Damage limitation
NOW that the government has decided to take the plunge, the details still remain to be worked out. And, as ever, much of the devil lies in the details. Early drafts of the different pieces of legislation, including a constitutional amendment, that are needed to ready military courts to put on trial civilians accused of terrorism suggest that the government is attempting to protect some semblance of the fundamental rights it has decimated by maintaining the right to appeal to the superior judiciary for individuals convicted in military courts of the new offences being drawn up. If – if – the final legislation approved by parliament envisages such safeguards, it would suggest that the political class is at least aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing the military to completely usurp the judicial process. Anything that circumscribes limits and tightly patrols the new military courts ought to be welcomed: the fewer the exceptions, the shorter the duration, the quicker the imminent constitutional deviation can be recovered from.
There is, though, a basic problem. In attempting to maintain a right of appeal while denying terrorism convicts the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, the government — and parliament by extension – is trying to avoid a contradiction that cannot be avoided. In essence, there is a two-fold purpose in opting for military courts: ensuring a quicker, more streamlined process for anti-terrorism trials, and lowering the threshold of evidence needed to secure convictions. If the right to appeal is maintained, the government will be hoping that the superior courts will decide appeals based on the lower threshold of evidence, and fewer due-process and fair-trial protections, that military trial courts require, and not the higher threshold that the regular court system allows. But that will be up to the courts themselves to decide. Will the Supreme Court participate in a system that denies the superior judiciary the right to enforce fundamental rights while still allowing it to hear appeals of terrorists convicted in military courts? That only the SC can decide and the country will only know when the new system is in place and the laws are challenged and convictions appealed.
In truth, now that the government — the entire political class, really — has acquiesced to the military’s demand for expanded military courts, the only thing it can really do to try and return to a fundamental rights regime in the quickest timeframe is to reform and improve the criminal justice system, the state prosecution service and the police investigation process. Two years is what the army has demanded for expanded military courts. Two years should also be the time the government takes to ready the normal judicial process to deal with the terrorism threat inside the country. It can be done. But only if the government gets serious about governance and reforms.
SBP taking sides
THE State Bank of Pakistan, the lead regulator for the financial system, is supposed to be a neutral party to the various claims to superiority that various banking products often try and project for themselves through their marketing campaigns. It is not supposed to endorse one product as superior to another, least of all in the very area it is supposed to be regulating. Yet recently we have seen a number of ads appearing in the press, put in by the SBP, urging people to opt for Islamic banking as the place to keep their deposits in order to avail religiously sanctioned returns. What’s more, the ads imply that other banking products are against Islamic principles and the only way to obtain “peace of mind” with returns on savings and deposits is to opt for Islamic banking products. The ads clearly show that the regulator has taken sides in granting religious legitimacy to one set of products, and has implicitly declared rival products to be against Islamic principles and thereby injurious to religious sentiment. If this were a marketing campaign being run by a private bank in order to promote its product offerings, that would be a different matter. But coming from the regulator, it is a problematic message to be sending out.
The State Bank should be meticulous in its neutrality when dealing with the wide array of financial products offered by the banking industry. It should avoid promoting one set of products over another. This is particularly the case since unlike the early 1980s, there is no policy decision in place at this time to phase out all banking products not specifically registered as Islamic. Since 2001, the policy decision has been to run two parallel systems of banking in Pakistan and leave it up to the consumer to choose between them. Yet for almost a year now the SBP has been going quite the distance in portraying Islamic banks as being more resilient to financial storms and superior in capital adequacy ratios, amongst other things. Now we’re seeing the regulator raising the stakes further, by adding its voice to marketing campaigns that seek to delegitimise all other product offerings by conventional banks. There is nothing wrong with seeking to encourage Islamic banking, but the regulator should restrict itself to strengthening the regulatory framework rather than becoming a party to the marketing messages put out by the industry.
Zikris under fire
THE traditionally secular nature of Baloch society has been under threat for some time, and things appear to be taking a turn for the worse. A report in this paper recently detailed the growing persecution of the small community of Zikris — a little-known Islamic sect — who are concentrated mainly in southern Balochistan. In July, several Zikris were injured when a bus carrying members of the community was the target of a roadside bomb in Khuzdar, and the following month their Khana-i-zikr in district Awaran was attacked. Six worshippers were killed and seven injured. Around 400 Zikris have moved out of the area after the incident. Members of the community have also been singled out in various cases of looting in Awaran and Turbat. These incidents have reportedly begun to vitiate the traditionally harmonious relationship between Zikris and other Muslim sects whose lives are often intertwined through ties of kinship.
Although the Zikris — unlike the Hazaras — are ethnic Baloch, there has been a consistent effort led by religious parties in the province to marginalise them on account of what are considered their unorthodox practices. These efforts gained further strength from regional developments, such as the Afghan war of the early ’80s, which led to the proliferation of madressahs in the province churning out jihadis for the next-door theatre of war. Upon returning home, the governance void that has long been Balochistan allowed them to entrench themselves, and sow discord among the Baloch along religious lines. By doing so, they also served the interests of state elements cynically patronising ideologically-driven extremist groups to counter the Baloch insurgency which, like the society from which it arises, is secular in character. A people divided are, after all, easier to control. This provincial government, with its nationalist credentials and representative aspects, is better placed than many others to demonstrate a real understanding of the problems that bedevil the province. But it has yet to demonstrate it has the courage to do something about them.