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The military and
other emergency workers struggled against time and nature on Sunday to
reach at least 10,000 people trapped by collapsed bridges and flooded
roads and threatened by rising water brought by the worst monsoon rains
in Pakistan’s history.

The army announced
Sunday night that it had reached up to 20,000 people, but the
government’s response to the disaster – which has already claimed
hundreds of lives – has been widely assailed as slow and inadequate.
Criticism was further fed by a decision by President Asif Zardari,
already deeply unpopular, to leave the country this week for political
talks in Europe.

“We’re out of
bridges, so it’s the necessity of time to reach them by air,” said
Adnan Khan, an official at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority
of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, who called the situation “very
urgent.”

The crisis is
especially catastrophic in Swat, once famed as a tourist valley, where
the army defeated militants last year. Local leaders said at least 900
Swatis have died, and nearly all the bridges that the army built after
last year’s war have collapsed.

Officials said at
least 10,000 people were stranded in Upper Swat and Dir Ismail Khan,
which were inaccessible by road because 40 bridges had fallen. Efforts
were under way to erect temporary spans, but officials were skeptical
that they could be built in time.

Estimates of the
total death toll on Sunday ranged up to 1,100, although the national
government put the figure at 730. The nation’s largest and most
respected private rescue service, the Edhi Foundation, predicted the
death toll would reach 3,000.

The great disparity
in numbers reflects the challenge facing the government and other
emergency workers struggling to reach isolated areas and to gain
reliable information.

Officials said the
deluge was the worst since 1929 – 18 years before Pakistan gained
independence – in what is now the country’s northwest, where water
levels at dams continued to rise.

The growing
frustration with the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is a large blow
to Islamabad, which is often criticised for being disconnected from the
needs of the people in the province, which represents a pivotal
battleground against the Islamic insurgency.

For the past year,
the government and the military have been engaged in a “hearts and
minds” campaign to restore public services after fighting displaced
more than three million people last year. But reconstruction efforts
have been painfully slow, and the public mood has shifted from
frustrated to furious.

The demanding
relief effort in the coming days and weeks will provide yet another
test for the government to nurture the population in the nation’s
northwest. Last summer, during the mass displacement, Pakistani
authorities refused to allow American officials and planes to deliver
aid to the refugee camp. The authorities did not want to be associated
with their unpopular ally.

In the absence of
effective government aid, hard-line Islamist charities pounced, using
aid to sour public opinion against the war and the United States.

Pakistani TV showed
entire villages under water, and dozens of bridges and roadways ravaged
across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which has been economically decimated by
terrorism in recent years.

In the village of
Torwali Bahrain in Upper Swat, the market was washed away, leaving more
than 1,200 people with minimal food and no government assistance,
according to the Swat Peace Council, an independent advocacy group.

Adnan Khan, the
provincial disaster official, said it might take up to four days to
reach people cut off without food and drinking water.

The Pakistani
military said it had dispatched more than 30,000 troops to rescue
survivors in boats and, using about 35 helicopters, by air. Officials
said helicopters were delivering food to clusters of people and
returning with small groups of survivors.

The United States said it would offer $10 million for relief, and said it provided 50,000 meals on Sunday.

Many survivors
sought refuge in schools. But just 20 miles from the regional capital,
Peshawar, displaced people were lying along the road without tents,
food or assistance, except for boiled rice from nearby villagers.

A U.N. warehouse
storing rations in Nowshera was under four feet of water, but through
other warehouses, the organization managed to feed about 21,000 people
on Sunday.

Fazl Maula Zahid, a
regional manager at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Swat, said
100,000 acres of soil along the Swat River had been washed out. He said
it would take up to 10 years to restore the fertility of this critical
area that feeds 50,000 people.

“These lands will be changed into desert,” Zahid said. “And you know what kind of plant can be planted in a desert? Nothing!”

“It was a big disaster,” Khan said. “Our infrastructure over the last 50 years has been washed away.”

The South African
newspaper The Star went one step ahead in its reporting of the 15 year
sentence for Jackie Selebi a former head of police, president of
Interpol and struggle veteran, as activists in the fight against
apartheid are called.

Reporter Shaun
Smilie tracked down ex convict and gangster Allen Heyl and asked him
what the former top cop should expect in prison.

Heyl who has spent
a total of 27 years behind bars told Smilie that Selebi must, “speak no
evil, see no evil, hear no evil. Don’t trust anyone, don’t stick your
nose in anyone’s business and hope to find a friend soon.” Heyl added
that if he was well behaved Selebi could expect to get privileges such
as a radio and iron in time, but on the whole former president of
Interpol could count on getting ‘the best of what hell can offer.”

Judge Meyer Joffe
who announced his retirement from the bench minutes after he handed
down the sentence for corruption covered all the bases in the statement
he delivered. It was a measured preamble that traced the arguments for
and against incarceration as a form of deterrence, cited previous cases
and laid down precedent, examined the religious, philosophical
foundations of the concept of mercy and its place in the implementation
of justice.

Meyer went back to
Selebi’s acceptance speech when he was appointed Commissioner of Police
by his friend and protector former president Thabo Mbeki and
recalledthat the man did understand the importance of his role as the
country’s chief law officer and the weight of the position he was sworn
to uphold.

Selebi he said had
insulted the court with his mendacity and rubbished the honour of the
lowly men who put their lives on the line for a salary that was a
fraction of the sums he was receiving monthly in bribes from his
convicted drug smuggling friend Glen Agliotti. Meyer excoriated Selebi
for his lack of respect for the court’s processes and reserved his most
biting criticism for Selebi’s arrogance and lack of remorse for what he
had done.

The conclusion was unavoidable: no one is above the law, not even a hero of the struggle for freedom and human rights.

In fact especially
not a hero of the struggle for freedom: Selebi has gone from prisoner
of conscience to one imprisoned for graft. The system of justice and
accountability is still working.

South Africa can in
spite of the battle now being waged for the moral centre of the
political imperative, still draw these parallels: such a one would be
the timeline of events running from a now more beatified than ever
Nelson Mandela to a Jacob Zuma, a tale of two opposites if there ever
was one. Is it not remarkable that the more time passes the more heroic
Mandela seems?

No one coming
behind matches him and the high energy invested in finding more ways to
sanctify him simply throws into even starker relief the emptiness
around.

There is a strong
feeling that the ANC has lost, or is in the process of losing its moral
and ethical compass, just as much as there is the sense that the blame
for this can be shared all round to the pro-Mbeki and pro-Zuma factions
and all others in between currently jostling and kicking under that
great umbrella.

But foundations
laid can be refurbished; aspiring new generation leaders have a
precedent to follow, and a history of sacrifice and service to call
upon for inspiration and rebirth.

When will such
simple lessons penetrate the consciousnesses of Nigeria’s current crop
of government officials: good and bad, right and wrong, crime and
punishment?

Corruption in high
office for our Inspector Generals is treated, with retirement and a
lump sum of benefits, if at all. Once you have guzzled your fill you
are politely asked to move aside for someone else to get a turn.
Ill-gotten gains are not questioned. Declarations of assets remain
secret. Governor and legislators fight like urchins to claim
responsibility for a tiny bridge that someone else initiated as if
there are not enough projects crying out to be done!

And the irony is
lost on them in the money grubbing haze that overtakes their senses. In
October the bunch that cannot provide pipe-borne water and electricity,
will cut the biggest 50th anniversary cake in the world.

A cake to beat all cakes from those who specialise in devouring, not baking, the national cake.

Amidst much protest and occasional violence, the
second phase of the presidential amnesty programme enters the second
stage this week with the intake of 670 ex-militants drawn from three
states of Ondo, Edo and Delta.

The first batch of training sessions, housed at a
former camp for the National Youth Service Corps members in Obubra,
Cross Rivers State, was not quite the smooth operation its promoters
wanted it to be. The distrustful men always found one reason or the
other to vent their displeasure. They protested over the state of the
camp, which in truth was not quite ready for them; the lateness in the
payment of their allowances; the lack of empathy from officials; their
unhappiness with the leadership of the programme and the fact they were
put in a camp at all.

The Federal Amnesty Team headed by Timi Alaibe,
special adviser to the president on Niger Delta must surely have heaved
a sigh of relief when the trainees graduated. The training is for the
20,192 militants who benefitted from the October 2009 amnesty granted
by the federal government. The entire process is expected to last six
months, with each batch expected to involve 2, 000 ex-militants.
However, the number in each group was reduced, after the first set, to
600.

One of the officials said the last group was
indeed a test for how the rehabilitation and skills exercise would be
carried out. If that is so, then many improvements need to be made in
the handling of the exercise. One issue that has stuck out like a sore
thumb in this process is the lack of trust between the trainees and
their trainers.

Mr. Alaibe obviously needs to do more to reassure
the people under his charge that he respects the terms of his
assignment and to convince the ex militants that their wellbeing is
important to him.

At the heart of the unhappiness of the players is
money. The men complain that their allowances, at N60,000 a month, are
either paid late or not paid in full.

The delay is blamed on government officials, the
banks or the leaders of the ex-militants – who are also accused of
deducting some part of the money. Since the process has been on for up
to ten months now, it is strange that there still remain some hiccups
in the mode of payment of the allowances.

Then there is matter of those left out of the
process. Due to poor communication or misplaced skepticism about the
process, a couple of thousands of ex-militants turned in their weapons
only after the deadline stipulated by the amnesty committee. So,
although these men were demobilised, their names are not on the
official list of those to benefit from the allowances. This appears
unjust and unnecessary. It is also unlikely to fade away. Unless the
amnesty team finds a way to accommodate this group of men, there will
always be a cloud over the whole process and it portends difficulties
for peace in the Niger Delta.

Part of the final stages of the process is skills
acquisition and provision of scholarships to those who want to go
further in their education. Some of the ex-militants say they are
unsure how this will work. They have a point. Going by the experience
of the last batch of trainees, this will not be a smooth exercise
either. Close to half of the last batch of trainees are deemed to have
‘failed’ the exercise and will be sent back to camp. This might clog up
and distend the system – making it impossible to conclude the programme
on time and heightening the anxiety and distrust already nursed by the
ex-militants.

Above all this is the reality that a scheme that
targets, at best, only 30,000 youths in the Niger Delta solely because
of their propensity to foment trouble is hardly sustainable. The
reality is that there are millions of youth in the same pool from which
these young men are drawn and unless the general state of neglect in
the Delta is addressed in a holistic, grand plan that takes care of the
needs of all the peoples of the area, it will only be too easy for
another set of youngsters to equally demand special treatment from the
federal government.

The whole amnesty project is like treating the symptom. Government would do well to tackle the disease itself.