I am told that America’s foreign policy breeds resentment, fails to address the causes of extremism, and simply creates more anti-American militants.
Mumtaz Tanoli of OAKDF says terrorism is rooted in the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. “The people are impatient with unemployment, poverty, injustice, and inequality,” he says. “The growing disparities, poverty and desperation are the roots of terrorism . . . Here, the opportunities are only for those with money or inroads in society and the rest feel poor and frustrated.”
Tanoli left his job as a translator for USAID to work with OAKDF–a decision that cost him the rare opportunity of obtaining a U.S. green card and also slashed his salary by 90 percent. He says his decision was partly based on the sadness and uneasiness he felt while watching his USAID colleagues live a life of relative opulence and waste. “The Americans were buying fancy waterbeds, but the locals had nothing,” he said. “How can you win people to your side that way?”
Overall, the U.S. quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis seems like a dismal failure. Pakistanis say they are unhappy that U.S. Apache helicopters in late September killed up to 50 Pakistanis as they fled across the border from Afghanistan in what was the fourth such cross-border strike in a week.
Feryal Ali Gauhar, a Pakistani filmmaker, actress, writer and human rights activist, and Ali Sethi, a Pakistani author, have drawn attention to reports that the U.S. military, operating from a secret base on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, may have breached the Indus River and flooded a Pakistani village in order to protect a strategic airstrip used to launch unmanned drone attacks. Pakistanis also believe that U.S. forces supervising an airbase in the Jacobabad district of Sindh province denied permission for the airstrip to be used to deliver much-needed relief to submerged areas where 700,000 people were trapped. And according to the Guardian newspaper, U.S. soldiers in Chinook helicopters are generating additional ill-will during relief missions by donning helmets with patches that commemorate their fellow soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that are regarded as morally offensive in Pakistan as in much of the world.
The hard hit northern regions of Pakistan are likely to provide fertile ground for rogue groups eager to exploit the flood tragedy to gain new sympathizers. These groups are able to make inroads because the government is seen as a lame duck and the U.S. is regarded as a foreign aggressor. For the staff of OAKDF, the answer does not lie in waging a “war” against extremists but in providing impoverished Pakistanis with an alternative that is neither starvation nor bellicosity.
“The people are vulnerable and desperate but they realize those [extremists] who help them still have an agenda,” says OAKDF’s Rashida Dohad, noting that rural Pakistanis are rational actors, not marionettes of extremist groups. Instead of forcing these Pakistanis to choose between lives of poverty or allegiances with intolerant groups, OAKDF offers an avenue for reengaging in the political process and demanding that government meets people’s basic human rights.
“Humanitarian aid is only effective if it’s based on a relationship of mutual trust” and there are no strings attached, said Dohad. “If your attitude is sincere, you are able to demonstrate that you’re genuinely there because you care . . . only then will people welcome you.” She recalled a recent experience of traveling on a long, bumpy road to an isolated 30-mile stretch of the Kandian Valley right after the floods damaged bridges and highways. “The people were so amazed and touched to see the effort we made to bring them food,” she said. “They were eager to hear our message.”
Pakistanis such as Dohad are asking the tough but important questions in wake of the flood: Will the Pakistani government subsidize food now that prices have skyrocketed? Will political leaders vote to levy a flood-relief tax on the wealthy to help rebuild the demolished homes of the poor? Will Pakistanis insist their government stops marching in step with the dictates of the IMF and incurring more debilitating debt? Will political leaders actually invest in Pakistan’s infrastructure and reject bribes to rebuild bridges with sand rather than cement? And, finally, will the government invest less in its military and more in its people.
Deena Guzder, reporting for the Pulitzer Center
ISLAMABAD, CHARSADDA & ABBOTABAD, PAKISTAN, PAKISTAN
The Great Flood of 2010: Pakistan’s Struggle to Stay Afloat
Unlike in southern regions where the floodwaters slowly and stealthily supersaturated entire villages, the waters in the north raged through mountain ravines with the ferocity of a runaway train. Today, parts of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province still resemble a warzone: battered bridges, crushed schools, and leveled villages. Instead of bullet holes, there are watermarks. The damage to infrastructure and crops is disheartening. Economists estimate its cost will exceed $4 billion.
I embark on a nine-hour trip to Kohistan with Mumtaz Tanoli and Hassan Ali Khan of the Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation (OAKDF). Quite aptly named, Kohistan means “land of mountains” in Persian. We zigzag along treacherous roads, abruptly halting and speeding as the potholes dictate. Tanoli, a gregarious man with eyes full of laughter, distracts us from the stomach-churning twists and turns by regaling us with stories of his days in Mongolia. However, when he speaks of Pakistan’s recent tragedy, Tanoli’s mood turns somber. He notes that the mountain terrain is not conducive to road-building so many people rely on footpaths — footpaths that were largely washed away during the floods. “The development that has taken place in the last 60 years has been wiped away in a matter of days,” he says. “That, too, in a district that is already so deprived and underdeveloped.”
As we drive past piles of rubble in the Shangla District of Swat Valley, Khan says that “people built an 18 kilometer road and electric plant here, but now nobody can believe there was anything here before the floods.” Six weeks after the floods, Swat’s most pressing need is reconstructing 45 bridges, draining approximately 10,000 acres of inundated land, and rebuilding hundreds of houses and shops. “In this region, access is always an issue. We’ve done [food] distributions in so many places, but we have to travel for days just to reach these places. The farmers who have taken their livestock to graze in the highlands are now having trouble [coming] down the slippery mountains because the footpaths have [disappeared],” says Khan. “No other area of Pakistan has such difficult terrain.”
Stopping outside a flattened bazaar, I speak with an 80-year-old farmer named Fazal-ur-Rehman. “We have been hit so badly that we thought it was our Day of Judgment,” says the elderly man who is wearing an olive green tunic and vest. He tells me the trip to the nearest town used to take 45 minutes, but now requires five hours because the floods washed out the road. “I want the government to rebuild the road,” he says. “We can’t take food back to the village and I’m too old to make such a long trip.” According to Rehman, many mills were washed away with the floods so there is nowhere to grind grains to sell on the market. “Everything is washed out, even the houses that use to line both sides of the river.”
After the floodwaters demolished a bridge over the Indus River between Shangla and Battagram, OAKDF helped install a cable car so villagers could make the crossing. We stop in Battagram, catch a ride on the cable car, and speak with locals benefiting from the new form of transportation. “We are very happy and grateful,” says an elderly man with a fluffy beard. “There would be no way for us to cross the river without these people’s help.” The cable car was designed to carry six people, but often departs with double that number (as well as a goat or two). Tanoli convenes a meeting with the villagers and asks how else OAKDF can help them rebuild. One of the villagers asks that OAKDF install a new suspension bridge and power station. Tanoli tells him that engineers are still debating the feasibility of building a new bridge in this rugged, earthquake-prone region.
Deena Guzder, reporting for the Pulitzer Center
ISLAMABAD, CHARSADDA & ABBOTABAD, PAKISTAN
The Great Flood of 2010: Pakistan’s Struggle to Stay Afloat
The Cambridge-educated Pakistani political activist, Omar Asghar Khan, was known throughout his homeland for his lifelong struggle on behalf of the most underprivileged members of his society, especially laborers and farmers. Promoting progressive political ideals, Khan confronted hostile maulvis who opposed educating girls and the timber mafia responsible for deforesting the Hazara Division, a former administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province.
On June 25, 2002, a week shy of his 49th birthday, Khan was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his in-laws’ residence in Karachi. The authorities labeled Khan’s death a suicide, but his family insisted he had been murdered for political reasons. Khan’s funeral in Abbottabad was attended not only by his many friends and family members but also by many thousands of grateful men and women from destitute villages scattered throughout the North-West Frontier Province. Shortly afterward, Omar’s younger brother, Ali, recruited a group of activists to establish an NGO in memory of Khan. Today the Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation (OAKDF) works with citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable, to promote political and socioeconomic justice for Pakistanis across class strata. Through town hall meetings, OAKDF encourages citizens to engage with the state to reform institutions and revamp policies.
After this summer’s floods, OAKDF realized many Pakistanis in rural villages were severely traumatized and had no access to of mental health professionals. To help children cope with anxiety and stress, the foundation organized art therapy classes.
“We ask them to draw what they fear most,” said Rashida Dohad of OAKDF. “Many of the drawings are full of blue, full of water,” she said. “The children tell us they fear the sound of rain.”
Inside a modest schoolroom in Charsadda, I watch a female teacher instruct a dozen students sitting cross-legged against the wall to draw what makes them happy. Many of the children hold up drawings of houses and food. One little girl shows me a drawing of her pet goat that she says was lost during the flood. Since the government requisitioned public schools as relief camps for internally displaced people, the school year ended prematurely for many children.
The children not only lost their homes and friends, but also their belief that the world was a predictable place immune to catastrophic changes. Professor Iqbal Afridi, Head of psychiatry department at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, told Dawn newspaper that flood survivors, both children and adults, are in urgent need of counseling and treatment after seeing their entire world swept away in a matter of hours. He has suggested that psychiatrists be posted in every relief camp, yet I did not meet a single mental health expert at any of the camps I visited across Pakistan. Afridi said the number of reported cases of mental illness in the camps was rising constantly, but the real trauma would hit full-force when people returned home and saw their villages, businesses, and lands reduced to rubble.
I drive with OAKDF staff past smashed schools and collapsed homes. We stop at a union council in Utmanzai, Charsadda that OAKDF set up so that local people could voice their hopes and frustrations in the wake of the flood. In a dimly lit room with a mud floor, we meet with a group of seventeen women who range from young adults to grandmothers.
“The people we voted for did not come until five days after the flooding,” complains an elderly woman wrapped in a shawl. “The water came up to our neckline,” she says, using her hand to gesture to her throat. “We went arm-in-arm to the boat.”
Many of the women say they need money to rebuild their homes since their husbands cannot work in the inundated wheat and sugarcane fields this crop season. They seem to appreciate having a forum in which to air their grievances, but many of them are noticeably traumatized and might benefit from speaking with mental health workers.
A young lady sits cross-legged on an upturned wicker bed. “I am so unhappy because the water came into our small store and destroyed everything,” she said. “I am worried, there is so much uncertainty, and I don’t even feel like eating.”
