Afghan parliament
WITH a powerful bombing targeting the Afghan parliament in Kabul on Monday, coupled with a Taliban advance on the northern town of Kunduz, the Islamist militia has shown that its offensive capabilities are very much intact. While government buildings in Kabul have been attacked before, this is the first major assault targeting the Afghan parliament. The symbolism has not been lost, with the Afghan Taliban suggesting they can strike at will. It is a small miracle no lawmakers lost their lives — parliament was in session at the time of the attack — while Afghan officials say a number of militants have been killed. Elsewhere, reports indicate that the militia may be on the verge of taking Kunduz city; it has already taken over a neighbouring district while the Taliban have also made territorial gains in Helmand. These developments, in particular the attack on parliament, will put additional.pressure on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government, as the Kabul administration looks increasingly shaky in the face of the militant advance.
Decades of war and occupation have brought little to Afghanistan apart from death and destruction. With the fall of the Taliban regime following the US-led invasion in 2001, stability has remained elusive as the militant movement has challenged the government in Kabul. Yet if the Taliban try to regain power militarily, clearly the vicious circle of conflict will only continue. That is why all stakeholders — the government in Kabul, the Taliban as well as external powers — must put their weight behind a negotiated settlement to the Afghan imbroglio. The Taliban have been conducting back-channel talks with several interlocutors, including those close to Mr Ghani. Among their major demands is the withdrawal of all US forces from the country as well as the release of prisoners.
While they have been making advances on the battlefield, perhaps the Taliban have also kept up the talks effort because of the arrival of another militant player in the neighbourhood — the self-styled Islamic State. Regardless of their motivation for talks, the Taliban want the reopening of an office in Doha as a central contact point with all parties. The Kabul administration must keep the door of dialogue open while Pakistan, though it has admittedly lost some of its influence over the Taliban, must also encourage the militia to reach a negotiated settlement. Unless all parties agree to cede space and make compromises, a negotiated solution will not be possible.
In the name of the poor
THE capture by elite interests of a special programme meant to benefit poor farmers in Punjab clearly illustrates where matters are going wrong in the provincial government’s way of doing things. A special scheme under the Chief Minister’s Package for Poor Livestock Farmers was supposed to provide free vaccination for cattle belonging to needy farmers. But instead, most of the vaccinations ended up being administered to cattle belonging to MPAs of the PML-N, or their relatives and friends. This would not be a noteworthy issue by itself, were it not for the fact that the budgets of Sindh and Punjab particularly are full of schemes of this sort. If such elite capture can be carried out so easily in a relatively simple programme such as this, it is easy to imagine what happens in many other programmes where the handouts can include cash or readily encashable items such aslaptops.
The Punjab government has budgeted Rs30bn in its Annual Development Programme for “special initiatives”, which include large numbers of schemes that are basically handouts of precisely this sort. This is the largest allocation in the ADP after infrastructure. Likewise, the Sindh government’s ADP budgets 40pc of its total outlay on “social protection” measures that include up to 85,000 beneficiaries, we are told, for cash handouts in different forms. In many cases, the targeting of these schemes is very opaque and vulnerable to elite capture. Of course, the possibilities of elite capture should not be used to argue for a complete withdrawal of the state from all such redistributive functions. The poor and marginalised need state support. But more needs to be done to ensure that support meant for these underprivileged communities does not get co-opted by the elites. How exactly this is to be achieved needs further input, but provincial governments relying on massive increases in such schemes should also give more thought to ensuring the protection and sanctity of the rights of the intended beneficiaries.
Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial