Rebuilding ties
ALL things considered, it appears to have been a cordial meeting focused on constructive diplomacy rather than mindless sabre-rattling. National Security Adviser Nasser Janjua and US ambassador to Pakistan David Hale were unlikely to achieve any major breakthrough in their meeting on Thursday, but the Pakistani side did take the opportunity to send a positive message: the state remains willing to engage with the US for the purposes of peace and stability in Afghanistan. The meeting came as the US State Department notified that it is withholding a further $255m in security assistance to Pakistan in a highly unusual manner. American officials may have hoped to signal to Pakistan that they are not yet looking to cut Pakistan off entirely, but dangling the $255m as an apparent reward for further cooperation by Pakistan will likely have angered and embarrassed officials here.
The US continues to remain tone deaf to Pakistani sentiment, and while that may be inadvertent or deliberate, the result is the same: further complicating an already fiendishly difficult relationship. There is a further problem, unique to the administration of President Donald Trump: it is not clear if the US leader is on the same page as his secretary of state and secretary of defence. With different centres of power speaking in different tones on the same issue, the real locus of US strategy on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the region generally is unknowable. Furthermore, the turmoil in the State Department makes it more difficult to stabilise the Pakistan-US relationship, with the job security of everyone involved in the Af-Pak policymaking chain from the secretary downwards in doubt. Given the uncertainty, perhaps the best course of action for Pakistan is to engage the US across the diplomatic, military and national security spectrums for an urgent explanation of Pakistan’s position on Afghanistan and its preferred path to peace and stability in the region.
What Pakistan must avoid is the temptation to pay the US back in its own coin, reacting petulantly to what is a manifestly frustrating approach. Particularly worrying are the signs that Pakistani public opinion is being mobilised against the US once again — a tactic that has only the most fleeting of benefits and that quickly grows in potential to hold the state itself hostage. Like the US has erred by viewing Pakistan through the prism of its flawed Afghan policy, Pakistan will err if it sees Afghanistan through the prism of a flawed American policy. Much as Pakistan has legitimate security concerns about encroachment in Afghanistan by other regional powers, especially but not limited to India, the greater threat to Pakistani security is an Afghanistan in a state of perpetual turmoil. If the Quadrilateral Coordination Group or Six-Plus-One process is revitalised, it should be possible to put diplomacy back at the centre of an eventual Afghan solution.
Rain havoc
FOR many families in Karachi, there are no Eid festivities today. The monsoon rains that began on Wednesday evening have created havoc, bringing death and misery to its citizens, and laying waste to their plans for a joyous holiday weekend. At least 23 people, including seven children, lost their lives on Thursday alone in rain-related incidents, mostly electrocution, while three deaths were reported yesterday. Overflowing storm water drains choked with garbage and an aging, dilapidated sewerage system have spewed their collective filth into low-lying areas: homes are flooded, possessions destroyed, and roads — dotted with submerged vehicles — have been rendered impassable. Many sacrificial animals, purchased with hard-earned savings, have drowned. The rising water level in the Lyari River even submerged the heavy machinery being used to construct the expressway running alongside, nearly claiming the lives of the two men who were operating it.
This season’s monsoon has highlighted once again with devastating clarity the consequences of the decades-long neglect of governance in Pakistan’s largest city, one whose formal economy generates nearly 25pc of the country’s GDP. The dereliction of duty by successive self-serving and corrupt ruling dispensations and their brazen violation of rules are directly responsible for the plight of its citizens today. Warnings about this week’s spell of rain and high chances of urban flooding had been issued well in advance, but that could not prevent the inevitable: the massive amounts of rain that fell on the city had simply nowhere to go. Karachi’s multiple natural storm water drains — over 30 — are choked with garbage or drastically narrowed by land reclamation, the last a symptom of the construction ‘boom’ that brings eye-watering profits for some people in high places. The PPP-led Sindh government, by playing politics with Karachi’s present and its future, has further aggravated the situation. In 2013, it brought in legislation that stripped the elected KMC and district councils — which have hefty MQM representation and are responsible for municipal services in Karachi — of virtually all their functions, and handed over municipal services to the bureaucracy of Sindh’s local government department under its direct control. Even the distribution of water, disposal of sewage or solid waste — of which this metropolis generates more than 12,000 tonnes daily — no longer remained under KMC’s purview. Matters have become untenable. Only a holistic, well-thought-out solution that takes into account technical aspects as well as governance issues can prevent Karachi from descending further into a dystopian nightmare.
A policy of inclusion
NADRA’S recently announced policy revision for transgender people is another sign that the trans community is well on its way to reclaiming the fundamental rights it has long been denied. The announcement demonstrates how policies and processes for marginalised groups ought to be — empathetic and accommodating, taking into account their life experiences and the systemic disadvantages they encounter. To that effect, the decision to allow those who have been abandoned by their biological parents to register under the guardianship of their guru is commendable. So, too, is the decision to create three gender categories in addition to ‘male’ and ‘female’ — recognising the fact that gender lies on a spectrum, and respectful of the terminology a trans person uses to describe their identity. But there are aspects that require further attention.
First, what of those trans persons who may have neither parents nor gurus? Ostensibly, they ought to fall under the new Child Registration Certificate, or B-form, policy that was announced for orphaned or abandoned children — which itself ought to extend to adults. The authority must act swiftly to provide clarity on this potential lacuna, not only for the transgender population but also for all those denied CNICs for want of documented parentage. Second, a policy is only as good as its implementation. While Nadra already allowed for gender identification on CNICs to be assigned solely “as per applicant’s appearance or desire”, many have argued that this is not the case in practice. Going by the provisional census results, there are 10,418 transgender Pakistanis and, according to Nadra, as of April only 1,681 have been registered, which means that at least 84pc of the trans population lack primary proof of identity. Reaching this underserviced group will require sensitisation of Nadra employees on transgender rights and related issues, procedural training on the updated policy and registration outreach initiatives. Policies that seek to mainstream disenfranchised groups must be wholeheartedly embraced, and enacted in both letter and spirit.
Source: Editorials
Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2017