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  #1401  
Old Thursday, June 25, 2015
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Default 25.06.2015

Little progress on MDGs


AN indicator of how low a priority human development is for the state is that there exists a special parliamentary task force on sustainable development goals. This may come as a surprise to many, including elected representatives. Even fewer may be aware that the shift to sustainable development goals — from the earlier Millennium Development Goals — has come under the present government’s so-called Vision 2025, an ambitious Planning Commission blueprint for development and economic growth that has found few takers among the country’s policy planners and decision-makers so far. The confusion and lack of interest can be gauged by the fact that a meeting of the special parliamentary task force on Tuesday, that was meant to shed light on the issue of climate change and its potential impact on Pakistan, appears to have roamed desultorily into the arena of Pakistan’s uneven and unsatisfactory performance in achieving the MDGs. Essentially, the country’s elected representatives and the state itself do not appear to have as yet grasped the basics of the huge developmentchallenge that confronts the Pakistani state and society.

Some history and context may help. When the MDGs were mooted 15 years ago, there was a great deal of hope internationally that the eight goals could be substantially met by the developing world. Pakistan has by no means been the worst performer, but it has also at no point taken the MDGs seriously enough to ensure that sustained and meaningful progress has occurred. Of the eight MDGs — eradicate extreme hunger and poverty; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental stability; and develop a global partnership for development — Pakistan has managed some progress in the so-called targets and indicators specific to each goal. But none of that progress has been adequate compared to the goals, nor is there independently verifiable data to back up the claims of progress made by the government.

The reasons are not hard to fathom: no overhaul of the bureaucracy or administration that must help achieve the goals; no restructuring of the state’s finances to free up money for investments in people-centric development; no meaningful national conversation on what people-centric security really means. In the absence of any of that, it is impossible to imagine achieving universal primary education or ensuring environmental stability. Moreover, post-18th Amendment, there is a fundamental shift in terms of responsibilities between the centre and the provinces. Virtually all of the targets and indicators underthe MDGs, and now the indicators for the sustainable development goals, are in provincial remit. There, predictably, Punjab is performing better than the rest, with Balochistan the worst off and Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa having decidedly mixed results. So far, human development has not been a priority for the provinces either, but perhaps the onset of local governments may help change that?

Islamabad LG polls

IT is quite true that were it not for the superior judiciary’s pursuance of the matter, there would be little progress on local government elections, as the political class in the provincial and national legislatures has shown scant interest in this crucial area of governance. While rushing the process or passing flawed legislation to pave the way for the polls can create new problems, an interminable delay can create complications as well. In Islamabad, a strange situation has emerged. As per the Supreme Court’s directions, the Election Commission of Pakistan on Tuesday announced the schedule for local polls in the federal capital. The polls are due to be held on July 25 while nominations will be received till June 26. But, there’s a major hitch — the relevant LG law for the capital has still not been passed by the Senate and unless the legislation is finalised, it will be very difficult to hold the polls as per schedule. Nearly all parties have criticised the announcement of the election schedule. The law, which has been passed by the National Assembly, is being reviewed by a Senate sub-committee. Those familiar withthe process say that as this is the first time local polls are being held in Islamabad, there are many unresolved questions. Among these — which emerged at public hearings — is the extent of power that elected local officials will have.

Two basic things must be kept in mind in this situation: firstly, the polls cannot be put off indefinitely and the law cannot be debated endlessly. Secondly, a badly drafted law will create major hurdles for the incoming local government. The major stakeholders — parliament and the ECP — need to reconcile both of these issues and come up with a workable solution. While the ECP should consider a fresh schedule in consultation with lawmakers, senators must also give a realistic time frame for the passage of the law. We hope the law is not delayed further so that the federal capital has an elected local government of its own soon.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2015
Heatwave deaths


EVER since the Sindh government sprung into action on the mounting death toll from the heatwave in the province, a series of absurd instructions have been pouring forth. The latest such announcements come from a late-night meeting chaired by Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, which decided on the early closure of shops, marriage halls and restaurants, a one-day government holiday, and a protest sit-in against K-Electric and the federal government. Earlier, the chief minister had ordered the closure of schools and colleges, even though it is summer holidays and most of these institutions are already shut. These measures have been used in the past to respond to a sharp deterioration in the power situation, and they have rarely ever yielded measurable results.
But what makes these announcements absurd is that they have very little to do with the deaths from heatstroke. The load-shedding situation across Sindh is very dire indeed, but the deaths from heatstroke are only marginally connected to electricity. The dead consist largely of very vulnerable people, including the poor, the elderly and day labourers, who had no awareness of the early symptoms of heatstroke or of preventive measures such as rapid rehydration with salts and covering of the head to prevent direct exposure to sunlight. The Sindh government isfocusing excessively on electricity as the cause behind the deaths, and not enough on measures that more directly deal with the cause of the deaths. Did the participants of the meeting coordinate with any of the hospitals where the heatstroke victims were being treated or with the Edhi morgue which is saying it is filled to capacity, to find out what sort of assistance they might require? Did they try to determine the identities of the victims to see which groups were particularly vulnerable and what measures could be taken to target assistance to them? Did they coordinate their energy conservation ideas with K-Electric, which might have useful suggestions about how the existing electricity in Karachi can be better utilised? Did they look into the logistics of setting up relief camps across the affected areas, particularly Karachi, with the aim of marshalling volunteers with necessary supplies? It does not appear so. All they did, it seems, was to roll out the same old tried and failed ideas from the past, and announce them with a new gusto. That will hardly work to alleviate the crisis. Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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  #1402  
Old Friday, June 26, 2015
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The ‘banned’ outfit

IT is difficult to comprehend why parents of the APS Peshawar carnage victims were shown video clips of militants’ brutality at Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing concerning the establishment of military courts. The families have been through enough, and one wonders why they had to be shown the recordings when all that was apparently required was their opinion on the 21st Amendment. On another note, the hearing was significant because it has once again brought to the fore the issue of the status of ‘banned’ groups in Pakistan. When Justice Qazi Faez Isa asked if the state had declared Daesh — as the self-styled Islamic State is also known — a proscribed organisation, the attorney general replied that he would produce documentation detailing the outfit’s proscription in court. This is perhaps indicative of the state’s overall method of dealing with the proliferation of militancy.
While on paper there are grand plans and designs; when it comes to implementation, the state is largely at sea.
While it is debatable what sort of presence the IS has in Pakistan and how big a threat it poses to the country’s security, the nation needs to know whether it has been officially banned or not. The problem is that many militant outfits thrive because the state has left a grey area where they can operate. Groups like the IS, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and Jamaatud Dawa all fall within this category. Are these groups banned? If so, how are they able to organise and how are their leaders able to march in rallies and deliver speeches? Also, while an organisation may be banned on paper, its leadership is largely free to carry on business as usual. This dichotomy needs to be addressed. An authentic list of banned organisations needs to be made public and must be updated regularly. Moreover, all individuals associated with proscribed outfits must also be watched and their finances frozen. The Supreme Court would be ideally placed to ask the state for a comprehensive, updated list of proscribed groups in the country, and to inquire what steps the government is taking to prosecute the leaders of these outfits. The face of militancy is constantly changing and taking new forms in Pakistan. Up to now the ad hoc approach has failed to secure the country from the menace of terrorism and if matters continue to remain as they are, it will only provide more space for militancy to thrive.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Old Friday, June 26, 2015
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MQM’s alleged links


THE surge of allegations against the MQM continues, this time the BBC chipping in with claims that have been heard before elsewhere though perhaps not in the detail revealed on Wednesday. Two things in particular stand out about the BBC report alleging links between the MQM and the Indian state: one, that the claims were made by members of the MQM themselves; and two, that a list of weapons — many of the items being of a kind no peaceable political party anywhere could possibly have any interest in — has been recovered from an MQM property in the UK. The MQM response has been as predictable as it is inadequate: the few party leaders who were willing to brave the cameras and microphones on Wednesday dismissed all allegations and hinted at yet another unspecified plot against the MQM. With more claims and stories almost sure to follow in the days and weeks ahead, perhaps it is time for, first, the federal government to revisit its strategy and second, the MQM to do the same.

Thus far the PML-N government’s response to every new twist and turn in the widening and deepening case against the MQM has been either to reiterate its support for government agencies (if the allegations emanate from military-backed quarters) or to pledge to investigate (if they originate in the media or elsewhere). So it is hardly surprising that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday directed Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan to apparently investigate the claims made in the BBC report. If that is unsurprising, it is also thoroughly unacceptable: the BBC report suggests that at least one unnamed Pakistani official is aware of the alleged MQM-India nexus — should therefore the government not be informing the country about what it knows rather than pretending that it is in the dark and committed to finding the truth? Repeatedly in recent weeks and months, the interior minister has hinted at knowledge about the MQM’s alleged illegal activities — but always baulked at revealing what his ministry is aware of for unspecified reasons. Are Pakistanis forever destined to remain a population that its own elected representatives withhold the truth from?

The other aspect to consider here is the MQM’s inadequate response to the growing list of allegations against the party. The essential point is that none of the claims are particularly new or surprising: the MQM’s connection to violence and militancy; the MQM’s foreign linkages to various states; the MQM’s economic exploitation of the cities in which it rules — everything has been alleged over the years and it is commonly accepted that most of the allegations have at least a kernel of truth to them. What the MQM — which still has a large support base as the April by-polls- in Karachi showed — needs is an overhaul of its politics and internal organisation. It must clean out the worst elements, admit to a flawed past and lay the ground for a people-oriented future.
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Old Saturday, June 27, 2015
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Default 27.06.2015

Afghan peace talks


PEACE talks, or even talks about talks, in Afghanistan for many years now have been a case of going round in circles — with the Afghan Taliban in particular always sending mixed messages. Once again, then, with Pakistan Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz making some of the most emphatic and direct claims on attempts by the state here to facilitate talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the Afghan Taliban have quickly tried to distance themselves from these initial and careful rounds of engagement. Are talks dead before they can even begin? Not necessarily. For one, it is quite common for elements of the Taliban, particularly those with links to the leadership, to engage in talks about talks while the leadership itself remains condemnatory of talks and hews to maximalist preconditions. That is the Taliban’s equivalent of talking and fighting, a strategy that seeks to wrest the maximum concessions from the other side if it ever comes to a negotiated settlement.

In the Taliban’s case, there is another reason to publicly appear dismissive of talks that have taken place: the annual spring offensive is at its peak and there is little value in sending mixed messages to the rank and file fighting it out over vast swathes of the country. Moreover, this fighting season has brought a new element, a surge of fighters, many of them foreign, who appear to have been dislodged by the military operations in Fata. Were the Taliban leadership to acknowledge even an incidental interest in talks, it would perhaps send the wrong message to the field where the Taliban have made deeper inroads quicker than what was widely perceived. Yet, the same old conundrum remains: the Afghan Taliban, for all their ability to operate in far-flung areas and inflict significant damage on the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces, appear to be no closer to overrunning the country. Kabul in particular appears to be a city where the occasional — though high-profile — Taliban attack is possible, but there appears to be no imminent danger of a governmental collapse or the capital coming under sustained attack. Therefore, with an Afghan president more willing to go the extra mile than anyone else in power, it remains to the Taliban’s advantage to also engage in talks.

For its part, the Pakistani state appears to be going through cycles of indecisiveness of its own. All sides agree that Pakistan has influence over the Afghan Taliban, though the security establishment and government here often argue that the degree of influence is much less than it is perceived to be by outside powers and the Afghan government. Yet, at no stage has it been apparent that Pakistan is willing to test the limits of its influence over the Afghan Taliban in the interest of securing a negotiated settlement. Can a meek Pakistan truly influence a recalcitrant Afghan TalibanCENTERn?


Focus on K-Electric
KARACHI’S beleaguered power utility is once again the focus of public ire following the enormous loss of life from the recent heatwave. The government of Sindh has blamed prolonged power outages as the key factor behind the deaths and some members of the party ruling in the province have demanded that the government retake control of the utility from its private sponsors. The prime minister has, wisely, refused to take such a step, but his government has now announced that it will be conducting a “performance audit” of the utility to see whether or not the private owners have been living up to their responsibility to the public interest by investing in system upgrades and power generation from their own plants. The debate, if it can be called that, arising from the heatwave deaths has therefore morphed into a debate around the government’s regulatory will and capacity in providing oversight for the sole privately owned and operated power distribution company in Pakistan.

On Thursday, the government issued formal instructions to Nepra, the power sector regulator, to conduct an audit of K-Electric to determine why the power utility is not utilising its full generation potential to serve its customers, as well as whether it has lived up to its commitment to invest in its distribution system to prevent frequent tripping and technical outages. In its defence, KElectric is expected to tell the regulator that the irregular supply of gas and the lack of payment from government offices complicates generation, while attacks on its offices and response teams coupled with frequent theft of power lines by scrap merchants has complicated its efforts to bring about upgrade of the system. Besides judging the truthfulness of these claims, Nepra would be well advised to seek a broader mandate for its inquiry. It should also look into the claim being made by the management of the utility that it has successfully lifted the company into profitability. In addition, the power sector regulator should try to determine how regulatory oversight can be strengthened for privatised power utilities following their takeover by new management. This is particularly important as the privatisation of three more power distribution companies is scheduled for this year, and whatever mistakes were made in Karachi’s case must not be repeated. There is a strong public interest in power distribution, and the case of K-Electric makes clear that safeguarding this is as important as it is complicated.


Zaheer at the ICC
THE appointment of former Pakistan captain Zaheer Abbas as the president of the International Cricket Council is a rare honour coming Pakistan’s way, besides being a step in the right direction by the world cricket governing body. Abbas, one of the finest batsmen to have represented the country and the game, was confirmed for the coveted post in a landmark decision taken by the ICC in its annual conference in Barbados on Tuesday. The move is a departure from the previous ICC policy of appointing figureheads from the member cricket boards or technocrats for the post and it is understood that the controversial exit of Bangladesh Cricket Board’s Mustafa Kamal earlier this year prompted the world body to rethink its policy. That said, Abbas’s induction is still a hurriedly put together move following the sudden withdrawal of exPakistan Cricket Board chief Najam Sethi from his nomination for the ICC post last month, which he said was a decision in conjunction with the world body’s future plans to involve iconic cricketers.


The president’s post at the ICC, despite being a ceremonial one, poses perhaps the stiffest challenge in Abbas’s career since he faced the tearaway Aussie pace duo of Lillee and Thomson at Sydney some three decades ago. He is likely to find himself on a sticky wicket when it comes to dealing with thorny issues such as the Big Three controversy, security and the corruption issues currently afflicting the game, as well as the cut-throat commercialism threatening to take control. While as a figurehead at the world body Abbas is expected to have a rational and unbiased view of the controversies plaguing international cricket, he cannot remain oblivious to issues pertaining to Pakistan cricket, which include the revival of foreign team tours and the continued defiance of India to play us either at home or at neutral venues. Abbas successfully countered many a bouncer in his heyday and needs to be just as assertive and skilful in his new job.
Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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  #1405  
Old Sunday, June 28, 2015
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Default 28.06.2015

Balochistan amnesty

IN theory, it is a significant concession by the state, addressing one of the principal demands of militants in Balochistan: along with the release of the so-called missing persons in the province, offering an amnesty to those involved in militancy has been seen as a major step towards the end of the long-running, low-level insurgency in the province. But the announcement by the Balochistan apex committee, a high-level provincial body consisting of government and military officials, of a general amnesty for militants who surrender and the creation of a rehabilitation programme for such militants is unlikely to immediately change the security environment in the province. Unconditional surrenders and handover of arms to the state followed by an attempt to reintegrate armed Baloch into society are not uncommon — indeed, in recent weeks there have been reports of several low-level tribal leaders turning in their weapons to the Balochistan government. The real challenge in Balochistan centres on the militants who, in the vernacular, are believed to have taken to the hills and the non-tribal leaders who are driving much of the insurgency through swathes of Baloch-dominated areas in the province.

Will anyone of those Baloch elements be tempted to opt for even a temporary ceasefire in the wake of the apex committee’s announcements? It seems unlikely. For one, the insurgency itself is believed to have fractured, and splinter groups are harder to induce with state-sponsored incentives as well as more likely to be determined to keep fighting to establish their credentials. More fundamentally, however, none of the rhetoric emanating from the state suggests that there is a rethink of the militarised strategy for dealing with Balochistan’s militancy problems. Consider just some of the heated rhetoric surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, with blunt vows by both government and military officials to do whatever is necessary to ensure the project comes to fruition. Given that the principal known opponent in Balochistan of mega development projects by the centre are the Baloch militants, how does the tough line taken on the construction of the CPEC chime with an attempt at a more conciliatory, softer approach towards the militants themselves?

Surely, as the recent Mastung carnage and various other attacks over the years have underscored, the Baloch militants’ violent approach tends to undermine the nationalist goal of a more autonomous and prosperous Balochistan. Surely also the state has a responsibility to, as was reiterated by the committee, to ensure security by taking on irreconcilable and unwaveringly militant elements. But over a decade of trying to pacify Balochistan by crushing armed dissent has yielded precious little: large parts of Balochistan are today as inaccessible and cut off from the rest of the country as they were a decade ago. Balochistan is a political problem that should be settled through political means — until that reality is accepted, Balochistan will continue to bleed.


Islamic State’s reach

FRIDAY’S deadly events illustrate the capacity of the selfstyled Islamic State to wreak havoc across regions beyond its direct control, as well as the need for a coordinated response from the international community in order to neutralise the extremist movement. At least two of the attacks — in Tunisia and Kuwait — have directly been claimed by IS, while it is unclear which group is responsible for the assault on a French gas factory. A fourth attack in Somalia was carried out by the Al Shabab outfit. The Tunisian and Kuwaiti attacks also illustrate the favoured targets of the so-called caliphate: Westerners and Shias, respectively. Nearly 40 tourists — reportedly mostly Europeans — were killed when a gunman opened fire in a Tunisian beach resort; the attack was confirmed to be the work of IS on Saturday, while this is the second major terrorist assault in the North African country this year. In Kuwait, a suicide bomber targeted a Shia mosque packed with worshippers during Friday prayers. Nearly 30 people were killed while over 200 were injured. This is said to be the oil-rich sheikhdom’s worst terrorist incident in many years while the atrocity mirrors two similar bombings of Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia that occurred over the past few weeks.

Clearly, the threat IS poses is not limited to the territory it occupies in Iraq and Syria. These attacks show it has the capability to inspire cells and lone-wolf attacks much further afield. Only a few days ago, an IS ‘spokesman’ called for attacks during the month of Ramazan. On Friday we witnessed the destructive response to this call. The need is for countries which have suspected IS cells or sympathisers to pool their efforts in order to prevent coordination between militants and the leadership. IS is a transnational threat, hence it requires a response that is not limited by frontiers. Along with a crackdown on the movement’s ability to communicate with supporters, including through the internet and the media, perhaps the most important requirement is to dislodge the ‘caliphate’ from the territory it has occupied in Iraq and Syria. For this, regional states will have to shed their divisions and work with both Baghdad and Damascus. This may be easier said than done, but unless the physical safe havens IS has occupied are taken away from the organisation and its leadership captured and neutralised, many more such atrocities can be expected.


Budget walkouts


FOUR budgets have been passed following a walkout by the opposition in the National Assembly as well as in the legislatures of three provinces — Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In fact, the walkouts themselves were motivated by factors that had nothing to do with the budget. This is not the first time that budget sessions have been marred by walkouts due to factors extraneous to economics. KP has a bit of a record in this, where every budget session for the past three years at least has seen a walkout. The state of the economic conversation amongst the political leadership is dire enough as it is, but walking out of the budget session in protest has taken matters to a new low altogether.

The budget session ought to be reserved only for budgetrelated discussions. Political scores can be settled later. The budget and the allocations contained within it are far too important to be held hostage to politicians’ outrage. The combined amount contained in these four budgets is close to Rs6.9 trillion, which is not a small sum of money whose allocations are being decided in such a casual manner. And although the Balochistan Assembly did not stage a walkout, the quality of discussion was very poor; the provincial government did not even release the detailed documents of the budget, so it is difficult to see how the legislators were even able to have a debate. Budget debates have historically been of very poor quality in Pakistan, with most members sticking only to rhetorical talking points. But this year has been a record as four of the five assemblies passed their budgets while the opposition walked out, and the fifth assembly carried on a debate without any budget details having been released. It shows a lack of interest in our political class that appears averse to tackling the real problems that plague the country. This is a deeply regrettable fact in the era of empowered provincial assemblies.
Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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  #1406  
Old Monday, June 29, 2015
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Reining in VIP expenses

THE Supreme Court on Saturday rightly ruled that a petition seeking to slash the allegedly extravagant sums of public money spent on the President House, Prime Minister House and the various governor houses across the country is a matter of policy and a political question in which the court should not intervene. In the constitutional scheme of separation of powers and separate domains, the court is charged with interpreting the law and issuing authoritative judgements on legal disputes – not determining whether any given policy is good or bad according to some subjective standard. A court aware of its limitations is a court that is well placed to perform its constitutional duty. Perhaps this most recent judgement will guide future benches in not wasting the court’s valuable time in hearing and authoring judgements on what are clearly politically motivated petitions and will instead dismiss them at the outset.

Yet, to say that the court is not the right forum for hearings on the so-called VVIP culture that has taken hold at the very top is not to deny that there is a problem of the country’s leadership, elected and unelected, having become unjustifiably removed from the people. It is not so much the upkeep of buildings and residences – the presidency and governor houses, for example, are symbols of the federation and steeped in history, so must be preserved for posterity. The problem is rather who makes decisions on issues like security arrangements, protocol and overall budgets. Far too often, rather than independent professionals, those decisions appear to be left to the beneficiaries themselves. Take the case of security, surely something that must be taken very seriously given the terrorist threat in the country. But when does high-profile security start to unnecessarily and unfairly impinge on the people’s rights? Of the hundreds of policemen idling around state residences and the dozens of vehicles in fast-moving convoys on cordoned off roads how much of that is about pomp and display and how much truly about necessary, efficient and cost-minded security?

At its root, the problem is that those making decisions about VIP lifestyles and security are either the beneficiaries themselves or those who are beholden to the high officials for their jobs. Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to have independent audit and budgeting committees. Rather than, say, the President House draw up its own budget and submit it to the government for approval, an independent committee of relevant professionals should be tasked with drawing up a proposed annual budget. The savings, admittedly, from a national budgetary perspective would be small. But measures that reduce the physical and psychological distance between the people and their elected representatives are worth more than can be counted in rupee terms. The epidemic of so-called VIP culture harms the democratic project. Excess must always be reined in.

Justice delayed

THE perils of an inefficient judicial system are all too well known in Pakistan. Any individual or group that has to approach the courts knows that justice, if it is ever served, will be a long time coming. From the apex court to the lower judiciary, but especially in the latter, the backlog is massive, leading from time to time to concerted efforts to clear it. But it is not just a matter of the sluggishness with which cases, and the sheer numbers they constitute, make their way through the system; even after the conclusion of a trial, it is common for litigants to have to wait for months and sometimes even years for the judgement. Hence, the fact that the Supreme Court handed down a judgement on Thursday prescribing a time frame within which courts must deliver their verdicts should be taken as a positive step. As its author, Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, noted, without this final step the entire judicial set-up is rendered illusionary. Litigants will no doubt feel some relief at the apex court’s directive that civil courts must deliver their judgements within 30 days of a trial’s conclusion, district courts within 45 days, and high courts within 90 days.

A step in the right direction though this may be, there is much else that remains to be done to reform the judiciary. The central fact is that the country’s court system is badly broken; from poor investigation to weak prosecution and overworked judges, there are a very large number of problems in the system and most will remain unaddressed as a result of Thursday’s judgement. There already exist directives within which several sorts of judicial forums must conclude a trial, but these are overwhelmingly breached. The situation is so dire that it has led the country into quagmires from which extrication appears difficult. Consider, for example, that during the late ’90s, in an effort to speed up the progress in certain serious offences, Anti-Terrorism Courts were set up bypassing the regular court system. A decade and a half later, given the backlog that has built up in the ATCs and the low conviction rate secured there, after the Army Public School massacre the government resorted to the deeply problematic decision of trying civilians in closed-door, military courts. Such clouds of illegitimacy can be avoided: effective steps need to be taken urgently to revive the presently moribund courts’ system.

Mass transit

WHAT would in any case have been embarrassing for the authorities was made only much more so by the fact that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had taken such keen personal interest in the project. Last week, as residents of Rawalpindi and Islamabad greeted the rain with relief, some of the stations of the new Metro Bus line were inundated. The underground stations on 6th Road and I.J. Principal Road saw accumulated rainwater that caused the escalators to become dysfunctional. And on the newly built elevated bus roadway between Saddar and Faizabad there was considerable accumulation of rainwater, raising the question of whether the drainage system was adequate — especially given the heavy rains and intense cloudbursts that are common in this area. To be sure, not all the flooding was because of insufficient infrastructure. Nevertheless, there is reason to question whether enough thought, research and planning have gone into the two mass transit systems that are already up and running in Lahore and the twin cities, as well as those that are being planned.

There is no doubt that mass transit systems are urgently needed in most of our big cities. However, public money is being spent. Are cities getting the best bang for the buck? True, the Metro Bus systems in Lahore and Islamabad/Rawalpindi are moving hundreds of thousands of passengers. Nevertheless, questions remain about whether the best routes were chosen. In which city would a subway system be a better and greener solution? What are the merits of rail versus bus? The Shahbaz Sharif government is planning to add the Orange Line Metro Train to the Lahore mass transit system, but hundreds of trees are to be felled. Has a credible study been conducted regarding the long-term impact on the environment? These questions, like the creation of mass transit systems, are of tremendous public interest. It behoves the government to confide in the people, in an accountable and transparent manner, so that the legacy it so seeks to leave behind is indeed a positive one.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Default 30.06.2015

Khan of Kalat agrees to talk

ANY move that appears to break the stultifying impasse in Balochistan is cause for at least some cautious optimism. A report in this paper yesterday revealed that the Baloch leader, the Khan of Kalat Mir Suleman Dawood Jan, who lives in self-exile in London, has agreed to meet a delegation of Balochistan government officials. Prior to this, he will hold consultations with members of the Grand Jirga who, after the death of Nawab Akbar Bugti at the hands of the army in 2006, had sent him abroad to work towards the restoration of Kalat State. In September last year, the Balochistan Assembly passed a resolution to approach the tribal leader and enlist his help in establishing peace in the province.

For the National Party-led government that has been vowing to bring the ‘angry Baloch’ to the negotiating table, this is a victory of sorts. Aside from the Khan of Kalat’s lofty standing in Balochistan’s tribal hierarchy, there is the weight of history: in pre-Partition days, the erstwhile princely state — then ruled by the present Khan’s grandfather — held a pre-eminent position in the tribal confederacy that stretched across central and southern Balochistan. The government is obviously hoping that Mir Suleman can bring the other angry Baloch — the recalcitrant separatist leaders — to the negotiating table. However, history also records that when the then Khan of Kalat signed the Instrument of Accession to join Pakistan in 1948, it caused much anguish among nationalistminded Baloch. His progeny too, not least because of their perceived closeness to the establishment, came to be considered as ‘traitors’ to the Baloch cause as the bitterness exploded into open rebellion several times over subsequent decades. Although Nawab Bugti’s murder was a watershed that led Mir Suleman to break his ties with the state and himself adopt the separatist narrative, his influence on players in the insurgency is debatable. Not least because for the first time, the separatist movement finds widespread support among educated youth, particularly in the non-sardari southern belt where tribal hierarchy does not inspire the same deference.

Nevertheless, this is a much-needed political initiative after a succession of sterile militarised strategies. In this situation, the removal of precious artifacts from the Khan of Kalat’s palace in Kalat town by his son Prince Mohammed, from whom he is estranged, has the potential of scuttling the talks before they even begin. It also gives oxygen to suspicions of state machinations — never far from the surface in Balochistan — in this case to install the son, seen as a pro-establishment figure, as the Khan of Kalat in place of his father. To restore confidence, the government must ensure the artifacts are returned without delay. In Balochistan, with its Gordian knot of complexities resulting from decades of self-defeating policies, even the slightest wrong move could take us back to square one.


ECP’s challenge

AS the judicial commission inquiring into allegations of fraud and misconduct during the 2013 general election moves inexorably towards concluding its work, the detailed response submitted by the Election Commission of Pakistan is worth examining. The ECP is not only the constitutional body tasked with the holding of elections, it is also the body that lies at the heart of many of the electoral allegations made by the PTI since May 2013. As such, the ECP not only has a sophisticated insight into the minutiae of organising and conducting elections, it is also well positioned to explain many of the strident allegations against it. The ECP’s submission to the judicial commission is quite forthright: while there were fairly widespread procedural lapses by polling officials, nothing has been brought on the record as yet to suggest a systematic attempt to rig the general election, either at a provincial level or nationally. That chimes with what most independent observers have claimed since 2013: that while the general election was not truly free and fair, it produced a result that was acceptable and credible and an incremental improvement on previous general elections.

The more important point though — at least from an ECP perspective — is to suggest fixes for the procedural lapses that 2013 revealed. Here the ECP tends to deflect more blame than take charge of fixing the system. Clearly, given that presiding officers and returning officers are not full-time employees of the ECP, there are real world limitations to how much training can be imparted and to what extent authority over the POs and ROs can be exercised. Surely, that should not mean that improvement is simply not possible when it comes to the present system. Limitations aside, there is no reason why ROs, who were very experienced judicial officers, should not be able to receive and file the relevant election-related forms — scrupulous attention to detail and strictly following laid-down procedure is at the very heart of the judicial process, after all. There is also the reality that the average RO would have overseen several elections — so there is little reason for amateurish mistakes that the inquiry has revealed at various stages of the counting and collating process. What appears to be the problem is that while the ECP has the legal mandate and relatively strong powers, the commission’s officers are reluctant to take a hard line when lapses are revealed. A more assertive, rules-bound ECP would go a long way to further strengthening the electoral system.

Thalassaemia report


THERE is no denying that this is a country familiar with incompetence, mismanagement and corruption scandals. Even so, the revelations recently made about the Punjab Thalassaemia Prevention Programme are astounding. Consider the following, which are just a few of the findings made by the Planning & Development Department of the Punjab government: the PTPP has been forcing field officers to carry on using expired medical items. “Out of 96,000 vials about 67,000 have expired or are near expiry,” says the report; some Rs17m were spent on establishing a DNA lab but it was never made operational, with the PTPP outsourcing the work to a private lab at a further cost of Rs5.7m; of the estimated 6,000,000 carriers in Punjab of the mutant thalassaemia gene, the PTPP managed to detect only 7,837. And where foetuses were found to test positive for thalassaemia major, the PTPP has no documentation regarding the termination of such pregnancies; in this regard, the report points out, “hypothetically if a single child out of 311 foetuses [that tested positive] has been born, then [the] complete exercise ... will be futile.”

Thalassaemia affects some one in six Pakistanis, and the PTPP was set up in 2009. The initial budgetary outlay was Rs147.4m, revised upwards till it reached Rs196.835m by December last year. Its task was to introduce thalassaemia preventative measures through intervention in 22 districts. That this is its performance speaks volumes for, first, the kind of interest taken by the Punjab government in one of its own initiatives and, second, the level of oversight involved. It is legitimate, here, to point out the waste of a massive amount of funds. But that would be to ignore the plight of hundreds of thousands of adults and children who continue to suffer from this grievous affliction. Once again, it would seem, the promises of help made to them by their government remain confined to good intentions alone, with their fate abandoned to the promise of easy money.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Default 2.07.2015

Rupture in the Baloch insurgency

THE decade-old insurgency in Balochistan is no longer the monolith that it had so far appeared to be. Twenty people were killed and several injured in the early hours of Tuesday during a clash between two militant groups belonging to the banned Balochistan Liberation Army and the United Baloch Army that took place near the border of Kohlu and Dera Bugti districts. With both sides using heavy weapons, the skirmish lasted several hours. Elsewhere in the province on the same day, in the Mashkay area of Awaran district, 13 militants were killed in an encounter with security forces. Reportedly, among the dead are a brother and nephew of Dr Allah Nazar who heads the Baloch Liberation Front, another banned separatist group.

For several years, the unity between the various militant groups has been a distinguishing feature of the Baloch insurgency; areas of their operations even overlapped in many places without reports of friction. That seems to have effectively come to an end with the death of veteran Baloch nationalist Khair Bux Marri in June last year when a rift between his sons Mehran and Hyrbyair — who heads the BLA from self-exile in London — led to the creation of the UBA with other groups also aligning themselves with one side or the other. Such a rupture was perhaps inevitable at some point: prolonged militant movements become susceptible to internal crises stemming from differences over ideology and/or finances, which can then lead to disagreements about operational strategies. Where the security forces are concerned, the fracturing of the insurgency offers a tactical advantage for them to comprehensively crush the movement. In 2013, nature afforded them a similar opportunity when a devastating earthquake struck Awaran, a stronghold of the BLF. In its aftermath, the security forces — under the umbrella of providing relief to earthquake victims — managed to access parts of the very volatile district that were hitherto ‘no-go areas’ due to risk of insurgent attacks. However, in the process they also employed highly questionable tactics such as allowing unfettered leeway to the ultra right’s ‘charity’ wings to establish a presence in the area’s secular and multi-sectarian — if deprived — society. Extremist forces are part of the problem that bedevils Balochistan, a fact highlighted by Dr Abdul Malik on Tuesday. They can never, in any viable sense, be part of the solution.

Recent events indicate there is, at last, perhaps some realisation that a new approach is needed. There was the announcement of an amnesty for Baloch militants turning their backs on violence, and an initiative to hold talks with the Khan of Kalat in London is in the works as a means of reaching out to hardline separatist leaders. However, unless the state discards its old proxies and prejudices, and takes the long view that actually addresses legitimate Baloch grievances, the province will remain a powder keg.

The bigger picture

IT is a picture and an accompanying press release meant to send a message of stability and a healthy working relationship: before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif embarks on any visit with internal security or foreign policy dimensions, there is now the obligatory day-before meeting between the prime minister and the army chief, Gen Raheel Sharif. So it was this Tuesday that before Prime Minister Sharif travelled down to Karachi, he met Gen Sharif and discussed issues of great import. There is some sense to the message, given the near obsessive scrutiny by the media and sections of society of the state of the relationship between the leader of parliamentary democracy and the leader of the powerful army. Given institutional histories, Prime Minister Sharif can hardly be faulted for wanting to be seen to be close to and working with his generals, while Gen Sharif would equally like to send a message to his rank and file and officer corps that he is lobbying for the military’s institutional concerns at the highest levels.


There is though a point where symbolism needs to be matched by substance. And substance ought only to be measured in terms of the constitutional scheme of things and incrementally righting the civil-military imbalance in the country. Consider, for example, the issue of Karachi. Where, really, is the civilian input today into the handling of the security crackdown in the city? When the Karachi operation was launched in September 2013, there appeared to be significant civilian ownership and some clear political leadership — Prime Minister Sharif, the interior ministry, the Intelligence Bureau, all seemed to have some sense of purpose and resolve about them. Today, examining the all-too-familiar picture of Gen Raheel seated on the left and the prime minister on the right during one of the army chief’s frequent visits to the prime minister’s office, is there any sense other than the military leadership is the one with the initiatives and the ideas and the civilian government simply acquiesces or indicates to what extent it can go along with the military leadership’s initiatives and ideas?

The lone gunman


LAW-ENFORCERS are routinely criticised for failing to crack down on crime, especially in a violent city like Karachi. But at times incidents take place that truly expose the state of unpreparedness of those who are supposed to serve and protect the people. One such incident transpired in Karachi’s DHA area on Tuesday, when a mentally unstable man blocked traffic on a main thoroughfare, started firing into the air and took a girl hostage before he ran out of ammunition and was subdued. It is a miracle no lives were lost as the suspect was armed with a submachine gun and a pistol. It is equally propitious that the shooter ran out of bullets, or else the episode could have continued for much longer, with more lethal consequences. What is also shocking is that while policemen tried to convince him to surrender, the man was overpowered by a TV reporter who was covering the event.
It is truly frightening to consider the level of mayhem that could have ensued had the gunman been an actual terrorist. The incident bears a striking similarity to the episode in Islamabad in 2013, in which a lone gunman paralysed the capital for several hours.

The incident highlights two key issues: the proliferation and availability of weapons in Karachi, and the lawenforcers’ lack of preparedness. That a mentally unstable individual could have access to a sub-machine gun is shocking and reflects the deadly level of weaponisation in society. Secondly, it is bizarre that in a city with several specialised police units, as well as the paramilitary Rangers, the LEAs were not able to neutralise the suspect until he ran out of ammunition. Of course, there exist nonlethal methods of disarming and disabling suspects in such sensitive situations; the question is, are our LEAs trained in these methods? This incident would suggest otherwise. The stand-off should serve as a moment of reflection for those who rule Sindh, particularly those managing Karachi’s affairs.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Default 3.07.2015

Violence in Sinai

IT is a measure of Egypt’s political instability that the completion of one year of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s government coincided on Wednesday with one of the biggest attacks by Islamic State militants in the Sinai on the security forces, leading to over 100 deaths. The government declared that the area — Sheikh Zuweid town — was “100pc under control”, but the force used by the security apparatus — F-16 jets and Apache helicopters — only highlighted the militants’ fighting prowess. Moreover, the government’s ‘100pc’ claim appeared dubious when the army declared it would continue the operation until the area had been cleared of “terrorist concentrations”. Even though it was the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate which had launched the attack, the government said among those killed were Muslim Brotherhood members, a claim the Brotherhood denied, saying those “murdered” had been doing relief work.

While Egypt had often witnessed terrorist attacks on foreign tourists and the Coptic minority, organised militancy is a new phenomenon and is obviously a reaction to the regime’s unabashed persecution of the opposition, especially of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose government, headed by Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was removed by the military, followed by bogus trials and the sentencing to death of a number of Brotherhood leaders, including Mr Morsi. In silencing the media and crushing the opposition, Mr Sisi’s aim seems to be to give Egypt ‘political stability’. However, the ferocious clashes in the Sinai and the murder of the chief prosecutor the other day underline the military-led regime’s failure to give peace to the country. Obviously, Mr Sisi hasn’t learnt any lessons from the fate of dictators like Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Muammar Qadhafi whose systems based on patronage and tyranny collapsed like a house of cards at the first whiff of the Arab spring. However, the dictators mentioned above did give stability — no matter how superficial — for decades, but Mr Sisi appears to be having difficulty in consolidating his hold even in the very beginning.

Crossovers from PPP
THE PPP has reached a point where a clutch of trained, skilled members are leaving it and going over to a party that appears to be the counter-force to the PML-N in Punjab. Many PPP stalwarts have crossed over to the Imran Khan camp in recent days. Many others are set to follow suit. Calls from within the PPP to remind them of the merits of loyalty seem to have had little effect on the outward-bound — those who are asked to be faithful to the party have someone closer to be sympathetic to: themselves. There are many explanations for this exodus; the most wanting in reason refers to it as another season of cleansing within the party. But this does not appear to be the usual load-shedding of the unwanted. These departures are a huge, if not fatal, blow to the PPP because at the moment it is struggling to stay relevant.


The situation in Sindh — the last PPP bastion — is an obvious influence on the defections in Punjab. But the truth is this could well have happened a long time ago. The loud, then fading, demands to have a party that at least pretended to stand and work towards a softer cultural milieu went unheard. They were left unaddressed by a PPP leadership which felt no qualms in transforming the party from a people-driven entity to one where decisions were imposed from above. Having quite spectacularly spent its capital, like unworthy heirs to a rich legacy, they are now content to tag along and act as appendages rather than seeking to take the initiative.

In their defence, they may say they had little chance of preventing the large-scale defections in a country where both the militants and the military have shown such a strong dislike for their politics — which doesn’t relieve the pain of witnessing the shrinking of political choices in the country. That erstwhile Bhuttoists can switch to whatever ideology is symbolised by Imran Khan is a reconfirmation — the umpteenth one — of the redundancy in the Pakistani political arena of the brand other than the one that is pursued by both the PML-N and PTI. Mr Khan and Mian Nawaz Sharif have often been described as two sides of the same coin, fighting for the same interest groups and duelling for the mantle of the leadership of a single group. If the PPP once offered a clear or nuanced alternative, now, depleted by the defections, it will find it hard to regain the ground it has lost. It is no coincidence that the defections are being blamed on a policy adopted by Asif Ali Zardari and executed by the likes of Manzoor Wattoo. It is a policy that puts emphasis on what happens not on the streets but inside the drawing rooms — from where Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had once pulled it out to place in the public domain.


Response to heatwave

ALMOST a week after the heatwave in the southern part of the country passed, leaving behind an alarming death toll, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finally thought it worth his while to pay a quick visit to Karachi and make some inquiries. His visit was abbreviated, and cut short further as he attended one meeting with Sindh government officials and civil society leaders before departing straight for the airport. In the meantime, he offered condolences to the bereaved without finding the time to visit the hospitals where they were being treated, and left behind reports that an inquiry committee had been constituted to affix responsibility on those government departments that were negligent during the tragedy. All through the event itself, the federal government took the line that it was the Sindh government’s responsibility to formulate a response, and deflected charges that power outages that aggravated thedeath toll had anything to do with the centre since KElectric is privately owned. But by insisting that the National Disaster Management Authority did indeed fashion a response, the federal government tacitly admitted that there was a role for it to play in such a situation. Nobody has asked whether the Met Department, another federal body, actually issued an alert in response to which government departments could have mobilised.


Mr Sharif’s visit, and the response of his government more generally, appears almost flippant in the face of a large death toll that crossed 1,200 in Karachi. First by participating in a blame game over who was responsible for the shoddy response, then by making a short and perfunctory visit whose only tangible outcome appears to be another committee, he has reinforced the perception that the city of Karachi has nobody to care for it. Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah couldn’t abort his trip to Larkana as the death toll mounted during the heatwave, while Mr Sharif cut his own visit to Karachi short when he arrived in the city after the crisis had passed. What exactly does accountability mean at this point? What difference does it make that a committee will now be making some inquiries when both the federal and provincial governments are more interested in protecting their own image than sheltering the most vulnerable of lives from a crippling natural event? The residents of Karachi can do without mere lip service being paid to their troubles.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2015
http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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Default 04.07.2015

End of Khyber-II

ON the first anniversary of the ongoing Operation Zarb-iAzb on June 15, the military wrapped up Operation KhyberII in the Tirah region. Launched in March, after the military cleared much of the Bara plain in Operation Khyber-I, this follow-on operation in Khyber Agency was meant to clear the fierce Tirah terrain consisting of deep valleys and high mountains. The principal threat in the Tirah region came from the TTP; the Mangal Bagh-led Lashkar-i-Islam; a breakaway TTP faction, the Jamaatul Ahrar; and sundry foreign militants. That the military, with its superior power, would eventually prevail over the militants in terms of reclaiming the Tirah region was always clear. However, there has been a high cost, not least in terms of the more than 50 dead soldiers and over 100 injured. Yet, with the army chief in North Waziristan yesterday and the military preparing for what is expected to be one of the toughest fights there in the Shawal region, loss of life in military operations is the high price the country sadly must pay for the state to once again reassert its control in the militancy-hit regions.

It should be noted that Operation Khyber-II has not resulted in actual physical control by the military of all three passes from Tirah into Afghanistan — though the unreclaimed valleys of one of the three passes can, according to the military, be controlled by aerial firepower because the military now occupies the peaks over them. This means two things. One, Operation Khyber-II may require another phase for the total recapture of Tirah. Two, the military may apparently be forced into the continued use of air strikes in the Rajgal and Kachkol valleys to prevent the movement of militants until winter. At that point, with the onset of the cold season, a new challenge will emerge if the valleys have not been taken over by the military by then — ensuring a military presence in tough and inhospitable terrain while simultaneously guarding against hardened militants slipping in under the cover of extreme temperatures. Vital as it has been to reclaim the Tirah region, it was clearly left to the last because of the challenge it posed, unlike the Bara plains which were relatively easier to secure in Khyber-I.
From this point onwards, the post-operation challenge is a familiar one: the military can hold and secure terrain, but it will only ever return to some semblance of long-term normality if the civil administration is allowed to function — and if the civilians show some ownership of the project. Administrative control of the Tirah tehsil has traditionally been done from Bara, a situation that must change if Tirah is to be stabilised. Perhaps a road-building project into Tirah would also go a long way in creating long-term stability in a region that has been dominated by kidnap gangs, drug traffickers and, of course, militant groups.

Injustice averted

HAD it not been for timely action by the police, the horror that was Kot Radha Kishan could have been replayed all over again on Tuesday in Makki, another village in Punjab. The circumstances were similar — a poor Christian couple, a blasphemy allegation, hate-mongering clerics inciting a mob to violence, and a possible underlying motive that had nothing at all to do with religion. The utter lack of reason was, of course, a given: the victims, who were illiterate, had found an old panaflex advertisement for various colleges which they were using to sleep on. Some Arabic inscription, allegedly from the Quran, was part of the text which led two clerics and a barber — who, it is said, coveted the couple’s home — to accuse them of committing blasphemy. According to a senior officer of the district police, a mob had dragged the couple out of their home and was beating them to death when the police intervened and rescued them. One of the clerics who incited the mob has been arrested while the other two instigators are still at large.

It is, unfortunately, rare that law enforcement comes down so assertively on the side of marginalised groups, particularly when faced by mobs baying for blood. Perhaps the Kot Radha Kishan incident last year, in which a young Christian couple was lynched upon being accused of committing blasphemy and burnt in the brick kiln where they worked, was a watershed of sorts. The court has been insistent upon a thorough police investigation into that case, and recently indicted over 100 suspects, including the three clerics who had allegedly incited the mob. In the current instance as well, all those involved must be brought to book, and the victims enabled to return to their home in dignity. While the actions of the police were no more than what their job demands, they must be commended — for such a stand on their part sends a powerful message to those seeking power or pelf by exploiting religion.

Bridges to nowhere

THE collapse of Chanawan bridge near Gujranwala, which resulted in the loss of 17 lives when the engine and three carriages of a train passing over it fell into the canal below, is a tragedy whose cause might take a while to determine. What is regrettable to note is the early blame game that has led to tensions between those officials responsible for law enforcement and those responsible for maintenance of the bridge. The former said it was unlikely to be an act of sabotage, whereas the latter said the bridge, which is more than a century old, was in working condition as trains passed over it regularly. This exchange began even as rescue efforts were still under way, and was sparked when unnamed military officials gave informal statements to the media saying they suspected sabotage since the train was carrying troops to participate in a military exercise. Speculations about the causes of such tragedies should wait at least until rescue efforts have been completed.

What is worth bearing in mind, though, is that this is not the first bridge collapse in recent years, although it is the first one involving a railway bridge. Only last month, the collapse of the Old Bara bridge in Peshawar killed three individuals, and in April more than 50 people were injured when a makeshift bridge in an Islamabad slum collapsed as people gathered on it for a funeral service. Then in September last year, another bridge in Attock collapsed while the river below was in high flood, killing three people in a car as they were crossing it. In July 2012, two people died when a pedestrian bridge collapsed in Lahore. Then, of course, the famous Shershah bridge collapse in Karachi, that sparked an epic blame game of its own in 2007, killed five people. There are many other examples of bridges poorly maintained or makeshift bridges built for pedestrians in rural areas or urban slums collapsing. The death toll in the present tragedy is higher than in any of the other incidents mentioned here, but taken together they all highlight the casual manner in which bridges are treated in our society. Building and using bridges is easier than ensuring they remain safe from wear and tear as well as sabotage. Thus far, our track record in ensuring the upkeep and protection of our infrastructure has inspired little confidence.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/newspaper/editorial
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