Fai’s campaign, spread over four decades, aroused no suspicion in the American security agencies.

By Muhammad Ali Siddiqi

ONE can understand why New Delhi welcomed Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai’s arrest: there is perhaps no other American who has done more to bring the cause of Kashmir’s freedom to the notice of a wide range of fellow Americans than this tireless crusader for Kashmir’s freedom.

An irate letter written to then president Clinton by the Kashmiri Women for Communal Harmony, an Indian American women’s organisation, perhaps testified to the effectiveness of Fai’s campaign when it protested against the positive tones in which Clinton had replied to his letter.

On Dec 27, 1993, responding to Fai’s letter, president Clinton said he “shared” Fai’s belief that “we all must look closely at our policies with regard to human rights”, and then added what to KWCH was a provocation, “I look forward to working with you and others to bring peace to Kashmir, and appreciate your input”. This “appreciation” was too much for the KWCH, which sought to add to Clinton’s knowledge by saying that Fai’s Kashmiri American Council was “a stunt” and alleged that the president’s letter had given “respectability” to Fai.

During the first Clinton term, the White House, the State Department and a large number of congressmen both Republicans and Democrats repeatedly asked India to address America’s human rights concerns and enter into talks with Pakistan with a view to a final settlement of Kashmir.

A bewildering variety of activity comprised Fai’s campaign — letters to American leaders, ‘vigils’ outside the White House, personal meetings with congressmen and media personalities, ads in newspapers and demos in Washington D.C. and elsewhere. All this activity was spread over four decades and aroused no suspicion in the American security agencies. Fai’s biggest success came during then Indian prime minister Narasimha Rao’s visit to Washington in May 1994, when an unusually large number of congressmen mobilised themselves on the Kashmir issue. In one week alone, 10 congressmen wrote to president Clinton, urging him to raise the Kashmir issue, India’s defiance of UN resolutions and its violations of human rights dur ing his talks with the Indian prime minister.

Dan Burton, the fiery Republican from Indiana, wrote a letter to secretary of state Warren Christopher, urging him to “express our deep concern about the human rights situation in Kashmir” and to ask Rao to allow the holding of prayers in the Hazratbal mosque, which “continues to be surrounded by military bunkers”.

At the Rayburn Office Building, congressman after congressman, and at least one senator, came to the podium to denounce human rights abuses by India in Kashmir. The occasion was the launching of a book by Prof William Baker, the chief guest being Azad Kashmir prime minister Sardar Abdul Qayyum.

The speeches and the letters to Clinton were uncomfortable for the Indian lobby, because they involved some prestigious names, including Senator Paul Simon, the Democrat from Illinois, who was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, House majority whip David Bonior and Dana Rohrabacher a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressman Bonior, perhaps the most outspoken of them, referred to the “breaking of the shackles of totalitarianism” throughout the world, and demanded the total withdrawal of Indian troops from India-administered Kashmir. The House majority whip regretted that his country did not really understand what was happening in Kashmir and urged president Clinton to raise the issue with Mr Rao. He was convinced the people of Kashmir were bound to achieve their freedom.

Congressman Rohrabacher not only supported the cause of the people of Kashmir, he paid tributes to Pakistan for its role during the Cold War, especially during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

On May 19, the KAC got a full-page ad published in The Washington Post. Entitled, ‘What Prime Minister Rao will not tell President Clinton’, the black-bordered ad dwelt on the situation in India-administered Kashmir and focused on the human rights situation.

The outcome of the Clinton-Rao meeting was a disappointment for India, for in his very opening statement Clinton called for talks between Pakistan and India to solve the Kashmir issue. Calling for ‘talks’ normally should provoke no government. But so closed has been the Indian mind on Kashmir that Indians squirm at the mere mention of Kashmir.

That the Indians were prepared for some rough moments during the White House talks became clear when an Indian newsman asked Rao whether Clinton had twisted his arm. To a burst of laughter, and showing his arm to the newsmen Rao said, “My arm is absolutely intact. The president didn’t even touch it”. Clinton was, of course, tactful. He expressed the usual warmth reserved for a visiting head of government, spoke of values that united America and India but then replied “differences remain” when an Indian newsman asked him whether there was an identity of views between the two leaders.

The joint statement issued after the talks contained on the American side’s insistence the following fifth point: “The two leaders agreed on the need for bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan to resolve outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, as envisaged in the Simla agreement.” Without Pakistan being there, Clinton insisting on a Kashmir solution in a bilateral US-India statement was quite a success for Fai. It is true that others also helped, including first and foremost the Pakistan embassy headed by Dr Maleeha Lodhi, various Pakistani associations and the American Muslim Council, led by Abdul Rahman Alamoudi (arrested in September 2003). But no one played a greater role in highlighting Kashmir’s cause than Fai, assisted by a fellow Kashmiri the late journalist Khalid Hasan. ¦

Of new provinces

There is need for a thorough debate on the proposals to create new provinces. Pakistan now needs a lean administrative superstructure in each province including smaller assemblies and secretariats.

By I.A. Rehman


IT is now quite clear that the country’s political gladiators are readying themselves for another spectacular battle, this time on the issue of the creation of new provinces.

While the PPP and PML-N have been sounding out their allies and supporters, the PML-Q has jumped the gun and submitted a resolution in the Punjab Assembly for constituting the southern Punjab districts into a separate province. While taking this step, the party, now a member of the ruling coalition at the centre, has tried to distinguish itself from the PPP’s stand by refraining from calling the proposed province Seraiki and arguing that the move is dictated by administrative reasons.

Although no principle stands in the way of creating new administrative units if the people of the territories concerned, a sizable majority if not all of them, demand it. Yet, the problems such demands raise need not be ignored. These problems have been identified more than once and their reiteration should not be out of place.

The first difficulty is the tendency among our overworked political leaders to ideologise every issue. The traditional custodians of the Islamic ideology or the Pakistan ideology, or both, will surely oppose the idea of dividing any province on a linguistic or an ethnic basis. They are so obsessed with their notions of the millat that the existence of Muslim nations within the great millat is anathema to them. It is with difficulty that they tolerate the existence of units in the federation of Pakistan, and off and on their yearning for turning this country into a highly centralised unitary state comes out into the open.

These ideologues are hopelessly behind the times. Ethnic and linguistic identities continue to provide strong motivation for movements for political autonomy all over the world, more so wherever states have not been able to justly accommodate the diverse intranation groups and interests within the state structure. In the subcontinent, all movements for provincial status, including those for the separation of Sindh from Bombay and the elevation of the then North-Western Frontier Province to a full governor’s province, had their roots in the people’s ethnic and linguistic aspirations, though reference to the people’s belief was also sometimes made.

The same can be said about the Indian experiences in this regard — the division of the East Punjab of 1947 into Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh and the birth of Jharkand out of the womb of Bihar and the emergence of the province of Uttarkhand out of the all-powerful Uttar Pradesh.

It is perhaps time our political leaders reappraised their notions of unity on the basis of shared belief alone and learnt to deal with political issues as matters of political adjustment. They will serve Pakistan better by seeking unity in diversity instead of closing their eyes to the pluralist nature of our society.

True, many prominent members of Punjab’s intelligentsia do not accept Seraiki as anything more than a dialect of Punjabi, nor do they concede the Seraiki people’s claim to be a distinctly separate ethnic community. Controversies on these points have been going on for decades. Do these issues have a decisive bearing on the present Seraiki demand?

What matters today perhaps more than anything else is the fact of the Seraiki people’s poverty and deprivation. They are the traditional grain-producers of the region and they have been starving for centuries. Unlike the people of central and northern Punjab they have not gone into business or services and now they want to have their share of both. That is legitimate politics on the basis of a community’s socio-economic interests.

Incidentally, what will be the fate of the Punjab’s Provincially Administered Tribal Area in D.G. Khan District where some of the country’s poorest and utterly neglected people live? Why cannot these Balochi-speaking people be united with Balochistan in accordance with their wishes they had expressed many years ago?

The promoters of the Seraiki province are likely to have some problem with the people who have been demanding the revival of the former Bahawalpur state as a separate unit. Unless the PPP can find a way to take these people along, the split in Seraiki ranks could cause it considerable difficulties.

We may now look at some of the problems that need to be addressed.

First, the impact of the creation of new provinces on the status of the Senate ought to be examined. Today Balochistan and Sindh hold 25 per cent of seats/power each in the Senate (Islamabad excluded). If Gilgit-Baltistan is recognised as a province and the Hazara and Seraiki provinces are created the share of these provinces (along with that of the leftover Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in the Senate will be reduced from 25 to around 14 per cent. The balance of power among the units of the federation could be upset whether or not the Seraikis and Hazarawals side with Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa respectively.

Secondly, if the new provinces are to have as top-heavy administrations as the provinces today the country’s non-productive expenditure, which has already crossed all reasonable limits, will rise further and create unmanageable eco nomic crises.Thirdly, Pakistan has just embarked on an experiment to build a federation of duly empowered units. There is considerable anxiety whether the provinces have the capacity to benefit from the administrative and financial powers they have acquired. The question can more justifiably be raised about the capacity of the proposed new provinces.

Quite obviously there is need for a thorough debate on the proposals to create new provinces. Maybe Pakistan now needs a lean administrative superstructure in each province — smaller assemblies and secretariats and a radical pruning of the plumage of power. The day may not be far off when the provinces could need their own constitutions and their own plans to generate resources instead of banking on their shares of the divisible pool.

The debate on the subject has thrown up two points of view. According to one, talk of new provinces and their autonomy will be relevant only if the state can beat off the challenge from the extremists who believe neither in provinces nor in a democratic constitution. The other argument is that satisfying various communities’ aspirations for empowerment and autonomy will make the state stronger and enable it to defeat the militants. Only time will tell which of the two views will guarantee the people a happier future. ¦

Devolution the saviour — II Devolution the stabiliser

With the return of the LG system, Sindh is halfway back to good governance already.

By Tanwir Naqvi


THIS second article focuses on highlighting the essence of the people-serving local government system that has (fortunately for the people of Sindh) been reintroduced, as well as how governance will be seriously hampered when this pro-people governance system will inevitably clash with the authoritarian anti-people colonial Police Act 1861.

The DC-SP based governance system discussed in the first article had evoked in the people the feeling of being left out from governance. The British therefore introduced powerless local ‘bodies’ in 1909, 1919 and 1924 responsible only for municipal functions in just the large urban areas.

These laws were cloaked in superficial national façades in the Ayub and Ziaul Haq eras up to 1979. And yet, even these municipal entities remained subordinated to the deputy commissioner or commissioner empowered as controller of local governments to countermand any executive order, resolution, byelaw, or budget of the local ‘bodies’.

The local government system devolved the deputy commissioner’s latent political power formally to elected leaders of the people. It deconcentrated the functions of most provincial departments, as well as the 10 functions of the deputy commissioner.

It decentralised these functions to officers of the district, tehsils and unions, who were empowered with the authority to enforce laws within the sphere of their respective responsibilities, and placed them under elected heads of their local governments. It created a system of formula-based transfer of financial resources to each local government along with mechanisms for both internal and external audit.

The law embodied a potent system of dual control over the local governments — the first by the people through their local councils empowered to legislate as well as to monitor their governments; and the second by the province through its local government commission and the provincial assembly.

The local government system thus empowered threetier local governments, headed by approachable elected leaders, mandated to deliver or face censure or dismissal; and thus trained in wielding political and legislative power coupled with administrative and financial authority for shouldering higher leadership responsibilities.

Under the principle of subsidiarity, the service delivery function of the provincial government was decentralised to local governments, thus freeing the provincial governments to perform five major functions: interacting with the federal and other provincial governments; formulating policies and strategies; enacting new laws and modernising old laws; directly managing only trans-district functions; and exercising control over local governments through the local government commission.

After the empowerment of the provincial governments through the recent elimination of the Concurrent Legislative List under the very same principle of subsidiarity, the fruits of devolution were expected to ripen in the form of even better service delivery by the provincial and local governments.

To lend focus to those municipal functions that affect every citizen perpetually, LGO 2001 narrowed down the scope of the municipal role by excluding education, training and health from municipal responsibility; and assigned this pruned municipal function to the town/tehsil municipal administration (TMA) of each city/common district.

Functions relating to education, training and health were consequently assigned to the district governments. The responsibility for all schools and colleges, whether established by the provincial governments or the erstwhile municipalities, thus passed to the district governments, leaving specialised colleges within the domain of provincial governments. Similarly, all health facilities from dispensaries to general hospitals were decentralised to district governments, leaving specialised hospitals with the provincial governments.

LGO 2001 converted the ‘tehsil’ into an integrated rural-urban municipal entity with its urban as well as rural population enjoying municipal facilities as a fundamental right. Its TMA has a planning office to plan and manage its coherent urbanisation. It was envisaged that gradual modernisation of agriculture, and establishment of industry, would create new businesses and jobs in each tehsil. This, along with the growth of municipal, health and education facilities, was expected to promote rapid urbanisation of the whole tehsil, and its evolution into a coherent city district.

This countrywide phenomenon would enable the people to stay in their home tehsils and districts instead of migrating to the few existing cities. This trend of ‘urbanisation of rural areas’ would thus gradually arrest the unabated ‘ruralisation of the urban areas’.

Police Order 2002 was designed in harmony with this local government system. The two systems — local governance and policing — were integrated through authority over the head of the district police being given under both the systems to the district nazim, and to no other elected leader or bureaucrat; and both the district nazim and the head of the district police placed under the oversight of public safety commissions.

With the reintroduction of the district magistracy in any form empowered with authority over the police, the district nazim is likely to experience insubordination by the executive magistracy as well as the police; and he, along with the rest of the political leadership, could even feel threatened by both, especially in the absence of public safety commissions.

With the police not exclusively responsible for policing the district to the satisfaction of the district nazim and the people, incompetence and tyrannical behaviour of the police will return, thus leaving the people as helpless before the police and the executive magistracy as they used to be. With the whole district government thus undermined, the governance system could soon border on collapse.

With the return of the local government system Sindh is halfway back to good governance already. Restoration of Police Order 2002 will complete the virtuous circle. If elections within this year can restore political leadership to the system, these July-August hiccups might even be forgotten, and 2011 remembered as the year in which the political elite truly set the stage for the establishment of a stable people-and-state-serving democracy from bottom to top.

If this does not happen, the consequences for democracy could be grave; because it will convince the people that politics is not about improving the lot of the people, or preventing what looks to them like a ‘failing’ state turning into a ‘failed’ state; but only about an oligarchy having fun at the expense of the people, generation after generation. ¦ — Concluded The writer was the founding chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau and pioneered the reconstruction of the institutions of state during the period 2000-2002.