Columns - Page 6

imran bakht · #51 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Gut reaction

Lubna Jerar Naqvi ·

Two Pakistanis were shot dead by Raymond Davis, a US consulate employee who claims that he did so because he feared the youths were “chasing” him to rob him. A number of questions arise from Davis’ statement. But, basically, how did he know that the men were “chasing” him, with intentions of “robbing” him? If Davis’ display of “self-defence” was caused by the security situation in Pakistan, he should have brought a security guard along for his protection, if not a convoy, since he was allegedly a diplomat.
Again, how could Davis be so sure he actually saw the men handling weapons when his full concentration must have been on driving, since he was so desperate to escape robbers chasing him? And whether or not they did have weapons, was he not a little trigger-happy, anyway?
Legal experts in Pakistan are of the view that Davis cannot claim diplomatic immunity. “There is no diplomatic immunity for the American ‘killer,’ “ Barrister Farogh Naseem was quoted as saying in The News on Sunday. “But if immunity is claimed by the US embassy, or even the Pakistan government, a court will have to decide to grant it or not,” said Mr Naseem, who is a former advocate general of Sindh.
Technically, Davis was not a diplomat under the Vienna Conventions, he added, and that even a diplomat can claim immunity only in a situation where he/she is performing diplomatic duties. The US Embassy insists that since Davis is a member of its “technical and administrative staff,” he “should” be given diplomatic immunity.
The Lahore killings, in which three Pakistanis died – including the man killed by a speeding American diplomatic vehicle during the incident – have sent shockwaves across Pakistan, and people expect justice. If anything, consideration for the grieving families of the deceased requires that the process of law take its due course in Davis’ case. That’s only fair if Davis is not a diplomat, as the barrister has stated, and he did not carry out the shooting in his line of duty.
The London-based Association of Pakistani Lawyers (APL) has described the shooting as an extrajudicial killing. It has emphasised that justice cannot differentiate between a “Pakistani” criminal and a “US” criminal, particularly in an arguably capital offence.
If the Americans adopt a more reasonable position in the Raymond Davis case, it would be an opportunity for them to stem the growing tide of anti-US sentiments in Pakistan, as well as to prove that America is the land of justice, as it presents itself. Meanwhile, it is an occasion for the Pakistani government to assert the country’s sovereignty.
It is essential for the United States to allow rule of law to prevail and help in the revelation of the truth, whatever it may be. If requested by the Pakistanis, they should agree to the calling in of neutral foreign experts to help in the investigation.
There is no point repeating the Nisour Square incident way, in which 17 people, including a ten-year-old boy, were shot on Sept 16, 2007, by a convoy protected by the US mercenary outfit Blackwater – since renamed XE Services.
But let’s reverse roles and suppose that two American, and proven robbers, at that, had been shot dead in self-defence by a Pakistani on American soil. One can only imagine how the authorities would have dealt with the shooter.

imran bakht · #52 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Will America respect Pakistan’s law?

Fasi Zaka ·

We have begun the most political of tennis matches, the Desi Davis Cup for the prize of Raymond Davis’s freedom or conviction, the American accused of shooting two Pakistanis in Lahore. The court of choice will be clay, slippery for both Pakistan and America.

Some facts are clear. Raymond Davis shot and killed two people. A third was killed by a US consulate vehicle rushing to save him. What remains to be verified is the diplomatic status of the killer, the identity of the driver of the second vehicle and whether the two of the three people killed were actually attempting a robbery.
The Americans, predictably, are not eager for Raymond to be tried in Pakistan, or at all. They have claimed he is in the clear because of diplomatic immunity. That fact is suspect at this stage because of Davis’s background in private security, a recent newspaper expose of his non-diplomatic passport status and the US consulate’s-flip flopping on the nature of Raymond Davis’s work.
A firmer account of what actually happened will emerge in the coming weeks. If Davis’s version of events is true, that he acted in self-defence, it still leaves the question of who the driver of the second automobile was, and that incident of vehicular death leaves very little room for innocence. It was reckless driving caused by placing a value judgment on the life of an American over a Pakistani. Second, why did Davis have a gun and was it licenced? Even if he is cleared for acting in self-defence that still leaves open the issue of acting with excessive force and illegally bearing arms .
For some time now the Americans have been publicly flexing their verbal muscle at Pakistan. I am sure they never expected it, but they have been put to the litmus test here. The question really is: Will America respect Pakistan’s law?
In all likelihood it won’t. And that’s outrageous. It’s outrageous for one pertinent reason; even though all the facts aren’t yet in, based on the circumstantial evidence available so far, America’s case looks extremely weak. Right now they are resting their case on diplomatic immunity. That’s dubious at best, but what it does signal is that the Americans do not want the legal process to go through. From Pakistan’s perspective, quite rightly, it has to.
Even in the remote possibility that Raymond Davis’s diplomatic immunity is established, that’s not the final straw. For egregious excesses committed by their diplomats, countries do sometimes waive it. The US knows this all too well. For example Gueorgui Makharadze, a Georgian diplomat in the US, in 1997, was waived of his diplomatic immunity by his own country so he could stand trial in the US (later convicted) for killing a 16-year-old girl in an accident.
Second, by judicial equivalence had Davis done the same in a crime-hit ghetto in the US, he still would have faced jail time. But, by most accounts the PPP and the PML-N are facing immense pressure to let the man go. If WikiLeaks taught us anything, it’s that we have a good idea to what extent his case is being discussed right now and with what intensity.
This is partly why the prognosis is so poor. Because the case is Punjab-related, we can anticipate the PPP passing the buck to the PML-N, and vice versa citing the international nature of the crime. With the onus of responsibility divided, a clear stance will be hard to evolve. And this will benefit the Americans as it tries to isolate one or the other.
Letting Davis leave will mean many things: it plays into the hands of the right and supports the army narrative of politicians being weak on matters of sovereignty. But that shouldn’t matter, what should matter is that three people died and those who killed them must answer for it.
Who wins match point here need not be one country, or the other, but a just application of Pakistani law. If only it had a better winning streak.

imran bakht · #53 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Seize the day

Ameer Bhutto,

There is nothing more sublime than the political sovereign (the people) asserting their will to set right the wrongs. From time to time, rulers who run amok and systems of governance that are contorted to fit their requirements need a jolt to be reminded who the masters really are. Winds of change have blown away a despot in Tunisia. Unlike in Pakistan, no one was preaching to the Tunisians that they must suffer in agonising silence to preserve ‘the system’. The storm has spread to Egypt, where the people are on the move, and precursors of the tempest are visible in Yemen, Jordan and Algeria. In a damage control exercise, the Egyptian cabinet has been sacked and a new prime minister and vice president have been appointed, but these measures have failed to impress the protestors. The people of Tunisia and Egypt have shown that they are living nations with an awareness of the future and the will and courage to strive to better their lot.
Why is there no sign of this happening in Pakistan? United States Vice President Joe Biden has warned that Pakistan could be next in line, and understandably so because conditions here are far worse than in Tunisia and Egypt, which were not looted by the rulers as openly and on such a massive scale as Pakistan. There are no reports emanating from those countries of target killing bloodbaths or the kind of lawlessness we have to endure. Their institutions had not collapsed the way ours have. They do not suffer from administrative atrophy and corrosion of the writ of law to the extent we do. Make no mistake about it; we have travelled much further down the road to doom than they had. And yet, while they mobilised to save their countries from ruin, all we hear from the people here is a deafening silence.
What do the people in Tunisia and Egypt have that is lacking in us? Is it an intrinsic part of our national character to be doormats and suffer in silence all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to which we are continuously subjected? In the aftermath of the devastating floods last summer, one imagined that there would be outrage at the way an elected government abandoned the people to their fate. But instead, the doling out of a very meagre pittance by means of the ‘watan card’ sent them tamely back to what was left of their homes, or to the refugee camps where many still live, without even a whimper. They do not seem to care about the hell they have been put through or that the dams, canals and roads that were eroded, or deliberately breached, have yet to be repaired, as a consequence of which if we have a similar or even lesser flood this summer, the water will flow totally unimpeded into not just the already devastated areas, but also practically everywhere else.
But if servitude is part of our national character, then how can Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s revolution, that toppled two military dictators, be explained? Perhaps the difference between then and now is that that was an age when ideology and the distinction between right and wrong still mattered. Myopic greed had not clasped the nation in its clutches back then as it now has. All the great revolutions of the world have been born from the yearning for freedom from oppression, hunger and suffering. A nation that is addicted to living off handouts can bring about no revolutions. Bhutto lifted the nation’s spirits by telling them that “yeh quom aik azeem quom hai. Yeh quom duniya ka loha banay gi!” He challenged them to step forward and prove their mettle: “Mehnat karo gay? Laro gay? Maro gay?” After the Indian invasion of East Pakistan, he defiantly declared in the United Nations Security Council “We will build a better Pakistan. We will build a greater Pakistan.” He mesmerised the people with his message of hope and made them believe that the future could be so much brighter than the desolate darkness successive military dictators had led the country into.
That was a different time. A different world. At the very least, a different Pakistan. Firstly, there are no such leaders on the national stage today, no such message of hope, no ray of light. The leaders we elect are themselves the cause of our suffering. The only ideology they offer the nation is record breaking corruption, incompetence, comprehensive disregard for public and national interests and a putrid political expediency they call mufahimat that has devastated Pakistan but has achieved the desired effect for the rulers of silencing any meaningful dissent from virtually all quarters by inviting all and sundry to enjoy a slice of the power pie. That is why the cry of the suffering, the hungry and the desolate who commit suicides or sell their children in the market out of desperation goes unheard and unrepresented in the corridors of power.
Secondly, the people have changed dramatically as well. Their priorities, aims and objectives are different today. Like their new leaders, ideals, principles and ideology are currencies that now carry greatly diminished value. Buying people off with handouts was a strategy initiated by Zia-ul-Haq and has been continued by successive military and civilian governments as an opiate for the poor to keep them silent while they themselves loot the coffers. The people fail to see this and, though their lives are in tatters, they are satisfied with scarps that fall off the tables of the high and mighty. Such a strategy may serve the purposes of the government of the day but is destroying the binding fabric of nationhood and a sense of common interest and destiny.
Yes, leaders have let the people down very badly, but only because the people have allowed them to do so repeatedly and get away with it without any trace of accountability. Ultimately, the political sovereign can not escape responsibility for the mess they find themselves sinking in. It is true that there is no one of national following to lead a popular uprising, but that has never been an insurmountable impediment in the history of revolutions. It is people who bring about revolutions, not leaders. When a nation mobilises, new, clean and honest leaders come up from among their ranks. Who had heard of Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro or Emilliano Zapata before the Chinese, Cuban and Mexican revolutions? Who led the popular uprising in Tunisia? It was the people who seized the initiative. In fact, not having strong leadership was perhaps one of the reasons for the success of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, as it is now being called, because some leaders can be pressured and manoeuvred, whereas the formidable flow of an entire nation can be neither contained nor diverted.
Even if Joe Biden’s warning was to be heeded and an effort made to set right the wrongs, the million dollar question is who will undertake such a gargantuan task? Everyone is naked in this hamam (bath). Slumbering nations can be awakened by shock treatment. The bungling, incompetent incumbent dispensation in Pakistan has delivered enough shock treatment to awaken a continent or two. If we have a smidgen of spine left in us, now is the time to show it. How long can the anaesthetic of handouts and political bribery withstand the mounting pain and suffering? Long gone are the days of deliverers descending from the heavens to lead nations out of slavery to the Promised Land. When leadership and ‘the system’ fail, it falls upon the political sovereign to seize the day, not only because it is their democratic right, but because it is their moral duty.

imran bakht · #54 Thursday, March 03, 2011

The tide of revolt

Rizwan Asghar ·

The Arab world is in a disturbed and expectant state. Everywhere men and women are weary of the old order and are demanding change. A revolutionary spirit is at work, and the public mind in Egypt, Libya and Algeria is excited. The fall of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is the spark that has set the Arab world on fire. The Jasmine Revolution, nicknamed after Tunisia’s national flower, is a signal for a radical change in the North Africa-Middle East region. A vigorous liberal opposition to the established order is gathering momentum rapidly.
Protests have broken out from Egypt to Mauritania. Many of these countries are living under emergency laws for a long time. Now the entire order of authoritarianism, which had succeeded the Arab countries’ independence from the Ottoman Empire, is crashing. It seems as if many of the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world are going to be doomed.
Authoritarian governments in Egypt, Algeria and some other countries are taking desperate steps to avoid Tunisia-like scenarios. In Kuwait, the government has announced a decision to hand out 1,000 Kuwaiti dinars to every person to offset the effects of rising food prices. The Algerian government has increased its purchases of wheat to prevent food shortages. But these belated efforts are unlikely to stop the anger from spreading.
The Tunisian revolution has been hailed by supporters of democracy everywhere in the Arab world, and reports are regularly coming of violence in many countries, and of men setting themselves on fire in Algeria, Mauritania and Egypt in protest against their governments, in emulation of Mohammad Bouazizi, the young man whose self-immolation in December triggered the Tunisian revolution.
More than 100 people have lost their lives in Egypt and hundreds of thousands of protesters have come out on the streets demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy. His dissolution of his cabinet, with the promise to install a new one, could not alleviate the frustration and anger of the masses. Many experts of regional politics predict that a domino collapse of Arab dictatorships is on the cards.
The world will witness a more sustained struggle against rigid regimes in the months ahead. The Tunisian revolution could prove to be decisive and has the potential to revitalise the discourse of political change and reenergise opposition movements across the region. After decades of failed challenges to authoritarianism, Arab opposition figures now have an unexpected precedent of successful struggle.
The US approach to the promotion of democracy in the Arab world has always been duplicitous because of the perceived apprehension of the rise of radical Islamic groups capturing power. Moreover, the US needs the direct support of Arab rulers in its global “war against terror”. So the prospect of such a democratic change had vanished as a believable possibility. This accounts for the Obama administration’s refusal to support the struggle for democracy in the Arab world.
The ouster of the Tunisian president has also introduced a new trend in the politics of Arab countries, where democracy was inextricably linked with military intervention. Now Tunisia has toppled a tyrant through the power of its people, which has infused a sense of confidence among Arab masses.
Since the end of the Second World War, the growth of democracy across the world seems to be coming in regional waves. During the 1960s, many African countries took significant steps towards a democratic future after becoming independent from European powers. In the 1980s many right-wing dictatorships fell in Latin America. In Asia, the Philippine revolution of 1986 ushered in democracy in South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan. In the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet bloc brought democracy to Eastern Europe. The next chapter has started in the Arab world.

imran bakht · #55 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Amortisation of loans

Yusuf H Shirazi ·

The settlement of foreign debt has become a problem of prime concern for many developing countries, in particular Pakistan. The terms of the debt are becoming even more onerous than under the Marshall Plan. The sums needed to repay loans and credits received from the developed countries are snowballing. The developing countries are compelled to spend an even greater part of their national income for repaying debts to foreign creditors.
In order to tighten their politico-economic grip over the developing countries, the developed countries make the terms of loans increasingly harsher. The interest rates are snowballing even in the case of the World Bank. The underdeveloped countries as a whole must now devote more than one-tenth of their foreign exchange earnings to debt servicing. The percentage is much higher in case of Pakistan. These payments are continuing to rise at a rapid rate and debt repayment offsets the current inflow of aid. This creates a vicious circle for many developing countries threatened with the prospect of losing all means of financing economic development. Yet, the USA, and, for that matter, all the donor countries, is disinclined to come to their rescue. Finding themselves in such a predicament, the developing countries are requesting creditors to defer payments on old debts and, if possible, to grant new ones on favourable terms.
Pakistan is expected to take every possible care to ensure that its external debt servicing charges do not exceed the danger point of export receipts.
In the early years after independence, the average annual balance of trade was favourable to Pakistan. In this period, Pakistan had a negative balance of trade only on two occasions. The first time was in 1949-50 when the first post-War economic recession looked like becoming worldwide and the second time in 1951-52, when there was a slump because of the Korean War and Pakistan continued the OGL (open general licence) imports of consumer goods for too long.
During the period of the First Five-Year Plan, the balance of trade became adverse. The only year during this period when Pakistan had a favourable balance of trade was 1955-56, when exports received a temporary fillip from the devaluation of the Pakistani rupee. Since then, the balance of trade, on the whole, has been worsening, and is now at an all time high.
In no year during this period did Pakistan have a favourable balance of trade. This deterioration took place despite a phenomenal rise of value of exports under the powerful impetus of the Export Bonus Scheme introduced in the mid-1950s. However, imports had risen even faster. The association between massive inflows of foreign aid and equally massive adverse balances of trade during this period is not coincidental. This aid took the form of not only developmental goods but also of huge quantities of surplus food-grains and other agricultural commodities from the United States and other developed countries. During the course of this, the self-reliance index of Pakistan’s foreign trade dropped rapidly to an all-time low.
During the first three years of the Third Plan, the average adverse balance of trade reduced somewhat. This was achieved in 1964-65, as much by expanding exports as by cutting down imports. Pakistan is now finding it far more difficult to slash imports than to expand exports. This is explained mainly by the fact that the massive inflows of foreign aid have greatly increased Pakistan’s dependence on imports from the donor countries, not only in respect of machinery and other capital goods but also of basic industrial materials. This situation may take quite sometime to be corrected, because the development of indigenous basic industries is quite a painstaking and time-consuming task.
For too long, no conscious attempt to improve Pakistan’s external balance has been discernible and the initiative seems to lie entirely in the hands of the donor countries. The value of Pakistan’s imports rose when foreign aid inflows grew somewhat. It is thus no wonder that the adverse trade balance was also higher year after year. In short, the value of imports was rising and the value of exports declining. Since then, the adverse balance has been rising, the highest being during these years. Unless the imports are balanced with exports and loan, credit and aid homogenised, the country’s lack of socio-economic sovereignty may lead to lack of politico-economic sovereignty. This is a thought which must concern economic thinkers and planners, and the sooner the better.

imran bakht · #56 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Who is Raymond Davis?

Adil Najam,

Strangely, the more we get to know about the case of Raymond Davis, the less we seem to know. Even more strangely, the fact that the entire incident happened in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses seems to confuse the facts further. The reason for this maybe because no one seems to want to get much clarity; although different parties may want different parts of the story to ‘disappear’, everyone seems keen that the story goes away. However, we may all live to regret it, if it actually does.
Here is what one does know about Raymond Davis. He is a staff member of the US consulate in Lahore, shot dead two Pakistani men last Thursday in a crowded part of Lahore (Mozang Chowk); according to him in self-defence. A vehicle of the US consulate rushed to Mr Davis’ ‘rescue’ ran over a third person, who also died. A murder case was registered against Raymond Davis, who was handed into police custody. A case has also been registered against the driver of the US consulate vehicle that ran over a third person, but the driver has yet to be apprehended.
After a fair deal of scrambling by both US and Pakistani officials on what to do or say, their positions have now started becoming clear and they have taken the stance that is usually taken in such cases: the US is asking that Raymond Davis, as a diplomatic functionary, should be handed back to them; Pakistan seems to be responding that the matter is sub judice and that the law should take its course.
Beyond that, there are more questions than answers. For most part, these questions fall into three categories: (1) Who is Raymond Davis? (2) What exactly happened at Mozang, Lahore? (3) What should happen now?
The answer to the first question is: the earliest reports suggested that Raymond Davis was a “technical adviser” and a “consular” official. More recently, US Embassy officials have described him as a “functionary” of the Embassy assigned to the US consulate in Lahore and carrying a US Diplomatic passport. Reportedly he was hired at the US consulate in Lahore as a security contractor from a Florida-based firm Hyperion Protective Consultants.
All of this has material relevance to whether he is entitled to diplomatic immunity or not, but even more because of the apprehensions of many Pakistanis that he could be linked to the CIA or to the infamous firm Blackwater (later renamed XE Services).
And that leads squarely to the second question: what exactly was happening at Mozang? In line with the immediate knee-jerk reaction of many Pakistanis, an early commentary by Jeff Stein in The Washington Post seemed to suggest rather fancifully that the shootout could have been a “Spy rendezvous gone bad”? That could be a conspiracy theory, but not an entirely implausible one. Mozang is not a part of town that you would expect too many foreigners, let alone a US official, visiting; and certainly not in what was reportedly a rented private vehicle. And while Pakistan today is clearly an unsafe place, the question of just why an embassy official was carrying a firearm be wished away.
On the other hand, however, Mr Davis claims that he shot in self-defence as the two men on the motorcycle were trying to rob him at gun point. Anyone who knows Pakistan knows all too well that this, too, is entirely possible. TV footage and reports coming immediately after the incident showed one of the young men lying dead with a revolver and wearing an ammunition belt. And certainly, the question of why at least one of the two young men on the motorcycle was carrying a loaded firearm cannot be wished away just because of enmity
Indeed, serious questions need to be asked about just who the two young men on the motorcycle were, just as they need to be asked about who Raymond Davis is. There just seems to be too many unnecessary weapons in too much proximity in this story. All of the many explanations that are floating around are very disturbing, but also very plausible. This is exactly why this story is even more dangerous if left unresolved.
Finally, the third question – which is now getting the most attention – about what should happen now. Much is being made – maybe too much – about the Vienna Convention and its implications for diplomatic immunity. Familiar diplomatic games about the minutia of vocabulary are being played and will in most likelihood result in all too familiar results. That is exactly what one would expect in any such situation anywhere.
But this is not ‘any’ situation’; and this is not ‘anywhere’. This is about US-Pakistan relations: A relationship that is so jaundiced that there is just about nothing that the US can say or do which Pakistanis are likely to believe, and there is just about nothing that Pakistan can say or do which Americans are likely to trust. Which is why getting stuck in the intricacies of the Vienna Convention of 1963 is the exact wrong place to get stuck. This is a time for public diplomacy: certainly from the US and maybe even from Pakistan. It is not in America’s interest to be seen to be standing in the way of justice and due process. And it is not in Pakistan’s interest to be seen to conducting a flawed process of justice.
There are too many people on the extreme in both countries who will not and cannot change their opinion and apprehensions about the other. But there are even more people in both countries who could all too easily be swayed to the extremes on distrust if this delicate case is not handled with clarity and transparency by both sides. Doing so will probably bring with it more than just a little diplomatic embarrassment. Not doing so can only bring worse in the tinderbox that is US-Pakistan relations.

imran bakht · #57 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Licensed to kill?

Asif Ezdi,

You only have to read the three press releases issued by the US embassy on the shooting to death last week of two Pakistanis by an American employee of their consulate at Lahore to see through the sheer flimsiness of the claim of his diplomatic immunity.
The first press release described the perpetrator as “a staff member of the US consulate general in Lahore”. Crowley, the spokesman of the US State Department, also designated him as “an employee at the US consulate in Lahore.” The killer himself told the Lahore police and the magistrate’s court that he works as a technical adviser at the consulate. (Since Crowley denied categorically that the person in question was named Raymond Davis and since US officials refuse to divulge his true name, we will call him the first killer, to distinguish him from the second killer, unnamed and unidentified, who knocked down and crushed a Pakistani motorcyclist to death the same day, while trying to reach the first killer.
The second press release, issued a day later, had a different story. It described the first killer as a “diplomat assigned to the US Embassy in Islamabad”. Overnight and without any explanation, a member of the staff at the Lahore consulate became a diplomat at the Islamabad embassy.
A third press release then made another change – or refinement. It describes the first killer not as a diplomat but as a member of the “technical and administrative staff” of the embassy.
This is also not correct. A person does not become a member of the “technical and administrative staff” of an embassy just because the embassy claims that status for him; or because he holds a diplomatic passport; or because a visa, even an official visa, has been issued to him on such a passport. He becomes a member of the staff of an embassy only if it notifies to foreign ministry of the receiving state (ie the host country), in accordance with Article 10 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, that he has been assigned that position. There is no mention in any of the press releases that such a notification was issued.
The reason why a consular employee mutated overnight into a member of the embassy’s staff is obvious: A member of the technical and administrative staff of the embassy enjoys full immunity from local criminal jurisdiction under Article 38 of the Convention on Diplomatic Relations and cannot be lawfully arrested or detained, while a consular employee enjoys no such privilege under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which governs consular missions. As regards liability to criminal jurisdiction, he is in the same position as a citizen of Pakistan and can be proceeded against, tried and punished for criminal acts in the same way as a Pakistani.
The claim made by the US embassy on his behalf that that he acted in self-defence is also of dubious validity. It is not enough, as the embassy states in its press release, that there were armed men who he had every reason to believe “meant him bodily harm”. It will have to be established that they were targeting him, that he was in grave danger and that the shooting was not an excessive response. The burden of proving all this will rest on him.
So far, at least as far as public statements are concerned, the Pakistan government has refused to bow to the US demand for giving immunity to the killer. But our past record, and not simply that of the present government, is not reassuring. One example is the surrender to the Americans of Aimal Kasi by Nawaz Sharif in 1997 during his second term as prime minister without fulfilling the legal requirements, simply upon a phone call from the then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Rehman Malik said in the National Assembly: “This is Pakistan… The law will take its course.” That is precisely the problem. Our leaders say one thing for public consumption in Pakistan and quite another thing privately to the Americans. And then they do as promised to the Americans. Gilani’s famous conversation with the US Ambassador in 2009 on drone attacks is just one example.
True to his record, Gilani once again has been trying to run away from his responsibility in this matter. He told a press conference that since the matter was in the court and the Punjab government was conducting an inquiry into it, he would not comment on it. Gilani is right that the investigations have to be conducted by the Punjab Government and that the courts have to take a decision on the criminal liability of Davis. But it is for the foreign ministry (ie the federal government) to make a determination whether the killer is a member of staff of the embassy or of the Lahore consulate, the central issue upon which his immunity depends.
Clearly, heavy pressure is being exerted on Pakistan to let him go scot-free. It may be the US is not concerned only about the welfare of one of its nationals but, more important, it fears that a trial of the killers might bring into public knowledge some unsavoury facts about the activities of US security companies and US officials (spies?) in Pakistan. The first killer was certainly no diplomat in the conventional sense. According to the ABC News and The Huffington Post, he was an employee of a fly-by-night private security company, a small-bore version of the more famous Blackwater. He certainly acted in a cold-blooded manner. After he had shot his victims in the back, he pumped some more bullets into their bodies as they lay on the ground.
Even more outrageous than the misrepresentation of the first killer’s status is the complete silence of the US embassy on the motorcyclist who was crushed to death by the second killer. It was not just an accident or a hit-and-run offense but an act of recklessness showing complete disregard for the lives of ordinary Pakistanis. Anyone who breaks a road barrier and drives in the wrong direction on a one-way street bears full responsibility for the consequences and if a death results he is as culpable as a person who shoots his victim dead.
The US embassy has not offered even one word of regret or sympathy for this killing. They have even refused so far to identify the killer despite the repeated requests of the police. It is to be suspected that an attempt will be made to whisk him away, if he has not left the country already.
Pakistan must make a demarche immediately that if that happens all those members of the embassy and the Lahore consulate who are complicit will be asked to pack up and leave the country.
What happened in Lahore last Thursday was not an accident. It was a disaster waiting to happen, given the impunity with which we have allowed US diplomats and “security guards” to violate our laws. They behave as if they have a license to kill. We have given them tacit permission to carry unauthorised weapons, travel in vehicles with darkened windows and false number plates and even to threaten our police when they ask them to submit to security checks. There are killers on the loose on the streets of Pakistan masquerading as diplomats. They will become even bolder if we fail to bring the Lahore killers to justice.

imran bakht · #58 Thursday, March 03, 2011

What children learn

Zubeida Mustafa ·

IF the knowledge of schoolchildren in Pakistan had not been assessed independently before, the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) Pakistan 2010 would have come as a bombshell.

We have known a lot of what has been recorded in this report, which was produced by the South Asian Forum for Education Development and Idara-i-Taalim-o-Agahi with remarkable mobilisation of the youth in the regions covered.
The National Education Assessment System (NEAS) and Learning and Educational Achievements in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) have carried out similar exercises before and, unsurprisingly, have arrived at similar conclusions: children are not learning in school what they are expected to know. ASER also says this about children’s knowledge of the subjects tested — Urdu/Sindhi, English and arithmetic.
The proof of the pudding is in its eating, it has rightly been said. Will ASER be able to sustain this annual survey to provide a benchmark for educators to determine the learning output of their investment in this vital sector? ASER’s significance will also be determined by its success in nudging policymakers in using its findings as a guideline to draw up realistic plans. It is up to the government to use the information provided by ASER intelligently to affect a change in the education system. Sadly, the political will needed to overhaul education in Pakistan is missing.
At the report’s launch last Thursday, panellists spoke of the importance of measures to improve learning outcomes in school. Most of what was said is valid. The accessibility of schools needs to be increased, teachers need to be trained, headmasters must be made accountable for their schools’ performance. The private sector must be inducted as a partner in public-sector education.
But the key question that remained unanswered was: how will this be done? We know that simply putting all children in school is not enough. They may never learn anything there if improvements are not made in related areas such as school management, pedagogy, curricula and textbooks.
This exercise has, however, highlighted some facts that deserve careful consideration. I will pick on only four. The most important is the inability of our students to communicate — that is the case with students even from the best of private schools in urban areas.
ASER found the reading skills of students poor. It tested their comprehension just in English. I am not sure how much children understand the local languages either. Since writing and speaking skills were not assessed, one cannot draw definitive conclusions on students’ ability to communicate.
The latest teaching methodologies require students to ‘construct’ knowledge through a participatory approach. Can they do it when their language and communication skills are so poor? Our children are not learning to express themselves in any language. That explains the rote learning culture in all schools.
Another extremely worrying finding that has not drawn much attention is the very high ratio of children going in for paid tuition. Nearly 14 per cent of the children surveyed in rural Pakistan — 25 per cent in private schools — pay for after-school tuitions. Why? Is it a fad? Or has pedagogy deteriorated so much that a child of normal intelligence cannot learn in class and needs extra tutoring? Or has corruption eaten to the core of the teaching profession to the extent that teachers neglect their responsibilities in the classroom and perform somewhat better only when they draw monetary gains from private tutoring. The malaise is deeper in the private sector.
Another finding that should prompt the Sindh government to study this report very closely is the shocking disclosure that Sindh’s performance in every area is abysmal. Its children are uniformly at the bottom rung of the ladder in reading (Urdu/Sindhi), English and arithmetic. Even Balochistan, which was once considered the most backward of all regions (its enrolment figures are still the lowest), has forged ahead in the learning outcomes of the children who are enrolled. Azad Kashmir, the newly created province of Gilgit-Baltistan and even Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been in the grip of violence, have shown better results than Sindh.
How would one account for it? Asad Sayeed, an academic and one of the panellists, was spot on when he spoke of the politicisation of the school system in Pakistan. Our schools serve as polling stations — that is fair enough. But there is no reason why the school staff should be engaged for election duties. This practice corrupts the education infrastructure as it provides the government the opportunity to induct loyalists in school faculties to ensure favourable results in polls. And the fact is that loyalists do not make good or honest teachers. Their priority is to serve their political masters. As one of the biggest employers, the education department is always under pressure to choose between merit and political loyalties. It is ironic that the ruling party has made the wrong choice in the province that constitutes its power base. In the process, it is destroying education in rural Sindh.
One positive finding in ASER, that should prove to be a challenge for a government that cares, is that the 20 per cent of out-of-school children (they include drop-outs and those who never enrolled) have competencies that should not be ignored. An inclusive approach is needed to bring these children into the school system. This was attempted by the Junejo government in the ’80s under the Nai Roshni scheme that met a sorry end, not because it was inherently flawed but because no one was interested.
A similar programme that has succeeded is being run quietly on a small scale by Saira Zaidi of the Infaq Foundation’s Teachers’ Training Centre. She picks up out-of-school girls from the neighbouring goths in Korangi, builds on their competencies and helps them pass their Matriculation after four years of tutoring. Some have gone on to do their BEd.

imran bakht · #59 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Yearning for learning

Rafia Zakaria ·

IN his second State of the Union address last week, US President Barack Obama spoke about raising American educational standards in mathematics and science. To underscore the urgency of this he labelled current times a ‘Sputnik moment’, drawing a historical analogy with the moment Americans discovered that the Soviet Union had leapt ahead of them with the capacity to launch satellites into space.
The near-obsessive American preoccupation with being outdone by China is not a new phenomenon, and President Obama’s comment represented one iteration of a debate that is forcing failure-averse American to reconsider many aspects of their competitive capacity against that country’s rise.
In this race, the issues of education and parenting are perhaps two of the most heated arenas of discussion. In her recent book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chinese-American Yale professor Amy Chua illustrates one extreme of this on-going spat. Shredding apart what she sees as the overly lenient style of American parenting, Chua describes how she refuses to let her own children watch television or play video games and forces them to do 2,000 maths problems each night until they top their class. The message underlying the misery is simple: mediocrity is unacceptable, and children must work hard and devote themselves to perfection. Chua’s daughters win many competitions and excel at academics, dwarfing the meagre achievements of other American children raised by less exacting parents.
Chua has many detractors, among them New York Times columnist David Brooks, who titled his response to her thesis “Amy Chua is a wimp.” Presenting evidence against her Chinese style of parenting and education, Brooks draws attention to the fact that isolated learning with intense focus is in actuality not as cognitively demanding as social interaction. Drawing attention to the complex dynamics involved in participating in group activities, from maintaining status to achieving consensus, Brooks argues that rote learning and memorisation, as well as an isolated existence devoted only to outdoing your peers, are inherently lacking in certain crucial skills.
Citing research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brooks reminds us that most human activity takes place in groups and that the failure to learn how to operate in them leaves children at a serious disadvantage. Chua’s aping of the Chinese is thus misguided, leaving her offspring with an incomplete set of skills.
In a sense, however, both Chua and Brooks are trying to figure out a recipe for the same thing: how to replicate the yearning for success in an affluent society where being a poor student may not have many dire consequences. The issue, as it happens, may not be the number of hours children spend doing their homework or the quantity of maths problems they are forced to do every night, but the motivation created by the longing to escape poverty.
Against the affluence of American children, which, as Chua hypothesises, must be controlled artificially through rules imposed by parents, Chinese children are motivated not simply by the prospect of their parent’s anger but also by a set of circumstances from which only educational achievement can provide an exit. Furthermore, Chinese children, living as they do in a crowded society that requires extensive group navigation, automatically learn the skills that Chua’s children, in their faux-Chinese education, may possibly be denied. The apathy of American children defines decline: by educating its poor, China has made a superpower tremble.
Where most discussions about education in Pakistan unfold a heart-wrenching saga of doom and gloom, recent analysis of Chinese educational styles provides some hope. Take for instance the issue of memorisation, which has roundly been denounced in recent years. New research now argues that memorising mathematical facts such as multiplication tables actually makes students better at the subject.
Similarly, memorising poetry has been shown to be beneficial in teaching students semantic and auditory relationships between words and their sounds. This is not to say that the flailing Pakistani education system, poised as it is on memorisation, does not need to be modernised. But what it does demonstrate is that certain cultural attitudes towards learning that we have in common with China may not be entirely bad.
Like China, Pakistan has a vast population all bearing in their hearts the longing for a better life that the Chinese have so successfully harnessed. Pakistani students, like Ibrahim Shahid, who recently received an astounding 23 As in his O level exams, possess the capacity to far outdo Western students, who have never had to encounter quite so many odds. These odds, whether they be studying long hours without electricity, navigating the complex world of getting the best tuition teachers or obtaining closely held copies of past exams can, as the Chinese example adequately demonstrates, become the building blocks of global domination.
While the United States is unlikely to overcome its fears of being outdone by China in the near term, the rise of China and the increasing emulation of its strategies by Western countries provide particular opportunities. Pakistan’s close economic and strategic relationship with China, along with its geographic proximity, all point to the need for increased cooperation on the educational front.
As a recent Harvard study by Professor Asim Khwaja notes, educational enrolment in Pakistan increased by ten percentage points between 2000 and 2007 and the number of private schools rose to over 47,000. This represents both demand and a basic infrastructure for implementing Chinese strategies of education whose cultural and economic likenesses could yield promising dividends for Pakistani students. Yearning without learning leads to frustration and self-destruction, but yearning when educated, the Chinese have demonstrated, leads to leadership.

imran bakht · #60 Thursday, March 03, 2011

Beyond ideology

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

The Raymond Davis and Mumtaz Qadri affairs continue to monopolise public debate in this country, and predictably so. The ideological fault lines that divide mainstream society – and I use the term mainstream intentionally given that the fault lines outside the major urban centres and Punjab are quite different – have been as clearly demarcated as they ever could be. Yet social divisions that are based in the real material conditions of life remain hopelessly underspecified.
On the occasion of the latest “Namoos e-Risalat Tehrik” rally in Lahore this past Sunday, that great orator Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman is quoted to have said that “the nation could put up with price hikes, load shedding and joblessness but not a change in the blasphemy law”. It is amazing that this statement, coming from arguably the most influential religious supremacist in this country, has so far elicited so little comment, let alone be challenged. Around 35 years ago, the great Maulana’s father, Mufti Mahmud, lambasted Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a public rally organised by the emergent Pakistan National Alliance for being a habitual consumer of alcohol, suggesting that Mr Bhutto was not fit to be the leader of the land of the pure because he singularly failed the religious worthiness test. Of course Bhutto spent most of his time in office trying to prove that he possessed the requisite sacredness to head a Muslim country, and ended up digging his own grave. But in the immediate aftermath of Mufti Mahmud’s slight, the elected prime minister announced in the light of day during a public rally of his own attended by thousands of ordinary Pakistanis: “Haan mei sharap pita hoon, likin mei awam ka khoon nahiin pita”.
Today, Pakistan is admittedly a different place. The Islamisation process unwittingly initiated by Bhutto was carried through to its logical, horrific conclusion by the tyrant Zia and the supremacists have never looked back. But too many who proclaim themselves progressives focus only on the ideological machinations of the Zia regime, replete with the usual emphasis on madressahs, loud speakers, and holy warriors. Without understanding, and taking concrete political positions on, Pakistan’s multifarious social – including class – conflicts, it is possible neither to move beyond alarmist reactions to religious radicalism nor to rebuild an alternative to it.
Zia’s period marked not only the state’s venturing into the private realm of morality and the institutionalisation of a public religiosity that is cynical and deep at the same time, but also a retreat of progressive forces from the political realm. This retreat was undoubtedly a function of unbridled repression, but it has now been 23 years since Ziaul Haq’s plane exploded over the Cholistan desert. More than two decades is a long time. Yet there has been very little attempt to re-engage with the popular classes that continue to be the victims of real material exploitation.
At the very least, there is a need to think deeply about the constituencies of the religious right. If, for example, the white-collar government servant and trader-merchant class are at the forefront of ‘defence of Islam’ campaigns, what material interests drive them? Are we to believe that those who are taken to religious causes are motivated only by abstract ideas? One does not have to be a Marxist to recognise that there is a link between the realm of ideas and that of hard material interests.
In principle an argument can be made that white-collar government servants and trader-merchants do not contribute to progressive social transformation (although I am wary of any such absolute claim). But surely the blue-collar working mass is the agency destined to be at the forefront of a movement for change. And surely it is time to recognise that the religious right does not have a monopoly over a politics that caters to the needs of this mass. In fact, when Fazl-ur-Rahman proclaims that food, employment and basic amenities are virtually irrelevant, a golden opportunity is presented to progressives to speak for ordinary Pakistanis, while exposing the right-wing’s complete lack of concern for working people’s real needs.
It is telling that the great defenders of the faith in this country have made no mention of the tumultuous events unfolding in the Arab world. One is reminded of the relatively minor role played by the religious parties when masses of people came out onto Pakistani streets in 2007; that agitation has been generically labelled the ‘lawyer’s movement’, but in its initial phase represented a general uprising against Musharraf’s dictatorship. The point simply is that real (and often spontaneous) political struggles are spearheaded by ordinary people, and not by statist religio-political groups that otherwise claim to be the ultimate representatives of the masses. But until progressive forces take back the space that they occupied until the Zia interregnum, the fiction that religio-political organisations do take up ‘popular’ causes will remain unchallenged.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this fact brings us back to Raymond Davis. It is a sad fact that some progressives are actually trying to find excuses for an American diplomat shooting two men in broad daylight. It matters not a jot whether or not the two men were assailing Davis or not. What matters is that American diplomats the world over act as if they have a God-given right to shoot people at will in the name of self-defence. In many ways these individuals are a microcosm of their state in its dealings around the world (and for that matter the American outpost in the Middle East – Israel). A spade must be called a spade. Yes the right-wing and the media are using Raymond Davis to engage in the worst kind of xenophobic polemic. But does this mean that progressives should stop calling imperialism by its name, and demanding a world free from the Empire’s manipulations?
In the final analysis, class and other forms of social exploitation remain major facts of life in Pakistani society, just as imperialism remains a major fact of life in the arena of geo-politics. The right-wing plays to the gallery on both these fronts, even while it seeks only to further its own self-serving and obscurantist agenda. This agenda cannot be beaten back by exhortations to no one in particular for the reestablishment of a ‘tolerant and peaceful’ society. Reaction needs to give way to wilful action on the basis of a clear vision for social justice; liberation from the empire’s suffocating grip, and a forced retreat for the military establishment. The struggle to rationalise the role of religion in the public sphere is much more likely to gain social traction as part of such a broader vision.

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