'Time for a new Somalia policy'

By Dr Afyare Abdi Elmi

Only one in 10 Somali children go to school, says Save the Children Foundation [GALLO/GETTY]

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 21, 2009, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, set a broad agenda for Afghanistan from which Senator Corker interpreted that Mullen was calling for "nation-building".

Mullen was asked why the US was focusing on Afghanistan while al-Qaeda has spread its wings throughout the region, including Yemen and Somalia.

Mullen responded that Afghanistan is critical because that is where it all began.

History of failure

Mullen's response played more to domestic political considerations on what the US public will support rather than strategic thinking about dealing with the problem at hand.

The unanswered question is what Washington can and should do in order to reduce the threats stemming from other stateless countries such as Somalia?

US policy toward Somalia has been a continual failure since 1978 when Zbigniew Brzezinski, the then US national security adviser, declared that the Cold War was being lost on the sands of the Ogaden desert when Soviet-supported troops were helping its ally Mengistu Haile Mariam, the president of Ethiopia, to defeat the Somali army that had captured the Ogaden region.

During President Bill Clinton's era Operation Restore Hope was turned into the nightmare known today as Black Hawk Down.

Under George W. Bush outsourcing the 'war on terror' to warlords to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia backfired - forcing the Islamists to unite under the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which brought order to the country but disorder to Washington's counter-terrorism tactics.

The US also supported Somalia's warlords by providing money, information and legitimacy even though the Somali government had pleaded with Washington for help.


Black Hawk Down was a nightmare for the Clinton administration [GALLO/GETTY]
President Abdullahi Yusuf's government tried to secure financial and military assistance from the US in 2004 and 2005, although, interestingly, the Bush administration opted for the warlords, directly undermining the government.

Compounding the error, after the Somali Islamists defeated the warlords in 2006, the Bush administration supported the Ethiopian invasion in order to destroy the ICU and uphold a transitional Somali government.

Apparently, Washington was not aware that one of the few things that can unite Somalis is an effort to undermine Ethiopian dreams for regional domination.

A failed state

I believe that the US has an interest in doing better than this. The pay-off from reducing the threat of piracy off the coast of Somalia and defeating the uncompromising threat to both Western and Somali interests posed by Somalia's extremist groups and the country's statelessness would be great.

The US' national security strategy during the Bush administration focused on fighting terrorism, which it defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents".

According to this strategy, Washington considered failed states a threat to its security.

The rationale was clear. Since al-Qaeda used a failed state - Afghanistan - as a base and attacked Western interests, the US should treat all failed states, especially in the Muslim world, as a security threat.

Piracy and poverty

The Somali state's failure has yielded other public problems. The upsurge in piracy and the increase in extremism that has drawn in foreign fighters are two examples.

In 2008, Somali pirates attacked 111 ships and hijacked 42 of those they attacked.

This led to significant increases in insurance rates for ships and products that travel through the Gulf of Aden.

Additionally, many countries sent war ships to patrol the area, thus affecting their military budget - there are currently about 23 ships in the area helping to protect the ships passing through.

Still worse for the local population is the fact that piracy affected the humanitarian aid and business goods reaching Somalia.

Foreign fighters

Moreover, the presence of non-Somali fighters in Somalia is becoming a glaring fact.

Abul-Yazeed, the leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he talked about the relationship between al-Qaeda and al-Shabab, one of Somalia's radical Islamist groups.

He confirmed that the two groups had good relations although they are not united under one organisation and also mentioned that some of al-Qaeda leaders in the region, such as Abu-Dalha al-Sudani, were killed in Somalia while fighting Ethiopian forces.

Muqtar Robow, al-Shabab's former spokesperson, and Ali Fidow, the group's current spokesperson, have said that al-Shabab shares the same objectives and enemies as al-Qaeda.

Both sides are proud of their collaboration and openly talk about it.

Some al-Shabab leaders went to Afghanistan and fought there while al-Qaeda sent fighters to Somalia to help al-Shabab.

The time when most analysts misunderstood the relationship between al-Shabab and al-Qaeda has long passed.

Foreign abuses

The statelessness in Somalia has also made the country and its people vulnerable to foreign abuses.

European-based companies typically use Somalia as a dumping ground for toxic waste.


Somali pirates say they are responding to abuses by foreign companies [GALLO/GETTY]
After the Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean in 2004, a mysterious disease killed many Somalis. Somalis named it "Kaduudiyow" - which is best translated as describing how a person shrinks.

There has also been widespread illegal fishing in Somali waters and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that 700 vessels fished illegally in Somali waters in 2005.

Somalia's pirates take advantage of this fact to justify their piracy - calling themselves coastal guards and arguing that piracy began as a response to the abuses that foreign fishing companies committed against Somali fisheries.

Somalia's misery, neighbours' gain

All of this is being further complicated by the fact that Somalia's neighbouring countries have exploited Somalia's miseries for their own gain.

Both Ethiopia and Kenya have played a role in perpetuating the Somali conflict.

Ethiopia has been intimately involved in setting Somali clans against one another by arming clan warlords for the purpose of permanently making the Ogaden region its own and to allow it to rule Somalia indirectly through its proxy warlords.

Kenya benefits from the chaos in Somalia, despite the cost of housing refugees, through the presence of thousands of middle class Somali merchants.

Furthermore agents from international organisations, foreign embassies and NGOs operate from Kenya - filling up its hotels and making Nairobi the de facto capital of Somalia.

Somalia is also a landmark case when it comes to how a collapsed state environment can threaten civilian lives.

For the past 20 years, tens of thousands of Somalis have died because of the civil war and drought.

According to the Save the Children Foundation, one in every 10 school age children go to school.

Malnutrition is also rampant because the world has neglected Somalia since Black Hawk Down.

Misguided policies

Interestingly, even though the US national security strategy claims that failed states are a threat, Washington has supported the forces that have perpetuated statelessness in Somalia - that is Ethiopia - which has been meddling in Somali politics since Somalia became independent in 1960 - and the Somali warlords.

Moreover, Washington's misguided policies toward Somalia have strengthened the forces it claims it is trying to defeat.

The Bush administration helped to destroy the ICU under the pretext that al-Shabab was part of the heterogeneous groups that expelled the warlords from Mogadishu. At this time, al-Shabab was a minority group within the ICU and did not even dare to openly reveal its programme.

Ironically, the Washington-supported Ethiopian invasion replaced the conditions that favoured moderates with conditions that favoured al-Shabab and other radical elements.

Interestingly, when he came to power, Barack Obama ordered inter-agency policy review in which he asked all of the agencies that worked on Somalia to revisit previous strategies.

The committee doing this review is expected to finalise their recommendations and policy guidelines within the next few months.

Now, with the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, the accommodation of the moderate Islamists to the peace process and the government's decision to adopt Sharia, those conditions that favoured the radicals have been reversed and the opportunity for defeating extremism has presented itself again.

So the Obama administration should capitalise on this, rectify previous bad policies and do all it can to support the establishment of a strong state in Somalia.

Dr. Afyare Abdi Elmi teaches international politics at the Qatar University's International Affairs Department and is the author of a forthcoming book, Understanding the Conflagration of Somalia: Identity, Islam and Peacebuilding by Pluto Press.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

THE energy crisis – both in terms of electricity and gas supplies – continues to cause huge losses to the industry, especially in Punjab. Despite all the promises made by successive governments, the crisis has only worsened with the passage of time and there are no signs yet of anything changing for the better in the near future.

Experts in the energy sector insist that while doing what it can in the short-term, the government has no option but to take a long-term view of the scenario. Renewable energy, according to them, is the only way forward.

Citing published reports, an Islamabad-based consultant said the government is believed to have decided to constitute an energy sector high-level task force whose membership will be sold to the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) for at least $100 million. The relevant ministry is in touch with Islamabad-based diplomats representing the countries concerned.

Hoping that the deal will come through, the consultant, who preferred anonymity, reiterated the need to invest in the renewable energy sector which, he said, would be particularly feasible for local weather and living conditions.

The FoDP Summit meeting in New York a few months ago had identified issues of persistent energy shortage and its impact on the economy. The meeting had agreed to support Pakistan in preparing a sustainable and integrated energy plan.

In this regard, the summit had mandated the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to take the lead in mobilising international assistance to Pakistan for its energy-specific needs. Leaders had also requested a report on the energy sector so that an action plan could be prepared at the earliest.

The draft also proposes the setting up of a secretariat and a steering committee to provide oversight and direction to the task force. The way forward will be finalised in consultation with the government and FoDP members. The task force would create a forum for international partners and the government to work together on an integrated action plan and a report on the energy sector which would help the members to prioritise areas for supporting the energy sector.

Irfan Afzal Mirza, another consultant who has formerly been with the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB), said the recent agreement signed by the Dutch government to provide Rs356 million for the Pakistan Domestic Biogas Programme that is being implemented under the Rural Support Programme Network (RSPN) is an indication that the world is interested in nudging Islamabad to move further on the road to renewable energy.

The current reliance on oil-based power generation, according to a spokesman for the ministry of water and power, has reached “the alarming level of 46 per cent compared to 5.6 per cent internationally.” This is so basically because of the shortage of gas which generally accounts for around half of the country’s needs for the purpose. Domestic and imported oil produces another 28 per cent.

Mirza said the agreement signed recently by the visiting Dutch minister for development cooperation was a good step forward. A public-private partnership, it has been designed to lay the foundation for a commercially viable biogas sector which can relieve 30 to 40 million people in the rural zones from the energy shortfall.

Initially, the funds will be used to construct 14,000 biogas plants in Punjab which has the largest potential for biogas and that will lay the institutional foundation for the sector whose overall unused potential has been assessed at five million such installations.

The large agricultural and livestock sector produces large amounts of biomass in the form of crop residues and animal waste, such as bagasse, rice husk, cotton stalks, jute waste, straw and dung in rural settlements. Much of it is currently collected and used outside the commercial economy as unprocessed fuel for cooking and household heating. Besides, municipal solid waste (MSW) produced by a large urban population is openly dumped, which could instead be disposed of in proper landfills or incinerated to produce useable methane gas or electricity.

As things stand today, sugar mills use bagasse for co-generation purposes and have been allowed to sell surplus power to the power grid. The potential can be seen from the fact that last year Faisalabad Electric Supply Corporation signed a power purchase agreement with a private sugar mill under which it was to receive over 2500MW of bagasse-based electricity per year. This, naturally, is surplus power for the mill concerned which first meets its own energy needs. If this is what one private initiative can do, things can radically change if it is promoted on a national scale, said Mirza.

One ton of municipal solid waste when combusted reduces oil use by about 45 gallons and coal use by about 0.28 tons. Every city across the country produces thousands of tons of MSW and its combustion using modern waste-to-energy technologies that have inbuilt pollution control equipment can produce clean energy. This will diversify the energy mix and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.

Other than Punjab, Sindh is also getting active on the biogas front. The provincial chief secretary recently directed all the departments and stakeholders concerned to expedite efforts for alternative energy production using the Cattle Colony in Landhi as a significant source for the purpose.

Such colonies that are spread across Karachi house millions of buffalos and cows, which, according to an official estimate, produce 9.5 million kilogrammes of fresh dung, which can be used in the alternate energy project for getting power and gas. Such initiatives, Mirza said, was in line with the global trend favouring alternative energy. According to the US Energy Information Administration, 18 per cent of the global consumption comes through renewable sources. Of the remaining, three per cent is nuclear energy and 79 per cent comes from fossil fuels. Sweden leads the way with 40 per cent dependence on renewables, while China heads the list of major producers with more than 50 gigawatts of alternative energy per year.

The State Bank of Pakistan’s decision late last year to introduce financing facility for the establishment of new power projects using renewable energy, Mirza said, was also an indication that the country is getting serious on the issue. “Better late than never,” he concluded.

TIME is running out for the Pakistan Steel Mills, a sinking ship operating at 35 per cent of its capacity. Only a miracle or an apt governmental response can salvage this giant state-owned enterprise.

The Rs10 billion approved by the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet last week was not a bailout package as generally perceived, but covered the bank guarantees approved mid of last year. The mill needs a major capital injection and a sound business strategy to survive.

It would become clear over the next few days if the government has the political will and the capacity to put things right. It is contemplating to shake-up the current team of executives.

“Pakistan Steel can be turned around if the government so decides. The will of the government would be tested this week when a special committee headed by the PM Gilani meets in Islamabad. A stronger independent management team equipped with the right set of skills can pull it up again”, an insider told this scribe.

You need not be an expert to figure out the collusion of incompetent/inefficient management with the vested interest and corrupt bureaucrats in pushing the mill over the edge. Factors such as government’s indifference, political interference in workers appointments, allotment of quotas and award of licences to buyers eroded the financial viability of the mill.

Lack of transparency in procurement of raw material and distribution of production amongst buyers has long been a bane of the company, bringing its credibility under question. Besides, the practice to let the company’s executive chairman head the board of directors created a conflict of interest and compromised the capacity of the board to act as a whistle blower, when the situation deteriorated.

The government last week turned down a proposal of the management to inject one-time sizeable capital in PSM, a member of ECC told Dawn in confidence.

The ECC approved Rs10 billion for PSM to meet its need for term-loan facility of Rs8 billion for five years and a running finance facility of Rs2 billion, renewable on yearly basis, in favour of Pakistan Steel based on government guarantee to consortium of banks led by the National Bank.

People working or doing business with PSM are anxious or depressed. The arrest of Moin Aftab Sheikh on the charges of corruption in the PSM rattled officers in the related ministries. Many, when contacted, declined to discuss PSM affairs even informally.

The middle and the lower cadre staff at the mill, however, was not perturbed as they believed that the crisis was cyclical that visited them every three years.

Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen, when contacted in Islamabad over telephone, did not shy away from talking on the issue. Speaking to Dawn he blamed the archaic management practices at Pakistan Steel for the slide. He confirmed that Rs10 billion, the amount approved in the cabinet meeting in the second week of January was not a bailout package.

“They (PSM) approached us in July last year when they could not open L/Cs as their credibility was under public scrutiny. At that point, we decided to help them by persuading commercial banks to form a consortium under National Bank leadership and support them with a loan guaranteed by the governemwnt. The amount approved in the cabinet was basically the guarantee money demanded by lending banks”, he said.

“I am not ready to commit even a dime to mismanaged public companies that have bled public exchequer dry. They will have to restructure and develop a business plan to grab our attention”, Tareen said.

Mir Hazar Khan Bijrani, minister of industries, was optimistic. He felt that people were reading too much in the PSM story. He was confident the government would set things right.

“The mill cannot survive if operated at 35 per cent capacity. The target should be to run it on 90 per cent capacity. We are doing all it takes to achieve that. If it means revamping of the organisation, so it be. The government will do its part by ensuring steady supply source of raw material from Iran or elsewhere. I am hopeful that God willing we will succeed in protecting and promoting national assets,”, Bijrani told this writer from Lahore over phone..

The top tier management of the PSM was not inclined to divulge the details of the financial difficulties and raw material procurement problems with the media for fear of more negative publicity. Officials informally admitted that the situation was precarious and not manageable.

Insiders, however, confided that the absence of buffer stocks of raw material and the inability of the PSM to raise required amount of capital from the financial market has created a situation where blast furnace can stop any day bringing the PSM at a grinding halt. The plant is already operating at 35 per cent capacity.

Chairman, PSM, M M Usmani, explained that all woes of the PSM can not and should not be brushed aside by attributing them to corruption.

“There are issues related to prices, credit availability, government apathy, workers blackmailing etc. I have still not given up hope. We must understand it would be no less than a disaster if blast furnace died down. We will not allow that to happen. We will do all in our power to avoid closure”, he reluctantly commented over telephone.

Experts believe that cumulative loss to the national exchequer and the economy would be immense if PSM closes down.

“The loss from the failure of the PSM will not be limited to over 16000 workers (12000 regular and 4000 contract workers ) who will loose jobs or its 1800 registered customers (steel re-rolling, engineering, construction, traders, etc) who would loose dependable local supplier, it would shake the economy at its seam.

Beside the PSM is perceived as a symbol of the economic strength. Currently when the country is faced with security and politico-economic challenges, a perception of crumbling industrial sector would devastate business sentiments”, said an expert.

“The project needs urgent injection of capital to cover for its vital expenses. It also it needs professional management and operational freedom if the government wants to pull it back from the brink”, a retired PSM officer said.

“If PSM has to survive, top appointments should be handled by a search committee, rather than by politicians. The strategy could be more effective if emoluments were performance-based and the PSM head be made personally accountable for dubious deals”, said a management expert.

General Saeed Qadir, ex-chairman PSM, when approached for comments in Islamabad said: “Its pains me when I see the present state of PSM. The project was giving profit a year ago. In my view the following factors led to its decline: wrong appointment of CEO, no check on rampant corruption, international recession and decline in the pace of domestic growth”.

“The CEO of PSM was more of a front man who had never managed any mechanical operation in his entire career what to speak of running the country’s largest integrated plant. The CEO therefore had nothing to offer to steer this most challenging project infested with all sorts of problems including inefficiency, corruption, dealer mafia, contractors’ cartels and above all political interference”, commented General Qadir.

Kahyam Siddiqui, an officer of Tawairqi Steel, and Khalid Khan CEO of Al Abbas Steel, expressed their concern over the state of affairs and said the PSM was a major source of raw material for the steel re-rolling sector in the country.

“What has been done has been done, the blame game should stop and efforts should be focused on saving the PSM”, Khalid said.

Russia and other former Soviet republics have one of the world's worst air traffic safety records, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Experts have blamed weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality among many carriers for the fatal accidents in recent years. Here is a list:

March 1997: Fifty passengers and crew die when the tail of their An-24 charter plane from Stavropol, Russia, breaks off mid-flight while flying to Trabzon, Turkey.

December 1997: A Tajikistan Tupolev-154 crashes into a river about 13km from the airport in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, killing 85 passengers and crew.

July 2001: A Tupolev-154 on a domestic flight from Yekaterinburg in western Russia to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast of Russia, crashes near the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing all 143 on board. The aircraft was approaching Irkutsk, a scheduled refuelling stop, when it crashed.

October 2001: A Tupolev-154 from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Russia, explodes and plunges into the Black Sea, killing 78 people, most of them Israeli citizens. It was later determined that the plane was hit by a Ukrainian missile during military training exercises.

July 2002: A Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev-154 flying to Barcelona, Spain, from Ufa, Russia, collides with a cargo plane over Germany, killing 71, including 52 children.

January 2004: An Uzbekistan Airways Yak-42D on a domestic flight from Termez to Tashkent crashes in heavy fog during its final approach to the airport. All five crew members and 32 passengers were killed, including the senior United Nations representative in Uzbekistan.

August 2004: 90 people die when two Russian airliners are blown up, apparently by Chechen suicide bombers, within minutes of each other.

May 2006: An Airbus 320 of the Armenian airline Armavia crashes into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather, killing all 113 people aboard.

July 2006: At least 124 people die when an Airbus A-310 from the Russian S7 company skids off the runway in the Siberian city of Irkutsk and bursts into flames after hitting a concrete building.

August 2006: A Tupolev Tu-154 of Russia's Pulkovo Airlines with about 170 people aboard crashes in Ukraine as it travels from the Russian resort of Anapa to St Petersburg. All on board are killed.

March 2007: A UT Air Tupolev-134A touches down about 400m short of the runway at Samara in Russia before breaking up and catching fire. All seven crew members survived, but six of the 50 passengers were killed.

August 2008: A Boeing 737-500 carrying 90 people, including a Kyrgyz high-school sports team, crashes after reporting a technical problem following take-off near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, killing 65.

November 2009: Eleven crew members are killed when a Russian military cargo plane crashes on takeoff in the Siberian city of Mirny.

Do get a move on
After a long lull, the Americans believe they can get the talks going again
Jan 21st 2010 | JERUSALEM | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by David Simonds

BARACK OBAMA’S peace envoy, George Mitchell, is back in his Middle East bailiwick after two months away, apparently hopeful he can get Israelis and Palestinians to agree to “terms of reference” that would let long-stalled negotiations resume. Both sides still balk at his draft document’s latest wording. Mr Mitchell is begging Egypt, Jordan and the Saudis to help him nudge the Palestinians back to the table. There is now at least a chance they will succeed.

The Israelis say they are ready to resume talks with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), “without preconditions”. But in the same breath, Israeli officials suggest that Binyamin Netanyahu, their prime minister, may seek alternative approaches, hinting at unilateral map-making of the West Bank, perhaps even with an American wink. They even speak of a “Jordanian option”, a long-discarded old favourite of Israeli hawks that would drastically water down Palestinian independence.

Mr Abbas, who is still running the Palestinian Authority despite his promise (or was it really a threat?) to step down in protest against what he sees as Israel’s intransigence, is sticking to his demand for a full freeze on Israeli settlement-building, in Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank, before the talks can resume. Mr Netanyahu’s announcement in November of a partial and temporary freeze, welcomed by the Americans, is still not good enough for the Palestinians. The ten-month moratorium is “far less than what was requested,” says Mr Mitchell, “but more significant than any action taken by any previous government of Israel for the 40 years that the settlement [movement] has existed.”

Mr Netanyahu’s freeze has two aspects. Israeli soldiers recently tore down a caravan put up by settlers at Elon Moreh, a settlement in the West Bank’s northern heart. In contrast, Jewish Israelis are moving unimpeded into homes they claim to own in the middle of Sheikh Jarrah, an all-Palestinian district of East Jerusalem. Recent Palestinian calls for an initial six-month freeze on settlement-building in the city’s eastern part have so far fallen on deaf Israeli ears.

Mr Mitchell’s proposed terms of reference for new talks would have both sides accepting the 1967 border as the basis of a final accord, with land swaps enabling Israel to annex the largest settlements closest to the old border, while the Palestinians would add equivalent tracts to their own state. The wording would let the Palestinians contend that what is envisaged is a Palestinian state recovering the equivalent acreage conquered by Israel in 1967. This dramatic breakthrough apparently occurred in private in talks between Mr Abbas and Israel’s then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in late 2008—but nothing was signed. Israel’s present negotiators stress that Mr Netanyahu has not endorsed this “100% principle”. If he did, his largely right-wing government would, they argue, fall.

To soften Israeli resistance, the Mitchell draft also stresses Israel’s Jewishness, the need to accept some “facts on the ground” (ie, the permanence of the largest close-to-the-line settlements), and the primacy of Israel’s security. But that raises the hackles of the Palestinians, who argue that the latest wording weakens the force of the 100% principle. Harping on Israel’s Jewishness is code, they say, for limiting the rights of Israel’s 1.5m Arab citizens, a fifth of the total.

The Olmert-Abbas talks have gained weight as the peace process falters. The two leaders were close to agreement not only on a territorial principle that most foreign governments endorse but also on the tricky issue of Jerusalem. Mr Olmert proposed a five-party commission, comprising Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, to administer the entire “Holy Basin”, the much-disputed area that includes the Old City, what Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims the Noble Sanctuary, the Western Wall and the main Christian shrines. No single state would have sovereignty—only God.

Many prominent Palestinians are sorry such vital understandings were not nailed down. But Mr Abbas contended then and later that Mr Olmert was a lame duck, facing corruption charges and poised to resign. If and when talks resume, the Palestinians want to pick up where they left off. But Mr Netanyahu’s people say that Israel’s new government, elected by a right-lurching public, cannot be bound by such unsigned, unpalatable understandings.

Backed by European leaders, Mr Mitchell is urging Mr Abbas to give talks a chance. Once they get going, the envoy implies, America will press Israel to extend its moratorium. “We think that the negotiation should last no more than two years,” he says. “Personally, I think it can be done in a shorter period of time.” Mr Mitchell is plainly one of nature’s optimists. But he is also a tough and shrewd negotiator.

Pakistan should have a law on domestic child labour as well as domestic labour in general.
By Anees Jillani

IT is sad that a fellow lawyer — and a senior one — should be allegedly involved in torturing Shazia, a 12-year-old girl who was a domestic worker at his house, to the extent that she died. Shazia belonged to the Christian community that faces discrimination in our society.
It was not surprising then that the police was reluctant to register an FIR against the accused and only public uproar forced it to take action.

Chaudhry Naeem, the main accused in the FIR, is an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and was formerly president of the Lahore Bar Association. He is allegedly the guilty party in this case, but is he the only one involved in such cruelty? Millions of households all over the country are employing children under the age of 18. Are they not all guilty of the same crime, although many continue to justify it on the grounds of helping a poor child? Child labour is generally legally permissible in the country, due to major loopholes in the relevant legislation. Employment of all children in the age group of 14 to 18 years is allowed in all sectors whether formal or informal.

There are few areas in the formal sector that prohibit labour by children under 14 years, and it is legally allowable in a few sectors with certain restrictions. And then come the big sectors, like domestic child labour, agricultural labour and selfemployed children, which remain totally unregulated.

The media has thankfully picked up on the Shazia case and will hopefully follow the issue until a positive outcome is achieved. A section of civil society has also been galvanised. But it has repeatedly been pointed out to the relevant govern ments that the scope of child labour laws needs to be urgently broadened, and the big gaps in them must be plugged.

All kinds of projects dealing with domestic child labour have been launched. Fancy reports based on surveys have been prepared. They are all now gathering dust. Many in the donor community must now be thinking of commenc ing yet another project on this issue. The Shazias of this country do not need more projects. What we desire and need is action on the part of the federal and provincial governments.

Ideally, Pakistan should have a law governing not just domestic child labour but domestic labour in general. This is the most neglected field as domestic workers employed in people’s households are secluded and thus do not exist as a group and are difficult to reach and be counted. They do domestic chores including cooking, caring for children and running errands at meagre salaries and work totally unregulated hours with no weekly days off.

Quite a few of them — particularly the children — live in deplorable conditions. This is the invisible workforce of Pakistan, and it is high time that a national law was enacted. And if the political will is missing at the national level, then at least provincial laws should be enacted. Giving cheques to Shazia’s parents and hugging her father in front of the cameras is not a solution to the problem. Much more needs to be done on the legislative front.

Pakistan’s constitution only prohibits child labour below the age of 14 years in factories, mines and other areas considered hazardous occupations. The latter term remains undefined but one can argue that child domestic work falls into this category. Additionally, the Factories Act 1934 prohibits under-14 employment in factories, the Mines Act 1923 in mines and the Shops & Establishments Ordinance 1969 in offices and restaurants.

The Employment of Children Act 1991 has a schedule with two parts that lists 38 sectors where employing children under 14 is prohibited. Domestic child labour can easily be added by the federal government to this schedule to outlaw it. The contravention of this ban in the 1991 act is punishable with imprisonment extending to one year, or with a fine of up to Rs20,000, or both.

It is about time that the authorities concerned and the relevant stakeholders — including employers, parents, media and even children — realise that a child employed is a future destroyed. Poverty may be a major cause of child labour but poverty is also caused by child labour. A child who fails to go to school will end up working in menial jobs without learning any major skills all his life and will consequently remain poor.

The vicious cycle of poverty will thus continue. State intervention is required to break this cycle, and the sooner we do it, the more Shazias we will be able to save. ¦ The writer has written Child Labour: the Legal Aspects. aJ@Jillani.org

Drones and the law
Given the increasing frequency of drone attacks in Pakistan, human rights groups must unite in protesting their illegality and garner the support of the international community against them.
By Rafia Zakaria

ACCORDING to newspaper reports, nearly 19 drone attacks have taken place in Pakistani territory in the first month of 2010. The number swells to nearly 60 if the total attacks in 2009 are added to the figure.
In recent months, international and local attention has begun to focus on the legality of these attacks and the international instruments that control incursions by one government organisation into the territory of another.

In the United States, some of these questions have begun to arise as commentators begin to evaluate President Obama’s first year in office in relation to the promises of his campaign. In Pakistan, debates have been instigated by the attacks themselves as well as recent threats of their reach being expanded to beyond the immediate border areas and South Waziristan.

The doctrine of jus ad bellum or the right to wage war is the subject of several international treaties that together provide a legal framework that defines the parameters for lawful conflict between nations. Article 2(4) of the UN charter provides that: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Based on the article, unless justifications are provided, drone attacks in their current form are in contravention of the UN charter and hence a violation of international law.

The most prominent justification offered by the US is that these attacks are occurring with the consent of the Pakistani government. Consent, it seems, obviates any violation of the UN charter. Specifically, Article 20 of the UN’s ‘Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts’ states: “Valid consent by a state to the commission of an act by another state precludes the wrongfulness of the act in relation to the former state to the extent that the act remains within the limits of that consent.” Simply speaking, the argument is that since Pakistan implicitly agrees to the use of drones on its territory, it consequently precludes the possibility of complaining against any international law violations. As noted by Sean Murphy in his article on the legality of drone attacks, the problem with this justification is that it has been based almost entirely on news reports and ambiguous indications by unnamed officials.

Indeed, one Washington Post report of September 2008 states that while Pakistan “formally protests such actions as a violation of its sovereignty, the Pakistani government has generally looked the other way when the CIA conducted Predator missions or US troops respond to cross-border attacks by the Taliban”.

The consent justification also becomes problematic in the light of the actual statements that have been made by Pakistani leaders. Mere days after the report mentioning the tacit agreement with Pakistan, Gen Ashfaq Kayani stated: “There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border.” Ultimately, however, the consent argument is problematic because a covert or tacit agreement suggests the absence of a written instrument that demarcates the boundaries and instances of such incursions and the nature of those that are being consented to. The absence of such an agreement at worst makes the drone attacks a violation of international sovereignty and at best relegates them to the status of legal limbo. There is simply no stipulation of what is allowed, what area it covers and how long such incursions may occur, all crucial questions given the indefinite nature of the war on terror itself.

A second legal argument offered in justification of drone attacks is based on their status as acts of self-defence against attacks by non-state actors. Article 51 of the UN charter allows such actions provided that the military force used is necessary to achieve a defensive purpose and does not cause a disproportionate loss of civilian lives and property. Furthermore, it is necessary also that the non-state actors whose actions have motivated the defensive action are actually in control of the state.

In the present case, this argument would be based on the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was arrested in Pakistan and is accused of having planned the attacks there. The obvious problem, however, is that there is no proof whatsoever that the non-state group in question, Al Qaeda, is under the control of the Pakistani government.

Furthermore, if the argument for selfdefence is based on the fact that the Taliban are conducting raids against allied and US forces from across the border in Pakistan, it runs into a different problem. If the drone attacks are seen as motivated by the ‘hot pursuit’ doctrine through which they are actually pursuing Al Qaeda operatives who have attempted to escape across the Afghan border, then they must be connected to specific operations.

Instead, it is common knowledge based on statements made by various US defence and military officials that the drones are actually launched in response to intelligence gathered from reconnaissance al so conducted through drone aircraft, making the hot pursuit doctrine inapplicable in this situation.

While there has been much anger and public outcry against the drone attacks in Pakistan, there have been few attempts to present objections to international forums where the violations of international instruments can be noted. Commentators in the Pakistani media have focused exclusively on the utility of these attacks in killing foreign fighters rather than their legality. The problem with the former approach is that it evaluates the attacks from the angle of political and tactical considerations at the expense of the legal.

Given the increasing frequency of drone attacks in Pakistan, as well as the likelihood of the expansion of the programme, it is imperative that human rights and civil society groups in Pakistan unite in protesting the illegality of the attacks and attempt to garner the support of the international community against them. ¦ The writer is an attorney and director at Amnesty International, US. rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Talking to the Taliban

The former Taliban government was only ever officially recognised by three countries [AFP]

As Western leaders consider possible exit strategies from Afghanistan, a plan for encouraging Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons in return for money and jobs has several times been suggested.

Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, has said that peace must be reached "at any cost" and the scheme, which it is thought would cost between $500m to $1bn over five years, has prompted some furious policy debate.

Its critics argue that the West should avoid engaging the Taliban, especially when the conflict in Afghanistan is going so badly for the US and its allies leaving the group in a strong negotiating position.

But while US-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the West has been far more conciliatory to the Taliban in the past.

The Taliban emerged in the 1990s as a Sunni movement of Pashtun tribes and their supporters.

The group took Kabul and established their rule, including enforcing their interperatation of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Afghanistan in 1996, amid the civil conflict that had erupted in the wake of the Soviet defeat and withdrawal from the country.

Promising rule

In those early days, Western observers saw a group that appeared to be ready to bring an end to the corruption and chaos in Afghanistan.


The Taliban government was only ever officially recognised by the Pakistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

But, in 1996, after the group had taken power, the Taliban were engaged by US oil company Unocal, which hoped to build an oil export pipeline through Afghanistan.
For their part, the Taliban saw in the plan an opportunity to gain greater recognition from the US.

Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek militia leader, visited the US at the oil company's behest and visits from other Taliban officials followed.

But the plans attracted criticism from human rights groups that objected to an American oil company's dealings with a group known for its repressive social policies and was abandoned.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan which under the Taliban was recovering from years of war, continued to recieve aid from Western governments and non-governmental organisations (NGO) until 1998, when the Taliban order the NGOs out of Afghanistan.

Bin laden emerges

That year also saw the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya by allies of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, who had taken sanctuary in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, prompting a US missile attack on the country.

The UN imposed sanctions in 1999 and 2000, hopping to pressure the Taliban into handing over bin Laden, and following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, American officials met Taliban representatives to demand that they surrender the al-Qaeda leader.

The Taliban's refusal precipitated the US-led invasion that brought an end to the group's rule.

But more recently, as public support for Western efforts in Afghanistan has faltered, officials have moved to re-engage the group, arguing specifically that low-level Taliban supporters could be persuaded to lay down their arms.

In July last year, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, told an audience at the US Council of Foreign Relations that it would be worth separating die-hard Taliban supporters from those less ideologically inclined.

'Reintegration'

On a trip to India earlier this month, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, reiterated that sentiment saying that "we may see a real growth of reintegration at the local or district or provincial level".


Clinton, centre, said it is worth separating die- hard and moderate Taliban supporters [AFP]

Even amid the conflict, Western powers have had some success engaging the Taliban.

In 2007, the British managed to bring Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a Taliban commander, on side, giving him the governorship of the Musa Qala district, though he has subsequently been accused of corruption.

But critics are wary, arguing that the time for such deals has been and gone, and that after nearly a decade of conflict, the Taliban has moved closer to al-Qaeda, pointing to the increasing use of al-Qaeda-style tactics such as suicide bombings.

But the near 10 years of conflict has wrought changes on the Western forces in Afghanistan too, and the move towards engagement may be driven, as Karzai said, by a desire for an end to the fighting "at any cost".

Asked this week whether he believed the Taliban could play a role in the future government of Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan, said: "I think any Afghan can play a role if they focus on the future, not the past."