Wheat smuggling

EXPECTING a bumper crop this year, the government had decided to allow export of 0.5 million tons of wheat - a decision it was to regret later. Traders actually sold 0.45 million tons in foreign markets, and there was not enough left for the domestic consumers. And 2007 saw serious wheat shortages and price hikes, forcing the government to permit import rather than export of the commodity. It was widely believed that the main reason behind the shortages was hoarding for the purpose of smuggling. In fact, the Advisor to the Finance Ministry acknowledged at a press conference in September that the hoarders had withheld two million tons of wheat from the market. The government since has been trying to figure out what went wrong and where. As part of this effort the Directorate General of Intelligence was given the task to ascertain the extent of export/smuggling of wheat and wheat flour to Afghanistan via Torkham, Afghanistan being the favourite destination of our wheat smugglers. In a recent Recorder Report, the Directorate General of Intelligence was quoted as saying that as per the information it had collected from multiple sources no smuggling was taking place in the border areas except for a very small scale activity through ‘katcha’ routes in South Waziristan Agency. The claim is hard to believe in view of past practice. It is even harder to take it seriously given the reasons cited in support of its conclusion that the smuggling activity on the Afghan border is negligible. Reason one for doubting the conclusion is that there are very few flour mills in Afghanistan; and the second reason is that large parts of Afghanistan lack access to electric supply, because of which there are no wheat grinding facilities on the other side of the border.
The assumption, of course, is that before the arrival of electricity and flour grinding machinery people in Afghanistan and everywhere else ate wheat in unground form. Press reports say that wheat smuggling goes on not only to Afghanistan but to India and Iran as well. The temptation to smuggle was particularly great this year since the price of our wheat was much lower than the international price. In India, for instance, it was 40 percent higher than here. According to one report, an estimated 1.5 million tons of wheat was taken out of the country illegally over a six-week period in August and early September alone. The report further refers to an unnamed senior government official as saying that about 200 truckloads of wheat leave Sindh every day for India. No wonder, wheat shortages in Pakistan became so acute this year that the government was compelled to allow import of one million tons of the commodity. The issue needs to be addressed on different fronts. First of all, the figures for estimated and actual production must be ascertained properly and announced for public information. This is important to avoid confusion as to whether a shortage is the result of calculation error or due to hoarding. Needless to say, hoarders cannot be persuaded to do the right thing merely on the basis of moralistic appeals. Ways must be found to deal with the menace in an effective manner. So far as the problem of smuggling to Afghanistan is concerned it deserves rethinking. As it is, Afghanistan relies heavily on our wheat, some of which gets there via limited exports and the rest through illegal means. It would make sense, therefore, for Islamabad to try and expand legal trade through government-to-government negotiations. Formal exports of the commodity to Afghanistan will take away from unscrupulous elements the cost advantage and hence the incentive for smuggling.

 

At odds

THERE is much that does not make sense about the destruction of the CIA videotapes of the interrogation of at least two Al-Qaeda suspects in the year after the 9/11 attacks. For a start, the agency originally insisted the tapes did not exist. Now it has admitted that this was a lie but has gone on to say the recordings have been destroyed. The record was made, says the CIA, to ensure that the new harsher interrogation methods authorized by the Bush White House were within “legal limits.” Why then was crucial evidence that this was the case subsequently destroyed? Unless of course the pictures showed that the techniques used to extract information from the suspects were indeed beyond the “legal limits.” The other excuse advanced by the CIA that the videotapes were destroyed in 2005 to protect the identities of CIA operatives is clearly also odd. If the spy agency had been faced with a demand for the release of these recordings, it would have been the work of only a few hours to disguise the features of the interrogators by electronically doctoring their faces while still showing what actually went on during the examinations. What appears far more likely is that the tapes were destroyed since they represented damning evidence of abuse and torture against identifiable CIA agents. In particular it is reported that the pictures showed at least one suspect being subjected to “waterboarding,” a torture in which a prisoner is almost drowned.
During the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui who was picked up a month before 9/11 and convicted of being one of the plotters, his defense team sought access to any videotapes of terror suspect interrogations. It was then that the CIA denied that such tapes existed. This would seem to have been an obstruction of justice. If the agency then destroyed the tapes in case they were forced by the courts to hand them over, the crime is compounded. In 2005 Moussaoui’s lawyers were trying to build their client’s defense. That this seems to be the moment when the tapes were trashed may be no coincidence. The tapes themselves are not, however, the real issue which is that President Bush in moving to protect the American people from terror assault was prepared to authorize behavior that flies in the face of all the freedoms and values that Americans supposedly hold dear. Time and again in this administration’s baleful seven years of blunder, the White House has been prepared to order illegal and immoral treatment of prisoners. There will of course always be a few individual sadists in any country who will mistreat suspects. Nonetheless, the depravities of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the extraordinary CIA rendition campaign and the torture of those it believed to be terrorists, could not have occurred so extensively without active encouragement from the highest levels in Washington. Angry Democrats are focusing wrongly on the cover up of the videotapes. But perhaps they cannot bring themselves to accept the horrific truth that men have been brutalized and tortured in the name of America.

—Arab News