Friday March 14, 2014

A new dialogue committee

AS with everything dialogue related, it appears to be one step in one direction, another in another direction. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif making the trek to PTI chief Imran Khan’s home for discussions prior to the announcement of a new government negotiating committee at least sends the signal that the political leadership of this country can come together and discuss issues of great national import — even if the politicians in question are bitter political foes. That trend, visible during the last PPP-led government in Islamabad too, bodes well for democratic stability and suggests that the bad old days of decades past may have been buried for good after all.

Now, to the more complicated development: the formation of a new government committee to carry forward the dialogue process with the outlawed TTP. In the government’s version, the original four-member committee had performed some useful services and laid the groundwork for more serious and direct engagement with the TTP and now it was time for a committee empowered to take decisions on what can be offered to the TTP and what is to be demanded of it. The problem with that explanation is the composition of the committee: three serving bureaucrats and one retired bureaucrat and diplomat affiliated with the PTI. To students of how power works in Pakistan and what is and is not possible, it is difficult to see how the new committee is more empowered and independent than the previous one. Bureaucrats with a deep knowledge of Fata and tribal affairs some of the members of the new committee may be, but the Pakistani bureaucratic structure does not allow for much initiative or independence — or even forthrightly presenting conflicting views to their political superiors. If this is truly the result-oriented phase, in government-speak, of the dialogue process, then it would appear that the new committee may be little more than a front for behind-the-scenes confabulations between the political government and the army leadership and among the political leadership.

Away from the issue of the composition of the new committee, there remains the issue of what the principal negotiation points will be and how the political and army leaderships will square their differences on them. The TTP in its meeting with its own nominated committee in North Waziristan will likely lay out its own set of demands, which may give an indication of what the contours of a successful agreement may eventually look like. But what the TTP demands is one thing — how the PML-N government will be able to keep both the PTI and the army leadership on board in addition to keeping public opinion on its side is quite another matter. To wit, to what extent the PTI, the PML-N and the army are on the same page is difficult to say.

Gangsters’ paradise

EVEN though Lyari’s hapless people are no strangers to the sounds of gunfire and exploding grenades, Wednesday’s attack in a crowded market in what is surely Karachi’s most neglected neighbourhood took brutality to a new level. Innocent people have died in the past, caught in the crossfire between rival gangs or between criminals and law enforcers. But in Wednesday’s atrocity the criminals seem to have directly targeted civilians to spread terror in the area. At least 14 people were killed — mostly women and children — while shopping, as criminals appeared to launch the assault to ‘avenge’ the death of a comrade who had reportedly been killed by the Rangers in an operation. While in the past announcements were made to warn people before gun battles, no such warning came before the latest carnage.

Once the hub of vibrant political activity, the working-class neighbourhood of Lyari has been surrendered to criminals by the state and political parties. A virtual no-go area — one of many in a city dominated by mafias of various persuasions — for ‘outsiders’ there are parts of Lyari where the presence of law enforcers is non-existent. Here heavily armed young foot soldiers of gangs rule the street. The situation has come to such a head because for several years now, political parties, including the PPP and MQM, have been accused of patronising rival criminal groups. So strong is the gangs’ stranglehold over Lyari’s affairs that potential lawmakers from the area are said to be ‘nominated’ by crime dons. The PPP, which has strong roots in the locality, is particularly to blame for ceding space to criminals. The root of the problem is that there appears to be no political will to rid Lyari of criminal gangs. To top that, despite the ‘grand operation’ that has been under way in Karachi for several months as well as numerous Lyari-specific actions, the law-enforcement agencies have failed to cleanse Lyari of its gangs in a thorough fashion, adopting a piecemeal, reactive approach instead. Until Lyari’s crime dons are arrested and prosecuted and political parties stop patronising gangsters, the area’s people will not see peace, and outrages like the one witnessed on Wednesday will continue.

Malaysian air tragedy

IT is astonishing that an airliner should go missing in this age of cyber technology and satellite imagery. The Malaysian airliner sent no distress signal and on its last contact with the Kuala Lumpur air control reported the all-normal “all right, roger that”. Then it disappeared on what was to be a long flight to Beijing with 239 people, a majority of them Chinese, on board. On Wednesday, China claimed it had found “smoke and floating objects” in the South China Sea, though US officials say their satellites had detected no heat and wreckage indicating a crash. Chinese officials, meanwhile, have expressed frustration over inadequate efforts by other parties. On Wednesday Prime Minister Li Keqiang expressed his determination to continue the search for MH370 “as long as there is a glimmer of hope” and appealed to other nations not to give up. Without criticising any country, Chinese authorities said there was “too much confusion” regarding the information about the plane’s flight path. Veiled criticism of other investigators was there in Mr Li’s speech also when he asked “relevant parties to enhance coordination, investigate the cause, locate the missing plane as quickly as possible and properly handle all related matters”.

Frustration over the failure to use technology also came from Paris, where it was left to Interpol to detect that two of the passengers had used stolen passports. The international police agency expressed its “great concern” that the passengers were able to use the fake passports without being detected by immigration control. The passports, stolen in Thailand, were on Interpol’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database. If the Malaysian immigration had made use of SLTD, the forgery would have been detected — though as yet there is no evidence that any foul play was involved in the tragedy. The records compiled by Interpol since 2002 have a mindboggling 40 million entries. Yet the agency’s spokesman regretted that “only a handful of countries” utilised it. Ultimately it is more the user rather than the technology that matters.