Indian wheat for Afghanistan

PAKISTAN is half-ready to accept Afghanistan’s longstanding request to allow import of Indian wheat via the Wagah border - the shortest and least expensive route - although it continues to express reservations on the issue. According to a report, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani told the Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta at a recent meeting that on principle he agreed with the request. Nonetheless, Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is reported to have expressed the fear in the National Assembly that if Afghanistan was allowed to import the fungus-infected Indian wheat, it might enter our food chain. The danger, according to him, of this happening is great given the fact that there are no flour mills in Afghanistan and all its wheat grinding is done in Pakistan. Hence, the Indian wheat would easily come into contact with the local produce, increasing that much the chance of our own wheat catching the fungal infection. It may be recalled that not long after the US started its latest war in Afghanistan, India had offered to send in wheat through Pakistan. Islamabad had rejected the offer out of hand, saying that it contained a fungus that would infect and harm our own wheat crop. The resistance, therefore, is not new. In fact, official experts claim that the disease, known as ‘Karnal bunt’, has been present in the Indian state of Haryana since the 1930s.
This makes one wonder why India, despite having made significant progress in science and technology, failed all these years to find a remedy for a wheat fungus that makes bread - a staple of Indian diet like ours - smelly and unpalatable. As such, no one should want it. But the Afghans certainly need it. It is possible that the Karnal bunt disease does exist in India but to a limited extent; it is also possible though that our objections to the commodity’s transportation to Afghanistan have something to do with regional politics. After all, influence peddling and economic assistance programmes go hand in hand. But then the main driving force behind India’s apparent willingness to resolve the Kashmir issue is its interest in Pakistan as an energy and trade route to the resource-rich Central Asian republics. Indian wheat supplies to Afghanistan may be seen in that light. Traditionally, Pakistan meets Afghan wheat requirements from its own resources. The recent wheat crisis was caused, among other reasons, by smuggling of some 1.7 million tons of wheat to different neighbouring countries, particularly Afghanistan. The production outlook for this year is not very promising either. It makes eminent sense, therefore, to reduce the pressure on our resources by letting Kabul fend for itself to whatever extent it can. With regard to the concern about the possible spread of ‘Karnal bunt’ fungus in our flour mills, the simple solution would be to tell the two countries to get the wheat ground in India. The passage of flour truckloads through Pakistan will take only a short time, and is unlikely to infect the local wheat during transportation. Apparently, Prime Minister Gillani gave due consideration to all these aspects of the issue when he accepted the Afghan request for extending transit facility to Indian wheat. The remaining reservations also need to go.

Talks with Dalai Lama

AT last the Chinese government has proposed reopening talks with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. The mystery is that Beijing did not realize the necessity months ago, long before the Olympic torch began its controversial world tour past crowds of pro-Tibetan protesters. By some vagary of the political system, no one in the government seems to have realized what a publicity disaster the torch carrying would become. Given that both the government and ordinary Chinese people have invested such effort and hopes in the Summer Olympics, this was an extraordinary piece of bad judgment. However, those outside China who are now suggesting that had Beijing been talking the Dalai Lama, there would have been no protests at all, are very probably wrong. So emotionally charged has the issue of Tibet become for the Western liberal establishment (which at the same time wholly ignores a similar issue among China’s Muslim Uighur population in Xinjiang) that the multicountry procession of the Olympic torch was bound to be used as an excuse for demonstrations. The irony is that the Dalai Lama himself, though obviously heartened by the renewed spotlight on Tibet, has not changed his life-long commitment to peaceful protest. He seeks not Tibetan independence but rather autonomy within China that will permit his people to live according to their ancient traditions. Nor has he ever disapproved of China’s staging of the Olympics.
Rather than demonizing the Tibetan leader, the Chinese should have been negotiating with him these past months. Now they enter into talks as if under duress and are strongly suspected of seeking merely to assuage international opinion until the Games are over. The Dalai Lama’s people are hoping that the proposed discussions will amount to more than a temporary publicity sticking plaster. Were Beijing to offer to review its entire policy of the enforced integration of Tibet within China, with large-scale immigration by Han Chinese, and even produce an outline agreement on the eve of the Olympics, the current public relations disaster would be transformed into a triumph. This is, however, to ignore the visceral views of the majority of Chinese, who regard Tibet as an integral part of the country. Thanks to 60 years of Communism, there is also a strong ethic of conformity and an inherent disapproval of diversity. This is applied as much to China’s Muslim and Mongol communities as it is to the Tibetans. With its newfound confidence and rising economic power, China is not in the mood to compromise. What is more, in its long history, the rise of regional powers has always spelt disaster for central government. Nevertheless, as it once again achieves great-power status, Beijing must learn to compromise, albeit from a position of strength. It did it successfully in taking back Hong Kong and benefited hugely from the former British colony’s financial expertise. It could do it again through a wise accommodation with the Dalai Lama over the future of an autonomous, but still Chinese Tibet.

—Arab News