World must not ...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][SIZE="3"][B]World must not give up on Afghanistan[/B][/SIZE]
By
Shashi Tharoor[/SIZE][/CENTER]

US President Barack Obama’s announcement of the start of American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and his administration’s increasing emphasis on reconciliation with the Taliban, have been studied attentively in one capital that has a large stake in the outcome — New Delhi.

India has no troops in Afghanistan, but it has invested roughly $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) to help reconstruct the country, with projects ranging from maternity hospitals to Kabul’s electricity grid. During his visit to Afghanistan in May, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced additional assistance of $500 million, over and above India’s existing commitments. This is by far India’s largest foreign-aid programme, because Afghanistan remains a country of vital strategic significance for India.

So, what does the looming US withdrawal mean for India’s role in Afghanistan? India has largely focused its aid efforts on building institutional capacity and developing human resources so that Afghans can stand on their own feet before long. One ongoing project is the construction of a new parliament building in Kabul, a symbol of India’s desire to see representative institutions flourish. But it is no secret that India does not believe that Afghanistan is ready to dispense with the foreign forces that have been shoring up domestic peace.

India is not a member of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a largely Nato operation to which it was not invited to contribute, given Pakistani sensitivities about a possible Indian military presence in Afghanistan. But India regards the foreign military presence as indispensable to promoting political stability and economic reconstruction.

No one in India’s government really expects US forces to disappear overnight from Afghanistan, despite the elimination of Osama Bin Laden. The plan is to withdraw only 10,000 US troops by year’s end. Later, when winter sets in, America will withdraw another 5,000. But Obama says that he intends to bring the 30,000 ‘surge’ troops back home by next summer, after the Afghan snows melt and the US election season starts heating up. Even if he does (a decision that surely will have to take into account realities on the ground), 68,000 US troops would remain — twice the number deployed in Afghanistan when he became president.

By 2014, the US intends to reduce its operational presence to a role largely confined to supporting Afghan forces. After all, the rationale for the original US intervention was to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for the next Bin Laden. Indications are that the US will maintain about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, even in the most modest scenario.

Indians have every reason to be relieved. An Afghanistan without ISAF will be prey to the machinations of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This would be a proven security threat to India: the Taliban regime of the day was complicit in the hijacking of an Indian airliner in 1999.

As a result, America’s interest in reconciliation with the Taliban is viewed with concern in India. India is wary of those who might pretend to be reborn constitutionalists, but seize the first opportunity after a US withdrawal to devour the regime that compromises with them. This is why India stresses the importance of improving the Afghan government’s capacity to fight and overcome terrorism. Without this capacity, the government will again be vulnerable to an extremist takeover. The role of Pakistan remains of serious concern, particularly given China’s recent progress in making Pakistan its own zone of ‘strategic depth’.

India shares America’s commitment to what Obama described last December as the “long-term security and development of the Afghan people”. But, for India, any process of reconciliation should be Afghan-led, inclusive and transparent. India fully supports the “red lines” affirming Afghan leadership and ownership of the negotiating process laid down by President Hamid Karzai’s government in its London and Kabul communiques, and believes that his government should not be forced to cross them. The bottom line for India remains the Afghan people’s right to decide their own destiny. It views the international community’s role as being to help Afghans accomplish that.

[CENTER][SIZE="2"]Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and UN Under-Secretary General, is a member of India’s parliament and the author of a dozen books.

[U]Source: Gulf News, Project Syndicate, 2011[/U][/SIZE][/CENTER]

The US love ...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]The US love affair with drones[/B]
By
Ted Rall[/SIZE][/CENTER]

One of the pleasures of traveling through the developing world is that things develop. They change. There’s always something new.

Afghanistan is, depending on one’s point of view, developing, deteriorating, or doing both at once.

Example: Last August found me and two fellow Americans in a hired taxi zooming past bombed-out fuel trucks through Taliban-held Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border. The sense of menace was palpable, but our driver seemed calm.

Then his face darkened. We were passing into the flatlands east of Mazar-i-Sharif. We saw nothing but dirt, dust and rocks, all the way to the horizon. Yet our driver was nervous. He scanned this bleak landscape. “Motorcycles,” he said. “I am looking for the motorcycles.”

The adaptable neo-Taliban increasingly rely on the classic tactics of guerilla warfare. Rather than hold territory, these postmodern Islamists-cum-gangsters rely on hit-and-run strikes using something I hadn’t seen in 2001: motorcycles. Like a scene from the Kazakh film epic about Genghis Khan updated by Quentin Tarantino, squadrons of bearded bikers are terrorizing Afghanistan’s newly- and cheaply-paved highways.

[I]I call them the Talibikers.[/I]

One of the more intriguing revelations in last year’s WikiLeaks data dump was that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency has been supplying the Taliban with thousands of Pamir dirtbikes, including a 2007 shipment of 1,000 to the Waziristan-based network led by Mawlawi Jalaludin Haqqani. Talibs ride the Pamirs and their preferred brand, the Honda 125 and its Chinese knock-offs, to assassinations. They launch attacks on highways from bases in villages 10 to 15 kilometers away.

The Talibikers speed across the desert in great clouds of dust, “Mad Max” style, to ambush and bomb fuel trucks. There they set up checkpoints where they shake down travelers for cash. Sometimes they kidnap motorists and demand ransom payments from their families. By the time the hapless Afghan national police shows up, the resistance fighters are long gone.

An early report on the Talibikers appeared in the Telegraph in 2003. “The motorcycles have played a key role in Taliban hit-and-run operations in the south of the country where the campaign against international troops and aid workers has intensified,” the British newspaper reported in November of that year. “In the latest incident, a Frenchwoman working for the United Nations was shot dead this month by the pillion passenger on a motorcycle in the south-eastern town of Ghazni. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack.

In another recent attack, a group of motorcyclists opened fire on an aid convoy near Kandahar, killing four Afghans. In August, two motorcyclists threw a grenade into the Kandahar compound of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, damaging the building but causing no injuries.”

ISI-funded motorbikes continue to play a vital role in the Taliban’s war to drive US and NATO occupation troops out of Afghanistan. “Day and night, Taliban assassins on motorbikes hunt their victims, often taunting them over the telephone before gunning them down in the city’s streets,” Paul Watson wrote in The Star, a Canadian newspaper, in February 2011.

“They are working their way through lists, meticulously killing off people fingered as collaborators with the Afghan government or its foreign backers … The build-up of Afghan police and soldiers, and foreign troops, in and around Kandahar city over recent months has improved security, but agile and coldly efficient motorbike death squads remain active.”

Mass attacks continue as well. “About 100 Taliban fighters on motorcycles attacked a northern Afghan village that was working to join the government-sponsored local police program against the insurgency, killing one villager, police said Wednesday. An ensuing battle also left 17 militants dead,” the Associated Press reported in May 2011.

There are fewer than 10,000 Talibikers in Afghanistan. They could be eliminated – if the US and NATO stopped focusing on assassination-by-drone and instead used the same technology to increase security.

[I]Drones, drones everywhere[/I]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) date to the maiden flight of the now-familiar Predator drones in 1994. After 9/11 the United States became addicted to the Predator and its successor, the Reaper.

Today the Air Force and CIA have at least 7,000 UAVs in service around the world, representing the biggest and most visible presence of the US military in Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. This trend is likely to accelerate. As of March 2011 the US Air Force was training more remote drone “pilots” than those for conventional planes. Next year the Pentagon wants $5 billion just for drones.

Drones are getting smaller and more numerous. “One of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three-foot-long Raven, which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill,” according to The New York Times. “There are some 4,800 Ravens in operation in the Army, although plenty get lost.” More on this later.
It’s easy to see why generals and politicians are so enthusiastic. The pilotless planes, guided by operators manning a joystick at military and pseudomilitary agencies such as CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and armed by Xe, the private contractor formerly called Blackwater, are relatively cheap. A Predator costs $4.5 million; an F-22 Raptor fighter jet runs $150 million a unit.

Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, cites the “three Ds”. Drones are “dull” because they can patrol empty stretches of barren land 24 hours a day. They’re “dirty” because they can fly in and out of toxic clouds, including radiation.

Most appealingly, they are “dangerous” because the absence of a pilot eliminates the risk that a pilot – they cost millions to train – will be killed or captured by enemy forces. UAVs exploit the element of surprise: though relatively unobtrusive, they fire supersonic armor-piercing Hellfire missiles capable of striking a target as far as five miles away.

“People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying,” The New Yorker magazine reported in 2009.

“‘You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,’ a former CIA officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.) [Bleeding] human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: ‘squirters.’”

[I]Charming.[/I]

According to the Pentagon, drones hit their targets with 95 percent accuracy. The problematic question is: who are their targets?

Thousands of people have been rubbed out by drones since 9/11.

(Press accounts document between 1,400 and 2,300 extrajudicial killings by allied forces, mostly in the Tribal Areas adjacent to Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. According to media reports cited by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 957 Pakistanis were murdered by American drones in 134 airstrikes during the year 2010 alone. Since the media only learns about a fraction of these “secret” killings, the real number must be many times higher.)

[I]Drone attacks illegal, unethical[/I]

Since the Pakistani government does not officially acknowledge, much less authorize, such attacks, they are illegal acts of war.

Political philosopher Michael Walzer asked in 2009: “Under what code does the CIA operate? I don’t know. There should be a limited, finite group of people who are targets, and that list should be publicly defensible and available. Instead, it’s not being publicly defended. People are being killed, and we generally require some public justification when we go about killing people.”

[I]One would think.[/I]

Legal or not, Christine Fair of Georgetown University says the US doesn’t use drone planes indiscriminately: “You have lawyers, you have targeteers, you have intelligence operatives, you actually have pilots who are manning the drones. These are not 14-year-old kids right out of basic training, playing around with a joystick,” she told National Public Radio.

In the real world, it’s often hard to tell the difference. There’s no doubt that drone operators make mistakes. In April 2011, for example, two American marines were killed by a Predator in Afghanistan.

Of course, the majority of victims are local civilians. In Afghanistan and Pakistan drone strikes have killed countless children and wiped out so many wedding parties that it’s become a sick joke. Estimates of the civilian casualty rate range from a third (by the New America Foundation) to 98 percent (terrorism expert Amir Mir). There is no evidence that a single “terrorist” has ever been killed by a drone – only the say-so of US and NATO spokesmen.

Errors are inherent due to the principal feature of the technology: remoteness. Manned aerial warfare is notoriously inaccurate; pilots zooming close to the speed of sound tens of thousands of feet above the ground have little idea who or what they’re shooting at. Drone operators have even less information than old-school pilots. Like a submariner peering out of a periscope, they are supposed to decide whether people live or die based on fuzzy images through layers of glass. They call it the “soda straw.”

Nowadays, staffing is a troubling challenge: it takes 19 analysts to study images and other data from one drone. In the future, a war could eliminate unemployment entirely: it will take approximately 2,00 men and women to process information from one drone equipped with “Gorgon stare” optics capable of scanning an entire city at once.
There’s also a huge gap in education, experience and culture. Virtual warriors require simple rules that don’t apply when trying to kill jihadis. At the beginning of the US war against Afghanistan in 2001, for example, it was an article of faith within the Pentagon that men wearing black long-tailed turbans were Talibs.

Dozens, possibly hundreds, of noncombatants were killed because of this incorrect assumption. In February 2002 a drone operator blew up a man because he was tall – as was Osama bin Laden. In fact, he and two other men killed were poor villagers gathering scrap metal. Again, this doesn’t address the broader issue of whether it’s okay to murder people simply because they are members of the Taliban.

At least as interesting as the choice of target is whom the U.S. does not try to kill: the Talibikers.

Unlike the wedding parties, houses and tribal councils that have been mistakenly incinerated by the aptly-named Hellfire missiles, Taliban bike gangs are easy to identify from the air. One or two hundred dirtbikes speeding across the desert toward a truck on an Afghan highway are unmistakable. Most Afghans, even those who oppose the US occupation, fear the Talibikers and resent being robbed at impromptu checkpoints. There have been a few scattershot drone strikes, nothing more. Why don’t the CIA whiz kids make these easily-identified fighters a primary target?

[I]Afghans a low priority for US[/I]

I posed the question to Afghan government officials. They told me that the same US military that blows $1 billion a week on the war won’t lift a finger to save Afghan lives by providing basic security. “Afghan lives are worth nothing to the Americans,” a provincial governor told me.

Last week the United Nations announced that civilian casualties were up 15 percent during the first six months of 2011. If the same rate continues, this will be the worst year of the ten-year-long American occupation.

A well-placed US military source confirms that Afghan security “isn’t a priority, it isn’t even much of a passing thought”. Contrary to President Obama’s claim that US is in Afghanistan in order to prevent the country from becoming a base for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups and to combat opium cultivation, he says that Afghanistan isn’t about Afghanistan at all. “Afghanistan is a staging area for drone and other aerial strikes in western Pakistan,” he says. “Nothing more, nothing less. Afghanistan is Bagram [airbase].”

Under Obama the death toll has risen, worsening relations between the White House and its puppet president, Hamid Karzai. Beyond the horror of the deaths themselves, it would be impossible to overstate the contempt that ordinary people in nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan feel for the drone program. “Americans are cowards” was one refrain I heard last year. Real soldiers risk their lives. They do not send buzzing machines to kill people half a world away…people they know nothing about.

Back in 2002, former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith worried about blowback. “If [Taliban leaders and soldiers are] dead, they’re not talking to you, and you create more martyrs,” he noted. Ongoing drone attacks “suggest that it’s acceptable behavior to assassinate people…Assassination as a norm of international conduct exposes American leaders and Americans overseas.”

These days, the media gives little to no time or space to such concerns. Americans have moved into postmorality. Right or wrong? Who cares?

Recently international law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame University said that the new reliance on drones could prompt an already militaristic superpower to fight even more wars of choice. “I think this idea that somehow this technology is allowing us to kill in more places and … aim at more targets is for me the fundamental ethical and legal problem.”

Meanwhile, adds Mary Dudziak of the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law: “Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on…endless war.” No casualties? No problem.

Meanwhile, at a “microaviary” inside an air force base north of Dayton, Ohio, “military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds”, approvingly reports The New York Times.

Ted Rall is an American political cartoonist, columnist and author. His most recent book is The Anti-American Manifesto. His website is rall.com.

[U][I][SIZE="2"][CENTER]Source:Al Jazeera[/CENTER][/SIZE][/I][/U]

Pakistan reforms...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Pakistan reforms nowhere in sight[/B]
By
Farhan Bokhari[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Continuing violence across Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi in the recent past has once again come as a powerful reminder of the mounting challenges which confront the south Asian country’s political and economic future.

While the dust settled after days of killings in Karachi that rocked prospects for the future of Pakistan’s main cosmopolitan city, the recent events also said much about the overall future of the Muslim country which also proudly presents itself as being armed with nuclear weapons.

Yet, Pakistan’s political and economic evolution, for the moment fails to show the country as heading towards greater stability. Almost 64 years after its creation as an independent state, and more than three years after the last military ruler stepped down from power, Pakistan’s political and ruling class fails to miss any opportunity for bickering and squabbling.

A recent example helps to illustrate the slide. A provincial minister from Sindh, of which Karachi is the local capital, chose to publicly denounce those who live in the province, speak Urdu and belong to families that migrated from India in 1947.

Widespread violence ranging from killings to the burning of cars quickly ensued, forcing the provincial minister who is also a close ally of President Asif Ali Zardari, to publicly seek an apology for his comments. While the dust seemed to settle thereafter, there is no assurance that a similar episode will not erupt yet again.

Fundamentally, Pakistan is surrounded by a crisis of government and governance. On the one hand, the country’s so called democratic rulers have failed to steer it towards stability since they were handed down power following the 2008 departure of former president General Pervez Musharraf.

In the three years or so which have followed Musharraf’s rule, Pakistan’s cause for democracy has hardly been helped by the trends prevailing across the country. During this time, political institutions have weakened and further lost track of progress as the ruling class failed to make them oriented increasingly towards tackling some of the most difficult challenges faced by Pakistan.

At the same time, Pakistan has only floundered further in seeking prospects for stabilising the country’s economy. In the past week, as Karachi remained the centre of Pakistan’s public attention, incoming reports of the resignation of the country’s central bank governor became a bit of a sideshow. Yet, realistically, the reports that Shahid Kardar, the governor, has stepped down just nine months into his job, deserve far greater attention for anyone looking at the future of Pakistan.

Responsible spender

Kardar, a chartered accountant by training, is one of Pakistan’s most eminent, credible and respected economists with a long history of sticking to his principles. Though his resignation is not yet confirmed, the accounts making the rounds so far, largely appear to suggest that his break with the ruling structure came on the matter of his failure to convince the government to become a more responsible spender.

For the moment, individuals like Kardar may fail to discourage profligate spending, especially amid reports that national elections which are due by 2013 may in fact be held next year. Yet, it is equally true that a failure to appreciate individuals like Kardar may only be at the cost of Pakistan’s best interests.

Going forward, the need to stabilise Pakistan’s political and economic future may require the country’s ruling class to put in place a broad set of progressive reforms.

This is all the more vital at a time when the ongoing security challenges faced by Pakistan driven by the conflict between its security services and groups of determined militants, show no sign of going away any time soon.

But if recent events are indicative of what to expect, Pakistan’s rulers appear to have little ability to change course for the better. The trends of the past three years since Pakistan embarked on the road to democracy once again, speak volumes for the country’s emerging outlook. Eventually, lessons must also be learnt from Pakistan’s history as a country which has hovered between short-lived periods of democracy and military rule. Today, the Pakistan army is back in its barracks and shows complete determination to abide by its commitment to civilian rule.

Yet, the army’s commitment on its own is no guarantee of the continuation of a civilian democracy of the kind that many Pakistanis would ideally seek. The completion of Pakistan’s journey towards a sustainable democratic framework must be built upon a strong legacy of political and economic reforms that are nowhere in sight and still waiting to come together.

[CENTER][I][SIZE="2"]Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
[U]Source: Gulf News[/U][/SIZE][/I][/CENTER]

education reform...
 

[SIZE="3"][CENTER][B]Public demand for education reform
By[/B]
Dr Faisal Bari[/CENTER][/SIZE]

In a recent dialogue on education reform in Pakistan, organised by the Open Society Foundation (OSF), Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) and South Asia Initiative (SAI) of Harvard University at Harvard, where 30 odd politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, academics, and representatives of donors got together to discuss issues in education reform in Pakistan, a number of politicians mentioned that there was almost no pressure on them from their constituents to improve the performance of public sector schools in their constituencies.

These were politicians representing urban as well as rural constituencies — and all of them said that while they did get some demand for more schools, especially for girls, but other than that most of the demands relating to education were about teacher transfers and not about quality of education or even access.

This poses a bit of a paradox. We know that the demand for education, revealed in surveys as well as revealed through the willingness of parents to pay for education, is quite strong in Pakistan. And it does not matter where in Pakistan you do these surveys. The demand for education comes out to be fairly strong across all the usual divides that we talk of: income, gender, rural-urban, and geography. We also know that the general perception of the quality of education being imparted at public schools is poor, and most parents are aware of that. Yet, the politicians said that they do not have parents coming to them and breaking down their doors demanding better quality education through the public sector.

This points to a strong disconnect. If you know that the public school that your child goes to is giving poor quality education, why are you not putting pressure, individually and collectively, on elected representatives at the provincial and national level, to demand better quality? It is not the case that the representatives said people do not come to them per se. They do. They come to ask for help in intermediating with the police, they demand infrastructure provision (access to water, local roads, sewerage), they just do not ask for quality improvements in education delivery.

From the education area, the representatives said, the major demand that they get from their constituents is about teacher recruitments (jobs), and teacher promotions, transfers and placements. So, it is not the case that the constituents are not making demands from their representatives; they are just not making these demands regarding delivery of quality education from public schools.

This is a big issue. Everyone agrees about the need to educate all children in Pakistan. All of us are aware of the danger of having illiterate and unskilled citizenry. Education has been made a basic right recently through the 18th Amendment and the inclusion of Article 25A, whereby the state now has to provide education to all children between the ages of 5-16 years. But why is it that understanding of the importance of education and clear demand for education is not translating into pressure on public representatives?

It is important to unravel this paradox, if indeed it is one. When we asked the public representatives why they do not make the issue of education more important within their parties, in their political manifestos, in the promises they make to the electorate, and in things that they demand from their parties as well as from the government, especially if their party is in power, they replied that though they agreed that education should get higher priority, it is hard for them to make it into one of the top issues as the constituent demands — the ‘demands from the ground’ — are not about education delivery.

In fact, one representative actually said that never had any parent come to him to ask for any intervention on the side of education delivery. This, from the representatives’ point of view, also made it hard for them to take education access/quality issues to party leadership as a top demand from ‘the people’, and it made it hard for them to press for education issues through committees and sub-committees in the government or in the legislature. I do not want to generalise to say that this must be the experience of all legislators. But restricted to the small sample I mentioned, it does lead to an interesting paradox: when parents clearly think education is important and demand it and seem to be, where they have to and/or they can, willing to pay for it, as citizens why do they not articulate the demand for better educational facilities and delivery from their representatives? Why is the parent and voter space not connected where public sector education is concerned?

Is it that voters/citizens feel that given the patron-client basis for our political system they can only ask for well defined one-time interventions and hence should ask for private goods (transfers of officials, access to jobs)? Is it that public representatives can only have an effect through one-time interventions (getting schemes (schools) approved, getting transfers) while it is hard to deliver on changes in educational access/quality that require more sustained pressure and work and are also difficult to measure? Do citizens feel that their feedback on service delivery will not change anything?

We definitely need more work to understand why this disconnect exists, whether it exists in other areas too and how we can fix it. Improvements in education delivery, especially in the public sector, will be very hard to achieve unless the larger population demands them. And their demand will only have teeth if they can reward good behaviour and punish poor behaviour. Elected representatives in a working democracy are the most sensitive to this reward and punishment system. If this loop is not working, which at least in the case of education it does not seem to be, public sector reform will become much harder to implement and public sector performance much harder to improve. The problem does not seem to be of law or administrative issues, but of how the citizen-representative relation is structured. Media, civil society and NGOs should have a role here in developing the link between citizen demands and elections as well as performance of representatives. I look forward to hearing if others also feel that this paradox exists and if so, how we can start resolving it.

[CENTER][SIZE="2"][I]The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email]fbari@sorosny.org[/email]
[U]Source-Daily Times [/U][/I][/SIZE][/CENTER]

US economy and Pakistan...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]US economy and Pakistan[/B]
By
Huma Yusuf[/SIZE][/CENTER]

THE Obama administration is having a rough time. Last week, it was revealed that the US economy has ground to a virtual halt, growing by only 0.4 per cent in the first half of this year. Revised figures for the total loss of economic output during the 2007-09 recession also painted a more dismal picture, with estimates going up from 4.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent.

Meanwhile, the US Congress remained locked in a nasty battle over how to raise the debt ceiling. On Friday, Republicans barely managed to pass a bill through the House of Representatives that calls for billions of dollars in spending cuts, only to have Democratic senators reject it. Without a compromise, the US government faces the prospect of running out of money
and being unable to make social security, military and interest payments. But what does all this have to do with Pakistan?

The mixed messages being exchanged within Washington are not a patch on the chaotic signals the US and Pakistan are sending each other. Earlier this month, the US suspended more than one-third of military aid to Pakistan, even while the House Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress voted 39-5 not to block all aid to Pakistan.

In a new twist, the House last week passed a bill significantly cutting overall US multilateral assistance and mandating
conditions on aid to Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. A separate bill voted on by the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations called for tough restrictions on civilian aid to Pakistan, tying it to Islamabad’s progress in fighting terrorism and checking nuclear proliferation. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton promptly vowed to fight these aid restrictions.

On the military side, too, the sparring continues. US military chief Adm Mike Mullen announced that the military-to-military relationship between the US and Pakistan was passing through a difficult phase (and just to rub it in, he added that US-India military ties are developing swimmingly well). As if in response, Maj-Gen Ashfaq Nadeem told the Abbottabad commission that the US had not alerted the Pakistan Army about the May 2 raid targeting Osama bin Laden in what was perceived as a great violation of trust.

The stormy US-Pakistan relationship, seen against the backdrop of the US’s mounting economic woes, crystallises a major dilemma facing the Obama administration: can the US continue to champion its role as the world’s policeman, and globally promote its values and democratic outlook? Or must it now adopt more pragmatic, isolationist policies that prioritise its national — read economic — interests?

This question has dogged US President Barack Obama since he took office. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he acknowledged the challenge of balancing idealism and realism when it came to foreign policy. The choice, he implied, was between privileging national interest and defending moral obligations, between engaging with states or societies.

During Obama’s tenure, the freedom-and-democracy rhetoric of the George W. Bush years has been toned down, and the US has engaged with hostile or reluctant actors such as Iran and China at the expense of focusing on human rights violations. But this does not mean that the debate has been settled.

The Arab Spring and Iran’s Green Movement truly tested the Obama administration’s foreign policy doctrine, forcing it to clumsily toe the line between idealism (acknowledging the desire of the citizens of Egypt and Tunisia to be free from tyranny) and realism (the need for institutional stability across the Middle East). Libya pushed the test even further, forcing the US to support humanitarian intervention in a country where it has minimal interests.

Of course, the idealist/realist binary is further complicated by the fact that the rise of China and India is seen as the greatest threat for the US in terms of economic viability. In this regard, the US cannot seek to succeed domestically if it does not strike the right chord internationally through trade and other agreements across South, Central and Southeast Asia, as well as South America. In an era of globalisation, even US isolationism requires international engagement that will constantly challenge the integrity and resilience of American values.

How the US resolves this dilemma is crucial for Pakistan. As an idealistic, values-defending world policeman, the US will strive for a stable and prosperous Pakistan that can participate in a vibrant economic corridor stretching from Central to South Asia and be a linchpin of regional stability through robust bilateral relations with India, Afghanistan and Iran. For this scenario to work, the US and Pakistan must have a strong relationship that emphasises mutual respect in the context of the Afghanistan endgame, sustained civilian aid, Pakistan government capacity-building initiatives, development projects and more.

On the other hand, an isolationist, realist US has narrower interests in Pakistan: to prevent terror attacks against US targets originating on Pakistani soil and to stem nuclear proliferation. This scenario is far uglier, requiring containment rather than engagement, and potentially involving economic sanctions, US bullying through various international fora, unilateral strikes and an exaggerated tilt towards India on security issues that could ultimately worsen regional dynamics.

It is extremely unfortunate that US-Pakistan relations are currently falling victim to the US’s ongoing identity crisis. For its part, Pakistan must acknowledge and address this crisis, rather than planning for its third divorce with the US through overtures to China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even India. Pakistan should remember that bilateral relationships do not unfold in vacuums, and that how the US frames its foreign policy in coming years could determine how the rest of the world interacts with Pakistan as well.

[I][CENTER][SIZE="2"]The writer is a freelance journalist.

[email]huma.yusuf@gmail.com[/email]
[U]Source---Dawn [/U][/SIZE][/CENTER][/I]

Dirty politics, failed government...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Dirty politics, failed government[/B]
By
Dr A Q Khan[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Somebody said to the Quaid-e-Azam that politics is a dirty game. He smiled and replied, yes it is, but for dirty politicians. The Quaid-e-Azam never went to jail, even for a single day. No policeman ever questioned him and he never committed an illegal act. And still he managed to accomplish a task which probably nobody will ever equal. He never compromised on principles and the British knew that Jinnah was one of those politicians who were not purchasable.

Dirty politics is the root cause of all evils in our country. When politicians become self-centred, corrupt and compromising, the whole administration collapses. The immediate result of this is deterioration in law and order, because the law enforcing agencies overstep their wide powers powers. They register false cases, murder innocent people in fake encounters, abduct innocent people and mint money through corruption.

Due to dirty politics and dirty politicians the whole country is in a mess. TV anchorpersons and journalists try to draw the attention of the rulers and politicians to the serious problems being faced by the public, but to no avail. There is no trace of any improvement in any field. The only thing of common interest to both the rulers and the opposition parties is to bribe and facilitate horse-trading. The government has very cunningly managed to keep the MQM, JUI-F, the ANP and the PML-Q in its fold. Even the N-League was tricked into playing the dirty role of “friendly opposition.” The government has survived for more than three years. The opposition creates some hue and cry and then quietens down after extracting benefits from the government.

The economy is in a shambles, unemployment and inflation are at an all-time high, and the people feel that the nation is lost. There is no pride, no self-respect and no sovereignty. Corruption is no longer a matter of a few thousand or a few hundred thousand rupees. Now it runs in the billions. While the public is advised austerity, the rulers spend millions per day for their own comfort. Many are living like the Viceroys did during British rule. There is no law and order in Balochistan and Karachi and targeted killings have become common. When the death toll becomes alarmingly high, the president and/or the prime minister issue a statement saying they have taken notice of the events. The same hollow statements are made after suicide attacks.

More often than not, law enforcing personnel are absent when arson, hooliganism and murders take place, but later pick up innocent people to exhort money from them. There are so many examples of dirty and inefficient management. Due to the failure of the postal system, courier services are thriving and many post offices have been closed, causing inconvenience to ordinary people. The telephone and telegraph system collapsed resulting in a boom of mobile phones usage. This is costing this poor country hundreds of millions of dollars per year on mobile imports. We daily witness the rotten state of affairs of the railways. People are being subjected to long hours of halts and delays in this scorching weather. We never have had a more inefficient railway minister in our history. Now people can reach their destination faster by using a donkey cart.

The revenue and land registration systems are also in a shambles, with the result that, due to the absence of proper records, the land mafia is having a heyday. Land is illegally occupied, high buildings are erected and sold, and nobody dares to touch the occupiers and builders. Extortion is a state-sponsored industry and is a billion-rupee business. If you refuse to pay you are either shot dead or your property is set on fire. The law enforcers get their share from all such dirty deals. The problem is that dirty politics results in inefficient and corrupt leaders who do not follow the rule of law and do not enforce it either. These very people are the fountain of all evils.

The government destroys whichever organisations or institutions it controls. The most notable examples are Steel Mills, PIA, railways, telecommunication, power plants, and this is to name only a few. One is forced to believe that the Almighty has turned our rulers deaf, dumb and blind. Our history is full of golden examples of excellent governance. One only has to read the history of the periods of Hazrat Umar (RA) and of Hazrat Umar bin Abdul Aziz (RA). The latter was very rich, but on assuming power he distributed all his wealth among needy people. During the periods of these two rulers (and hundreds of others of the same kind), there was no law and order problem, no poverty, no starvation. Our rulers are least worried about life hereafter, when they will have to answer to Allah for all their deeds.

When I see the greed of our rulers who speed around in bullet-proof cars with large security entourages under the illusion that nothing will happen to them, I remember a story narrated by the famous waliullah Fariduddin Attar (RA).

Once a ruler (or king) built a grand, expensive palace. Its pillars were covered with gold leaf, costly Persian carpets covered the floors and it had beautiful gold-plated furniture and chandeliers. He invited many rulers from nearby countries, hosted a grand reception and asked his guests for their opinion about his palace and whether they could find any fault with it. All the guests were full of praise for the palace, saying that they had never seen one like it before and probably no one would see another like it in the future. However, a Sufi remarked that there was indeed a defect, a very fine crack in the wall. The ruler became annoyed and thundered that there was no crack anywhere. The Sufi said that there was indeed a crack in the wall through which Hazrat Izrael, the Angel of Death, would come to take the ruler’s life when his time came and the ruler would not be able to stop him. All this wealth and grandeur will be of no avail, he told the ruler. Within a few years you will be a handful of dust. I was talking of that crack, so please do not rely on the grandeur and strength of something temporary, as nothing can turn a temporary thing into a permanent thing. Do not pin your hopes on it and be haughty in your behaviour. If a person does not express his views honestly to the ruler, it is definitely a misfortune for both of them.

In the light of the above, my request and advice to the rulers is to learn from it and remember that all this greed and effort to amass wealth and property will be of no avail. After some time they will be taken care of by Hazrat Izrael and then they will be just a handful of dust after a short time, just like their ancestors.

[CENTER][SIZE="2"][I]Email: [email]ali4drkhan@gmail.com[/email]
[U]Source---The News[/U][/I][/SIZE][/CENTER]

Education in mother tongue...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Education in mother tongue[/B]
By
Dr Faisal Bari [/SIZE][/CENTER]


There is evidence from education literature that strongly suggests that student learning is better if they are taught, at least in the initial years of education, in their mother tongue. It makes sense. Children are able to pick up concepts much better if they are explained in their mother tongue and they do not have to struggle with language issues, in addition to learning other content.

This “evidence” is not new. In Pakistan, we have had some provinces, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who have had some of their education in local languages but, by and large, we have been focusing on Urdu and/or English as the main medium of instruction.

The 18th Amendment is going to change some of the power relations surrounding this debate. Among other things, the 18th Amendment has also devolved education, as a subject, to the provinces. Now provinces have the legal power to legislate on issues of medium of instruction, which languages will be taught when and for how long, decide the educational curriculum and goals, and so on.

There have been many who have been arguing for devolution of power to the provinces. It was felt that increased autonomy would strengthen the federation. The 18th Amendment has addressed a lot of these concerns.

Within education, supporters of devolution have argued that giving decision making to the provinces will allow them to a) include more local/cultural content in learning, b) allow teaching in local language, and c) allow the province to include local perspectives to various historical and cultural narratives. The evidence regarding ‘better learning in mother tongue’ supports the positions that pro-devolution people take, but the two arguments – for better learning and for possibilities of a richer and more local curriculum – are separate.

It was interesting that at a recent dialogue on education reform in Pakistan, organised by Open Society Foundations (OSF), Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) and South Asia Initiative (SAI) Harvard, where 30-odd academics, politicians, bureaucrats, and representatives from donors were participating, there was agreement that education should not only be about reading, writing and arithmetic skills, but should also look at issues of social cohesion and citizenship. And the importance of language of instruction, in this context, also came up. But there was quite a divide, amongst people even in that small group, as to what education should do to address issues of social cohesion and citizenship and how the local language debate fits into this.

The argument for cultural enrichment, through local language and content, and the argument for better learning were made. But there were people who argued, and quite strongly, that not promoting Urdu, as national language and not giving children a good facility in English, was very problematic as well. Some people saw the role of a national language as important for promoting social cohesion, while facility in Urdu and English was seen as important for functional reasons too: both languages were thought to be important for access to higher education and/or vocational training, jobs and better economic prospects in general as well.

We could have learning in mother tongue in the early years, say up to grade 4-5, while the other languages are taught as subjects and then have a switch in the medium of instruction when children have gone beyond the stage of learning basic skills in language, reading, writing and arithmetic.

The issue is not that of finding compatibility alone but that of developing a deliberate and thoughtful approach to policymaking that is informed by our combined thinking on what we want education to achieve and on what insights, from relevant research, from related areas, are available. Currently, our policymaking is too haphazard and ad hoc and reflects the relative lack of systematic thinking that is needed.

For example, Punjab decided to switch to English as the medium of instruction in all public schools earlier this year. The ground reality is a) we do not have enough teachers who can teach English as a subject, b) we certainly do not have enough teachers who can teach mathematics, science and other subjects in English, c) the current set of teachers has not been trained to make the switch, and d) short trainings are not enough to make such a switch. The result is confusion. There are many teachers who are still teaching in Urdu and/or Punjabi but now force the child to learn things, to reproduce in tests, in English. Teachers who cannot switch to English are feeling insecure. And children are not going to learn English or even the other subjects better this way.

Should Punjab have not had a more thorough discussion on goals of education and policy options open to us before making the switch? Is Punjabi not important? Should children not be exposed to Punjabi and Punjabi culture, language and literature? And should we not have a discussion about the role of each of these languages (local, Urdu, English) before policy options are imposed.

The brief dialogue we had on issues of social cohesion, citizenship, and the role of language showed that there were important national and sub-national goals at stake here. The dialogue also showed that there was no consensus on these issues even in a relatively small group. There is no consensus on these at the larger level as well. But given the importance of the area, and the changes expected when the 18th Amendment and devolution of education is implemented, the dialogue on these education related issues should happen in the public space in Pakistan.

[CENTER][SIZE="2"][I]The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email]fbari@sorosny.org[/email]
[U]Source-Pakistan Today [/U][/I][/SIZE][/CENTER]

Pakistan power shortages..
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Pakistan power shortages keep growth prospects dim[/B]
By[/SIZE]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ[/CENTER]

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The machine operators lean back lazily on rolls of cotton fabric, shooing flies from their sweat-soaked tunics as their boss, Abdul Latif, paces between rows of silent electric looms covered in lint.

The textile plant owner knows it’s just one of several rolling blackouts that will darken his plant today, as they have every day for four years. Along his street, other textile plants have either closed or begun selling their looms for scrap. Latif scrapes by, but the outages have cut his plant’s output in half.

“The situation is very bad,” Latif says. “We’re losing contracts because of these outages. We can’t deliver on time. If it continues like this, we may have to shut down.”

One of Pakistan’s biggest scourges has nothing to do with suicide bombers or militants wielding Kalashnikov assault rifles. Because the country cannot produce the electricity needed to support a population of 177 million, the government intentionally shuts down power in staggered intervals, often for hours at a time.

The rolling blackouts are most frequent during the summer, when the whir of air conditioners in 100-plus-degree heat boosts demand for power. Apart from districts with top government and military offices, virtually every neighborhood and village suffers.

The stopgap policy prevents the country’s moribund economy from getting off the ground. And as long as the economy sputters, millions of Pakistanis remain mired in poverty and joblessness, leaving the country’s disaffected youth vulnerable to recruitment by Islamist militant groups.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s government has given Pakistanis little reason to hope for a solution anytime soon. This summer, government officials said that it would take at least seven years to build up the electricity generation capacity needed to eliminate the blackouts.

Various factors explain Pakistan’s power woes. During Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s rule from 1999 to 2008, strong economic growth fueled an upsurge in consumer spending that had Pakistanis flocking to stores to buy air conditioners, refrigerators and other appliances. But Musharraf failed to pump money into boosting generation capacity to keep up with demand and the country’s booming population.

Zardari inherited the massive gap between supply and demand, but his cash-strapped administration hasn’t moved fast enough on hydroelectric dam projects and has yet to shore up the country’s aging distribution network.

Other factors make the situation even worse. About 15 percent of the electricity generated is lost to theft, says Ejaz Qureshi, a spokesman for the state-owned Pakistan Electric Power Co. In addition, the government often fails to pay its bills to private power producers, which means those companies can’t buy sufficient fuel for their plants. At times, they cut off electricity to the offices of government agencies that owe them money.

The havoc wrought by the shortfall is particularly acute in the country’s textile industry, a pillar of Pakistan’s fragile economy.

Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city and home to its textile sector, has seen 200 of its 4,000 textile plants close in the last three years because of the blackouts, says Wahid Raamay, chairman of the city’s Council of Loom Owners and a plant owner.

During that period, 100,000 workers have been laid off, about 10 percent of the city’s textile workforce, Raamay says.

Plant owners forced out of business face a grim future. In a country where many people distrust banks, many plant owners sell their personal property – gold, jewelry, cars – to buy the machinery needed to start the business. If their plants close, they may find themselves at rock bottom.

“They all used to have good cars, good homes, and now everything has disappeared,” Raamay says. “Now they ride motorcycles to get around.”

Five months ago, Malik Mohammed Kashif was forced to shut down his plant, lay off 80 workers and sell his 66 looms to scrap dealers.

On a sun-baked afternoon, Kashif strolls through his darkened, empty building and winces as he speaks of the future.

“As for me, I’m finished,” says Kashif, a 30-year-old father of four. “With the shutdown, we lost $350,000, nearly everything we had. We’re at the bottom now because of this.”

This summer, public anger over ceaseless power outages boiled over. In Mianwali, in Punjab province, throngs of demonstrators calling for a stop to the outages clashed with baton-wielding police in early July. Two people were killed and 22 were injured. In Karachi, four people were killed during protests and work stoppages in early June that brought sections of Pakistan’s largest city to a standstill.

In Faisalabad, the extent of blackout-induced layoffs in the textile industry has reached the point that plant owners often work the looms alongside their laborers.

At Latif’s plant, workers paid by the hour say the outages cut their already meager wages in half. Machine operator Mehmood Hussain makes $4.65 a day when the blackouts don’t occur and $2.32 when they do. For a family of seven reliant on his income, the difference is huge.

“It’s a critical situation now,” Hussain says. “We can’t buy decent food or buy clothes for ourselves. And there’s no way out. Looms are all we know.”

One group, however, prospers from the textile industry’s misery: the scrap dealers. Their stalls on the edge of the city are filled with grease-covered gears and flywheels stacked next to piles of wooden rollers and spool holders.

Dealer Mohammed Sharif says he sometimes buys up to 100 looms a day, paying just $290 for machines that cost plant owners $1,500.

“When the textile plants suffer, our business booms,” Sharif says. At the same time, he knows the scavenging can’t last indefinitely.

“If looms continue to shut down at this rate, a day will come when we won’t have any business at all. What will we do then?”

[SIZE="2"][I][U][CENTER]Source: sacbee[/CENTER][/U][/I][/SIZE]

Global Economy Will Fundamentally Change
 

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]The Shape of the Global Economy Will Fundamentally Change[/SIZE][/B]
BY
MOHAMED EL-ERIAN[/CENTER]

Who would have thought just 18 months ago that a member of the eurozone, the most elite club of economies in Europe, could have a worse credit rating than Pakistan? And yet this is the case for Greece today, perched on the verge of a debt restructuring; two other eurozone countries (Ireland and Portugal), meanwhile, are already in Europe's intensive care unit, receiving large bailouts.

And who would have thought that a rating agency would dare question the sacred AAA credit rating of the United States, the sole supplier of global public goods such as the international reserve currency (the dollar) and a financial system that serves as the nexus of international capital flow? Still, that's exactly what Standard & Poor's has done: In August the agency downgraded the United States’ AAA status to AA+, citing policymaking uncertainty in Washington and the country’s lack of a long-term plan to deal with its fiscal problems.

And who would have thought that the same country, which is renowned for its flexible labor markets and dynamic entrepreneurship, would experience a persistently high unemployment rate? Well, this is the case for the United States, where unemployment is stuck at around 9 percent, unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds is a staggering 14.5 percent, and the related joblessness problems are becoming increasingly structural in nature.

There are, of course, several bespoke reasons for these developments. But together, they speak to major realignments that are fundamentally changing the character of the global economy and how it functions. Three things in particular have had a significant influence, and they will continue to shape the world we live in for years to come.

First, too many advanced economies face problems rooted far below the surface, in their balance sheets and in the structure of their economies. This is not just about the unemployment crisis and the rapidly deteriorating public finances that, in cases such as Greece's, have reached alarming levels. It is also about malfunctioning housing markets, a continued breakdown in bank credit intermediation, and weak political leadership in the midst of messy party politics.

Second, rather than deal with these structural problems, policymakers have preferred to kick the can down the road. As a result, the problems have festered and become more entrenched, and the risk of adverse contagion has risen.

This is most obvious in Europe, where a liquidity approach -- involving piling new debt on top of already crushing obligations -- has repeatedly been applied to Greece's debt solvency crisis. This has also transferred massive liabilities from the private sector to Greek and European taxpayers and contaminated previously healthy institutions such as the European Central Bank. It is also the case in the United States, where unprecedented stimulus spending has failed to sufficiently reignite growth and job creation.

Third, several emerging economies have hit their developmental breakout phase, largely undeterred until now by the misfortunes of the developed world. You see this in Brazil, China, Indonesia, and several other countries. In the process, they have gone from strength to strength, so much so that their economies have started overheating at a time when more established countries are languishing. This is new territory for the global marketplace, one in which the less mature countries are more robust and resilient than their advanced peers and are able to grow sustainably at high levels while also strengthening their balance sheets.

Absent a major policy mistake -- a lurch toward protectionism, disorderly defaults, or disruptions to the international payment and settlement system, for instance -- we should expect these global realignments to continue.

It will take several years for the advanced economies to fully rehabilitate their balance sheets and restore the conditions for high growth and employment creation. In the meantime, income and wealth distribution will become even more skewed, morphing from an economic issue into a sociopolitical one.

The combination of stretched balance sheets and disappointingly slow growth also means that the advanced countries will opt for a mix of approaches to deal with recurrent debt concerns as they continue to de-lever from the age of credit and debt-entitlement. Some, such as Britain, will rely primarily on years of budgetary austerity. Others, like Greece, will succumb to debt restructuring.

Then there is the United States, the economy that anchors the core of the global economic and financial systems. It will initially opt for financial repression -- essentially a hidden taxation of creditors and depositors -- and attempt higher inflation to address its balance sheet issues. With time, however, it will likely be forced into greater austerity amid noisy political posturing and bickering.

The messier this transition, the greater the risk of undermining the international standing of America's global public goods. This in turn will challenge a global monetary system built on the assumption that its core -- the United States -- remains economically strong.

This is an important qualifier for what otherwise would be a far more encouraging outlook for much, though not all, of the emerging world. Look for these countries to continue to close the income and wealth gaps vis-à-vis the advanced countries. In the process, they will pull millions more out of poverty, providing them with greater economic opportunities and better access to education, health care, and nutrition.

As they continue to grow, emerging countries will push for greater accommodation on the part of a global economy that is still overdominated by the advanced economies. Global governance issues will come to the fore. International institutions will be pressured to reform more seriously. And multilateral negotiations will need to be more respectful of the growing strength of the emerging countries.

All this translates into an unusually fluid global economy -- and a world in which many established parameters will instead become variables. The sooner we prepare for it, the greater the chance that we are beneficiaries of the transformations taking place, not their victims.
[CENTER]
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Disasters, dengue and local government
 

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]Disasters, dengue and local government[/SIZE][/B]
By
Raza Rumi[/CENTER]

In the past few weeks, the intractable crisis of governance has once again exposed the dysfunctional nature of the Pakistani state, and its inability to grapple with basic issues of citizenship. After all, the guaranteeing of people’s rights and entitlements is the responsibility of the state, which it simply cannot abdicate. In Sindh, 5.3 million people have been affected by flash floods, out of which 250,000 are now homeless. The floods had been predicted earlier but the provincial and federal authorities were shamefully ill-prepared like last year. In Punjab, over 5,000 people are battling against the dengue epidemic and there are indications that it may spread to other parts of the country.

The killings in Karachi have momentarily halted but as hundreds of citizens were butchered for no fault of their own, the politicians indulged in a macabre game of accusing each other of breaking up Pakistan. Pity that the discourse on Karachi came down to Zulfiqar Mirza versus the MQM and seldom did anyone debate the fundamental causes of ethnic conflict, social breakdown and the governance vacuum. The killings have been followed by the inundation of the megalopolis by heavy rains. The civic failures of Karachi and Lahore on drainage and public health have exposed how cities cannot function without effective, accountable local governments.

In the aftermath of last year’s deadly floods, several reports (including one authored by this writer as part of a multi-sectoral team) had highlighted that strengthening local governance arrangements ought to be an urgent provincial priority.

In Sindh, the system of local government has been a subject of ethnic chauvinism and when the Sindh Local Government Ordinance was partially restored, the Sindhi nationalists called a strike across the province. In Punjab, several drafts for a new law to replace the 2001 Ordinance have been drawn up but have been held back in various ‘committees’. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa a similar situation exists.

The net effect of collapsed local administration is that we can neither manage disasters nor fight epidemics. In Sindh, not unlike last year, the preparations and resources at the local level were inadequate. The UN has warned that parts of Sindh are likely to remain flooded for at least six months; and so, would centralised agencies be able to handle the post-disaster early recovery phase? The performance of national and provincial disaster management authorities remains unsatisfactory. Perhaps the Sindh government would have to amend its position on local government and think of change next year. Similarly, governing Karachi and Hyderabad will require urban councils and inclusive modes of governance.

In Punjab, dengue is not going to go away soon. Experts have stated that the next year’s outbreak could be far more serious. Public health is not about centralised directives but the ability of the state to cater to health needs of the community and install sanitation systems, which prevent the outbreak of diseases and epidemics. An overreliance on the bureaucracy has failed to deliver civic services. Similarly, the capacity of large hospitals has been badly exposed as dengue cases have piled up in Lahore.

Public investment in health is skewed: most of the funds are spent on large hospitals which focus on ‘curative’ health services. Preventive or primary health services remain neglected and in a city like Lahore, the absence of local government means no public accountability. This is bad in itself because it means that the unreliable delivery of essential services is likely to remain so.

The political parties must not forget that their neglect of governance, especially at the local level, is only going to further disillusion many Pakistanis with regards to the efficacy of democracy and constitutional governance. It can be safely said that neither GHQ nor any external power is stopping the PPP, ANP and the PML-N from effecting a local government system or from paying attention to police reform. After three-and-a-half years of rule, political parties have no Musharraf to blame. Perhaps, Pakistan’s ubiquitous electronic media also needs to show a little more responsibility in facilitating an issue-based discourse and not sell theatrical antics and brainless pressers.

[CENTER][U][I][SIZE="2"]Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2011.[/SIZE][/I][/U][/CENTER]