Saturday, November 23, 2013
Intertwined interests: Afghan reconciliation
WHILE the focus of the world and the region remains on the impending US-Afghan bilateral security pact that will allow foreign troops to remain in Afghanistan until at least 2024 and on the Afghan presidential election next year, work on the most critical piece in the framework for a stable Afghanistan — the reconciliation process with the Afghan Taliban — continues quietly in the background. After meeting representatives of the Afghan High Peace Council in Islamabad on Thursday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is set to travel to Kabul at the end of the month presumably to see if the dormant reconciliation process can be nudged forward, or at least ensure the groundwork is in place for a speedy process after next year’s Afghan presidential election. However, like much else he has attempted since returning to office in June, Mr Sharif and his team seem busy enough in consultations and meetings without necessarily proposing a way forward in Afghanistan.
Complicating the task for both the Afghan and Pakistani sides is the increasing interconnectedness of the two countries in matters of security and stability. With the appointment of Mullah Fazlullah as the new TTP chief, it is for the first time that both the Pakistani and the Afghan state allege that their respective principal militant foe enjoys sanctuary in the other’s country. With the Afghan Taliban long enjoying fairly unhindered movement across the Durand Line, now the TTP leadership is in the Afghan backyard, from where it targets Pakistan. Whether that improves the odds of both country’s leadership understanding that cross-border violence is in neither country’s interest or exacerbates the already tense security ties between the two countries is a question that the months ahead will reveal. Suffice it to say, in the game of proxies, every side stands to lose.
Given that neither side is about to abruptly change course so late into the scramble that will shape the next phase of Afghan history, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that at least the cross-border movement and sanctuaries near the Durand Line on both sides are progressively discouraged. From a Pakistani perspective, the state has both much to offer and gain. Nudging the Afghan Taliban towards an internal, Afghan-led settlement in Afghanistan ought to buy some space when it comes to dealing with Pakistan’s internal security problems with the TTP. Surely, both the Afghan and Pakistani states must be aware of the ultimate nightmare: the TTP and the Afghan Taliban uniting to wage war in both countries.
Requiem for KCR: Jica diverts funds
QUITE understandably, Japanese donors have walked out on the Karachi Circular Railway. Not only that: the federal railway minister informed a news conference on Thursday that the Japan International Cooperation Agency has diverted the money to Bangladesh. Nothing surprising, considering Jica’s frustration if not outright anger. The KCR has been dead for nearly two decades, its tracks under tons of rocks. The Japanese offer of money and technology to revive it and make it a going concern had been there for nearly two decades, but somehow the federal and Sindh governments were never available to get things ready for the agency to proceed. Encroachments on railway land are a problem that is complex but not insolvable. This usurpation of government land by squatters and small-time realtors could have been sorted out if the Sindh government had made up its mind to remove all obstacles to the KCR’s revival. Evidently, the political will to give the nation’s biggest city a modern mass transit system has been lacking.
The Japanese plan had crossed many hurdles, not least the sloth that characterises our ponderous bureaucracy, and we were given 2017 as the date by which the new KCR’s first phase would be operational. Thursday’s news conference by Khwaja Saad Rafiq and Qaim Ali Shah essentially constituted the KCR’s requiem. Admitting that the Japanese had been “discouraged” from pursuing the project the two spoke of a new plan in which the federal government would help. The people will have their doubts over Islamabad’s will and resources to help the Sindh government on this project. Lahore has a metro bus system because the Punjab government showed single-mindedness and purpose. In Karachi’s case, Sindh’s two leading parties, which have monopolised political power for many decades, have demonstrated a sense of utter irresponsibility on this issue. Lahore has plans for a metro rail as well, but ‘modern’ Islamabad doesn’t even have plans for a rapid and comfortable transport system — such being the priority of our car-loving elite and obliging bureaucracy.
SBP checks: Loan write-offs
THE State Bank of Pakistan has ‘revisited’ the requirements for writing off irrecoverable loans and advances for consumer financing. It has issued fresh instructions to banks and development finance institutions. The new instructions, which reinforce oversight of directors of banks in such cases, aim at checking the misuse of the facility and curtailing the discretion of bankers while writing off the principal or interest, profit or other charges. The SBP wants the banks to put in place well-defined, transparent write-off policies and make every ‘reasonable’ effort at recovery. What this means is that the bankers, in order to establish that the amount is actually unrecoverable, will now be required to investigate that the person seeking the write-off hasn’t built any other assets with the bank’s money. This should prevent frauds to some extent.
Where banks have secured collateral against (bad) loans, they’ll have to follow a formula for recovering the amount. The assets will be sold off at current prices to adjust the amount so realised against the loan proposed to be written off. In exceptional cases, as those involving widows and orphans, the condition may be relaxed. The SBP wants the banks to obtain prior approval from it in cases where the write-offs are sought in the names of directors, chief executives and sponsor shareholders of banks/DFIs or in the name of their relatives or dependents. Internal auditors have been given powers to review the cases where the written-off principal amount is over Rs200,000. The SBP directive should help minimise ‘favouritism’ and ‘corruption’ by the bankers in loan write-off cases. Equally important is the protection from harassment of borrowers who are really in financial trouble and cannot pay their loans. It is time the SBP issued some directives in this regard as well.