‘Objectionable material’

IT is fair to say that the mix of ideology, religion and selective history taught in our public schools often leaves students unable to cope with the realities of the modern world. Some critics have even said that the curriculum is the main reason for the Pakistani population’s steady drift towards intolerance. Yet whenever efforts are made to reform the curriculum, powerful forces that insist on keeping intact the narrative in textbooks — one that was largely constructed in the Zia era — become active in order to mould the minds of the next generation. As reported in this paper on Saturday, the PTI-led government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has buckled under pressure exerted by Jamaat-i-Islami, its provincial coalition partner, and has decided to remove ‘objectionable material’ from primary school textbooks. We would assume any matter that promotes hatred and intolerance would fall under the category of ‘objectionable material’, but the Jamaat, it seems, has other ideas.

Reportedly, the party has issues with the presence of pictures of Christmas cakes and little girls without dupattas in schoolbooks, as well as the mention of ‘good morning’, instead of ‘As salaam-o-alaikum’. Moulding the curriculum so it is culturally appropriate is understandable, but these objections seem ridiculous. If anything, we need greater mention of other faiths and cultures in our textbooks so that our children are taught to appreciate diversity. Perhaps the JI and PTI should make an effort to educate youngsters about the values of harmony, tolerance and brotherhood so that their impressionable minds are exposed to an alternative narrative to counter the hate and poison that surrounds them. Also, there is much that needs to be fixed in KP’s education system before the administration starts worrying about Christmas cakes in textbooks. While some improvements have been made under the PTI’s watch where the management of the education system is concerned, matters largely remain the same. Additionally, much of the infrastructure, including girls’ schools, damaged by militants needs urgent attention. Instead of non-issues, it is these areas that the provincial government should be concentrating on.

A novel plan for PIA

A NEW plan is in the offing to bifurcate PIA into two companies and sell one of them to an international party. The plan would split PIA’s sprawling operations into two — creating an airline on one hand, and putting ground operations such as hotels, catering and ground handling in a separate compartment. The airline can then be sold off, while the other operations could be consolidated for sale later. This is, indeed, a novel idea and it should be given the space to succeed. Earlier efforts to privatise the state-owned airline have come to grief because of strident opposition from the labour unions who fear mass layoffs, and, reportedly, even from the Ministry of Defence which has large interests in the airline. The concerns of the labour unions are well understood, and layoffs at a time of high unemployment should be avoided to the extent possible. But all other considerations for retaining the airline as a national asset have now been overshadowed by the sorry state of the carrier’s affairs for a number of years now.

The fact that the airline has a workforce of 17,000 for a fleet of 36 aircraft, 10 of which are grounded, is evidence enough of its inefficiency. The accumulated losses, that had crossed Rs186bn when the plan was originally formulated in January, have left the airline with a debt burden of Rs276bn. This has made debt service one of its largest expenditure heads after operating costs. Having come this far, and stoked the embers of expectation, the government must now see through the successful implementation of the plan. Retaining PIA as a national carrier no longer appears workable, and if a viable path exists to divest the airline without sparking mass layoffs, then the plan deserves a chance. It is also worth noting that PIA would be amongst the first regional national airlines to be successfully privatised. However, it is equally important that mistakes of the past with regard to privatisation be avoided. Principal amongst these is wasting the proceeds. Since the government is intending to raise almost $4bn via its privatisation plan this year, it is crucial that we have thorough transparency on how those funds are utilised. The law requires them to be used for drawing down debt, not for financing the current account deficit. This must be ensured. Frittering away hard-fought gains has been a national failing for far too long now.

Kashmir at the core

SPEAKING at the UN General Assembly session on Friday was a Nawaz Sharif different to the one who had earned much flak from the hawks in Pakistan for his India vision of a few years ago. He was then an opposition leader who wanted to present himself as a moderate Pakistani politician. Now he is a prime minister who must represent his state’s interests which are made up of much more than a politician’s wishes. Pakistan and India are back at a place from where they have to build from scratch. And if internal Pakistani dynamics, such as Mr Sharif’s tenuous ties with the security establishment, have contributed to the responses today, India’s desire, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to act as an ‘emerging superpower’ has also deterred dialogue between the two countries. Last month’s cancellation of the foreign secretary-level talks by New Delhi, which deplored Pakistan’s contacts with leaders from India-held Kashmir, had heralded the suspension. In fact, the ground was being prepared for that eventuality and recent engagement between the two countries, when not cold, has been too heated. There were far too many incidents of firing on the Pakistan-India frontier if we are to cite just one significant reason for the deterioration in ties — and the gifts the two prime ministers exchanged were too bereft of substance to be of any long-term value.

Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir is based on a solid principle. The emphasis has varied, but Kashmir has been very much there influencing attitudes at the talks even when it was being kept out for the sake of confidence-building. On its part, New Delhi has also stuck to its guns over the disputed territory. Consequently, dialogue, which is always the best way forward and which in this case was kept going not least by the efforts of international powers, has been under constant threat. The basic reason for this engagement in recent times was that in a changed world, Pakistan and India could not continue their hostile ways if they hoped to keep pace with economic development. For many on this side of the border, the increasing insistence by Mr Modi’s India to dictate is rooted in the belief that India today is economically powerful enough for international players to side with it — tacitly and openly. That would mean greater pressure on Pakistan which has an image problem and a host of economic problems to deal with. But this formula disregards the fact that Islamabad cannot ignore or compromise on Kashmir. There is no denying that Kashmir is a central issue, but the only way it can be dealt with is by including the Kashmiris in the discussion — rather than using them to sustain nationalistic refrains. That fact must not be lost sight of.

Published in Dawn, September 28th , 2014

Infant’s kidnapping

IT’S a long-standing issue that hasn’t been able to attract the attention it merits: that of the kidnapping of newborns, usually from the hospital they were born in. There are no aggregate numbers other than what can be gleaned from media reports, and barely anyone to keep track of whether the infants were recovered or not. On Thursday, the despicable crime was apparently committed yet again, this time in Lahore. The baby’s family says that the boy, born a few hours earlier at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, was in the facility’s gynaecology ICU and his maternal aunt was attending to him. According to the father, staff on duty sent the aunt away to buy medicine, and was upon return informed that another woman proclaiming herself to be a relative had taken the baby away. The family alleges corruption on part of the hospital staff, further complaining that neither the ICU duty staff nor the hospital gatekeeper bothered to check the identity of the purported ‘relative’.

The hospital administration, for its part, claims that the mother herself handed the baby over to another woman. An investigation has been promised and for the sake of the family, and the unfortunate boy himself; it is to be hoped that the matter doesn’t end up being dusted under the carpet. The fact is that this crime has been reported sporadically from cities and towns across the country, from Peshawar to Karachi. In some cases, the kidnapped infant has been recovered; but in others, he or she has been lost forever. And while the eventual fate of such children cannot be guessed at, it is bound to be tragic — certainly, police have on occasion busted gangs involved in trafficking kidnapped babies. It behoves hospital staff, therefore, to urgently step up vigilance and accept their responsibility. Families, too, need to be made aware of the unscrupulous elements that often haunt hospital corridors. This crime needs to be dragged out of the darkness and be made the focus of a concerted investigation.

Assessing losses

A STORY is being propagated that the economy has suffered massive damage due to the protests in Islamabad, and the floods in Punjab. Most recently, the finance secretary appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, and complained that the economy, the image of the country, investor sentiment and inflation all had been adversely impacted by both events. Investors have shelved their plans; the rupee had slid from Rs98 to Rs103 to a dollar; the IMF had delayed its tranche; and inflation would probably be fuelled “on account of supply disruption of commodities due to dharnas and rallies” as well as the recent floods. He also touched on the external trade deficit, although it is far from clear how this might be linked to the floods or the protests. In short, everything was going fine until the floods and the protests came along and upset the apple cart, we are being told. All of these claims strain credulity. The story should be received with a large dose of scepticism because there is sufficient evidence that the economy was sputtering long before the floods and the protests descended on us.

How have the dharnas contributed to inflation, or to supply bottlenecks, except in the opening days when the government tried to choke all movement in an effort to stop the marches Moreover, the Fund as well as the State Bank had flagged the fragile nature of the recovery that the government was boasting of, and as late as July, the central bank was voicing scepticism about the growth story. The trade deficit was flagged as an issue much earlier in the year, and the value of the currency at Rs98 to a dollar was considered untenable from the very beginning. The build-up in the reserves was a positive sign all of last year, but it had also been underlined as driven by “one-off inflows” early in the year. The circular debt had returned to its previous levels by July, and the power tariff subsidy had to be revised upward by almost 50pc midyear. There is little doubt that the floods and the protests have dented the economy, but it is also important to keep in mind that the government’s growth story was in significant trouble long before these events materialised. The Senate standing committee should bear this in mind when taking stock of the secretary’s testimony.

No end in sight

IT’S a strange kind of impasse the country is trapped in. The PML-N government is trying to limp on from the ongoing crisis, but in a peculiar way: the government appears to think that if it ignores the PTI and PAT protesters, they will disappear in time. Meanwhile, the PTI and PAT have been busy adjusting their anti-government protest strategy, with Imran Khan switching his attention from the sit-in on Constitution Avenue to a travelling protest each week in various parts of the country. Clearly, the big loser in all of this is the country and any prospect of governance taking centre stage anytime soon. Consider that a summer of turmoil has morphed into an autumn of discord – and still there is no end in sight. Surely, this is not a sustainable scenario for a state and society contending with deep and complicated problems that only keep growing with time. Part of the problem was and remains the PML-N itself. Even when it attempts to create a veneer of semi-normality, the government seems to be undone by itself. The UN trip of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last week could have been an opportunity to put forward a confident face, to show that the government is thinking long-term about economic, political and social issues back home. Instead, the trip was lacklustre with little real planning or foresight seeming to have gone into it.

Perhaps that was because the trip was not a certainty until the last moment and most work at the UN General Assembly’s annual session is planned weeks and months in advance. But it does betray a larger point about the government’s performance so far: the promise and expectation has been so much higher than actual delivery. In area after area, be it the power sector or administrative reforms or parliamentary performance, the PML-N simply seems mired in old ways, unable or perhaps unwilling to forcefully move the democratic project ahead. Unhappily, the PML-N still does not appear to understand that as the chief custodian of the democratic project, the onus falls on the party to strengthen democracy and improve governance in a manner that can address the wellspring of discontent among the population. Yet, for all its shortcomings and placidity, the PML-N is in truth confronted by an opponent who is difficult to contend with. For all his claims about wanting to rewrite the social contract and to improve governance, Imran Khan’s quest comes down to a single issue: ousting the PML-N from power so that the PTI has another shot at capturing power. Raging against injustices – of which there are many, pillorying an under-delivering state – which it does, excoriating a government for not truly being democratic in spirit – which it isn’t, is all well and good, but it leaves a fundamental question unanswered: what is Mr Khan’s concrete and measurable plan for change? It’s not even that the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s performance has been less than stellar, but that Mr Khan does not even attempt to flesh out how, on what time scale and in which areas reforms would be prioritised and delivered. Without any of that, how is the PTI any different from the status quo it lambastes?

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

Apology and after

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s message to party workers and followers is reminiscent of the sentiments of a general who is striving to keep his troops together for the next battle. In an open letter, he has apologised to those who may have reason to part ways with the PPP and has asked the disillusioned to stay put a while longer, making it incumbent upon himself and Asif Ali Zardari to take some drastic steps towards the party’s revival. The PPP has not only been reduced to a regional party, more or less confined to Sindh, its support is considered emotionally inspired. It has drawn widespread criticism for not keeping pace with the people who have far more at stake today than backing a political party purely out of their love for the ‘martyrs’ the party has produced. Declaring one’s intention to take up where Ms Benazir Bhutto left off can only be meaningful if the PPP is willing to back its words with reorganisation along practical, result-oriented lines all over the country. The old stories about how the PPP once swayed Pakistanis across various divides are now mere opium that can only make those at the party’s helm oblivious to the current realities. It was easier for the PPP in the 1960s during the years leading to its founding. The repair now is a much more sensitive job, not least because others have been more inventive and mobile than the PPP, and the debate about whether or not they have moved in the right direction is a luxury which Bilawal Bhutto Zardari cannot afford at the moment.

The simple reality is that the people have found themselves choices and a new force to challenge the long-time PPP opponent — the PML-N — that had over all these decades provided an automatic justification for the existence of the PPP. The PTI is a challenge to grapple with. Imran Khan appears to have eaten deep into the PPP support base particularly in Punjab comprising anti-PML-N pockets — and the PPP’s policy of playing the appendage of PML-N is further harming its cause. To say that apologies are solutions would be as futile as dismissing this message by the PPP chairman as an instrument of surrender. For whatever it is worth, his letter does provide broad lines of policy and identifies the PPP with the ‘left-wing’ forces. It falls short of stating the obvious about who controls the politics in the country, but at the same time does promise resistance to “right-wing parties” that “appease” the extremists. For practical reasons, the edgy PPP jiyala would be hoping that these appeasers in the new party rule book would include both the PTI and PML-N. Though this is a dangerous course, this ideological focus is as crucial to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and his party’s rise as to the effort to organise at the grass roots.

Confident consumers

ALL is not as gloomy as it might appear. Investor confidence might be plummeting and the country’s savings rate may be the lowest in the region. We might be slipping further in competitive rankings, and the outlook of our credit rating may be hanging by a thread tethered to the IMF. But our consumers are amongst the most confident in the world. “Pakistani consumers are generally optimistic” finds a report by the research company Nielson. The State Bank’s own consumer confidence index reports a rising score between July last year and this year. Given that wage levels have been stagnant over this time period, while inflation has hovered around 8pc, these results can be a little puzzling. How are people spending more when they are earning less? The erudite find answers in the parallel economy, the so-called informal sector, which perhaps surged while the rest of the economy barely moved at a rate of 4.1pc.

The key word here is ‘perhaps’, because there is no reliable way of knowing for sure what is going on in the informal sector. But to those less encumbered by the methodological baggage of the erudite, no evidence is required beyond what a pair of eyes and ears can provide. Perhaps Pakistanis are spending more today because they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. And the less they know about the shape of tomorrow, the more likely they are to use it all up today. Saving and investment are for fools and squirrels when you live in a present, where tomorrow always falls in a faraway land. Here it’s all about the quick score and flaunting what you have. Let others worry about sending a mission to Mars; we can simply announce a housing colony up there and start trading plot files right away. So through all the turbulence, let us rejoice over the wind in our sails that has kept us in such fickle stead through the fiercest of storms — and let a million malls blossom.

A broken system

IN Pakistan, one of the major factors contributing to rampant lawlessness is quite simply that criminals don’t get caught. And if they do, weak investigation and prosecution means that soon enough, dangerous individuals are back on the streets. In fact, the data collected by the Faisalabad police serves as an eye-opener to indicate just how rotten the system is. Information collected by the district police reportedly shows that over the last five years, around 8,000 suspected criminals have been released for a number of reasons. Some of the suspects were apprehended for alleged involvement in crimes ranging from murder to robbery. The reasons for their release will be familiar to anyone with an idea of the workings of Pakistan’s law-enforcement and criminal justice systems. The suspects were let off because witnesses were too afraid to testify, while even investigation officers and judges faced threats. Alarming as the figure seems, considering the moribund state of the law-enforcement and prosecution systems countrywide, the numbers for the district should not be too surprising. Due to massive holes in the system, the Faisalabad police have resorted to ad hoc measures to detain suspects, such as applying Maintenance of Public Order laws.

This comes across as a relatively more tolerable way of keeping suspects behind bars, given that our law enforcers are known to use other, extra-legal methods, to ‘get rid’ of troublesome suspects. To assess the situation perhaps a similar district-level exercise could be carried out countrywide. In each district, the police should make public the number of suspects released, along with the reasons why. This would give reform efforts benchmark figures to work with. The next — and more difficult step — involves improving the capability and capacity of police forces to investigate crime. Today, mostly archaic methods — that largely rely on confessions, statements and informers — are used to build a case. Officials have often cited the need for using forensics to aid investigation efforts, hence it is time noble intentions were transformed into action and scientific investigation techniques introduced at the grass roots. And as the investigation system is modernised, the prosecution system also needs to be overhauled. The need for effective witness protection programmes has long been highlighted in the country, yet progress is painfully slow. Unless the state ushers in long-lasting changes in the investigation and prosecution systems, it will be unable to provide justice to the people and law and order will continue to plummet.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

PTCL suspension

SINCE technology dictates and defines everyday life so comprehensively a suspension of the routine is all the more paralysing. Following a blaze at a PTCL installation on Sunday, Lahore and some other parts of Punjab found themselves cut off from the world without the technology they had come to take for granted. Thousands of telephones, landlines and some operations by mobile phone companies linked to PTCL went dead and internet services were disrupted. Consequently, work was severely curtailed in many areas, prominent among them banks, educational institutions, the media industry and IT-related businesses. The fire incident took place just as the week leading up to Eidul Azha was about to get under way. This is the season when everyone is in a hurry to complete assignments before settling down to enjoy the holiday.

The disruption caused by PTCL added an element of panic to the pre-Eid rush and the flurry of explanations and promises of early resumption of normal operations put forward by the affected organisations did little to ease concerns. For many who found themselves constrained by the unexpected suspension of communications, the situation was not without irony. How come something that was there to speed up their work was not capable of quickly fixing a fault in its own system? Questions were raised about the precautions taken at the sensitive premises hit by the fire, and on Monday, there were reports that the city district government of Lahore was looking at forensic evidence to ascertain the cause. However, even if it was an accident that had taken place despite the best possible measures to prevent one, consumers were justifiably shocked and puzzled at the amount of time it took to restore the system to even a minimum level of functionality. Though some urgent effort was put in to resolve the issues and a few connections were restored faster than the others, the calls are for greater security of the system and a brisker response in case of an emergency.

Karachi operation

ON the face of it, the numbers appear impressive. A briefing on the Karachi operation, given by a Sindh Rangers official to the Senate Standing Committee on Interior, stated that the Rangers had conducted 3,696 raids, arrested 6,835 suspects and seized 5,214 weapons during the first year of the initiative. Although the briefing, which claimed that the operation had wiped out the TTP network in Karachi, was coy on details of the crackdown’s impact on various categories of criminal offences, police officials have often been quoted as saying the operation has brought down crime by 50pc, with the steepest drop in murders committed along political or ethnic lines. But Karachi is complex and Machiavellian, and has multiple stakeholders with often conflicting agendas. Hence, these claims need to be placed in context to understand the larger picture and gauge whether the gains are sustainable. While the decline in political/ethnic murders has indeed been marked, developments at home and abroad may have also played a role in reducing friction between political activists inclined to ‘robust’ means of conflict resolution.

For one thing, in the months following the 2013 elections, the main parties in Karachi, perhaps feeling vulnerable with a heavily mandated PML-N asserting its writ at the centre, made attempts to bridge their differences and these efforts culminated in their joining forces to run the province. This has been a fraught year for the MQM anyway with legal problems dogging its leader in London. Meanwhile, nearly 400 raids on the People’s Amn Committee during the course of the operation have brought down large-scale, gang-related violence in Lyari, but it is relevant to point out that almost as soon as the operation began, the gangs’ top tier leadership fled the area — some, intriguingly, even made it abroad. As for breaking the back of the TTP in Karachi, the briefing stated that the Rangers had arrested 760 terrorists in 403 raids on militant hideouts, but a cursory glance at newspapers on most days shows that sectarian killers — one faction of whom is said to be closely associated with the TTP — are going about their business without let or hindrance. Of late, relatives of prominent ulema have also been targeted, indicating a degree of planning which points to the existence of determined, well-organised gangs. Given these realities, it will take nothing less than a holistic approach — involving systemic, far-reaching reforms — to grapple with the criminal landscape of Karachi.

Pak-Afghan ties: the road ahead

THE history is so long and fraught and the problems so complex that the start of the Ashraf Ghani presidency in Afghanistan cannot immediately be seen as a new beginning in ties between Islamabad and Kabul. There are though fresh possibilities now that the Hamid Karzai era is over. Mr Karzai in his final speech in office exemplified quite how impossible it had become to hope for major breakthroughs in ties while he was still around: the rancour and vitriol Mr Karzai directed at Pakistan was neither new nor surprising and had thoroughly poisoned all facets of the relationship. President Ghani, meanwhile, is seen as a pragmatist who is aware that peace and stability in the region will depend on Pak-Afghan relations. Of course, with a power-sharing agreement in place in Afghanistan, it remains to be seen to what extent the Abdullah Abdullah camp — especially the hawks in the erstwhile Northern Alliance — impacts foreign policy and the national security choices of Afghanistan. Despite Pakistan’s reaching out several years ago, the remnants of the Northern Alliance, so influential in Kabul during the Karzai era, never really warmed to the idea. Much then could depend on how domestic politics between the Ghani and Abdullah camps shape Afghan policy towards Pakistan.

The immediate priority for both the Pakistani and Afghan sides should be to reduce the acute tensions along the border between eastern Afghanistan and Fata. Where security forces on both sides have targeted sites across the border, there needs to be an immediate cessation. But the problem is really one of sanctuaries and cross-border attacks — so long as militants on both sides of the border are present and active, the risk of an escalation between Pakistani and Afghan security forces remains very real. Eventually, the two countries, if they are ever to deal with the problem on a long-term basis, will need to move towards better border management in a way that makes it less porous but still accessible for legitimate people traffic. Yet, that surely does not mean putting everything else on hold, especially intelligence cooperation and re-energising military-to-military contacts across the border to make clashes less likely. From there, there are the truly big issues. Pakistan facilitating an internal Afghan reconciliation between the government and the Afghan Taliban would be at the top of that list and the one measure against which much of Islamabad’s intentions will be judged in Kabul and internationally. The protracted Afghan election process has added to lost time so a big gesture may be needed to revive the reconciliation process — one that could be provided by Pakistan. If the goals are kept reasonable but clear and both Pakistani and Afghan sides show they understand the past cannot be repeated, there is a possibility for a shared, better future.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

A new approach?

IT could be out-of-the-box thinking, but to what end is unclear at the moment. What one can posit about the Balochistan Assembly’s resolution to approach the Khan of Kalat, Agha Suleman Dawood Khan, to return from self-exile in London and assume a role in restoring peace to Balochistan is that the initiative could mean different things to different people in the province’s fractured political landscape. When the 2013 elections brought moderate nationalists to power in Balochistan, observers deemed it a positive development because the National Party was seen as better placed to address the many problems bedevilling the province, including the insurgency as well as the feelings of extreme alienation that decades of ill-conceived policies had engendered among its people. Fundamental to any chance of reaching out to disaffected Baloch was that the establishment abandon its unconscionable kill-and-dump policy to crush the separatist movement. However, the powers that be have continued to follow the same playbook, in the process undermining the Balochistan government. From his weak position, Dr Malik’s oft-stated intention to reach out to the leadership of militant groups was scarcely viable.

His support for the resolution could be another attempt in this direction, taking into account the Khan of Kalat’s standing in Balochistan, both in terms of tribal hierarchy as well as for historical reasons. The latter go back to the pre-Partition days when the princely state of Kalat, then ruled by the present Khan’s grandfather, held a pre-eminent position in the tribal confederacy that included much of central and southern Balochistan. However, Dr Malik may be clutching at straws, for many insurgents in the province consider the Kalat rulers as ‘traitors’ to the Baloch cause for having signed the Instrument of Accession to join Pakistan in 1948. As such, the militants may see overtures to Dawood Khan as further evidence of the state’s strategy of using proxies to further its ends. Indeed, the establishment has much to gain if the Khan can be persuaded to return; it is not in Pakistan’s interest for other regional players to be able to approach him or for him to go to the ICJ with Baloch grievances as he vowed to at a grand jirga convened after Akbar Bugti’s murder in 2006. Whatever the motives behind this recent resolution, the Khan’s return could be a catalyst for starting a crucial dialogue on important issues; that in itself would be a welcome change from the present suffocating impasse.

Counterterrorism challenges

THE National Counter-Terrorism Centre near Kharian, Gujrat, inaugurated by army chief Gen Raheel Sharif on Tuesday is a good time to raise an old question: what is the civilian-led law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus across the country doing to play its part in the fight against militancy? Expectedly, the military has talked up its purpose-built facility meant primarily to train army troops, but also foreign troops and local paramilitary and police personnel. While the military does have a legitimate and necessary role in specialised counterterrorism operations, the consensus in the world of anti-terrorism expertise is that dense, urban and built-up environments require civilian-led law-enforcement and intelligence operations. Consider though the state of that civilian-led apparatus across the provinces. In Punjab, an abortive and ill-advised attempt to create a parallel counterterrorism police force has been followed up with no real reforms of the existing police force. In Sindh, the operation in Karachi has seen the Rangers play a much bigger role than the police themselves. In Balochistan, the old problem of so-called A and B areas has left the police irrelevant and operationally confined to a tiny percentage of the province’s land mass.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a strong police leadership freed from the most intense aspects of political interference has restored some morale, but the police force as a whole has been battered and bruised by years of attacks by the Taliban. In Islamabad, the increased terror threat earlier this year required police from Punjab to be drafted in and, unhappily, Muhammad Sikander, the lone gunman on Jinnah Avenue in August 2013, has come to define the capital territory’s true policing potential. If a picture of weaknesses — and severe ones — on the civilian front were not dismal enough, the sense of near failure is reinforced by the drift in the policy arena. Nacta, the much-touted but mostly neglected National Counter-Terrorism Authority, remains in limbo, despite repeated promises by successive governments to re-energise it. The National Internal Security Policy launched with much fanfare by the PML-N government appears to have been forgotten altogether.Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who propelled the creation of the NISP and is principally responsible for its execution, disappears for stretches of time over matters of politics. The revamped and renamed Cabinet Committee on National Security (formerly the Defence Committee of the Cabinet) was launched with much fanfare but has become a victim of civil-military discord and civilian apathy. Where then is counterterrorism policy to be debated and articulated on the civilian side, much less led operationally by the civilians? Is it any surprise then that the military is seeking to take the lead in yet another area where international experience and logic suggests the civilians ought to be leading? Winning the fight against militancy is as much about the right leadership as it is about the right strategy.

Militant monks

RELIGIOUS zealotry mixed with xenophobic nationalism can create a toxic ideology that has the ability to tear societies and nations apart. And when the state fails to check the growth of groups espousing such ideology at the initial stage, soon enough these outfits become too complex to handle. In both Sri Lanka and Myanmar, over the past few years ultranationalist Buddhist extremist groups — led by monks — have seen their profiles rise as they have campaigned, often violently, against the Muslim minorities in their respective countries. On Tuesday, two extremist groups, Sri Lanka’s Bodu Bala Sena and Myanmar’s 969 movement, signed an accord on the island nation to “protect Buddhism”. Yet the track record of both these groups indicates that the agreement may be about more than just exchanging notes on spiritual matters. Monks from both groups have led anti-Muslim mobs which have looted and plundered at will. For Sri Lanka, this is an especially worrying development as relations between the island nation’s Muslim and Sinhalese Buddhist communities have remained largely peaceful, while the country also faces no known threat from Islamist extremists. Yet if anti-Islam demagogues are allowed to preach hatred, it could lead to reactive radicalisation within the Muslim community. In Myanmar, the sufferings of the Muslim Rohingya are quite well-documented. Though Myanmar’s foreign minister has said the state has started the “verification process” that could lead to granting the Rohingya citizenship, the authorities will have to do far more to rein in Buddhist extremists that often target the Muslim minority. In both Myanmar and Sri Lanka, the state has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Buddhist extremists’ activities. We in Pakistan know that if demagogues and rabble-rousers are allowed to plant the seeds of hatred, the results can be highly destructive for communal and sectarian harmony. Narrow nationalism cloaked in the guise of religion can spell the death knell for pluralism. That is why both states need to confront the extremist threat before it grows out of control.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

Price of inaction

PAKISTAN’S drift towards international isolation is only matched by the state’s denial of this truth. On Wednesday, the joint US-India statement issued at the end of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington D.C. contained direct language seemingly focused on Pakistan. It is worth reproducing the relevant part of the text: “The [US and Indian] leaders stressed the need for joint and concerted efforts, including the dismantling of safe havens for terrorist and criminal networks, to disrupt all financial and tactical support for networks such as Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the D-Company and the Haqqanis. They reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai to justice.” On the same day, the US Treasury department announced sanctions against three Pakistanis, including Fazlur Rehman Khalil, and two Pakistan-based entities for links to the LeT and Harkatul Mujahideen, the foremost of the Kashmir-orientated militant groups in the country. Certainly India has its own reasons for trying to build an anti-Pakistan alliance, but our refusal to address militancy concerns has created more space for Delhi’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Take the official reaction by the Foreign Office yesterday in which the FO spokesperson focused on a UN terrorist watchlist and denied that the US move is “binding” on Pakistan.

Therein lies the problem: while Pakistan continues to baulk at acting against certain militant groups, the countries under threat from those organisations are moving closer to each other in order to counter the threat. Consider that the joint US-India statement also refers to “dismantling” terrorist safe havens: is that an ominous sign that however remote the possibility at the moment, the US and India have begun contemplating the possibility of targeted counterterrorist operations on Pakistani soil at some point in the future? Surely, that would be nothing short of a catastrophe for Pakistan with unknowable consequences for peace and security in the region. Yet, the country’s national security and foreign policy apparatus remains indifferent to or unaware of the storm that appears to be brewing. In truth, many of Pakistan’s problems are self-inflicted. The best that has ever been managed when it comes to pro-Kashmir militant groups is to put the state’s sponsorship of jihad in cold storage, as was done by Musharraf in the early part of the last decade. But, a decade on, the security establishment seems bent on continuing the policy of politically mainstreaming the leadership of groups such as the LeT, HuM and now even the Punjabi Taliban. That is what allows Hafiz Saeed and Fazlur Rehman Khalil to address rallies, appear routinely on TV and to go on organising their ranks and developing their organisations with a brazenness and confidence that has the rest of the world looking on with alarm. Truly, the outside world can legitimately ask why the Mumbai-related Rawalpindi trials are stuck in limbo. The signals from D.C. are clear: if Pakistan doesn’t act, others will.

Wazirabad scuffle

THE anti-government ‘go Nawaz go’ slogan seems to have gone viral, thanks largely to the campaign being run by the PTI and PAT in Islamabad. Over the past few days, we have come across numerous reports of the slogan being raised in different forums, usually where members of the PML-N are present. Understandably, the N-League is extremely displeased with the frequent repetition of the stinging phrase. Patience in the party’s ranks is wearing thin and matters came to a head at an event in Wazirabad in Punjab’s Gujranwala district, where the prime minister had come to distribute cheques to flood victims. The situation turned ugly when PML-N workers, reportedly led by a provincial lawmaker, thrashed PTI supporters for raising the slogan after Nawaz Sharif had left the venue. As per remarks on television, Taufeeq Butt, the MPA in question, said similar treatment would be meted out to protesters who raised the dreaded slogan again. Deplorable as the violence is, what is totally unacceptable is the PML-N leadership’s apparent defence of the brutal tactics its activists applied to silence their opponents. Tweeting after the incident, Maryam Nawaz appeared to gloat over the ‘performance’ in Wazirabad, warning PTI supporters “not to mess with lions”. Political dissent is an essential ingredient of democracy. Yet what has been observed about both sides — the government as well as those in Islamabad calling for its departure — is that there is a visible lack of tolerance. We can question the timing and occasion where slogans are raised, but stamping out dissent through brute force smacks of authoritarianism. A few days ago, another protester raising the ‘go Nawaz go’ slogan was beaten up at a function in Lahore. Instead of using such methods, protesters can firmly but in a non-violent manner be asked to take their demonstration elsewhere. Meanwhile, party leaders would do well not to encourage any hooliganism in the lower cadres, which could worsen matters. All sides need to use democratic methods to express dissent, as well as to counter it.

Unfair protections

THE Competition Commission of Pakistan is back in the news with an important order against three state-owned construction companies. When they were formed, the National Logistics Cell, the Frontier Works Organisation and the National Construction Limited, were allowed an exemption from furnishing various types of sureties for work they undertook for the federal and provincial governments. Their competitors in the private sector, by contrast, have been required to furnish these sureties, ranging from bank guarantees to secure performance bonds and mobilisation advances, and retention money adjustment for example. Since such sureties tie up large amounts of the contractor’s funds, private parties say these exemptions give the three state-owned companies a huge unfair advantage, and place “burdensome terms” on their private-sector competitors. The CCP finds that the exemptions were originally granted to “allow growth under protection to achieve economies of scale”. Since their establishment decades ago, the economy has opened up to encourage greater private-sector competition but the exemptions have remained in place. The CCP finds that the three state-owned companies “no longer need protections in the form of exemptions”, keeping in mind “their ability to compete abroad”.

It is heartening to see the CCP asserting itself in an important matter. Providing a level playing field for all players is a key function for the government. Since the exemptions distort the market in the key construction sector of the economy, they create barriers for entry for other players, the CCP says. And since hundreds of billions of rupees flow through government contracts for construction in any given fiscal year, the size of the market that private parties are being discouraged from entering is enormous. Of particular concern is the fact that two of these companies enjoying exemptions come under the Ministry of Defence. The defence production sector has long enjoyed exemption from the structural adjustment measures undertaken by the government over the past three decades. If companies in this sector are enjoying profitable years while the rest of the public sector sags under the weight of accumulating losses, it is because exemptions of this sort have been granted in many other forms as well. Perhaps the CCP should look into similar uncompetitive practices in other state-owned enterprises in the defence production sector, which has escaped the brunt of budget cuts and subsidy rollbacks that other SOEs have had to suffer over the decades.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2014

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"I am still learning."

Hockey defeat

THE Pakistan hockey team’s failure to defend its title at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea on Thursday has disappointed its fans and experts of the game. Although the team fought valiantly for the title in the final, holding arch-rivals India 1-1 in regulation time, they were found wanting in the penalty shootout and eventually lost the battle 5-3, relinquishing the gold earned four years ago at Guangzhou, China. It was an unlikely end to Pakistan’s otherwise lively hockey campaign at the Games where they remained unbeaten in their group, defeating teams like India, Malaysia, China and Oman on their way to the final. India, by virtue of their win, will now get a direct ticket to the 2016 Olympics while Pakistan will take the thorny path of playing the qualifiers in order to enter the mega event. It is, indeed, a big setback for the national team that failed to qualify for the World Cup early this year, the first such occasion for them in the 42-year history of the tournament.

Having said that, there were still a number of positives for Pakistan at the Asiad. For the first time in many years, the team showed glimpses of the high-class game often attributed to the Asian hockey giants in decades past. It was encouraging to see talented youngsters like Umar Bhutta, Imran Butt, Mohammad Waqas and teenager Mohammad Dilber making their mark at the event and holding their own in pressure games like the ones against India and Malaysia. One must also hand it to head coach Shahnaz Sheikh who worked very hard to prepare the team for the Incheon extravaganza at the gruelling training camp set up in Lahore prior to the Games. Hockey has gone through a major transformation over the years insofar as the rules and regulations are concerned. However, the International Hockey Federation’s latest move to divide the game into four quarterly sessions has clearly robbed the game of its beauty and thrill, and needs to be reviewed.

Tahirul Qadri & polls

ON the 50th day of his dharna, Tahirul Qadri finally declared his intention of taking part in the electoral politics of the country. He is not only ready for the rough and tumble of the general election, but is also prepared to join those contesting the local government polls — if and when someone decides to hold them. The Pakistan Awami Tehreek chief might still link his participation in the election to a reform of the system first. It could well be that, denied an exit after having encamped in the capital for so many weeks, he is striving to find a way out, and the commitment to elections is one plank of that escape strategy. Whatever the reasons, those who had been questioning Dr Qadri’s agenda for change should welcome his announcement. They will be justified in hailing it as a sign of progress towards engaging elements that have been so frustrated by the current scheme to be calling for extreme ‘remedial’ measures. And they will be doing themselves a favour by not greeting the PAT chief’s statement with the jeers that so sadly and frequently overwhelm the real debate.

One impression Dr Qadri has managed to create due to his style and the content of his argument is that, over and above being a candidate for power directly, he is keen to play the ideologue whose blessings must be sought by those wanting to rule. He may still seek to play the revered spiritual and ideological leader, fielding his party and his followers in the election while choosing to not contest a seat personally. Hence, it is perhaps too early to dwell on how his dual nationality would disqualify him from taking part in an election in Pakistan until he declares his candidature. The big question is how well equipped, and before that, how willing the country is to address the grievances of various groups — even those who are not allied with the majority. There is absolutely no doubt that, among the religious groups pushing their respective agendas forward, the militant ones get more attention because of the scare they are able to create whereas the non-militant organisations are ignored, and even made fun of. This attitude has to change and whichever of Dr Qadri’s demands appear to be reasonable must be pondered over in the greater interest of democracy — as a principle — and the culture it spawns.

Counting losses the wrong way

EVERY so often, a Pakistani official trots out numbers to buttress the claim that the country has suffered a great deal from militancy. There is little doubt that Pakistan has suffered greatly and disastrously from militancy — and that is perhaps why the official attempts at putting a number on the losses come across as crude and unnecessary. This week, the Foreign Office claimed that the country has suffered $103bn worth of losses and over 55,000 lives to militancy and terrorism. But even when it comes to the lives lost, there is no single database that exists to even remotely corroborate the claim of fatalities. Indeed, the official estimate — or, perhaps, guesstimate — has ranged over the past year alone from less than 15,000 to, now, over 55,000 lives lost since 2001. If nothing else, it is a dishonour to the dead and injured to not even be accurately counted among the many who have sacrificed for their country. Almost as perplexing is the estimate offered by the Foreign Office of the financial losses suffered by the country: $103bn. For some perspective, this is more than a third of the country’s annual GDP. The $103bn figure only begins to make some kind of sense if investment and economic activity foregone because of militancy is included. But who’s to say whether foreign investment has slowed to a trickle in Pakistan because of militancy and terrorism or because of the energy shortage and business-unfriendly policies of the state?

The apparent laziness with which such figures are produced suggests that the real reason is to demonstrate to the outside world that Pakistan is as much, if not a greater, victim of terrorism than the outside world. The corollary then is that the outside world should do more to compensate Pakistan and to finance the fight against militancy here. Yet, there is a fundamental problem with that thinking: Pakistan is essentially under attack from Pakistanis who belong to organisations that at some point in their history have either been created, nurtured, sponsored, funded, trained or equipped by the Pakistani state itself. Clearly, countries such as the US and Saudi Arabia played a role in the genesis of the problem, but it is the Pakistani state itself that has made the choices that have left state and society so vulnerable to militancy and terrorism. To assert this is not to indulge in an endless blame game, but to underline that the country’s policymaking elite are still in denial about both the causes and the necessary policy decisions that have to be made. Pakistan will only win the fight against militancy if it honestly reckons with the past and moves in the present to shut down the militancy infrastructure and the enabling environment within society. Else, even the exaggerated losses claimed may pale in comparison to the eventual damage.

Published in Dawn, October 4th , 2014

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"I am still learning."

PTI’s hydel vision

ONE of the better things that the PTI government in KP has done is to give a new push to microhydel power generation schemes. Most recently, their attempts to pursue the Gorkin Matiltan hydropower project (84MW) in Swat has met with resistance in the Central Development Working Party, a government department tasked with approving projects whose cost is less than Rs3bn. Members of the CDWP, which is run by the PML-N federal government, say the project cost is too high, and that the cost of the electricity it will generate is also too high for a hydel project. They compare this project with another one in KP which was completed at slightly below the cost of Gorkin Matiltan. It is hard to avoid the impression that the resistance to this project is political. If the CDWP members, which is chaired by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Ahsan Iqbal, are serious about comparing the project costs of Gorkin Matiltan with that of Duber Khwar, they should also note that the latter was begun more than a decade ago. The first electricity ever generated in the territories we now call Pakistan was from a microhydel scheme in Renala Khurd. The next larger power generation was also a microhydel scheme in Malakand valley, built by the British in the 1920s. There was a vision to provide much of Pakistan’s power needs through myriad such schemes in the canals and mountains, but it fell by the wayside with the arrival of American aid in the form of mega dams. The PTI government has recently given new life to the vision, and is taking concrete steps on the ground to implement it. In return, the PML-N government, which never raised concerns about the cost of generation from the Nandipur project, is obstructing the scheme, arguing its costs are too high. Again, it is hard not to see this as obstructionist politics standing in the way of reviving a promising vision, and innovative approaches, to solving Pakistan’s power crisis.

Sounding the alarm

THERE was an unmistakable sense of urgency in the tone and choice of words of the Saudi grand mufti as he delivered the Haj sermon on Friday. Speaking to around two million hajis gathered in the plain of Arafat for the climax of the pilgrimage, Shaikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh sounded the alarm bell against the self-styled Islamic State without specifically naming the group. But the context of the sermon left little doubt who the cleric was referring to. Shaikh Abdul Aziz implored Muslim leaders to strike hard “the enemies of Islam” who were responsible for “vile crimes ... and terrorism” driven by a “deviant ideology”. The Saudi preacher’s unease is understandable; after all, the expansionist IS controls considerable swathes of territory across the border in Iraq and in Syria, not too far from the kingdom’s northern frontiers. There are also credible reports that thousands of Saudi nationals are fighting for extremist groups in both Iraq and Syria. So the symbolism of using Islam’s most important global gathering of the year to sound the battle cry against IS has not been lost.

While the Saudi mufti’s call for action against the violent extremists is indeed timely, there are a number of factors that Saudi ulema, as well as clerics in other Muslim states, along with the governments of Muslim nations, need to ponder over to get to the root of the problem. After all, IS and other jihadi outfits have not sprouted overnight. In this particular context, in Iraq and Syria such groups have been used by foreign powers to destabilise the incumbent governments. If the Saudi and other Gulf Arab states have not directly been involved in creating and funding Islamist militant groups, they are certainly guilty of looking the other way as private funds from their nations have flowed into jihadi coffers. And now that the militant groups have become too hot to handle, Arab governments have launched an armed campaign against them. Pakistan has experienced a similar situation and is learning the hard way that patronising extremists can be a double-edged sword; the militants can just as easily turn their guns on their masters should things go awry. The Saudis and all other Muslim states need to realise that using jihadi proxies against other states is extremely bad foreign policy and can boomerang in horrible ways. Once this realisation sinks in at the official level, the grand mufti’s call can have greater impact.

Polio: our badge of shame

THE sorry tale of Pakistan’s abysmal performance in practically all global development and welfare indicators is equalled, perhaps, only by the state’s stubborn, almost criminal, refusal to undertake the task at hand. Nothing, it seems can bestir the administrators of this country, regardless of whichever party is in power, into taking their responsibilities seriously. Consider, for example, the fact that Pakistan made history on Friday: it broke its own record of polio cases, with eight additional cases being reported on this day, bringing this year’s tally — so far — to 202. The last time we saw such a high number of confirmations was in 2000, when 199 cases were recorded. This regression is all the more distressing when it is considered that hardly 10 years ago, the indications were that the spread of the crippling virus was being brought under control in the country and there was hope that soon Pakistan too would join the majority of the globe’s nations that had proved themselves polio-free. That this sorry state of affairs comes after international authorities concluded that Pakistan is in danger of reintroducing the virus to other countries, and the World Health Organisation recommended travel restrictions on unvaccinated travellers from Pakistan, is a damning indictment of the authorities’ lackadaisical attitude. Almost all figures in political and bureaucratic circles have, at some point or the other, over the months past professed their recognition of the issue and their commitment to eradicating polio.

The fact that none of these people have subsequently put in any sustained action, or organised concerted and meaningful efforts, means that they were simply using it as a photo-op. From Imran Khan to Maulana Samiul Haq, from Aseefa Bhutto Zardari to Maryam Nawaz, to say nothing of those directly involved such as the heads of the prime minister’s focal team for polio and the officials of the health department — all have professed their commitment to protecting future generations from this dreaded disease. And yet, there has been no sustained action at all; if anything, the issue only continues to worsen. The travel advisory constitutes a reminder of the pariah status Pakistan faces if polio is not brought under control. While funds from international donors have been pouring in to bolster Pakistan’s own efforts and resources, all they have elicited are promises that have proved false and half-baked measures, such as the non-functional system of checking for vaccination certificates at airports. The world could be forgiven for wondering what it will take to get Pakistan to put its own house in order in this regard. There is, perhaps, only one thing left to say now. The political classes are once again mulling over the shape of the country’s future; they need reminding that no future at all is possible with a crippled population.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

PPP’s role in Punjab

THE shoe is on the other foot now and the PPP in Punjab is finding that it pinches somewhat. When the PPP led the coalition that was in power in Islamabad, the PML-N often suffered taunts from opponents and criticism from within over its so-called friendly opposition stance. While history suggests that the PML-N was not unequivocally supportive of the PPP-led government in order to see through an important transition – the N-League quit the government soon after joining it in 2008; it led the long march that resulted in the reinstatement of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and played a starring role in the ‘Memogate’ saga – by and large the party leadership was neither a fierce critic of nor attacked the PPP as it had in the 1990s. Now, with the PPP nearly wiped out electorally in Punjab, various voices from Punjab in the PPP camp are calling for giving the PML-N a tougher time, with concern surely rising that politics in the province has become a two-horse race between the PML-N and PTI. Yet, former president and PPP supremo Asif Ali Zardari has rejected the demands from certain quarters in the party and rightly so. Firstly, Mr Zardari is right to emphasise the need for democratic stability and for the party to play its role in ensuring that anti-democratic forces do not encroach further on civilian turf. Secondly, many of the dissidents in the PPP camp can hardly claim to have the party’s interests ahead of their own: the names in the mix at the moment are known to have shopped around for tickets from other parties ahead of last year’s election and may have one foot out of the party already. Thirdly, playing the role of a meaningful political opposition goes far beyond what the dissident camp is suggesting: essentially mimicking the PTI style of opposition politics. If the PPP is to revive its fortunes in Punjab, it will need a forward-looking and positive message as the days of surviving on rhetorical anti-PML-N politics are long over.

LG poll mess

THE Supreme Court’s ire is understandable. On Friday, the chief justice asked why his predecessor’s directive for holding local government elections by Nov 15 had not been carried out. The response by those representing the provincial governments in question was a pathetic resort to legal and administrative nostrums to justify inaction on the issue. And when Sindh’s assistant advocate general apologised to the chief justice, the latter replied he ought to apologise to the Constitution which had been violated. The chief justice wondered why the provincial governments had to wait for the judiciary to act instead of acting on their own. The court seemed displeased when the Sindh AAG said he had prepared a draft law that would authorise the ECP to carry out the delimitation of constituencies. The chief justice asked why the law had not been made earlier, and that even if an ordinance were promulgated within a week, it would still not be possible to hold the polls by Nov 15. The court was also witness to the KP government’s quarrels with the ECP when its advocate general said the election body had not agreed to the provincial government’s request for electronic voting and to hold the polls in phases for security reasons. As for Punjab, its additional advocate general blamed the federal government for failing to respond to the suggestions it had made with regard to the ECP’s power to delimit the constituencies. The provinces’ recourse to administrative and semi-legal excuses betrays their anxiety to evade local government elections because they are not sure how the people will vote and provincial lawmakers feel their authority will be challenged. While Punjab and Sindh had a problem with delimitation, KP had no such issue and should have gone ahead with the polls. Instead, the KP government, too, has fallen in line with the other two provinces, as if in an unholy alliance, to deny grass-roots democracy to their people. The ECP too cannot escape the blame for this mess; it gave Jan 8 last as the date for the polls and then requested the court for a postponement since the date was unrealistic. However, the ECP’s point that delimitation is not possible without a census is valid. For that exercise, it is the federal government that has to stir itself. In other words, all those who matter — the federal government, the three provinces and the ECP — have combined to deny grass-roots democracy to the people.

Flood assistance farce

THE government has made a sudden appeal for cash assistance from donor agencies to deal with the destruction caused by the latest floods. The appeal comes a week after the donors had been assured that no assistance would be required. It has been delivered to them through a bureaucrat in the finance ministry, instead of by the minister himself, who, it seems, is too busy in a roadshow to raise funds for the Diamer Bhasha dam project. The donors want a detailed damage assessment, as well as an action plan for rehabilitating the victims, before the request can be entertained. The authorities say that a variety of flood relief funds have been set up by the federal government as well as the Punjab government, and the donors should simply deposit cash assistance into these. This is the fifth consecutive year of floods in Pakistan, and each episode has seen an appeal for international assistance. Meanwhile, the donor agencies and their respective governments are entitled to wonder what steps Pakistan has taken to increase its preparedness for what is clearly becoming an annual trend. Have forecasting capabilities been improved? Have SOPs been created for the myriad government departments involved in managing the consequences of flooding while the disaster unfolds? Are rapid assessments drawn up in the aftermath of each episode? If so, why is there a sudden about-turn in asking for assistance this year? The World Bank has offered Pakistan the services of state-of-the-art flood forecasting technology that successfully predicted the previous two flooding episodes with a 10-day lead time. But the offer has been greeted with complete disinterest by the government. Currently, forecasts are issued with 48-hour lead time at best, which is grossly insufficient. Technology exists which can increase this lead time to 10 days and this technology has been offered to Pakistan. Not only that, there is no single government department that is tasked with coordinating the response once a flood alert has been issued. Instead, the same game is played out every year, with a muddled and uncoordinated response once the flood peak actually arrives, followed by the same finger-pointing and blame game in the aftermath of the deluge. Once the waters subside, the same appeals emerge to build more hydrological infrastructure as a flood-control mechanism. Donors might want to think twice about entertaining the request for cash assistance without a detailed plan of action. They should insist that a proper disaster preparedness plan be drawn up first, which must include measures to upgrade forecasting capabilities as well as an action plan for coordinating the response once the flood alert has been issued. Muddling through the same disaster year after year, and following this up with requests for cash assistance and hydrological infrastructure, is turning into a farce. And nobody is laughing.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."

Support for IS

The fact that the self-styled Islamic State is drawing fulsome praise from across the militant spectrum is hardly surprising. After all, the terrorist group’s rapid rise and capture of territory in Iraq and Syria has granted it celebrity status within jihadi circles. So while there may be minor differences between various global militant groups — tactical, theological, level of ferocity — the general consensus seems to be that the IS model of waging ‘jihad’ is a successful one and worthy of replication. A few days ago, the banned TTP — while still accepting Afghan Taliban supremo Mullah Omar as its spiritual leader — praised all militants in Iraq and Syria, including IS, terming them “noble” and “our brothers”. Some time ago, pro-IS literature was also reportedly distributed in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata. Also, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a fanatical militant outfit responsible for a number of terrorist atrocities inside Pakistan, proclaimed it was “in the same ranks” as the so-called Islamic State. Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram has expressed warm wishes for IS ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as have some militant outfits in Southeast Asia and North Africa.

While there’s little hard evidence that the above-mentioned statements signify that IS and other militant groups are forging some sort of grand global jihadi alliance, they do appear to be policy statements making the intentions of the militants clear. They should serve as warning shots, alerting governments the world over to the potential havoc such groups can unleash should they join forces operationally. In many ways, IS is the new Al Qaeda; but considering that it actually holds territory makes the Islamic State even more dangerous than the terrorist franchise. After all, Al Qaeda was successful because it was provided a safe haven by the erstwhile Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. Should IS consolidate its hold over areas it controls it will serve as a magnet for extremists from across the globe, with the potential to destabilise states across the Middle East and Central Asia, including Pakistan. While Al Qaeda is now being regarded by many as a spent force, especially after the elimination of Osama bin Laden, IS has many of the trappings of a state and its battlefield successes have made it the talk of the Islamist world. Hence it is essential that governments, especially those of Muslim states, coordinate their efforts to deny IS the chance to operationally link up with sympathetic groups elsewhere.

Eid shutdown

GIVE the majority of working Pakistanis half a chance, and they with alacrity will take off from their job early. Not for us the metaphor of busy beavers; no, we ensure that work must be avoided wherever possible. The casual onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that Pakistanis have done everything that needed to be done, solved all equations and balanced all the ledgers, to turn to a day off without the slightest feeling of guilt. Yet what is worse is that this characteristic is also reflected in the approach of the state. True, the number of gazetted holidays — when institutions such as banks cannot open for business even if they wanted to — has been reduced from what it used to be. Nevertheless, the state misses few chances to signal to the populace that there’s no need for the wheels of industry, banking, finance and so on to keep turning; that a cup of tea and rest can achieve the needful. Take, for example, the shutdown over Eid earlier this week. The government had announced a national holiday for the day of sacrifice itself, followed by two more holidays. But the slowdown started from Friday and the employees of several government offices are sure to include the coming weekend as well. Can the country afford lengthy shutdowns when it is not just losing revenue on account of work not done but is also delinked from the global banking and financial worlds? Consider just a couple of rough calculations: the daily turnover for the Karachi Stock Exchange varies from day to day, but the last figure recorded was Rs6bn. The maths for a three-day shutdown is simple. Retail and wholesale contribute Rs13bn a day to GDP, while manufacturing is Rs14bn. Revenue has been forgone from many other sectors as well. But tell that not to the state of Pakistan and its citizens, both of which evidently feel that this country is so rich that a few days’ income lost is no problem at all.

Civilians in the crossfire

THE escalating violence between Pakistan and India along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary in the disputed Kashmir region has, as ever, murky origins. India blames Pakistan, Pakistan blames India; meanwhile, the worst sufferer is the civilian population on either side of the divide. More lives have been lost and with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reduced to urging India and Pakistan to resolve their disputes diplomatically and through dialogue, there is a very real fear that more violence could result in more lives lost in the days ahead. With the blame game continuing and with few independent sources to verify how violence broke out, there is though a sense that both sides are determined not to back down — though it is difficult to see why either side would want the conflict to spiral out of control. For Pakistan, conflict in Kashmir cannot militarily be a goal at this juncture with the North Waziristan operation ongoing and strains on military resources because of overall troop commitments in Fata. For India, with the Narendra Modi-led BJP government in Delhi eyeing gains in elections in India-held Jammu and Kashmir scheduled for November-December, prolonged conflict should not be part of a winning electoral strategy. Yet, logic often does not work as it should in this most disputed of regions and, occasionally, events in Kashmir are tied to wider struggles that Pakistan and India may be engaging in.

Consider that the Modi government has taken a decidedly tough line with Pakistan despite Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wanting to pursue dialogue while simultaneously struggling with civil-military issues at home. The rapturous tone of the recent visit by Mr Modi to the US may have encouraged the Indian security establishment to pile further pressure on Pakistan. Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, that very tone of Mr Modi’s visit and the successful inclusion of Pakistan-specific militancy concerns in the joint US-India statement may have rankled, and sections of the security establishment here may have decided that India, and the world at large, needs reminding that the Kashmir dispute is still very much alive and a flashpoint that should invite international attention. The path to military de-escalation at least remains well-known. Purposeful and result-orientated contact between the directors general of military operations of Pakistan and India can help dampen the violence along the LoC and the Working Boundary — but will the two countries decide to activate that option themselves, or will the international community have to put pressure behind the scenes? The approaching winter — while still distant in the present context — should also help dampen hostilities, though it remains to be seen if the elections will be held on time or postponed until the new year after an ongoing visit to Jammu and Kashmir by the Election Commission of India. As ever, little can be said with certainty on Kashmir.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2014

__________________
"I am still learning."