[sacw] sacw dispatch (2 Nov.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
2 November 1999
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex
__________________
#1. Pakistan coup & the Indian nuclear theology
#2. New Book: India's Nuclear Bomb
#3. A Public discussion in Canada: Military Coup In Pakistan
#4. Joshi's Educational Coups: Our Own Hindu Taliban
#5. ABCnews: Acid Attacks Against Women in Bangladesh
__________________
#1.
=46rontline
Volume 16 - Issue 23, Nov. 06 - 19, 1999
Cover Story

THE COUP AND THE INDIAN NUCLEAR THEOLOGY
Who controlled the nuclear button in Pakistan as the coup was under way? An
assessment of the implications of the coup vis-a-vis nuclear weaponisation.

By T. JAYARAMAN

THE interest that the international media have evinced in the coup in
Pakistan is undoubtedly in part owing to the fact that it involved the
spectacle of a military takeover in an era when such political transitions
have become somewhat passe. In the post-Cold War years, the ruling classes
in most other nations have discovered far more effective and superficially
democratic means to contain dissent or manage internal crises. But the
other major reason for the interest undoubtedly stem from the serious
concern that is generated by political instability in any state which has
nuclear-weapons capability. Who controls the nuclear button at a time when
the normal chain of political and military authority of a state is actively
disrupted is a question of more than passing interest to most governments
and international public opinion.

But, curiously, in India the question of the nuclear dimensions of the
coup in Pakistan has not yet triggered a debate on the dangers posed by
nuclear weaponisation when there is endemic political instability in at
least one of the nuclear-armed states of South Asia. The Indian media have
been flooded with self-congratulatory commentary on the swearing-in of a
democratically elected government in India at the same time that the coup
got under way in Pakistan; little attention has been paid to the coup's
implications for the nuclear issue and the evolution of an Indian nuclear
doctrine.

The fact that India's leading nuclear theologians have maintained a
studied silence on this issue should, however, be entirely unsurprising to
those who have read the recently released draft Indian Nuclear Doctrine
(dIND). The crux of the matter is that events such as the coup in Pakistan
deal a body blow to some of the fundamental assumptions of the nuclear
doctrine enunciated by the high priests of Indian nuclear weaponisation.

As is evident from even a cursory analysis of the dIND, India's nuclear
weaponisation programme is Pakistan- and China-specific. In this context, a
key assumption of the dIND is that peace and security in South Asia can be
ensured by the possession of nuclear weapons that act as a deterrent. In
other words, it is the balance of terror between India and Pakistan, when
both nations are nuclear-weaponised, that will guarantee peace and
stability. The dIND says as much, with its entirely unoriginal invocation
of the basic principles of deterrence theory. To be sure, the document does
not refer to Pakistan directly but the implications vis-a-vis that nation
are obvious. The question that is important for any objective analysis is
whether the assumptions of deterrence theory will hold when there is deep
political instability in one of the states that is a player in the game.

The Achilles heel of deterrence theory, the hyperrationality of which
often makes it beguilingly acceptable to many, is the fact that it
presupposes that one's opponent will read one's actions and events in the
realm of nuclear weapons in the manner that one intends the opponent to.
The second problem is that the actual operationalisation of deterrence,
when nuclear weapons are really deployed, leads inevitably to situations
where the command and control of nuclear weapons is compromised and the
dangers of accidental or unauthorised launch become very high. Deterrence
theory presupposes perfect command and control since its stated aim is to
prevent a nuclear exchange. But the danger of deterrence is that such a
level of command and control is never achieved in practice - as the
experience of even the most advanced nuclear weapons powers has always
shown.

WHO controlled the nuclear button in Pakistan while the coup was under
way? Who had the authority to launch nuclear weapons when Nawaz Sharif was
attempting to prevent Gen. Pervez Musharraf from returning to Pakistan?
Would it have been the orders of the Prime Minister or the orders of the
Chief of the Army Staff that would have prevailed with the individuals who
physically controlled the arming, the launching and the delivery of nuclear
weapons? What are the political inclinations of these individuals, and
would they have been susceptible to the enticements of fringe extremist
political elements in a short period of extreme instability during a forced
political transition? Obviously, India's nuclear hawks have no clear
answers to these questions. But in a nuclear-armed environment, the
security - indeed, the very lives - of millions of Indians hangs on precise
answers to these questions, now and in the future.

Undoubtedly, the nuclear theologians will attempt to dismiss these
questions as unduly alarmist in the current context. It certainly appears
that currently in Pakistan it is the Army that has physical control of the
weapons. But according to reports in the Pakistani media, quoted by The
Times of India (August 22, 1999) for instance, the political authority to
launch nuclear weapons was to rest with the Prime Minister, while the Chief
of the Army Staff was to be the strategic commander. In the event of a
conflict between the political authority and the military, whose will would
prevail and how would that affect the control of nuclear weapons? Did
Pakistan have a mechanism in place whereby the strategic commander could
not override the political authority or vice versa? Hardly likely,
considering the technical difficulties involved in Pakistan acquiring such
a capability and given the internal political constraints. It is also true
that the armed forces were solidly behind Gen. Musharraf in the current
coup and were hardly disposed to listen to Nawaz Sharif. Gen. Musharraf
also moved rather rapidly to assure the world that his regime would
exercise nuclear restraint. But is it guaranteed that such a situation
would always obtain even in the future?

It is obvious that command and control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons will
always be a chancy affair. The compromising of command and control will
always be a possibility that cannot be excluded. Indeed, in more extreme
crises, a split in the Army would render the situation even more dangerous.
If, as was the case with even the current coup, part of the internal
conflict was precisely on the question of how to deal with Pakistan's
disputes with India, who controls the weapons becomes a matter of great
concern. Can an endemically politically unstable state, as Pakistan has
been for the last few decades, endure the pressures of a crisis of the
proportions of the Cuban missile crisis, scaled down no doubt to
subcontinental dimensions, without its command and control giving way? The
inescapable conclusion is that the lives of millions of Indians are only as
secure as the weakest link in the Pakistani chain of command for its
nuclear weapons. Only in the fevered imagination of India's Strangeloves,
dedicated to the pursuit of nuclear weapons, could this be construed as
security.

THE oft-repeated claim that India's command and control will be more
secure because of the civilian control of nuclear weapons cannot also be
taken at face value, even if it soothes various representatives of Track II
diplomacy from the United States. Apart from being an insult to India's
armed forces, this argument suppresses the fact that the most vociferous
and hawkish pressures in favour of India's nuclear weaponisation have
always come from its civilian sector. The blithe disregard of strategic
realities in South Asia by the pro-weaponisation lobby, whether in
government or outside, is undoubtedly partly due to the virtual exclusion
of the Indian armed forces from both the final decision-making loop as well
as the long internal debate that led to the nuclear tests and the handling
of the aftermath. And even if ultimate political authority rests with the
Prime Minister, it makes command and control no more secure if the physical
control of nuclear weapons lay with men in civilian clothing rather than
those in the varied uniforms of the defence forces.

But even more disturbing considerations emerge if one tries to analyse
more carefully the business-as-usual attitude of the nuclear hawks in India
towards the implications of the coup in Pakistan. This attitude in fact has
its genesis in the manner in which the Kargil conflict, a classic case of
the damage done to India's security by Pokhran-II, was ultimately brought
to an end. In Kargil, India's chestnuts were pulled out of the fire partly
by the intervention of the U.S. As Pakistan, hoping for international
intervention, prolonged the conflict beyond the time period that
intelligent political and strategic considerations would have indicated, it
was the pressure brought to bear by the U.S. that eventually led to a
Pakistani withdrawal. This happened at a time when clearly the Indian
government foresaw a long-drawn-out conflict, with high losses in terms of
men and material, to regain final control of the territory occupied by the
Pakistani intruders. Clearly it was also international pressure that
prevented Pakistan from explicitly bringing the nuclear factor into play
even though threatening noises did emerge from some quarters.

It is the self-deluding and mistaken reading of these events as a triumph
of Indian diplomacy and strategy, in utilising the U.S. to contain Pakistan
in the Kargil conflict and force its withdrawal, that has partly emboldened
the nuclear hawks in India to produce the aggressive dIND, unmindful of its
destabilising effects in the subcontinent. One of the key underlying
assumptions of the doctrine is that the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council (P-5) would automatically intervene if
Pakistan attempts to raise the nuclear threat in the subcontinent. The
gamble is that deterrence will work partly because the international
community will not countenance any destabilisation of deterrence by
Pakistan. And this is also the reason why the nuclear hawks view the coup
with relative unconcern, depending on the U.S. to intervene to ensure that
Pakistan continued to exercise nuclear restraint. What if the intervention
of the P-5 does not work or that they are unable to intervene decisively on
some occasion in the future. These are, of course, questions that only
'naive' anti-nuclear weapons campaigners would ask.

It is clearly this view that finds its echo in an editorial in The Times
of India (October 21) calling upon the "international community, and
particularly the U.S.", to "emphasise to the Pakistani military what the
consequences of any nuclear adventurism are likely to be." The editorial
smugly concludes: "It is to cover contingencies of this type that the
Indian nuclear doctrine authored by the National Security Advisory Board
talks of 'punitive unacceptable retaliation' in case of a nuclear first
strike on India." Undoubtedly P-5 intervention against the offender and an
Indian second strike would bring considerable cheer to the ghosts of those
Indians who would have been vapourised by a first strike.

The fact that this strategy, even in the short term, would require the
offering of substantial quid pro quo measures to the U.S., or that it opens
the door to worrisome possibilities such as international intervention on
the Kashmir question, has been lost sight of in the blind pursuit of
nuclear weaponisation. That this attitude is at least partly official is
evident from the alacrity with which the newly-elected government has
resumed its dialogue with the U.S. on a broad range of issues that have
been left somewhat unspecified but appear definitely to include
India-Pakistan relations. Indeed, it is National Security Adviser Brajesh
Mishra who is the first representative to visit Washington.

It certainly appears unlikely that the serious problems that beset
India-Pakistan relations can be settled in the short term. There is a huge
gap that divides the two nations that it seems will be difficult to bridge
without considerable patience and intense and prolonged effort. And
undoubtedly the continued instability of democracy in Pakistan complicates
the picture. But introducing nuclear weapons into the subcontinent or the
production of aggressive nuclear doctrines based on the false assumptions
of nuclear deterrence theory seems hardly the way to go about securing
peace. The correct first Indian response to its troubled neighbour,
post-Pokhran and post-Chagai, remains the acceptance of Pakistan's
oft-repeated offer to consider the non-deployment of nuclear weapons in the
subcontinent.
__________________
#2.
India's Nuclear Bomb
by George Perkovich

December 1999
Hardcover, 673pp.
ISBN: 0520217721
University of California Press

Reviews From Library Journal Perkovich (W. Alton Jones Foundation)
painstakingly describes the evolution of India's nuclear arsenal from 1947
to 1998. The stockpile resulted not from military need but rather from the
efforts of India's scientific community and an extremely small number of
politicians. Opposition groups, including several prime ministers,
lambasted the diversion of funds from education, health, sanitation, and
welfare programs to building bombs. Perkovich interweaves the complex
relationships among India, the United States, Pakistan, and China regarding
nuclear bombs, pointing out that none remained steadfast to principles. The
work concludes with sets of principles that are then applied to other
nuclear programs. Essential for any library concerned with nuclear
issues.-Donald Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis Copyright 1999
Cahners Business Information.
=46rom Kirkus
A detailed narrative and assessment of India's 50-year debate over nuclear
weapons development. In May 1998 India joined the ranks of the world=92s
nuclear powers when it detonated five atomic weapons. In this penetrating
and extremely well-researched and-documented study, Perkovich, Director of
the Secure World Program of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, analyzes the
complex and conflicting domestic interests and viewpoints that continue to
fuel India=92s nuclear debate. While the Western-oriented ``Realist'' school
maintains that states act purely in their national interest and defense in
an anarchic international setting, Perkovich dissents, claiming this
assumption ignores the specifics of India=92s case. Why did it act when it
did, why not sooner? Most of India=92s history has been typified by nuclear
restraint, however labored. On the one hand, India has striven to be a
stronger moral force than the West and the former communist world have
been. Thus it long resisted the testing of nuclear weapons. On the other
hand, India has pursued a quest to join the superpowers=92 ranks. If
superpowers have nuclear weapons, then India should have nuclear weapons.
These contradictory poles have determined India=92s nuclear policy. Pressure=
d
by an influential domestic scientific community and often incensed by the
West's arrogant demands for non-proliferation in the developing world while
maintaining its own arsenal, India=92s leaders from Nehru on, each of them
ambivalent about nuclear weaponry, have allowed research but never actual
testing=97until May 1998. Perkovich takes the reader inside this long
history, revealing personalities, institutions, events, and processes
generally little known in the West but vital to understanding India=92s
nuclear policy. He arrives at conclusions that are often startling and
controversial=97like his suggestion that India=92s democracy may have been a
stumbling block to nuclear restraint. An excellent study, showing a subtle
and balanced understanding of the nuclear predicament of both India and of
the developing world in general. (23 b photos)
_________________
#3
South Asia Partnership Canada
Invites you to a mid-morning discussion on the:

MILITARY COUP IN PAKISTAN: POSSIBLE REPERCUSSIONS ON THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES
AND RELATIONS WITH CANADA

Panel of Discussants:

Ms. Ingrid. Hall
Director General
South and Southeast Asia Divisions
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Ms. Hall is returning from the Commonwealth Visit to Pakistan led by
Minister Lloyd Axworthy

&

Mr. I.A.Rehman
(by phone directly from Pakistan)
Executive Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00
Date: Friday, November 5, 1999
Place: CCIC Boardroom 3rd Floor, 1 Nicholas Street, Ottawa, Ottawa
To attend please RSVP
Sangye Khan or Isabelle Valois
SAP Canada, Phone: (613) 241-1333, Fax: (613) 241-1129 Email:
sap@w...
__________________
#4.
The Daily Star
2nd November 1999
Op-Ed.

Joshi's Educational Coups: Our Own Hindu Taliban
by Praful Bidwai

So obsessed is much of our media with looking for (largely non-existent)
"moderation" in the BJP that it has played down the communalisation of our
education. The latest controversy over the dropping of "Marxism" from next
year's Class XII Political Science curriculum shows the communalisation
process continues relentlessly. Until now, Marxism was one of five
ideologies taught in Class XII, with Gandhism, Liberalism, Fascism and
Socialism. But it was suddenly excluded from the new CBSE curriculum.

The government says this was a printer's devil. But it can't explain why
the "mistake" occurred in only one of the six "units" in the syllabus, and
why it wasn't corrected even weeks after new guide-books were printed
following the revision.

The BJP's stance labelling Marxism a "dead" ideology during Parliamentary
debate arouses suspicions that the "mistake" might not be purely
accidental. The BJP may have floated a trial balloon to see how far it
could go.

Many BJP leaders argue and believe that Marxism has become irrelevant
after Communism's collapse. This is untrue. There are many schools within
Marxism which not only opposed Soviet-style State socialism, but predicted
it would prove unviable.

What existed on this view in the USSR (or exists in China) was not
socialism, but its bureaucratised distortion, without democracy. A brutal
dictatorship got consolidated under Stalin, which was inadequately
reformed later.

The point is not whether this theory is right or wrong, but that it
belongs to the Marxist current. It won't do to argue that Marxism has very
few followers, and so should be dropped. Gandhism has even fewer
adherents. The Sarvodaya movement is dead. Some core-ideas of Gandhism
such as village republics and household production have no takers. But
that is no argument for not teaching Gandhism as an original, major,
ideology.

Whether one regards Marxism as valid or flawed, it is an immensely
powerful theory and analytical tool, with profound insights into the way
societies evolve, and how social relations impact on economic and
political structures.

No one has developed as radical a critique of capitalism, bourgeois values
or the family as Marx-despite inadequacies. Marxism must be taught not
because it is correct, but because it is an indispensable part of
humanity's intellectual heritage, and a big influence in the formation of
our own intelligentsia.

The BJP's anti-Marxist prejudice and its silence on Fascism reflects a
bias typical of the Sangh. The RSS' founders-whom BJP leaders, including
Mr Vajpayee, have never disowned-were self-confessed admirers of fascism.
Golwalkar lavished praise upon Hitler for his militant nationalism.

Education minister M.M. Joshi is guilty of serious biases. If he had his
way, he would censor out Marx, Freud, feminism, even liberal pluralism.
This agenda is no different from that of Pakistani jehadists who too want
to ban and "wipe out" secularism from that country. The common mindset is
basically Talibanist.

Mr Joshi is working to a larger gameplan. He tried (unsuccessfully) to
impose Saraswati Vandana. He tried (more successfully) to radically
restructure apex institutions including the University Grants Commission,
National Council of Educational Research and Training (which produces a
majority of school textbooks), National Institute of Educational Planning
and Administration, Institute of Advanced Studies, and Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library.

His latest victims are the Councils of Social Science and Historical
Research, now hoist with Mr M.L. Sondhi and Mr B.R. Grover, both committed
communalists and poor scholars.

The NCERT has just recruited Mr K.G. Rastogi, who headed Vidya Bharati,
which runs the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs or nurseries of Hindu rashtra. Mr
Rastogi is a self-confessed murderer. He says he killed a Hindu woman in
the 1947 communal riots to prevent her from being raped by a Muslim mob.
He did not think of using the gun against the mob itself! His
autobiography is dedicated to the RSS, and has a foreword by K.S.
Sudarshan.

Our top educational institutions are passing under the control of men who
are vulnerable (being mediocre), or rabidly communal, or both. They will
highlight India's contributions to the world (read, myths about "Vedic
mathematics"), while running down all other cultures. This is the surest
way of turning India into the coming millennium's intellectual backwater.

To historian Grover, the BJP owes a huge debt. He furnished "irrefutable
proof" based on voodoo archaeology that a Ram temple existed where the
Babri once stood!

Mr Sondhi has a record of extreme intolerance. Take my personal
experience. I have addressed dozens of meetings against nuclear weapons
all over India. The only place where I was heckled is Delhi. The heckler
was Mr Sondhi-on May 16 last year.

The ICSSR and ICHR have under them the vast majority of our specialised
social science institutes. Their heads are supposed to be outstanding
scholars who provide leadership. But the new chairmen are likely to spread
communal poison, and leave devastation in their wake.

The BJP's agenda maligns some of the world's most creative schools of
historiography, led by our scholars: Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Ravinder
Kumar, Sumit Sarkar, Muzaffar Alam and D.D. Kosambi, who interpret history
by questioning both colonial historians and nationalist-communal schools
(which are a knee-jerk reaction to them).

The Hindutva agenda divides history into religious "periods". It lionises
the caste elite and maligns the minorities.

As Prof Sarkar says: "The basic thrust of the BJP is to construct an
enemy=8A For this, rewriting history, especially school textbooks, becomes
very important. The BJP's main fight is more with history than with
parties."

This prepares the ground for bringing up future generations on a diet of
exclusivism, blind nationalism, hatred and revenge. This negates the very
goal of education-to broaden minds, engage with ideas, and think
rationally and ethically.

We must ask: do we want our children to grow up as semi-literate
philistines and English-speaking Hindu Talibans? Or can we stop the BJP
from wreaking havoc?
__________________
#5.
ABCNews [The US Television Network] programme on Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 at 8p=
m

=46aces of Hope
Teen Launches Crusade to Stop Acid Attacks Against Women in Bangladesh

Doctors gave Bina Akhter three years to live after being attacked. That was
three years ago. Today, after eight operations, her face has evolved into
patchwork of skin grafts and scars. She still suffers from headaches so
severe she can hardly stand. (ABCNEWS)

By Connie Chung

ABCNEWS.com Nov. 1 =97 When I first began researching this story, I had
heard about barbaric acts of violence against women in the third world, but
I had no idea that hundreds of young women in Bangladesh were being
attacked with sulfuric acid simply because they dared to say no to men.
ABCNEWS=92 Connie Chung reports on a barbaric act against women.

Acid throwing has been called the barbaric crime of the century. Experts
say three to five women a week are being burned with acid in Bangladesh,
and the numbers are increasing at an alarming rate. "In 1996 there were
perhaps 50 cases. There were 100 cases a year after. And 200 cases last
year. So it appears to be doubling=85 And therefore there's a need for urgen=
t
action," says John Morrison, executive director of the newly formed Acid
Survivors=92 Foundation. Many of the victims are teenagers from very poor
families. Often, they are attacked with acid because they reject a young
man's advances or refuse a marriage proposal. It=92s as if the men are
saying: "If I can=92t have her, no one will." By throwing acid, the men not
only destroy a woman=92s face but her chances of getting married. Acid
victims are viewed as pariahs; usually they are even blamed for causing the
attack. Sulfuric acid literally melts away skin and muscle =97 often down t=
o
the bone. All the victims are scarred for life. Many of them are blinded
and lose their hearing. Some of them die. In the early stages of my
research, I saw a portrait of one victim that was truly extraordinary. It
showed a woman=92s head completely covered by a veil, except for one eye
staring out. (It was taken by Shafiqul Kiron , whose photographs of acid
victims won the World Press Club Award for People in the News this year.)
The woman behind the veil was a 17-year-old named Bina Akhter, and the more
I learned about her, the more I realized that we had to tell this story
through her eyes. Bina is one of those rare people you meet who is really
larger than life. She has been terribly injured, yet she has incredible
courage and spirit. And she=92s already making a difference in how her
country views acid victims, and how they view themselves. Ironically, Bina
was one of the first acid survivors to take off her veil. Most of the
victims are too ashamed to show their faces, so they hide behind closed
doors and curtained windows. But Bina was different. This teenager has been
inspiring other victims to step out of the shadows. For the first time in
Bangladesh, a girl burned by acid was demanding justice. She was even
marching in protests and speaking at rallies. Just before we headed for
Bangladesh, we learned that Bina was coming to America. An organization
called Healing the Children had arranged for Shriner=92s Hospital in
Cincinnati to donate surgery for two acid survivors. We timed our trip to
arrive in Dhaka a few days before she flew to Cincinnati =97 and then we fle=
w
back with her to America.

Bina's Story When I first met Bina, she greeted me with a big smile and a
hug. She's so warm, you almost forget the scars on her face and her badly
damaged left eye. She told me that she was once an accomplished sprinter,
and that she even hoped to compete in the Olympics. All her dreams were
shattered in an instant on August 26, 1996. Bina says she was awakened when
a local thug called Dano broke into the house at 2:30 in the morning: "He
was wearing a black mask. He lit a torch and that=92s what woke me up. I
started screaming. He was about to pour something on my cousin and I
knocked it out of his hand. It fell on the floor. Then he picked it up and
threw it at my face."

Medical Care Bina was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, which is the
only public hospital in all of Bangladesh that has a burn unit. Her family
couldn=92t afford to pay for the extensive surgery she needed to repair her
damaged face. (It would have cost more than $10,000.) She did have eight
operations, but her uncle had to sell almost everything he owned to pay for
medicine, bandages and blood. When I visited the burn unit, all I could
think of was just how fortunate we are in America. The hospital has only
eight beds for female patients =97 not nearly enough to care for all the aci=
d
burn victims. There is almost no modern equipment, few trained nurses, and
even clean sheets are in short supply. The patients are all bathed in the
same bathtub; their dressings are often changed by maids who clean the
floor. The doctors can do only the most basic reconstructive surgery. A
one-hour operation costs several hundred dollars in a country where the
average income is about $25 a month. Most victims need several operations,
each of which take four to five hours. The prime minister of Bangladesh,
Sheikh Hasina, told me she has just ordered a new 50-bed burn unit to be
built within a year. But even then, doctors at the hospital say there isn=92=
t
enough money in the budget to purchase all the necessary equipment. For
now, the only way seriously burned patients can get the surgery they need
is if someone pays to send them abroad. Recently, a philanthropist who saw
a report about acid violence donated funds to send six burned victims to
Spain for surgery. When I met one of those girls, 12-year-old Monira, I
realized the difference that proper medical care can make in the lives of
these victims. After Monira was attacked, her face looked as if it had
literally melted away. When she returned from Spain after eight months of
surgery, she was transformed. With a new glass eye, a prosthetic ear and
skin grafts on her neck and nose, she looked like a little girl again! But
Dr. Samanta Lal Sen, one of only eight plastic surgeons in this country of
127 million people, told me that=92s not the answer. "We cannot send all the
girls to Spain, America, Australia or Italy. We must do the treatment here
in Bangladesh," says Lal Sen. "And we have got the skill. If we get the
facilities, we will be able to do this surgery here. We must stand on our
own feet."

Bina's Crusade In 1997, Bina was invited to a workshop for acid survivors
held by a women's organization called Naripokkho. Soon she was working at
Naripokkho, tracking cases of acid violence across the country. This
teenager who was once too ashamed to show her face began counseling other
victims, speaking at rallies and marching in protests. Yet inside, Bina
was still a frightened teenager. Her alleged attacker, a local thug called
Dano, had never been caught. She told me she has seen him walking around
openly, and that he continues to threaten her and her family with more
violence if they don't withdraw the case. Activists say that=92s not
uncommon. They also say attackers often try to bribe police. The end result
is that convictions are few and far between. The Acid Survivors=92 Foundatio=
n
estimates that only one in 10 attackers goes to trial.

Overall Impressions From the beginning, I wanted to confront these men who
throw acid. I wanted to ask them how they could commit such a vicious
crime. I was given that chance when I was offered a rare glimpse inside
Dhaka Central Jail. My interview with three prisoners sentenced to life in
prison for throwing acid was one of the most fascinating parts of my trip.
This was one of those stories I will never forget. The faces of the victims
I met, the desperate conditions at the hospital, and the overwhelming
poverty in Bangladesh are all images that will stay with me always. But
what really made this story so memorable was Bina=92s courage. She is only
17, yet she is an indomitable force. As we got on the plane to come to
America, she was grinning ear-to-ear. She knew this was a
once-in-a-lifetime chance =97 her only hope for a normal life. She would be
treated by the best surgeons in America. Could they give her back what she
had lost? But even as she embarked on her journey, Bina was thinking about
the other girls she was leaving behind. "There are thousands of acid burn
victims in Bangladesh. They have no money, and what they have they=92ve
already spent on treatments," Bina says. "I wish they get the opportunities
I have. With proper care many of them could be restored to their normal
life. I hope America will help." We will continue to follow Bina and her
medical progress as she undergoes surgery sometime next year.
__________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.