It’s not America’s problem if Pakistan is breeding like rabbits: it becomes their problem once we start to export terrorism across the Atlantic

THERE was a time, not long ago, when the finger-wagging Americans warned Pakistan to keep a lid over its Population bomb. Now, all they shout about is our A-bomb and want it capped. As for hoi polloi proliferating the countryside and ensuring Pakistan’s top position as the fastest growing nation on planet Earth, who cares. What bugs Bush is the anti-American rote being grounded in million impressionable minds of the madressah kids. So, it’s not America’s problem if Pakistan is breeding like rabbits: it becomes their problem once we start to export terrorism across the Atlantic.

Why then observe July 11 and lecture to the walls about World Population Day? The population pantomimists putting up the yearly claptrap and the rulers of the day are fast running out of words to say. Do you really believe that Musharraf and Jamali absorbed themselves and laid out a road map for population control? Apart from the putatively puerile pronouncements, nothing worth writing home about happened.

“There are more mosques, madressahs and maddening traffic in the three years I have been away from Pakistan,” says Ali, who recently returned to the US. “Nothing seems to work — the people don’t work nor does the system...the place seems crawling with humans.”

Dr Attiya Enayatullah — with far too wordy a resume and therefore needs no introduction — is as old (and to some jaded) as the family planning logo itself. Having fought, more often won than lost many battles with ensuing governments who hated her aggression and tried smothering her, she still reins supreme on all things demographic. Many ferocious tomcats (I can’t name them) duelled with the battle-axe, putting roadblocks by denying her organization, Pakistan Family Planning Association, a partnership role with the government-run (notoriously inept) Population Welfare Ministry.

While flip-flopping ministries herself (one has lost count how many times), God knows the number of media events she stewarded over the past decades, getting writers to pitch human interest stories on child spacing and the health and well-being of mothers, inking reams of newsprint and devouring mega-hours of prime air-time.

Along with the rest, she seems to be revving up engines without wheels.

It was during one of those frenetic times that I interacted with young mothers at the local hospital in Sialkot. Memories of that single day still send a stab down the heart. Fresh as lilies but bowed down with bearing children, these young women wanted no more kids and thus came willingly to go through the sterilization process that would forever rid them of unwanted pregnancies. Cuddling infants while older children clutched to their mothers’ clothes, all looking scared stiff, these poorest of the poor, with vacant looks, came ready for the surgeon’s knife as rows of beds with red blankets awaited them.

Indescribable was the relief on their beaming faces when all was over.

“We insure that the process is painless and these women made as comfortable as we possibly can make them before and after the surgical procedure...we care for our women,” said Attiya Enayatullah, whose organization had a 100 per cent success rate in laparotomies, as opposed to the Ministry of Population Welfare’s clumsy and skewed-up approach in providing family planning services to women.

Enayatullah’s words rang in my ears as I watched recently Werner Fornos, an American who has devoted his life to population awareness issues around the world, accept the UN Population Award 2003 from Nane Annan, wife of the UN Secretary-General.

“There are 400 million women in the world today who want no more children. Yet, these women lack the information and the affordable means to do so. Empowering them will see world population level off at about eight billion — a significantly lighter footprint on this planet what is expected today.”

“Those who claim that the problem of rapid human growth has been resolved stand guilty of knowingly or unwittingly coddling the comfortable and ignoring the afflicted,” said Fornos, while beating up the Bush administration for pussyfooting on population issues.

Praising Fornos, said Nane Annan, “I know you are one of the best-known and most active leaders on global population issues, with a long and distinguished record in bringing population and reproductive health issues to the fore. You have worked tirelessly to raise awareness and secure funding for activities to address these issues.

“In fact, your advocacy efforts in the early 1980s were instrumental in the resumption of US aid to family planning programmes in Africa.”

As President of the Washington-based Population Institute, Fornos has travelled around the world, meeting kings, queens, heads of government and population experts, over the decades in a bid to convince them to examine population issues with open minds and open eyes and respect individual rights, religious beliefs and racial and cultural heritage.

Fornos’ own life story is very touching. He came to the US as a stowaway from Germany while still a little boy during the Nazi killings, and was adopted by a loving couple in the US. Since then, he has been back home several times and met his real brothers and sisters. He tells me he visited Pakistan and met with the then First Lady, Begum Nusrat Bhutto. “She was very interested and wanted her husband to actively pursue the population control policy as did Begum Attiya Enayatullah.”

But the governments that followed gave Fornos a luke-warm response, with the result that whenever he took a team of award-winners from top international media outlets to South Asia, he always bypassed Pakistan.

Our loss.

However, looming large on the international population landscape is the Pakistan-born Nafis Sadik. As the outstanding Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr Sadik would religiously make her annual tours to Islamabad to meet with whoever occupied the hot seat. Frustrated with the stagnation that met her each time she would visit, Nafis Sadik nonetheless kept her cool and would mouth the usual polite encouraging comments, but privately, she knew that the Pakistan population programme was indeed a lost cause.

Her successor, Saudi-born Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, has tried resuscitating the programme with a novel approach. “Only today, the UNFPA has signed an agreement to pump more resources for Pakistan population programme in order to save the lives of thousands of mothers who die during childbirth. We are now going to be opening our offices at the district level and we will hire locals who can better interact with the Nazims.”

The UNFPA, under her stewardship, has over 100 country programmes to run around the world.

Hopefully, we should see some positive changes from UNFPA touring the boondocks to micro-manage its local district offices. Until now, its efforts were concentrated in the air-conditioned cocoon of Islamabad and mollycoddled by the Ministry of Population Welfare to part with more money while blissfully ignorant of the hinterland realties.

“The UNFPA will be responsible for international procurement of all contraceptives for Pakistan. It will also provide technical assistance to improve the distribution of contraceptives to public health centres around the country, with special attention to rural areas suffering from insufficient supplies,” continues Ms Obaid.

Covering a five-year period, the UNFPA will spend a total of $18 million on contraceptives — $8 million from its own funds and $10 million from UK’s Department for International Development.

Furthermore, she says that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide $50 million to help communities purchase contraceptives and services. The Pakistan Government will seek to earmark a minimum of $7 million each year to procure contraceptives. For long, we have been hearing successive governments claim that contraceptive use by couples will soon reach 50 per cent. Until that happens, we must dream on....