Thread: Editorial: DAWN
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Old Saturday, January 25, 2014
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25.01.2014
Draconian measures

IF there is some semblance of a serious state response to the militancy threat at the moment, it is happening on two tracks: kinetic operational details and the legislative framework. Both are essential to the fight against militancy, but working on a plan is not the same as having a workable plan. On the operational front, have the lessons from past operations been absorbed fully? The two largest operations — in Swat/Malakand and South Waziristan Agency — that have been undertaken are far from an unqualified success. In South Waziristan, after some decent preparation and a good start the gains quickly became murky. The senior leadership of the TTP escaped and lived to fight another day, and to this day, the region abutting North Waziristan is anything but safe. In the case of a North Waziristan operation, there is the added complication of an exit into Afghanistan for militants — meaning that some cooperation from the Afghan side will have to be sought and secured.

In the case of Swat, which stands as perhaps the most successful counter-insurgency operation to date, there was no real thought given to the exit strategy for the military — which has meant that nearly five years on, the army is set to build a permanent infrastructure in the region. Surely, while new cantonments are not necessarily and automatically a bad idea, there should be some thought given at this stage to how North Waziristan, in fact, the whole of Fata, ought to be governed once the area is cleared of militants and the writ of the state is re-established.

On the legislative side of things, while war zones do call for special legal frameworks and emergency provisions, putting expediency ahead of everything else can create more complications than it may resolve. For one, in an era of an assertive judiciary that has rightly emphasised constitutional protections and rights of the citizenry, are the draconian steps the government is contemplating and already authorising through ordinances able to stand up to strong judicial scrutiny? Just as relevantly, is the government even aware of its responsibility to keep the public and parliament in the loop about its intentions and plans? The militancy threat is immediate and dire and it needs to be combated aggressively. But turning the country into a police state or security state is hardly the answer. Draconian powers, once bequeathed, are notoriously difficult to wrest away from state institutions. Whether it requires making the proposed laws time-bound or place-specific or having an adequate oversight mechanism, the need to restrain the state cannot be forgotten in the blind dash to defeat the enemy.

No progress on new airport


IT is impossible to recall a single example where any public sector development project in Pakistan has been completed within the stipulated period and at the originally estimated cost. And the New Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad is one among many examples of official neglect that the country’s projects, small, big and mega, suffer from. The entire development sector is a victim of gross official neglect, bureaucratic delays and political interference. The public perception is that all development schemes are conceived to benefit those with resources in one way or the other. In its hearing on the progress made so far on the airport project, the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly found to its consternation that the cost had escalated almost three times: from the original estimate of Rs37bn it was now Rs95bn.

The scheme which is delayed by over four years has had five project directors since it was launched in April 2007. The audit officials suspect massive financial corruption and mismanagement in the implementation of the project. After having spent Rs41bn of taxpayers’ money, the Civil Aviation Authority, which allowed “unqualified” people to oversee the project construction, has discovered serious lacunae in its engineering design. For one, the area doesn’t have underground water. So water supply to the new airport that is estimated to be used by 6.5m passengers annually will be a major problem. The National Highway Authority is yet to acquire land to construct a road to connect the capital to the airport, with the powerful real estate business demanding its share in the spoils. Somehow the CAA hopes to make the facility operational by 2016. There are also reports that a lobby is pushing the government to shift the airport to Rawat. It seems to have the prime minister’s ear. The prime minister had recently suggested the same, saying it would spawn skyscrapers along the Islamabad Expressway. Some capital watchers have found implicit in this suggestion a proposal to scrap the current project located at Fatehjung. It is nothing if not a cruel joke with the taxpayers who have no option but to finance our rulers’ abrupt flights from one idea to another.

A stillborn process


FOR many political observers, the news of Maulana Samiul Haq’s ‘quitting’ the peace process designed to bring religious militants to the bargaining table with the state must have been greeted with mirth. After all, when did the maulana-led process ever begin? An ostensibly hurt Samiul Haq released a statement on Wednesday in which he blamed Nawaz Sharif’s “lack of seriousness” for the failure of his grand push for peace. However, Prime Minister House retorted with a sharply worded statement on Thursday that Mr Sharif had never actually tasked the maulana with “any specific mission”. Who to believe? Our politicians have mastered the art of spin and are known to dismiss statements on record as ‘siyasi bayan’. But most people familiar with the hurly-burly of Pakistani politics had regarded Samiul Haq’s original claims of opening dialogue channels with the militants with scepticism. After all, reports indicated the prime minister had never explicitly assigned the cleric the role of go-between and gave him the vaguest of go-aheads to attempt mediation. The maulana, never media shy, made it appear as if he had been officially anointed the state’s peace emissary to the Taliban. Samiul Haq has backed out because, according to him, despite getting positive feelers from the Talibs all he got from PM House was silence. He added that the recent air strikes in North Waziristan also scuttled the ‘peace process’. PM House disagreed, saying they had not heard anything from the maulana in weeks.

Even if Samiul Haq had not abandoned his peace mission, his efforts were hardly likely to have succeeded. It is debatable how much actual influence the ‘Father of the Taliban’ retains over his wayward progeny. After all, as any parent will tell you, disciplining kids is not easy. And if those kids grow up into militants out to conquer the country, things really get difficult. These errant children of ‘jihad’ are hardly likely to listen to their elders.
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