From Today's Papers - 31 May

Lorry crushes colonel wife

A STAFF REPORTER

Calcutta, May 30: A lieutenant colonel’s wife was run over by a lorry as she returned home after seeing her husband and elder son off at the airport today. Jeeta Devi Singh, 40, lay with her head crushed on A.J.C. Bose Road near the race course around 3pm, yards from her home in Turf View, where younger son Nikhil, 16, waited impatiently for her. Husband A.N. Singh and elder son Neeraj learnt the news after getting off their plane at 4pm in Imphal, their hometown. “They had gone there to get Neeraj, who has just passed his Class XII exams, admitted to a college,” said a neighbour, Col Michael Mathews. Father and son are expected back tomorrow. “Younger son Nikhil, who passed his Class X exams this year, made a call to his mother’s mobile, which we found in her handbag, around 4.15pm,” an officer of Hastings police station said. “We asked him to turn up at the hospital.” Four-and-a-half hours later, the teen was handed over his mother’s body after a post-mortem. Officers said Jeeta Devi had possibly gone to her computer classes from the airport and then probably taken a cab home. She had just got off the taxi when the lorry came speeding from the Vidyasagar Setu end. “One of the wheels went over her head,” an officer said. “No one saw her reach the spot. We found some books containing computer lessons in her handbag.” As Jeeta Devi, who wore a pair of blue jeans and a white top, lay blood-splattered, traffic constable Dipak Das arrived at the spot and took her in a cab to SSKM Hospital, where she was declared dead. The Singhs have been living at Turf View for the past two years since Lt Col Singh arrived in Calcutta on study leave to do a course in management. Jeeta Devi was a jovial and popular neighbour who loved to socialise, Turf View residents said. The lorry driver abandoned the vehicle at the Bakery Road-St George’s Road crossing, where police found it and towed it to Hastings police station. A case of rash driving has been lodged and a hunt is on for the driver.

EDITORIAL: Future of army intervention

In the midst of all kinds of opinion about the “sincerity” of the PPP government in pursuing the cause of the judges and its “concealed sympathy” with President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has spoken at the National Defence University in Islamabad, and explained the stance of the partisans of democracy in the country vis-à-vis military intervention. He told the class that Pakistan had a few officers in the army who got together with “a class of politicians, bureaucrats, judiciary and affluent members of the civil society” to block the process of establishing democratic institutions in Pakistan. According to Mr Gilani, Pakistan paid a heavy price for this “civil military alliance” which flouted the supremacy of parliament and other democratic institutions. It created polarisation in the country and made it difficult for the political parties to get together on one minimal plank. In fact, he said, the only politics Pakistan knew in the 1990s was the musical chairs of pushing each other down. He therefore welcomed the decision of the current army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, to stop military institutions from interfering in civilian affairs.

The prime minister touched upon the central flaw in the state of Pakistan: geopolitical compulsions drove Pakistan to a “security-first approach as against a development-first approach” which the PPP has now pledged to reverse. He also made it plain that Pakistan had to fight against terrorism and restore law and order in the country, and that it was also committed to strengthening the army to face the new challenges.

To put in bluntly, the “security-first” approach had less to do with our geopolitical location — which was probably more relevant in the case of preventing the Soviet Union from reaching the “warm waters” of the Indian Ocean — than with India. Pakistani ideologues created the notion of the “other” to formulate its nationalism; and nationalism had to find its teleology of fighting a “just war”. But after losing many wars in pursuit this form of nationalism — which allowed supremacy to the army in the country — we want the army to tame itself. However, the question is whether we can do it without changing the nature of our nationalism?

Fortunately, both the mainstream parties forming the current coalition are in agreement over their policy projections towards India. Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mr Asif Ali Zardari have made it very clear to the residual jingoists in Pakistan that they will pursue normalisation with India to its logical conclusion. That is certain to curtail the tendency of the army to intervene in the system by pleading lack of attention to the “India factor and Kashmir”. The other important pillar that sustained military intervention in the past pertains to religious ideology. In this case too the country is threatened from within and religion can no longer be used to secure the country against India.

Prime Minister Gilani has corrected the misimpression that the government is leaning in favour of President Musharraf in the great drive led by the lawyers and the PMLN to get rid of the president by some means other than constitutional. A rumour in this respect was allowed to balloon out of all proportion and the PPP was challenged to join the crowd asking the president to leave. While the PPP has favoured Mr Musharraf’s voluntary decision to quit, and called for his impeachment if he doesn’t, it has also shown realism in not endorsing the rhetoric of trying the president for treason, knowing that the army will not allow that to happen.

Today, it should be appreciated that the army is clearly inclined to stay out of civilian affairs. It is worried about the challenges ahead posed by the presence of the Taliban in the Tribal Areas, and it is worried about the modality ultimately chosen by the politicians to tackle the problem. It is conscious of an increasingly unbridled public opinion nurtured by opinion-makers on TV channels and newspapers in favour of an isolationist future while no problem related to terrorism or the economy can be tackled without external assistance.

In today’s black and white “revolutionary” thinking, the PPP government is allegedly trapped in indecision. What everybody wants is a revolutionary decision to join battle on just one side; and resort to Constitution is ignored in favour of executive orders that effect summary change. But the only way problems can be resolved is the long constitutional view of things. What if President Musharraf refuses to go? The lawyers say they will agitate and hope that something will happen as a result. Thus a radicalised Pakistan is not in favour of doing things legally. Therefore it is good that the speech made by the prime minister sets the record straight on where the government stands with regard to the Pakistan army. *


US Army records highest number of suicides
Press Trust of India

Friday, May 30, 2008 (New York)

The US Army witnessed the highest number of suicides in more than two decades last year when at least 115 soldiers killed themselves, partly because of the stress of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another 53 suicides were reported from National Guards and Reservists who were not deployed. Besides, there were 935 suicides attempts last year, according to latest statistics released by the army.

In 2006, the number of soldiers who took their own lives was 102 and the suicide rate was up by more than 12 per cent the next year which made it 18.8 per 100,000 soldiers.

The army had started keeping record in 1980 and this was the highest number recorded since then.

That stress of war might be a major contributing factor, is clear from the fact that the army reported 85 suicides in 2005, 67 in 2004 and 79 in 2003.

So far this year, 38 suicides have been confirmed.

About one in four soldiers committed suicide during the first deployment and 43 per cent took their lives after coming home.

Only 7 per cent of soldiers who committed suicide were deployed for more than one time and 26 per cent were never deployed.

Thus army said the suicides do not show link with repeated deployments.

The army took solace from the fact that despite increase in the suicide rate, the number remained below the civilian rate of 19.5 per 100,000.

There are about 1.08 million troops serving in the army, comprising 525,000 on active duty 194,000 in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard's 356,000