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  #11  
Old Sunday, May 31, 2009
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Not a planned response to the IDPs crisis
By Izzud-Din Pal

Sunday, 31 May, 2009


MILITARY action against the insurgency was bound to affect the local population and to create serious dislocation in their lives. The surge of the large-scale migration of internally displaced persons (IDPs) seems to indicate that no plans were made in anticipation of this development.

Some system could have been devised to contain migration within the NWFP and, if necessary, to seek cooperation of other provinces to channel some of the migrants to those areas. The situation that has arisen in Sindh could have been easily avoided.

The government had no choice but to undertake this measure against the insurgency as it was clearly a challenge to the writ of the state. But along with the military action, it was necessary to embark upon a battle to win the hearts and minds of the people, to boost the morale of the citizens. As far as the refugee problem is concerned, the stakes are very high, because any failure to promptly resolve the issue would give rise to alienation, and defeat the objective.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has been doing his duty by keeping the people informed about the progress in this matter. People, however, are quite perceptive and they know that the power lies elsewhere. It is the president who has to make an effort to reach the citizens directly and as often as necessary, and assure them of his concern for their freedom and welfare. What is needed is to be visible, not for photo-op opportunities with foreign dignitaries, but for communication with people.

The situation that the country is facing today is the product of years of military rule and military-oriented strategies. For General Musharraf, running with the

hare and hunting with the hounds was an important policy in the context of disbursement of the US assistance. He also managed to distort the constitution and bend other national institutions including judiciary to suit his goals. The national elections held in February 2008 conducted under his regime could not have produced better results, because his plan was to carry on at least for another five-year term. The PCO along with the 17th Amendment are the legacy which is the constant reminder to people about what has come to pass in the country.

For Mr Zardari to hold on to these powers does not give a sense of confidence to people that in fact the system has changed. He should take advantage of the current special circumstances to have the parliament promptly restore the 1973 Constitution, a matter which needs no committees to examine.

It is in this context that the PPP government has to conduct their business according to the rules of democracy, and as a majority party to make decisions and be prepared to be counted for them. Taking refuge behind the so-called ‘consensus’ and ‘all-parties conference’ is to shirk responsibility. For example, when a party in alliance with them happens to oppose their decision, it puts a shadow on the writ of the state against the insurgents. Nizam-i-Adl, the main source where the trouble started is another example of the zigzagging alliance that Mr Zardari had put together to consolidate his power.

Pakistan is facing domestic enemies, with militants spread across Punjab and the Taliban in the tribal areas. It is Pakistan’s own problem. The US has direct interest in this situation as part of its Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy and it was underlined during the recent visit of Mr Zardari to Washington. To implement this policy, it was necessary to build a viable political machinery in Islamabad. And to promote a home-grown solution, the Zardari government was duly recognised as the legitimate civilian government in Pakistan. In that respect the visit was successful.

But to give it a spin and to suggest that success of Mr Zardari’s visit should be measured by the fact that he made the world accept Pakistan’s stance on the war on terrorism and that he was able to collect a large sum for this purpose would be stretching the point. Obama administration nevertheless is trying to depart from the previous US policies of patronising dictators in Pakistan, as reconfirmed by the US Secretary of State in her recent speech.

Admitting, as Mrs Clinton did, that the US policy towards countries such as Pakistan was ‘incoherent’, was not to suggest that foreign policy objectives of the US have changed. There is a remarkable continuity about American concerns regarding national security and foreign interventions prompted by these concerns. In some respects 9/11 serves as a watershed which was used by President Bush to ignore international law in dealing with ‘suspects’ in his war against terror. For Iraq, for example, it was the weapons of mass destruction which were never found. In Afghanistan, it has been a relentless pursuit of Osama bin Laden.

Intervention abroad has a long history in the US. From Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hawaii to the Philippines armies were sent to fulfil ‘humanitarian’ missions. Hans Morgenthau in his theory of international relations suggests a standard view that the US had a ‘transcendent purpose’ to establish peace and freedom at home and abroad. He does recognise, however, that there had been lapses from this standard criterion, the ‘abuse of reality’. But as Noam Chomsky reminds us, the purpose may be more related to how the imperial power operates.

In the new world reality of Barrack Obama, then, the lapses from the pursuit of reality during the Bush administration are being discarded but the purpose remains, that 9/11 should never happen again. This is the main objective of the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. The tribal area has been the breeding ground for terrorists who have managed to destabilise societies on both sides of the Durand Line and therefore it requires a holistic approach to resolve it. By itself it is a plausible approach. It would work if Pakistan was situated somewhere between Iran and Afghanistan. As it is, the country in its geo-political configuration belongs to South Asia.

During the Ziaul Haq regime, the Wahabi sectarian influence managed to distort the situation. The Taliban are the product of this worldview. As late Tahir Mirza, former editor of Dawn, said in an opinion piece (June 11, 2006), the so-called ‘war on terror has confused the real fundamentalist challenge…..A kind of hypocritical piety has come to dominate our lives….may have a far more invidious effect than the activities of the militants…There is also the practice that has lately become popular of saying ‘Allah Hafiz’ instead of Khuda Hafiz…..Or, there is this obsession with repeated umras by the well-to-do.’

A very important factor which plays its part in this hypocritical piety is the India-centric view which was fostered mainly by the military and their civilian associates, parading ideology of Islam. The school textbooks have been thoroughly revised to reflect this bias. The paradox is that even the political parties that claim to be secular manage to pander to religious groups for their support.

The reality about Pakistan is that Partition has left some important unfinished business including Kashmir and distribution of water resources. A meaningful revisit to ‘transcendent purpose’ should include recognition of this fact by the Obama administration. For India as an emerging power, it would be quite becoming to loosen some of its old clichés about Pakistan. The importance of this factor must be fully understood by those who had organised the Mumbai attack last year.

There should be no surprise, however, that not only some religious leaders but also some religiously conservative Pakistanis oppose the military action against the insurgents — a kind of hypocritical piety, to quote Tahir Mirza again. Negotiation and dialogue is usually part of any settlement of conflicts, but it has to be from the position of strength, to save the writ of the state. The situation, however, is very critical for Pakistan. First, if the war becomes prolonged or is caught in guerilla tactics by Taliban, then there is bound to be an effect on public opinion. Second, the refugee problem will become a minefield unless it is handled promptly and efficiently. The memories of the 2005 earthquake related miseries are still fresh in public mind.

No conflict, war or an insurgency, can be resolved by military action alone. There has to be an appeal to the hearts and minds of people, as mentioned above. One doesn’t need to be a Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle to fulfil this role. It would be just lucky to have a Tunku Abdul Rahman who played an important part in resolving the post-insurgency transition to create a peaceful and a prosperous Malaysia.

An important part of post-insurgency planning is to prepare for the reconstruction simultaneously with the military action. During the last eight months of its rule the Zardari government has been seriously guilty of ad hocism, to improvise as the situations arise — to deal with the challenges that can no longer be ignored. It is following the same policy about insurgency. Also, it does not have a good track record of initiating legislation for consideration of parliament. In the present case it needs to wake up and proceed by integrating the tribal areas with the rest of Pakistan through an appropriate constitutional amendment, and make the areas an essential part of national reconstruction.

The writer taught economics before his retirement.
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  #12  
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Obama’s bold foray into the Muslim world
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009



MAKING room for poetic license one could say, without fear of being refuted that Obama’s maiden foray into the heart of Islam is akin to Columbus journeying in the other direction.

This journey has begun with his historic address to the Muslim world that could mean all things to all peoples. That, incidentally, was the basic rationale behind Obama’s plan to journey down, first to the heart of Islam, in Saudi Arabia, and thence to the heart of the Arab world, in Egypt. Diplomatic pundits in North America are already praising the 5000-word historic speech that might change the course of our world history.

From the day he has moved into the White House, Obama seems fully conscious of the need to undo the damage done by George W. Bush to US relations with the Muslim world, especially in the wake of the cataclysmic 9/11.

Obama has history on his side, in fact personal history to make not only amends in Bush’s purblind policy of going after the Muslim world with a crusading vengeance but also invest conscious efforts, himself, to turn a fresh page and start a new chapter with it. His own Islamic roots entitle him to seek a new modus vivendi with the Islamic world, something naturally facilitated for him. He seems alive to this reality and has made no effort to hide his past or be apologetic about it.

These are the best possible credentials that an American president could flaunt to open a new window to the Islamic world. And Obama did seem to be consciously and stridently making use of these credentials and the goodwill that his induction in the White House has generated throughout the Muslim world to reach out to the Islamic Ummah with an open heart.

A master tactician of the rostrum, Obama knew exactly how to establish an early and sentimental rapport with his young, educated and cultured audience present in the auditorium of Cairo University. He began with the typical Islamic salutation of Salam instantly triggering a tumultuous applause. He reminded his spell-bound audience of the Quranic injunction that one must speak the truth under all circumstances: “As the Holy Quran tells us, be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That was an ideal platform to build his argument upon it.

Obama recalled the great contribution that the Muslims had made in the past centuries to sciences, arts, architecture and literature, and noted “civilisation’s debt to Islam.” He was magnanimous in admitting that it was the Muslims who “paved the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”

Though ostensibly addressing the audience present in the auditorium he reminded his admirers and critics in the West: “Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires, timeless poetry and cherished music, elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.”

Obama candidly and respectfully discarded the neo con matrix of a clash of civilizations between the West and the world of Islam. Once again, quoting from the Holy Quran he drew everybody’s attention pointedly to the Quran’s categorical statement on the race issue: “The Holy Quran tells us, Mankind, we have created you male and a female. And we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

Obama had no reservations in declaring that “America is not …at war with Islam.” He then went on to assert that a state of tension between the world of Muslims and the West preceded 9/11. He had no compunction in admitting that relations between these two spheres were weighed down by a long history of “ religious wars ( the Crusades)” as well as by the regressive “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”

Obama had the moral courage to admit the tirades the western world made in the not-too-distant-a-past, during the Cold War “in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies.” He mentioned, in this regard, the colossal injustice done to the Iranian people by US, in 1953, when the popularly elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddaq was subverted by the combined resources of CIA and the British intelligence.

Obama laced his address, throughout, by infusing into it a conscious respect for Muslim traditions and culture. Defending the hijab, Obama said: “Freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practise one’s religion…That’s why the US government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.” He was critical of those pseudo-liberals who have blown the hijab sky high as a symbol of female oppression and exploitation by insisting: “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.”

Obama could be taking a dig at France — where the government as custodian of the French spirit of liberte, has forbidden Muslim girls from wearing hijab at schools, or even Muslim Turkey where hijab-clad girls are frozen out of universities — when he said: “It is important for western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism.”

Speaking of the Sunni-Shiia divide, he chided the Muslims for their increasing intolerance for each other: “Among some Muslims , there’s a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of somebody else’s faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld, whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.”

Obama also made a conscious effort to jog the Muslim Ummah out of its laissez-faire attitude towards the danger posed to its moorings by rampant and rising terrorism within its ranks and reminded them that extremists among their own Muslims have killed “people of different faiths…more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” Obama admitted, disarmingly, that while Iraq was “a war of choice” Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.”

Obama conceded Iran’s right to harness nuclear energy for peaceful uses but wouldn’t allow it to develop into a nuclear weapon state. On the core Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio, which many see as the make-or-break issue for his presidency — and something on which he has been investing so much attention and effort so early in his term — he spoke, twice, of Palestine as a state for the Palestinians. He said: “It is undeniable that the Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians, have suffered…The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.”

On the unremitting plight of the people of Gaza, under siege from Israel, Obama had all sympathy and admitted that there is a “continued humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” However, not to be seen as becoming a partisan in the historic conflict, he reminded his audience of the “unbreakable” bond between US and Israel and, then, admonished the Palestinians of Gaza, in particular, to ‘abandon violence.”

By any unbiased yardstick it was a masterly performance of rhetorical flourish in which Obama said a lot of things that should please the world Muslim community and also force it to think over the gaping holes in its façade that it took a man as courageous and upright as Obama to point out.

However, a man as intelligent and perceptive as Obama can’t be oblivious of the trap doors ready to devour him and his revolutionary march to a new frontier. There is, at this juncture in history, a Zionist war-monger like Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm of affairs in Israel whose hatred of Palestinians and Muslims is legendary. As it is, the ultra-right phalanx is already touting plans to checkmate him, because they consider his foreign policy too ‘dangerously’ liberal. They are threatening to make him another Jimmy Carter with a one-term residency in the White House.

In the context of the Muslim world, Obama can’t be unmindful of the fact that this window of opportunity that has opened in the Muslim world because of the goodwill to offer him the room to pursue his policies will not remain open forever. The vast majority of Muslims subscribing to the pristine Islamic creed of co-existence with all other communities in the world will be prepared to forgive US, though not forget, the wounds an abrasive Bush inflicted on them, if only Obama would move quickly to heal those wounds. Black holes like Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib, the massacre of Haditha ( near Baghdad, in 2005) and, most recently, the Gaza siege should all be reminders to Obama that he has a long way to go before Muslms could start taking his protestations of peace for being real.

The Pakistanis are entitled to draw inspiration, in this period of national gloom, from Obama’s categorical reference to the need to build up Pakistan’s socio-economic infrastructure in order to drain out the swamp where Al Qaeda and its ilk feed. But Pakistanis, like all other Muslims, would like to see greater sensitivity in the Obama policies for Pakistan’s sovereign dignity, now being routinely violated and disparaged by American drones.

Obama has made a bold foray into the Muslim world. It’s a small step in a journey of thousand miles. The bridges of peace that Obama envisions will take all the effort from all around to build. Obama’s success or failure will be measured by how he levels the ground for this monumental task in his years in the White House.

The writer is a former ambassador.
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The militancy factor in south Punjab
By Riaz Missen
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009


SOUTH Punjab is a term coined by some quarters in the last two decades to distinguish lower areas of Punjab from its central and northern parts. To begin with, the region in question has been identified with poverty, underdevelopment and the dominance of the feudal clans and castes. Now it is being projected as the home for the recruitment of the Taliban suicide bombers. The fate of South Punjab really hangs in balance.

South Punjab has not been mover and shaker of the country’s politics. Located far away from centres of power, the people have had no say in the matter of socio-economic development programmes launched by one or the other military regime. Actually this has been the case since the Khalsa forces (Sikh military) conquered the states of Mankera, Multan and Derajat in the first quarter of the 19th century. Maharaja (king) of Punjab, Ranjit Singh, wanted to conquer Bahawalpur, Khairpur and Sindh as well but the British asked him to keep himself strictly confined to the western banks of Sutlej.

The desire to establish hegemony of the militarised Punjab over what was formerly northwest India was materialised in 1954 through One Unit plan with Lahore becoming the capital of the West Pakistan. For one and half decade, Lahore enjoyed power and was subjected to condemnation by the ethno-nationalist elements of Balochistan, Sindh and the NWFP. The opponents duly encouraged the ethnic feelings in the so-called South Punjab to fracture its will to rule the country with iron fist. Even some politicians of this region, as indicated by Shafqat Tanvir Mirza in his “The origin and politics of Seraiki movement” (Encounter, May 24), have tried to utilise such feelings for political mileage.

One needs to probe in detail into the consequences of the One Unit Scheme besides the one that led Bengalis to the path of separatism and winning freedom after a bloody civil war and intervention by the neighbouring India. The future of democracy was doomed when Punjab insisted to be counted equal to Bengal although it did not match its counterpart in numerical strength. Three eastern rivers were lost to India through Indus Basin Treaty.

Tan Tai Yong’s The Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab 1847-1849, published in2005, provides guide to the will of Punjab to keep intact its dominance in the decision-making process of the newly-borne state. The British after defeating the armies of Takht-e-Lahore actually disbanded the Khalsa army and quelled the rebellion by force but the events of the 1857 forced it to look towards Punjab for a succour to save Delhi and crush the revolt of the army mainly recruited from Bengal and Southern India.

The castes and tribes (predominantly Jats) that provide solace and saved the British Raj were duly rewarded. Declaring the tribes from Rawalpindi down to the Ravi-Sutlej Doabas martial races, their share in the royal army was increased to the extent that it became nearly a Punjabi army during the last century of British rule in India. The thick forests were cleared off in Central Punjab and the ‘crown lands’ were distributed among these loyal subjects. The canal colonies, as they were called, were expected to not only provide for the British Raj the defenders of its frontiers, threatened by the expanding Russian influence, but also make Punjab as the food basket of India.

As far as other areas of today’s Pakistan are concerned, the British did not develop the socio-economic system significantly except displace the forest communities whom they termed uncivilised and unruly people. A little bit administrative change was made by carving out of the Ranjit Singh’s Punjab, the NWFP. The feudal system was made hereditary and proprietors of jagirs in South Punjab and Sindh were given the revenue and magisterial powers to keep their subjects under control. The privileges of the Baloch tribal chiefs were kept unchanged while Maliki system was introduced in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

That the British patronised the loyal castes and tribes of Punjab during their rule in the north-western India is not only evident from allotment to them of agricultural lands supported by the canal system but also from the legislation carried out in their favour.

The most prominent of such legislations was the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900 that prohibited the non-agriculturalist castes from acquiring lands in the province. These were not only the enterprising Hindus that were victimised through such legislation but also the Janglis who were transformed into kameens due to the shrinking of forest area.

Nothing explains the frenzy following the partition except the way British colonised Punjab. The prospects of the Sikhs, who had got a major share of agricultural lands in Central Punjab, leaving for India, prompted the small landholders (Arains) to cross over to Pakistan in the hope of getting fertile lands. The Muslim tribes of Central Punjab expected to have their own share in the property vacated by the Sikhs. The Khalsas on their own part reacted sharply to revenge the loss of what they had in the past. The trauma of partition did influence the domestic and foreign policy of the country for the very reason that the immigrants dominated the civil-military bureaucracy of the nascent state.

The size of army (recruited from the known military districts of Punjab) would remain intact while the civil administrator would mainly belong to the Urdu-speaking segment. India would be regarded as an enemy while the duty of guarding the frontiers of British Raj would now assume a global dimension — Pakistan would play the role of a frontline state against the communist powers (Soviet Union and China).

The US and its allied western powers pumped into Pakistan huge funds to help it maintain a huge army and construct the ideological infrastructure to discourage the influence of communism that the capitalist bloc deemed a strategic threat. The nexus between the US and the civil-military bureaucracy of Pakistan is well known. So are the consequences.

Out of the many sectarian groups the country has had, only Deobandis and Wahabis had entertained the concept of waging jihad, even against the will of the state of which they were part. It is worth mentioning that neither of these groups had strong presence in the old population of the country which were either tolerant Brelvis or docile Shias. These militants groups were encouraged as a matter of policy. They first consolidated their position in Central Punjab and then penetrated into the South with official patronage during Zia-ul-Haq era. The pattern of the establishment of the mosques and Madrassahs belonging to Deobandi and Wahabi sects followed the settlements of the immigrants in the canal colonies of southern Punjab.

As the government is determined to eradicate militancy and launching military operation against the militants wherever they pose a threat, some sections of intelligentsia have raised an accusing finger at southern Punjab.

What this region has done? It is true that Punjab had provided largest share of funds and recruits in Afghan jihad and the structure of militancy still remains intact there. Why to make the south a scapegoat? Had the centre acted and cleared off Punjab from militants, Swat would not have seen its bad days.

Military operation is neither a solution to the problems of tribal region nor of south Punjab or any part of the country. True militancy is the law and order problem that the police and paramilitary forces have failed to tackle. Army has been used as the last option and it remains so in the future as well. But the government has not even started to address the root cause of militancy.

It is the ideological structure supported by none but the state that is fuelling militancy and creating inflexible and rigid souls. From constitutional provisions to the contents of the textbooks, the regimented and bigoted worldview is being promoted. Official media that is still selling religio-nationalism rather than building unified national identity on the traces of 5000 years old Indus-Hakra civilisation.

As far as south Punjab is concerned, religious militancy is not a phenomenon specifically associated with it. Actually there is widespread realisation among the intelligentsia to stop further colonisation of the region.

Whether it is Thal or Cholistan, promotion of agriculture has been followed by the expansion of networks of religious seminaries based in Central Punjab, the area wherefrom the colonisers come.

A separate province has emerged a viable option. Only the basis on which such administrative unit should be created is a matter to be settled. Some want to separate the agricultural districts from

the military-industrial areas, other want it on the basis of language and culture. Still there is another solution: converting the administration divisions into provinces will not only solve the problems of the Southern Punjab but also all the regions that are located far away from the centres of power — Islamabad and the capitals of the four provinces.
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The coming water famine
By Devinder Sharma
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009


A WASHINGTON-based news report titled “World over, rivers are drying up” says: “The flow of water in the world's largest rivers including India's Ganga, has declined over the past half century, with significant changes found in about a third of the big rivers.The reduction in inflow to the Pacific Ocean alone was about equal to shutting off the Mississippi river and the annual flow into the Indian Ocean dropped by about 3 per cent, or 140 cubic kilometers.”

Quoting a study published in the May 15 edition of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, the report goes on to say: “Among the rivers showing declines in flow, several serve large populations. These include the Yellow River of northern China, the Ganges in India, the Niger in West Africa and the Colorado in the southwestern United States. The study also showed that the Colorado, a lifeline of the southwest United States, won't be able to provide all of water promised to millions who rely on it for their homes, farms and businesses.”

That makes me wonder how stupid we can be when we promote unsustainable solutions like inter-linking of rivers to address the issue of river water going waste at a time when bulk of the country is starved of water and remains dependent upon rains as the only source of fresh water supplies.

At a time when the glaciers are melting and the rivers drying up, to suggest an investment of Rs1,20 lakh crores for linking the rivers in India was something I could never fathom. But knowing that the lobby groups have their own axe to grind, and academicians are always keen to provide oil to such lobbies, all I could do was to make my voice felt at some platforms.

Imagine, India making a massive investment to build a network of canals to link all the rivers, only to find that by the time the canals come into operation the rivers have gone dry.

Of course, you don't have to worry because the economists will tell us this is one public investment that will stimulate the economy in downturn, and the GDP will grow. The prime minister will tell us how India is managing to keep its growth figures upward of eight per cent in times of a global meltdown. What he will not tell us is that the heavy investment his government (or successive governments) made on linking the dry rivers was actually a futile exercise, and stupid economics.

This also brings me to the related aspect of water shortage that is being felt all over. Interestingly, the other day someone from a group of companies in a public lecture explained how the company was trying to educate the household help — the part-time women workers — who come to your house every morning/evening to clean the utensils and mop up the floor, on how to save water. As part of their Corporate Social Responsibility, the group was trying to do its bit. What an innovative effort, you would say. I wonder if it follows the same prescription in the chain of hotels it runs !

But is there a way out? Can we really find a solution to the water crisis, which as some people predict, would lead to future wars?

I can suggest a simple solution. Extraordinary times, they say, require extraordinarydecisions. The simple solution that I have been thinking about needs extraordinarydecision. I mean a tough political decision, and you have the answer to much of the water woes the world is faced with.

The Economist (Aug 27, 2008) states: “Five big food and beverage companies consume almost 575 billion litres of water a year, enough to satisfy the daily water needs of every person on the planet.” And the weekly has named the companies.

Wouldn't it make sense if we were to close down these five companies. Now hold on, before you think I am going mad, think again. Closing these five companies will not result in more hunger.

Closing these five companies will only mean that a few of us will be deprived of their products, nothing more than that. This will also enable us to seek suitable change in our unsustainable lifestyles that is harming the Earth.

All I am saying is close down these five companies. Give them a bailout package. If we can give a stimulus package to banks/insurance companies involved in financial frauds and irregularities, why not to these water guzzlers? After all, we have only one Earth to protect and preserve.

Ask these companies to close their shop. Or how long will we go on making fool of ordinary people by telling them to conserve water at the time of washing utensils or while brushing their teeth (I am certainly not against this kind of education and awareness) but why are we not willing to hit where it needs most? Why do we refrain from taking tough political decisions in favour of the masses? If the world really needs water, and water is the lifeline as we all know, than I think we should be willing to call for some hard decisions.

Extraordinary times require extraordinary decisions.

We want to protect the Earth, and our future needs. The Earth needs water, and we need a vibrant Earth. No price is bigger than protecting the Earth. Even if it means pulling down the shutter on world's five big food and beverage companies.

The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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Terrorism and piety
By Shahid Scheik
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009



THAT Pakistan faces a ruthless and deadly enemy advancing in the name of Islam to take over the country is hardly a controversy. Yet, this realisation continues to elude many segments of political opinion. And, some sections are still calling for an end to the army operation, others advocate a dialogue with the terrorists and yet others stick to the mistaken belief that American drone attacks have led to this armed rebellion.

The reluctance to confront groups, armed or peaceful, that act in the name of religion is a phenomenon common to most Islamic countries. Ethnologist Herman De Ley, formerly of the Centre for Islam in Europe, suggests that the legacy of colonial rule has led Muslim societies to associate secularism not with liberation, as Europeans usually do, but with foreign domination; by default, those opposed to secularism are linked with “piety.”

Hence, the terrorists operating in the NWFP, despite being visibly engaged in brutal acts of killing, maiming and brutalising Pakistani citizens, are held in esteem and given moral support by many Pakistanis who subscribe to the notion that their activities are in fact part of a battle against the US domination over Islamic lands and ultimately for the establishment of an Islamic state as it existed in the holy Prophet’s days.

Earlier, in 2007, the Lal Masjid terrorists imposing their version of Islam in the neighbourhood by force and opposing pro-American policies of General Musharraf were able to win support of some sections of the public, media and political leadership simply because they happened to be “pious”.

This ground swell of support encouraged terrorists to change their tactics from random attacks to capture of territory and adding the demand for “Islamic justice” to their ostensible anti-US agenda. This combination of piety and anti-Americanism enabled the terrorists, in less than eighteen months, to metamorphose, from a small group of hostage-takers inside a seminary to an organised militia holding hostage an entire administrative division and challenging the secular foundations of the state.

The promulgation of the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation at the behest of the Taliban, endorsed by Parliament, institutionalised submission to forces which are not only opposed to democracy but do not accept the writ of the Pakistani state. It would be prudent not to be misled into believing that the on-going military operation, which will only correct the internal security imbalance, can lead to a more rational approach in the debate concerning democratic, secular governance. There are several reasons for this.

First, the military operation partly arises from disputes over interpretation and implementation of the “Nizam-i-Adl” and not over the validity or correctness of the Regulation itself. So, the regulation stays. Second, promulgation of the Nizam-i-Adl has put, irrevocably, on the national political agenda the issue of the role of religion in matters of state, (it took the Europeans several centuries to shake off the dominance of the Church). Third, the earlier act of appeasement to armed militants has given impetus to other non-representative elements, and some nationalist-ethnic parties have resorted to violence for acceptance of demands. Others may do so soon for sectarian or non-democratic demands. Issues hitherto confined to Swat have become national-level problems.

More importantly, in the national political landscape, opposition to secularism and resistance to societal change are two sides of the same coin, with religious extremism providing a convenient cover to resistance against modern, scientific progress. In today’s Pakistan, societal change is viewed with equal disfavour by the militants (who believe change should conform to their tribal vision and lead to revival of an ancient state structure); by the religious parties (who believe change should only be according to the Sharia) and the powerful land-owning rural oligarchy, whose control of Pakistan’s politics and wealth and power are derived from the preservation of the status quo and denial of economic progress to average citizens.

The NWFP’s fast-developing social structure acts as magnet for the forces opposed to societal change. The number of successful small landowners outside the clutches of rentier landlords is growing.

Among the Pashtuns, a high percentage of urban dwellers in the cities of the NWFP now get exposed to the modern cultures of the major cities of Pakistan, especially Karachi. While transport business has enabled Pashtuns to absorb cross-cultural influences within Pakistan, more than two million Pashtuns, over the years, have had exposure to Arab and non-Muslim cultures from work experience in the Middle East. Lastly, the Russian and American invasions of Afghanistan, the influx of refugees and developmental activity by NGOs, all have exposed the NWFP rural dwellers to more social change in the past thirty years than what he has experienced in the previous three hundred.

Pakistan’s rural oligarchy is averse, like its religious elements, to submit to state laws and taxation and sustains its hold on power by exercise of justice, practised more efficiently than the state, through Jirgas, use of private militias to enforce control of personal freedoms and tribal loyalty, protection of archaic customs, arising from superstitions falsely identified with religion, discouragement of literacy and of modern, science-based education.

The brief interlude of administrative control exercised by the militants in Fata and Swat has demonstrated there is little difference between the tools of authority employed by the rural oligarchy and religious extremists. Both are founded on devaluation of state authority and in this they are supported by the mainstream religious parties, whose stated objective has always been, lest we forget, to deconstruct, albeit peacefully, the secular constitutional make-up of the Pakistani state.

All these forces come together in Swat where, as elsewhere in the NWFP, the issues of social change and secular governance are further interlinked with ethnic-based provincialism. This last factor, it should be remembered, was as much behind Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan imbroglio as the misplaced doctrine of “strategic depth.” Pakistan’s Pashtuns extended whole-hearted support to the Mujahideen against the Russians and to the Afghan Taliban against the US/NATO on the basis of ethnic affiliation.

The big loser in the Swat crisis has been the Awami National party (ANP), a secular party of high ideals although with a support base that does not extend much beyond ethnic Pashtuns. The party’s inability, in or out of power, to effectively protect the Pashtuns away from obscurantist influences has resulted in the ANP losing space to the militants. Now the ethnic controversy over relocation of internally displaced persons will create a sense of isolation among the Pashtuns, alienating them from the two major provinces.

Like the NWFP, Pakistan itself is in the process of a social change and one should expect that the reactionary forces will fully make use of their amassed stock of religious obscurantism, sectarianism and ethnicity to obstruct the process.

For the military operation in Swat to yield long-term dividends, it is necessary for parties such as the ANP and the PPP, the key political players in the NWFP, to remain steadfast in upholding their secular principles so that the militants can be defeated both militarily and ideologically.
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Economic growth, poverty and the IMF
By Izzud-Din Pal
Sunday, 14 Jun, 2009



NATIONAL budget, like the provincial budgets, is a political statement, with profound effects on the economy. More often it follows a predictable course of action, with renewed declaration to solve national problems. Occasionally, just occasionally, there is a hint of a new policy, new thinking. It is good time, therefore, to offer prefatory remarks in the context of the major issues facing the country.

In the annual ritual, the key factor indicating the health of the economy is the GDP growth. And like everything else in Pakistan, the answer to this question is not straightforward. Recently, The Economist, London, gave an estimate of 0.6 per cent growth for Pakistan for 2009. The official figures recently released indicated a growth rate of around 2.4 per cent for fiscal period 2008-09. In the context of the past performance of the economy these figures seemed to be exaggerated. This result could not have been obtained without fudging the data.

There are many reasons why the officials would try to embellish the picture. In this case, it was done perhaps under the shadow of the International Monetary Fund facility. With conditionality, the target for the period should be expected to be close to 2.50 percent. Obviously the performance of the economy has not come up to the level as envisaged under the measures designed for macroeconomic stability of the country. This controversy once again confirms the need to have an independent bureau of statistics not affiliated with the ministry of finance.

(The Economic Survey has now given the final GDP growth rate figure. It is two per cent. Last year, it was 4.1 per cent. The agriculture sector’s unusually good performance has partly offset the damage. It grew at a rate of 4.7 per cent as against the target of 3.5 per cent. The GDP growth target was originally set at 5.8 percent. During the year, it was revised downwards several times. The target the IMF gave was 2.5 per cent. Only Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Sardar Assef Ahmad Ali had predicted the correct figure. He said that the GDP growth rate for this fiscal year would be 2.0 per cent.)

When the prospects for IMF loan/facility were being debated in the country last year, many commentators suggested that to deal with the economic situation facing the country a home-grown solution should be adopted, to tighten the belts, so to speak, shared by all segments of the society, and with due consideration for the most vulnerable members of the society. As in the past, however, the government negotiated a facility with the IMF in order to correct the balance of payments situation. The constraints which accompanied the agreement called for ‘market’ solutions to control pressure on consumption and imports. Obviously the burden of these measures would fall mainly on the low-income groups, with the elite of the society left untouched with their perks and privileges.

It may be argued that since the early nineties, Pakistan has rushed to the IFIs, because their methodology fits nicely with the expectations of the ruling classes; the poor be damned. With ‘structural adjustment’ of the World Bank, for example, came an opiate popularly known as ‘poverty reduction and growth’ and in reality it happened to promote neither. It has already gone through three stages, with no noticeable effects on the economy. But the game must be played.

Why has Pakistan followed this path for a rescue package from the IMF each time to salvage its international credibility? The answer lies in the political configuration of the country, the concentration of power, oligarchic or military rule, where decisions have been made in the name of the people but not for the welfare of the people. This concentration of power has been reinforced by ‘security’ consideration inherited from the partition of British India and all this promotes a rent-seeking mentality. It has served as a drag on the body-politic of the country. The half-baked solutions are sought because no real sacrifices have to be

made, to stand up and to be counted, along with the rest of the population.

For a meaningful solution to the economic challenges facing the country, seeking rescue for external sector through conditionalities cannot be justified by any sensible criteria of resource utilisation.

Recently, a group of ADB economists have examined the paradox of the above phenomenon within the framework of economic analysis, challenging the prevailing orthodoxy which has been dominant since the days of Washington Consensus. Their report titled ‘A Reinterpretation of Pakistan’s Economic Crisis and Options for Policymakers’ suggests that the IMF loan of $7.6 billion is not the right recipe for Pakistan economic ills. The report deserves a detailed discussion which is not possible in the space available to me, but its central point is worth mentioning here.

The report suggests that the austerity plan recommended by the IMF would promote stabilisation at the cost of economic growth (Of course many IMF-WB wallahs have often suggested that stability should come first). This choice would not be rational, as the authors of the report suggest, because the austerity regime would not touch the core of the problem, the unutilised resources within the developing economy.

It is a point that has been forcefully made by Joseph Stiglitz, former VP of the World Bank, in his writings. Leaving unutilised resources would be self-defeating, because it would not improve incomes and reduce supply bottlenecks which contribute to inflationary pressures. This underlines the fact that the focus in current orthodoxy on ‘natural rate’ even when not all resources have been used would be a misleading indicator of the economic situation.

The spotlight on what the report calls `redundant` resources opens an interesting window for Pakistan; to devise a pro-poor public policy for utilisation of these resources, as the employer of the last resort.

The private sector even if fully developed in the country would recruit only the most `desirable` employees. Avoiding the technical jargon, job guarantees through public policy can be established to what the authors call ‘buy off the bottom’ — buying those who do not have ‘current demand price’. In the plan for employment creation, for example, special consideration could be given to the poor in the rural areas.

An imaginative and an effective pro-poor policy in Pakistan, therefore, calls for a fundamental change in the current thinking on the subject. There are people who for one reason or another cannot be part of the labour force and it is the duty of the state to provide them with necessary assistance. That is how the social welfare programmes have evolved in the developed countries which can be used as guidelines by the developing countries.

In the developed countries, cash transfers are paid for children (family allowances), and for old age security. The former are tied to the age and education and the latter provide (conditional) income supplement above a defined threshold. Then there is Medicaid (US), public health plans, and unemployment insurance, carrying various criteria for eligibility.

In Pakistan, People’s Party’s political statement about roti-kapra-makaan for the poor has never quite explained how in practical terms they would implement their promise. But starting with the 2008-09 budget, a programme for direct cash transfers was implemented in memory of Benazir Bhutto. The data are sparse about how the ‘deserving’ poor are defined for the assistance. The situation is more complex, however, in the developing economy of Pakistan. Cash payments for the poor are sparse, except for those as mentioned above. There is also a segment which would qualify for zakat. And improvements are needed in these areas. Then there are the poor who are unemployed, or partly employed in seasonal jobs or in segmented responsibilities (popularly known as disguised unemployed). In the context of the ADB report, these workers would qualify for job guarantees, being ‘unutilised resources’, as they would carry almost no demand price (i.e. higher wage pressure). These workers would be the focus of the pro-poor programme of reconstruction, to improve incomes and to reduce supply bottlenecks.

It is not within the scope of the ADB report to examine the social aspects of their recommendations, that their solution would be a first step towards creating an egalitarian society. With prevailing economic orthodoxy, of putting aside the concept of full employment in favour of ‘natural’ level, of pushing with privatisation for ‘optimum’ utilisation of resources, the rich get richer in this scenario.

It is in the framework of political economy that it is possible to identity the factors which propel the elite of the society, the rent seekers, to pursue ‘macroeconomic’ stability for ‘poverty reduction and growth’ neither of which would perhaps materialise, posing no threats to their perks and privileges, until it is time for the elite or their successors to move on to the next cycle of ‘macroeconomic’ stability.

With the increasing social instability in the country, the poor can become a ‘reserve army’ to push for a change and break this cycle with consequences, unless the elite leadership wakes up to this reality.

The writer taught economics before his retirement.
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Post-restoration: the role of the Bench and the Bar
By Muneer A. Malik
Sunday, 14 Jun, 2009



THE successful long march of March this year and the unconditional restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry have let loose a wave of expectations that the judiciary post-restoration shall usher in a new society based on the rule of law and that after decades of neglect the people shall have real access to substantive justice for the realisation of their basic rights contained in the constitution. What then is role of the judiciary post restoration and that of the bar?

First and foremost, let it be clear that the lawyers’ movement is far from over. It has simply entered a new phase that we foresaw would logically come. In this new phase the bench and the bar are embarked upon a common venture as sailors on a fleet of ships. At the head sails the flagship boarded by the commander of the fleet, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, who has been charged by the emerging national ethos the task of navigating through uncharted waters. The flagship carries, naturally the Chief Justice, the restored judges, the “reappointed” judges and judges appointed this year post 21st of March.

The fleet comprises ships that are of different makes and types. It includes ships headed by PCO judges, by those judges who breached their oaths and also by those who were inducted after the lifting of the Proclamation of Emergency and some by those who were inducted after the elected government took office. We, the members of the bar must board the flagship. Of the three organs of the state, it is the judicial organ that is the custodian of the constitution. It has no coercive power of its own but it exerts its will by the force of its moral authority that it derives from the legitimacy and respect that it commands in the eyes of the people.

It is perhaps in this context that US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner has observed that in the ultimate analysis judges do not protect the constitution; it is the people who do. For the larger part of our history, no matter what constitutional system we have lived under, the executive, that controls the coercive apparatus of the state, has dominated the other two institutions of the state. Whenever the military had intervened to take over control to run the affairs of the country, the judiciary had failed the people in discharging its duty to protect the constitution.

When the system of checks and balances between the three organs of the state breaks down, the one that is in control of the coercive apparatus strengthens its grip over our collective affairs. The rule of law stands eroded and the rule of men prevails. The judiciary’s most important task after the restoration, therefore, should be to ensure that the ignominious doctrine of state necessity is consigned to the dustbin of history.

The restoration does not and ought not to be seen as some talismanic wand that has ushered in an era of a fully independent judiciary. The judiciary has to be strengthened so that it can withstand future assaults from the executive. Judicial independence and constitutionalism go hand in hand. Judicial independence cannot co-exist with autocracy that is based on the rule of men as opposed to the rule of law. An independent and vigilant bar enjoying the support of the people is an essential precondition for preserving and enhancing the independence of the judiciary. And will the judiciary and the bar, the two wheels of the chariot of justice, not have squandered the people’s trust if they were to shut their eyes and rest on the laurels of the restoration?

The challenge of the times ahead is to integrate this fleet, incorporating some ships and discarding some. To do this the judiciary has to tackle the bull by its horns and declare Tikka Iqbal’s case non est. The fact the judges were restored by an executive order fortifies the view that the judgment of Tikka Iqbal’s case is indeed non est. It must seize this opportunity before Tikka Iqbal’s case seizes it; this is the hour, as it enjoys the support of the people, as never before.

If the principal objective of the lawyers’ movement was and is to establish the supremacy of the rule of law in Pakistan and not simply to provide employment to judges who had been unceremoniously sent packing and made non-functional on November 3, 2007 then the judiciary must transform itself in to a vibrant institution that stands guard over the constitution and the basic rights of the people, particularly of those groups or individuals who are the most vulnerable.

We chose this constitution on the assumption that it would, if followed, help usher a society in which every citizen would have the opportunity to realise and attain his/her fullest potential. In this scheme of constitutional governance we had hoped that, we the people, would enjoy certain basic fundamental rights, the existence of which was a pre-condition to a change in the quality of our lives and that of our progeny, born and yet unborn.

The fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution include the security of persons in respect of life and liberty, prohibit slavery and forced labor, protect against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, declare that the dignity of man is inviolable, provide for freedom of assembly, association, trade, business and profession, provide freedom of speech, freedom of religion, protection of property and preservation of our language, script and culture.

At the core of these fundamental rights is the notion that all men and women are equal before the law and that without access to justice all rights are illusory and meaningless. The cases of Azizullah Memon and Shehla Zia and the exercise of suo motto jurisdiction blaze the trail to a path beyond the Tamizuddin, Dossa, Nusrat Bhutto and Zafar Ali Shah cases. They illuminated the path to access to justice.

Treading this path is the next challenge for the post-restoration judiciary. But what is justice? It is essentially social justice where individuals are truly equal before the law, free of exploitation and indignity.

To achieve this end it is imperative that judges understand that their judgments must take into account the social background of the vulnerable sections of society. They need to sensitise themselves to understand and comprehend the values, beliefs, perspective of lives, and the daily experiences of others unlike them. Justice Holmes had observed that judges do not only interpret the law but in fact make the law.

Making law involves choosing values. Judicial independence is not to be equated with judicial isolation. We need to change the mindset of that pervades our entire judiciary that leads them to ally themselves with the ruling classes rather than with the masses else it will continue to be seen as another problem faced by the people in accessing justice. At a recent public reference for the late Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, one of the speakers, his childhood friend, had this way to tell;

“Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed was fond of eating nehari at Sabri on M.A. Jinnah Road on Sunday mornings with some of his childhood friends. One day, he, then a sitting judge of the Sindh High Court, related to Justice Dorab Patel some incident that he observed while having nehari at Sabri. Justice (retired) Dorab Patel, a man of impeccable rectitude, was aghast and turned to Justice Sabih

and said, “But Sabih do you think it is appropriate for a judge of the High Court to be eating nihari with the public at Sabri?” Justice Sabihuddin replied: “But, Sir, Judges, including you when you were a sitting judge of the Supreme Court frequently lunched at the Sindh Club.” After giving it some thought, Justice Dorab Patel replied “You know Sabih, you are right. I never thought about it this way.”

Does this not distort their perception about the needs and aspirations of the people of Pakistan? The judiciary post restoration must change such beliefs. It must be seen by the masses as the protector of their interests. It is heartening that the New Judicial Policy that took effect from June 1, 2009 addresses some of these issues.

We have seen for ourselves how the defiant “No” of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry energised the lawyers and civil society to defend constitutionalism. Together with the media they were able to raise the consciousness of the people, making them aware that dispensation of substantive justice and the realisation of their fundamental rights was possible only if the judicial organ of the state was truly independent and the judiciary comprised of men and women who had the courage to dispense justice without fear or favour.

It was this raised consciousness amongst the people that emboldened the judiciary to strike down the infamous Presidential Reference on July 20, 2007. People’s message to the judiciary was loud and clear and the message was: Do not be afraid of doing the right thing because we shall back you. We will need judges of rectitude who will stand up for the rule of law when it is time to take a stand and be counted.

Therefore, of compelling importance in the times ahead will be for the judiciary to assert its primacy in the matter of judicial appointments at all levels of the institution. The strength of the Supreme Court has been increased to 28 and that of all the High Courts substantially increased. There are proposals to double the numbers of the subordinate judiciary. In its efforts to assert its primacy in the consultative process and to forestall the packing of the courts, the judiciary will need the full and robust support of the bar and to reaffirm its commitment to the decided cases of Al-Jehad Trust and Asad Ali. And how does the bar express its support?

In the first instance the judiciary should support proposals to co-opt the organised bar in the consultative process. The bar on its part must widely disseminate its position on the criteria that must be met by potential appointees to the courts, both superior and subordinate. It must build a consensus, wide in its reach, taking along members of civil society on whom the laurels of the restoration rest no less.

We need to work together with schools and colleges, professors and teachers at institutes of learning; with business forums, workers’ unions, professional organisations, women organisations and all those who have a direct stake in ensuring the integrity of the judicial system. While the bench and the bar must continually defend civilian supremacy, they must stay clear of partisan politics lest they endanger their own unity.

They must make common cause with others who suffer from the erosion of the rule of law. When independent television channels are taken off the air or young girls are buried alive or dogs let loose on them we must protest, in our own ways consistent with our positions, with all the force at our command. We must show greater solidarity with the families of missing persons still unaccounted for. In other words the bench and the Bar must be seen as fighting for the fundamental rights of the people at large.

It is no secret that the backlog of cases is acutely straining the justice system which may well burst at the seams. According to a report published by the Secretariat, Law & Justice Commission of Pakistan on National Judicial Policy 2009 — A year for focus on Justice at the Grassroots Level, the current pendency in the superior and subordinate judiciary is 138,945 and 1,565,926 cases respectively. These figures do not include the pendency before special courts and administrative tribunals. Not even one per cent of the federal and provincial budgets are allocated to the third pillar of the state. A judicial officer in Punjab has to deal with 1668 cases per day on the average.

It is for us in the bar to lobby for the allocation of increased funding for the judicial system and to energise civil society to press the legislature and the executive to redefine national spending priorities. Access to justice is both quantitative and about results. The challenge for the judiciary post restoration is to reform the entire judicial system to realise the principle of public policy laid down in Article 37(d) of the constitution. It is not simply about what happens inside the courtrooms but also about what happens beyond. The justice system means the police, the prisons, prosecution and defence, legal aid, adjudication and enforcement. For instance the vulnerable sections of society see the police as part of the problem, either corrupt or furthering the interests of the powerful.

The courts must and in fact have started to take the police to task and make it more efficient, professional and service-oriented but it will be a long journey. The judiciary will need to manage its case load by encouraging transparent and fair plea bargaining and pre-trial settlements being ever mindful that speedy disposal of a list ought not to be at the cost of miscarriage of justice. Towards achieving this end it will be for the courts to nurture the independence of the public prosecutor and the creation of a credible public defender’s office the time for which has surely come. The task at hand is difficult but not impossible. The catch words ought to be vigilance, integrity, activism and innovation. The National Judicial Policy 2009 is a welcome step in that direction.

It would do the judiciary well to ponder the words of Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham:

‘It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law... a sealed book and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich and left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression and left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence.’

Let’s pray that the post-restoration judiciary is some day capable of making this boast.

The writer is a former president of Supreme Court Bar Association.
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No clash between Islam and pluralism
By Hussain H. Zaidi
Sunday, 14 Jun, 2009

THAT religious extremism has assumed horrendous proportions in our society, there can be no two opinions about this. During last few years, hundreds of people have fallen victim to the menace as the jihadis have taken upon themselves to establish a monolithic society by ridding it of all “evil”. The failure of the Swat deal reminds us that the jihadi ideology precludes tolerance of any dissent, difference or opposition as tolerating any ‘antithesis’ would constitute kufr.

Thus, according to that ideology, democracy and parliament are illegitimate being a western concept and institution respectively and thus an antithesis of the Islamic political system. The constitution, the legal system and all subordinate institutions which are based on democratic ideals are likewise branded as un-Islamic.

Such an ideology is obviously incompatible with the modern society, which is multiethnic, multicultural. In such a society, social order has to be based on a pluralistic philosophy—tolerance of religious and cultural differences within society permitting various groups to practise their distinctive cultures while cooperating in larger social, economic and political life. Pluralism also underlies democracy, which stipulates that people regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations should be given equal rights and opportunities. As one political scientist puts it, democracy is multivalued rather than single-valued and is disposed to share rather than hoard or monopolise.

The fundamental question as we face the strong challenge of religious extremism is this: Is a pluralistic society incompatible with Islam? Does Islam abjure other worldviews and provide for suppressing them? The jihadis would have us believe that Islam provides only for a monolithic society in which different cultures or sub-cultures cannot co-exist; rather they have to be merged with the “Islamic” culture. If preaching cannot effect that merger, force can be, and must be, employed.

If such an interpretation of Islam were to be accepted, then the use of force to remove cultural diversity would become legitimate and freedom of conscience, which underlies all moral freedom, become meaningless. There would be only one creed and one moral code, not by choice but by force. Such an interpretation of Islam would not only divest society of all ethical freedom but also breed mayhem and chaos as jihadis would wade through blood if need be to purge society of what they consider to be un-Islamic beliefs and practices.

All religions, including Islam, preach unity of their followers. However, most religions, including Islam, have experienced the rise of sects for one reason or another. In case of Islam, even the two main sects—Shias and Sunnis—are divided into sub-sects. The main reasons for this development are the question of leadership, different interpretations of the Quran and Sunnah, performance of rituals and application of codes. But do such differences preclude peaceful co-existence of people adhering to different creeds? The answer depends on what kind of society we have in mind.

In a monolithic society, different creeds cannot co-exist peacefully. All diversity has to be forced into a unity. It is only in a pluralistic society that different creeds can co-exist peacefully. The foremost condition for establishing a pluralistic society is to accept diversity of beliefs, practices and codes without trying to reduce the diversity to a unity.

Coming back to Pakistan, the country was created in the name of Islam. However, the purpose was not to create a theocratic, monolithic state but to safeguard the social, economic and political rights of Indian Muslims. And once Pakistan was created, the rights of even non-Muslims were to be protected as equal citizens. And that is what the founder of Pakistan, the late Muhammad Ali Jinnah, emphasised in his historic address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, wherein he said: “You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in the State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state….Now, I think that we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

The vision of Pakistan as outlined by its founder in the above extract was that of a pluralistic society in which full religious freedom would be granted to all communities, where the state would not discriminate on the basis of caste or creed and where cultural diversity would be reconciled with national unity. Being a statesman, Mr Jinnah knew well that in a multicultural society like Pakistan discrimination on the basis of religion could prove disastrous as it would play havoc with the very fabric of society.

Establishment of a multicultural society, as envisioned by Mr Jinnah, necessitated above all that religion should not be used for political purpose, because this invariably promotes one community at the expense of others. But unfortunately, starting from the 1949 Objectives Resolution, religion has been strongly injected into the body politic. Rulers have used it to consolidate their position, and power seekers to satisfy their ambitions. Though every government has used religion one way or the other, the Zia regime (1977-88) clearly outclassed others in this respect.

Since Gen Zia had assumed power by unconstitutional means, he needed some principle to legitimise it. He found such a principle in religion—the “Islamisation” of society—and an instrument to carry it out in the clergy. Zia’s so-called Islamic measures increased the existing polarisations in society. They widened the chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims and between Shias and Sunnis. It was his regime which fathered the country’s most extremist religious outfit. In exchange for the cooperation of the clergy, the Zia regime extended them full patronage. The enormous money that the clergy received was spent on arms and religious propaganda. Courtesy the US-sponsored Afghan war against the Soviet Union in which Pakistan was a frontline state, arms were easily available. The Afghan crisis was portrayed as a conflict between Islam and kufr and activists of many religious outfits fought in the war. The training and arms which they received were later used against rival creeds.

In breeding and nurturing religious militancy, the madressahs have played a lethal role. The pen is bloodier than the sword and this is perfectly applicable to our madressahs. The madressahs teach negation, and hence repudiation, of doctrines, rituals and moral standards different from theirs. Those who profess a different creed or have a different moral standard are looked upon as an evil. Women who do not put on veil or men who do not have a beard are considered impious. Men and women who mix with one another are regarded as essentially wicked. Those who listen to music commit a grave sin. All such wicked or impious people have to be reformed—by the use of force if need be.

The education imparted in the madressahs instead of inculcating in students a dispassionate quest for truth or at least enabling them to take to some socially useful profession, indoctrinates in them hatred for other creeds. The students are taught that only their creed is based on truth, whereas the rest are an incarnation of evil whose elimination is a most sacred duty of theirs. The reward of performing that duty, they are taught, is an everlasting life of pleasure in the paradise.

Most of the students owing to their impressionable age come to believe this stuff. Hence, when they leave their institutions, their hearts are filled with the strong desire to carry out their “sacred” duty. The madressahs also churn out sectarian propaganda in the form of inflammatory literature, which denounces followers of rival creeds as kafirs, who must either be coerced into conversion or exterminated.

It is easier to accept people like us than people different from us. But it does not mean that a society should shun all diversity and consist of only one race, creed or ethnicity. Rather all such diversity has to be appreciated, affirmed and accepted. This is the only sound approach in a multiethnic society like Pakistan. It is such approach that both the government and civil society should promote.

The view propagated by successive governments and even today by religious parties that Pakistan was meant to be a theocratic, monolithic state and a citadel of Islam needs to be corrected. As for madressahs, they as the breeding ground of religious militancy need a major surgery, otherwise the cancer of religious extremism would eat up the entire body politic.
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The political economy of the budget
By Hussain H. Zaidi
Sunday, 21 Jun, 2009


IT was rather amusing to watch the minister of state for economic affairs reproach the previous government, of which she was part in the same capacity, for its ‘faulty’ economic policies while presenting the budget for the new fiscal year. It was equally amusing to watch her claim that the PPP government, having a needlessly large cabinet despite economic crunch, is committed to living within its means as part of efforts to stabilise the economy. But this is what the political economy of Pakistan is where people in power want an increased share of the shrinking pie at the cost of allocative efficiency.

The budget is both a political and economic document. On the economic side, it is a statement of the fiscal policy by which the government makes decisions about public revenue and expenditure with a view to affecting output, employment and inflation in the economy. On the political side, the budget is used to reward, appease or penalise certain constituencies. Both the economic and political aspects of the budget are determined by the constraints within which every government works. The same is true of the budget for the fiscal year 2009-10 (FY10).

Politically and economically, the three perennial constraints which every government in Pakistan has to face while budgeting are the massive public debt, the need to maintain a huge military establishment, and the lack of tax culture. The first two constraints dictate that a large portion of the public expenditure is allocated to debt servicing and defence, while the third constraint ensures that the public revenue, particularly

from direct taxes, lags behind increase in government expenditure and growth of GDP. The result is not only increase in fiscal deficit but also misallocation of resources.

The government will be spending Rs2.48 trillion during FY10. Whereas the current expenditure of Rs1.69 trillion accounts for 68.43 per cent of the total expenditure, the Rs783 billion development expenditure constitutes only 31.57 per cent of the total expenditure. A developing country like Pakistan needs to spend far more on development projects. But the above mentioned constraints do not allow the Pakistan government to do so.

An amount of Rs1.18 trillion — which makes up 69.82 per cent of the current expenditure — will be spent on general public services (including debt servicing and transfer payments), and Rs343 billion—which constitutes 20.29 per cent of current expenditure — will be spent on defence products and services. The proposed defence spending for FY10 is 15.88 per cent higher than the outgoing fiscal year’s budgetary allocation of Rs296 billion and 10.29 per cent higher than the actual spending of Rs311 billion. As in the past, this fiscal year as well, actual defence spending may go up primarily due to stepped-up fight against terrorism.

Thus defence and general public services expenditure together account for about 90 per cent of current expenditure and 62 per cent of total expenditure. Debt repayment is an obligation that the Pakistan government owes to foreign countries and institutions as well as its own nationals. The massive military expenditure, on the other hand, is rooted in the country’s political system which is dominated by the armed forces no matter which party is in power or what robe — democratic or despotic — the government puts on.

It is easier for a party in opposition to criticise massive military allocation. But the very first lesson the same party learns when it enters the corridors of power is “don’t mess with the defence.” The Pakistan government’s discretion regarding allocation of resources starts only after meeting the expenditure on these two heads. At present, the armed forces are engaged in putting down insurgency in the north-western part of the country and therefore it is understandable that a sizable part of the national pie is allocated to supporting that effort. But let no one labour under the impression that once that insurgency is quelled, the defence expenditure will come down.

Scarcity of resources necessitates a trade-off among competing needs. If a country spends too much on producing or procuring defence goods and services, it will have too little to spend on civilian goods and services. Hence, not surprisingly, governments in Pakistan have been making meagre allocations to health and education — the two capital indicators of human resource development (HRD).

The FY10 budget allocates Rs31 billion to the education sector (compared with the outgoing year’s 20 billion) and Rs23 billion to the health sector (compared with the outgoing year’s 14 billion). Though allocations for both health and education have been substantially increased, they collectively (Rs54 billion) still account for only 2 per cent of the total expenditure, which is well below the desired level. Poverty alleviation and employment generation are among the basic policy objectives of the government, which require substantial investment in human capital development. Meagre budgetary allocation for health and education will impede the attainment of this objective.

Expenditure is one side of the budget, whose other side is revenue. Projected tax revenue during FY10 is Rs1.37 trillion including direct taxes of Rs565 billion and indirect taxes of Rs815 billion. The revenue target envisages 16.10 per cent growth in estimated receipts of Rs1.18 trillion in the outgoing fiscal year. The fiscal deficit of Rs722.5 billion, 4.9 per cent of the GDP, would be met partly through domestic resources (Rs457.6 billion) and partly through external financing (Rs264.9 billion). The 4.9 per cent fiscal deficit will be 0.6 percentage points higher than that for the outgoing fiscal year (FY09) but 2.7 percentage points lower (7.6 per cent of GDP) than that during FY08.

Although fiscal deficit during the outgoing fiscal year is much lower than that of 7.6 per cent of the GDP during the previous year, the “feast” has been accomplished by reducing developmental expenditure (federal government) from Rs 371 billion to Rs219 billion rather than by increasing tax-GDP ratio, which has fallen to 9 per cent of the GDP. As the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has noted in a recent report, a sharp cut in development spending is neither sustainable nor desirable, because the government is required to increase spending on human capital development and widening the social safety net as an effective antidote to extremism.

In FY10 as well, developmental spending may have to be slashed as the government is counting on highly uncertain capital receipts of Rs178 billion from the Friends of Pakistan and Rs50 billion for internally displaced persons for budgetary support.

In order to contain the public expenditure, the government has decided to cut power subsidy by 40 per cent to Rs66.7 billion from 111.64 billion in the outgoing fiscal year. The subsidy on oil has already been done away with. While the cut in subsidies will help reduce fiscal deficit, it will add to inflationary pressures in the economy. This will tell upon both consumers and businesses and may impede other objectives of the government, such as reducing current account deficit, increasing productivity of the economy and raising the level of savings.

Productivity of the economy will go down as resources will be diverted to speculative or non-productive activities such as investment in real estate. Already during the outgoing fiscal year, large scale manufacturing has registered negative growth of 7.7 per cent. Surge in prices of inputs will push up the cost of production and thus drive up the final price of exportable goods making exports less competitive in the international market. Savings will be discouraged partly due to reduction in real incomes, the single most important factor behind savings, and partly due to increased consumer spending in anticipation that prices will go up further. Finally, increased inflation will have enormous social cost in that it will hit hardest the salaried class and the poorer sections of society.

The budget provides for 15 per cent increase in salaries and pensions of government employees. If the purpose was to mitigate the problems of the masses, then the salary and pension increase would not serve that objective unless inflation was brought down significantly; rather it might aggravate their problem. The reason is simple: in the absence of substantial increase in output or price control, any increase in salaries and pensions is likely to be offset by a proportionate, if not greater, increase in prices. The result will be that the real incomes will further come down.

The 15 pc increase in wages means that, people earning Rs5,000 per month will get only Rs 750 increase, while those earning Rs30,000 per month will get Rs4,500 increase. But prices will increase for both by the same margin. It is pertinent to mention that lower income people spend a higher portion of their total income on essential items than the people falling in the upper income bracket. Thus increase in wages should be accompanied by price control of basic commodities and services like transport by keeping an eye on cartels and artificial shortages.

Essential as increase in salaries was, the government should have provided greater relief to the lower income employees than those with higher income by announcing higher percentage wage increase for the former. But then the political economy did not warrant such a decision.
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Is another revolution possible in Iran?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Sunday, 21 Jun, 2009


TO the likes of the ultra-hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and legions of his admirers among the American neocons — there couldn’t be a more gratifying spectacle than Iran consumed in crisis and chaos.

President Ahmadinejad’s re-election has apparently stirred a hornet’s nest in Iran, if one goes by the highly selective camera footage of western television networks in the aftermath of what had been billed in a wishful West as the most important election in Iran’s 30 years of the revolution that toppled the western-friendly Shah.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the western world was evincing an infinitely deeper interest in the Iranian presidential election of June 12 than perhaps the people of Iran themselves. All because of Ahmadinejad, the man singled out as an inveterate ‘enemy’ of Israel, a Holocaust-denier and one bent on wiping out Israel from the face of the earth. That has been held, consistently over the past four years since Ahmadinejad shot to prominence as president, as evidence of Iran being a promoter of ‘international terrorism’ and, thus, fully deserving of its pariah status.

A similar hype was in abundant supply, too, about the elections in Lebanon, a week earlier than Iran’s. There, the focus was riveted on Hezbollah, which in the western punditry is an acolyte of Iran and, as such, as much a ‘terrorist’ outfit as its mentor.

The defeat of the Hamas-supported coalition in Lebanon opposed to the western-friendly coalition — whose star is Saad Hariri, the son of the slain Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri — was hailed as a harbinger of similar things to come in Iran. In their exuberance to highlight the defeat of Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah-led coalition, the western media and political gurus were completely blind-sided of the fact that Hezbollah, itself, didn’t lose an inch of its unassailable stronghold in the Lebanese politics: it retained the exact number of seats it held in the previous Lebanese Parliament.

But the outcome in Lebanon whetted the appetite of those who wanted Ahmadinejad to lose to his main challenger, former prime minister Hossein Mousavi.

Mir Mousavi was given star billing in the western coverage of the Iranian electoral landscape, not so much because of his own distinguished past as the man who led Iran through the entire 8 years of that bloody war that Saddam Hussein had inflicted on it to oblige his western mentors, foremost among them the Americans. Instead, Mousavi was given all the benefit of the animus that the western media have worn on their sleeves like a badge of honour against Ahmadinejad.

So the suave and adroit Mousavi was presented in the colours of an Obama — someone putting an accent on the much-hyped hankering of the Iranian youth for a more open society and setting their hopes on an elliptical course.

Mousavi’s erudite and highly sophisticated wife, Zahra Rahnavard, was toasted as the nearest thing to Michelle Obama. In fact, she was quoted as quipping, when compared with the American First Lady, that Michelle Obama was the nearest thing to an American Zahra Rahnavard. Mrs. Mousavi, in her own right, is a woman of great intellectual dimensions. She is an educationist who served as an adviser to President Mohammad Khatami on women’s rights, and is also an accomplished sculptor whose sculptures are on display at a number of public places in Tehran.

But what sent the western media’s infatuation with Team Mousavi soaring into stratosphere was Mrs. Mousavi’s campaigning alongside her husband — something unprecedented in the post-revolution conservative Iran. That set the western tongues wagging in hyperbolic praise because it was evidence galore, in their self-serving imaginations, of Iranian politics and campaigning taking on the colours of US. Mousavi was portrayed as the favourite — just as Obama was in the last US presidential race — and Ahmadinejad as an under-dog that deserved no sympathy and destined for the dustbin of history.

Even the most charitable of western pundits, gazing jubilantly into their crystal balls, weren’t ready to concede the possibility of Ahmadinejad eking a victory out of the jaws of what to them was certain defeat. At best, it was going to be a close race with Mousavi coming out on top in the end. But where these savvy, mealy-mouthed, pundits went wrong was in their appalling ignorance of the ground realities of the Iranian politics.

Granted that Ahmadinejad is not popular in the upscale and trendy northern suburb of Shamiran in Tehran, where most of those claiming expertise on Iran accost western-oriented youth to get their views on Iranian politics. It’s also true that 60% of Iranians are those who were born after the revolution of 1979 and have never known what life was like under the oppressive Shah. But how many of these past-ignorant youths live in Tehran or Shiraz or Asfahan?

The reality that western gurus are either woefully ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, is that 80 per cent of Iranian population still lives in rural areas — villages and small towns — where Ahmadinejad is still immensely popular. The outspoken, simple-living and down-to-earth Ahmadinejad is a hero to the rural inhabitants of Iran because he comes across to them as one of their own. He speaks their idiom, lives like them, eats like them, bunks on the floor like them.

What a pity that the Washington Post has seen it fit only now to reveal what it had found out three weeks prior to the election date through a public opinion poll it had commissioned in Iran that Ahmadinejad was going to trounce Mousavi 2 to 1 at the polls. This finding was even more optimistic in Ahmadinejad’s favour than what actually transpired at the ballot box, with Ahmadinejad winning 67 per cent to Mousavi’s 32 per cent.

However, the massive protest mounted by Mousavi’s faithfuls, and the ham-fisted response of the security personnel on the streets of Tehran does pose a serious question to not only the credibility of the electoral process but also to the system of clergy-centred checks on the democratic process. Mousavi is not alone in doubting the heavy mandate the official result has landed in Ahmadinejad’s corner. The fact that in addition to Mousavi the two other contenders — Mehdi Kharoubi and Mohsin Rezai — have also cried foul points to a tainted verdict. That former President, Mohammad Khatami, has also come out publicly in support of the losing candidates accords a further moral dimension to their grouse against the establishment.

Taking full measure of the gravity of the situation, the Council of Guardians has taken the pragmatic way out. Declaring the outcome as still ‘provisional’ the Council has given itself some wiggle room. It has also ordered a review of balloting in some areas and given the reviewers ten days to complete the exercise.

The guardians of an esoteric democratic dispensation in Iran are obviously playing for time and hoping that the agitation on the streets will run out of steam in this interregnum. But even if the youthful votaries could somehow keep the flame burning in all this period, it’s highly doubtful that they would be able to dent the state apparatus of which an efficient and, at times merciless, security cordon is the backbone.

It shouldn’t be lost on any serious observer of the Iranian scene that its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei — who is more equal than others in his pre-eminent status in the scheme of things devised to keep the clerical control unassailable under any situation — has already bestowed his blessings on Ahmadinejad. Therefore, it would be naïve of anyone to think that he would eat his words and reverse the outcome of the election. No serious pundit is counting on a fresh ballot to satisfy the agitators.

Ahmadinejad, himself, has added weight to this conclusion by going away on a visit to Moscow to attend the gathering of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, in the teeth of Tehran witnessing daily protest rallies. That’s a measure of his confidence in the power of Khamenei to shield and protect him against those calling for his head. But in any case those day-dreamers in the West counting on this post-election flare-up to ignite another revolution in Iran are doing precisely that: day-dreaming.

The focus of the current agitation is not on overturning the revolution; it’s merely aimed at relaxing the system in favour of admitting and allowing more individual freedoms. The revolution of 30 years ago isn’t at stake; has never been in all these years. The simmering discontent of the younger generation of Iranians is pegged, very largely, on the issue of personal freedoms and greater access to the outside world. Nobody in Iran wants to go back to the draconian era of the Shah.

Not surprisingly an erudite and hands-on Barack Obama has got it right. Commenting on the stand-off between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, Obama frankly admitted that he didn’t see much difference in the policies of the two and was prepared to deal and talk with an unfriendly — hostile in his terminology — Iran, irrespective of who its president was. Obama has the foresight to appreciate and understand that issues of real sensitivity and importance in Iran’s foreign relations remain in the domain of the supreme leaders and the clerics close to him. Therefore, Iran’s relations with the US as well as the controversial nuclear issue will not take a new course without Khamenei being fully on board. The buck in Iran stops at the door of Khamenei. Obama knows it, and because of it his perception of present-day Iran has fewer cobwebs than the gurus hogging the intelligentsia’s terrain and the news media. They are desperately seeking to portray the ongoing agitation in Tehran as 1979-redux. But the reality is pointing in another direction: Iran has learned a lot in the past 30 years to ride out a tempest like this without losing its composure and dignity.
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