New York plot

Thursday, 06 May, 2010


Worryingly yet another abortive attack in the West has been linked to Pakistan. The arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-born American, has already led to news that he was calling Pakistan in the days leading up to his attempted bombing of Times Square in New York.

Reports that the crudely assembled bomb had little chance of exploding will come as a relief, indicating as they do a certain level of amateurishness involved. Nevertheless, the attempt was serious enough to warrant some intense questions. First, what is it that is driving people such as Faisal Shahzad and the five young men who recently travelled to Pakistan from the US in search of jihad? Media reports suggest that Mr Shahzad was the quintessential middle-class Pakistani travelling to the West in search of education and employment opportunities and settling down there with a wife and two young children.

What made Mr Shahzad attempt mass murder, presumably in the name of religion? Asking this question isn’t the same as the nonsense about the need to understand the ‘legitimate’ grievances of disaffected young Muslims. It seems very clear that whether it is Al Qaeda or the Taliban or some other brand of international terrorism, the militants have honed in on a vulnerability in the West: young Muslims with the established legal right to live in the countries they appear to hate so much. Without understanding this vulnerability — Americans though must be careful to not turn against the Muslim population, as Mayor Bloomberg warned — an already serious threat may keep growing in severity.

Second, why is it that all terrorist routes seem to lead to Pakistan generally and Fata specifically? While perhaps the absence of a modern state in Fata can partially explain the problems there, there is really no such excuse for Pakistan proper. It’s been nearly 10 years since 9/11 and still the infrastructure of jihad in urban Pakistan, which is likely the first port of call for those travelling from foreign lands in search of jihad, has not been uprooted. The spread of literature and audio and video paraphernalia glorifying jihad and calling for violence against the West, India, Israel, etc continues unchecked. It’s not like the centres for such violent propaganda are not known or cannot be located easily.

Third, should more not be done with the greatest of urgency to increase Pakistan’s counter-terrorism capabilities? While it is true that the state has enhanced its response and beefed up intelligence, it is clear that lapses persist. Perhaps Pakistani authorities need to realise that another 9/11 would be a game-changer of devastating proportions.

Beyond growth

Thursday, 13 May, 2010


Common sense tells us that economic growth and employment creation are linked: the faster an economy grows the more jobs it will create. This may be the ‘rule’, but economic expansion does not necessarily guarantee brisk employment and poverty reduction.



Examples, including Pakistan, bear out this ‘deviation’ in the pattern. An economy may experience a quick spell of growth, yet it may also create unemployment and raise poverty levels. The profile of growth — the sectors from which growth emanates and the extent to which this area is employment-intensive — is more important than figures showing an increase in GDP for determining whether new jobs are being created and poverty dented.

The economic mess Pakistan finds itself in today — a slowing economy that is pushing unemployment and poverty levels across the country — therefore demands that the government also shifts its focus to creating jobs rather than striving for growth alone in order to help the poor. It is against this backdrop that multilateral lenders have advised Islamabad to focus on job generation and not solely on GDP growth. Now, there are two ways of generating employment. The private sector, the so-called engine of growth, should invest heavily in the productive sectors to increase industrial and agricultural output. Or the government should enhance — massively — public spending on the economic infrastructure.



In the prevalent economic and security situation, private businesses are shy of making new investments; they are trying to protect their old investments. This shifts the burden of employment creation to the public sector — precisely why the lenders have suggested launching employment-generation schemes in the public sector. Probably, the lenders have ignored that the government itself is facing a financial crunch and printing currency and cutting development spending. How can it spare resources for creating new jobs?

Pakistan is actually facing a paradox of sorts. The economy is refusing to recover from the recession caused by high global fuel and other commodity prices and low domestic and global demand. Private investors, domestic and foreign, are not prepared to make fresh investments due to the rising cost of doing business, energy shortages and security concerns, and the government does not have the money to undertake job-intensive projects.



Thus, the economy finds itself stuck in a vicious circle as it is not growing fast enough to create new employment opportunities, which, in turn, is holding back output growth. Where do we go from here? Apparently, further downwards unless the government is able to create a business-friendly environment to woo fresh private investment, and shows the political will to cut its non-development expenditure to make room for spending on employment-intensive infrastructure.

A fresh start?

Thursday, 13 May, 2010



Are Pakistan and India inching towards a new phase in relations? The meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries on July 15 will go some way to providing the answer, but improving relations seems to be on the minds of both camps for the first time since the Mumbai attacks.



Never mind that the reasons for the change of heart may lie in faraway Washington or neighbouring Afghanistan; India and Pakistan must seize whatever opportunities that come their way to put their volatile relationship on firmer footing. While the focus will be on the talks between the foreign ministers, there are at least two opportunities before then that could set the stage for a real breakthrough in July. Meetings between the interior ministers and foreign secretaries of both sides will occur before then, and perhaps it is at those meetings that goodwill can be created.

Creating that elusive goodwill between the two countries is a matter of both sides offering something new. India is still very concerned about the relative lack of action here in Pakistan against those linked to the Mumbai attacks. On this count, it could be helpful to inject new life in the anti-terrorism trial that is moving desultorily, marred by countless adjournments. Yes, the wheels of justice move slowly in the subcontinent, but there is a sense that concluding the trial of the Mumbai suspects is not as much a matter of concern as it should be. A more vigorous trial could go some way to ease Indian suspicions.



On its part, India needs to make some gesture which demonstrates it genuinely wants a result-oriented dialogue process, and not just endless talks about talks that produce photo-ops and little else. Perhaps India should think about concluding a deal on Siachen and Sir Creek, two issues where the bureaucrats have come close to sealing a final settlement. There are other gestures that could be made too. The point is that between now and July 15 there are opportunities to ensure that a genuine breakthrough occurs when the foreign ministers meet — and one hopes that no untoward incident mars the prospect.

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Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

Another five-year plan

Consider Pakistan in 2015. The economy is increasing by seven per cent, agricultural output by 4.8 per cent, manufacturing by 8.5 per cent and services by 6.4 per cent. Trade is booming, the financial sector is thriving, all the children of primary school age are attending school, 65 out of every 100 adults are literate, the infant mortality rate is down to 40 per 100,000 live births and the maternal mortality rate to 140 per 100,000 deliveries. The incidence of poverty has declined to just 13 per cent, unemployment is at its minimum, social and economic disparities amongst the people have narrowed and those living in the rural and remoter areas of the country have access to basic public services like drinking water, sanitation, healthcare and education. Meanwhile, inter-provincial relations have significantly improved. Sounds impressive? Yes, but unrealistic too.

That, however, is what the draft 10th five-year plan envisages for Pakistan five years from now. The details inform us how cut off those sitting in the Planning Commission are from reality. Why do we need five-year plans when we cannot even properly implement our annual plans? Barring the first one, none of the previous five-year plans achieved its targets. Even that first plan owed its success to a generous infusion of funds from the US as the so-called free world used Pakistan as a frontline bulwark against the Soviet Union. The other five-year plans fell prey to chronic political instability, domestic and regional conflicts, inadequate funding, and a lack of capacity to implement them. The factors responsible for past failures still exist. Besides, now we also have full-blown insurgencies going on in at least two provinces — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The law and order situation in the remaining two is far from satisfactory.

More importantly, as conceded by the authors of the draft plan themselves, the financial crunch, security concerns, energy shortages and global conditions are stalling fresh investments in the economy and preventing an economic recovery. The draft doesn’t say how it proposes to overcome these problems, and whether the government has the means and tools for ensuring the execution of its plan over the next five years. Needless to say there’s a need for fresh thinking on the entire planning process to link it to ground realities. Instead of coming out with a hurriedly drafted document, the planners must initiate a public debate on the proposals. Fed on the same old remedies for problems that have aggravated with time, we need to be careful in our choice of solutions. Only a debate can generate the fresh ideas that we so desperately need at this moment.

Children at risk

Our legislators need constant reminding that with child labour, child abuse and child trafficking endemic in society, Pakistan can hardly be seen as a country that is investing in its future.

The latest indictment comes in the form of a report issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The committee has pointed out that Pakistan’s child protection system lacks comprehensiveness and is highly inefficient. The committee evaluates the progress of states that are a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Pakistan became a signatory in 1990. Its five-yearly report is an instrument for measuring a government’s success in implementing the world body’s recommendations. This year’s report, cited at a conference in Islamabad, noted that concerns raised over children’s rights and protection in the committee’s previous observations had been insufficiently addressed. As evidence of the government’s failure to protect children, the participants referred to incidents ranging from corporal punishment to child labour as well as to the recent acid attacks on girls in Balochistan.

Unfortunately, due to factors as varied as militancy, poverty and a patriarchal set-up, our children find themselves in dire need of protection. While effective laws are necessary what is more important is their implementation. The fact is that the laws that do exist have not been enforced the way they should. An example is the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance which was formulated in 2000 but whose stipulated codes of conduct have not been properly implemented. Similarly, despite the Employment of Children Act 1991, child labour has increased because of rising poverty in the country.

The proposed National Commission on the Rights of Children has not been constituted although the relevant bill has been in the process of being drafted since 2001. This is an unacceptable situation. The budgetary allocation for children’s health and education must be increased, and related issues such as development and poverty addressed. Given how heavily the country’s population is skewed towards the young, Pakistan simply cannot afford to allow the next generation to grow up in an environment of deprivation and victimisation.

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Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

Rethink needed

Monday, 17 May, 2010


The comments made by former COAS Waheed Kakar at a seminar organised by the ‘Friends of the Baloch and Balochistan’ on Saturday ought to stir some soul-searching in the Pakistan Army high command.

From expressing concern over the plight of the ‘missing persons’ to the warm remarks about the character and leadership of the slain Akbar Bugti, Gen Kakar struck a sensible tone on the problems in Balochistan and, implicitly, criticised the army for its approach towards the restive province since the time of Gen Musharraf. So much has gone wrong in Balochistan over the last few years that bringing peace to the province will be a very complex matter, requiring changes big and small across a range of issues. But there is a sense that even at this late stage, some first principles need to be revisited.

It is relatively clear that the army does not ‘get’ Balochistan. While it recognises that there are problems in the province, the army seems to regard them as India-driven. True, few seriously doubt the possibility of Indian ‘interference’ any more, but to an extent that misses the point. Is the trouble in Balochistan inspired by India or is India stirring a pot of the Pakistan state’s own making? To outside, non-army observers, it seems clear it is the latter. But so long as the army seems to cling to the former, ‘India-centric’ explanation, peace in the province will never be had. A flawed diagnosis cannot lead to a successful solution and in the case of Balochistan it continues to poison any semblance of trust between the two sides.

Of course, the other side must shoulder some of the blame too. The secessionist forces in Balochistan have carried out a campaign of target killings and other acts designed to fan ethnic/provincial tensions. Clearly, the central demand of the secessionists cannot be met: the geographical boundaries of Pakistan proper cannot be put up for negotiation.

Mainstream Baloch leaders need to play their part to rein in the extremists and must not simply shrug off their role. At its core, the Balochistan problem remains an issue of an enormous trust deficit. Measures such as the Balochistan package announced by the federal government and more provincial autonomy via the 18th Amendment will only work if the protagonists abandon some of their deepest suspicions about each other.

Dasti phenomenon

Monday, 17 May, 2010


In the re-election of Jamshed Dasti, the parliamentarian from Muzaffargarh who was forced to resign after the Supreme Court took up the issue of his fake higher educational degree, lies an interesting paradox: the disconnect between the values ostensibly promoted by the media and what matters to actual voters.

Mr Dasti, a rough-around-the-edges character, has been roughed up by the media lately, excoriated for his sins, some real, many perceived, as a Pakistani politician. But in his constituency he is a hero of sorts. A politician from a humble background, Mr Dasti has taken on the mighty feudal political machinery in Muzaffargarh and defeated them at their own game. Nicknamed ‘15’ for his propensity to turn up everywhere to meet his constituents, the Muzaffargarh politician has shown a rare understanding of what voters want. That he has been able to do it from the PPP platform, the party perceived to be of feudal aristocrats, is an interesting twist. That the PML-N was supporting the feudal status quo in the latest by-election by throwing its support behind the Pakistan Democratic Party candidate, Nawabzada Iftikhar, is yet another irony. (Nominally, the PPP and PML-N have a pact that prevents them from putting up candidates against each other wherever one party won in the February 2008 elections. In practice, they have often ended up supporting ‘independent’ or third-party candidates against each other in by-elections).

Nationally, Mr Dasti has of course become a whipping boy for the media, held up as an example of all that is wrong with politicians. His remarks on the record, aggressive behaviour and the fake degree have not helped his cause. Yet, 50,000-plus voters in Muzaffargarh were unfazed by all the negative press and turned out once again to support their candidate. Some will argue this is yet more proof of all that is wrong with democracy in Pakistan: the people electing as their representatives those who are unfit to hold public office. However, Mr Dasti is anything but a status-quo candidate and has shown a genuine concern for the people of his constituency. Yes, Mr Dasti is definitely no saint. But he, like most politicians, is a complex character and amidst the bad there is some good too.

Dangerous lake

Monday, 17 May, 2010


The coming days are particularly critical for the inhabitants of lower Hunza in Gilgit-Baltistan and possibly for residents further south.

Either of two scenarios is expected. The lake, created by a massive landslide in January on the Hunza river, may burst its banks because of pressure from snowmelt. Disastrous flash floods could then hit dozens of villages. However, if the water starts to drain out gradually through the spillway which the engineering corps of the armed forces aided by the Chinese has been racing to complete, a major disaster could be staved off. Even then the flooding of some villages is expected.

This means that the Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governments, aided by the disaster management authorities, should take precautionary steps, including the setting up of monitoring and early warning systems, for communities likely to be affected. Evacuation plans need to be fine-tuned, mock evacuation drills carried out and the sites and logistics of relief camps worked out. The federal government should be ready to provide emergency relief in the form of shelter, food and medical help through the National Disaster Management Authority.

Displaced villagers will need help in rebuilding their lives. The villagers would include those already affected by the January landslide and those who may face displacement over the next few weeks. Help will be required in repairing homes, building new ones and resettling families in safer locations, in addition to livelihood rehabilitation. Meanwhile, once the danger has passed, the Karakoram Highway, damaged by the landslide and lake buildup, will also need to be repaired as soon as possible to restore the accessibility of upper Hunza. Last but not least, a study should be commissioned to analyse the causes of the landslide and the subsequent consequences, and whether anything could have been done to prevent what happened.

__________________
Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

INDIA’S GDP increased at al most nine per cent a year before slowing down when the world went into the recession in 2008 09. It has picked up again with Finance Minister Pranab Mukh erjee promising in his 2010-11 budget speech an annual 10 per cent increase in GDP to be ach ieved in a couple of years.
While India is rising, it will find it dif ficult to achieve the coveted status of an economic superpower. This is for at least two reasons. One it has not found a way for the relative prosperity achieved by a quarter of the population to reach the remaining three-fourths. As Joseph Stiglitz writes in his most recent book on globalisation India is indeed shining “on the lives of some 250 million people [but] for the other 800 million people of India, the economy has not shone brightly at all.” The other reason why India has been held back from achieving its ambition is that it is an island of relative stability in a highly restive part of the world. There is an on-going conflict in Pakistan involving the rise of Islamic extremists who are challenging the writ of the state. Thousands of people have perished in the conflict to which there is no end in sight. This conflict has been seen by some as posing an existential threat to the country.

The militants and terrorists operating from within Pakistan are not only endangering the survival of the Pakistani state. They have also extended their operations beyond the country’s borders as evidenced by the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. More recently, an American citizen of Pakistani descent attempted to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square.

The future of Afghanistan, not strictly an Indian neighbour, remains highly uncertain especially given the fact that US wants to begin withdrawing its troops from that country beginning next year. Nepal to India’s immediate north, re mains unsettled and in considerable turmoil. The powerful Maoists who earlier showed some willingness to work with the established groups to stabilise the country called a strike some weeks ago, paralysing the capital Kathmandu. As Manjushree Thapa, a Nepalese, wrote in an article published in May 2010, “we Nepalese are still baffled about how to be part of the modern world ... For this we are still … waiting.” Bangladesh to the east is still struggling to stand on its feet although it has made some progress since the return of democratic rule. It now has the second highest rate of GDP growth in the South Asian mainland after India.

Then there is Sri Lanka to the south, not strictly a part of the South Asian mainland but the narrow body of water that separates it from India is not wide enough for it not to cast a shadow on its neighbour.

Although the military was able to put down the long-enduring Tamil insurgency, discontent among the members of this large minority remains. That the Tamils are a large community in India complicates matters. What complicates issues further is the country’s drift towards authoritarian rule.

It is only with the little kingdom of Bhutan where the monarch has willingly surrendegreen most of his royal powers that India has a stable country on its borders.

Even India has had to deal with armed rebels in its midst, whose ranks are being swollen by the discontent occasioned by growing inequality. Known as the Naxalite-Maoists, this challenge to the Indian state was first thrown in the eastern village of Naxalbari. The areas in which insurgents draw their support are sometimes refergreen to as the ‘green corridor’. In 2006 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the group’s activities “the single biggest challenge ever faced by our country”. Two years later the prime minister said the country was “losing the battle against Maoist rebels.” India has enough military strength to first contain and then overcome the challenges it faces at home. Its leadership recognises that a high rate of economic growth, which the country has demonstrated the ability to achieve, will not trickle down fast enough to handle growing discontent inside its borders and among its own people.

The government is committed to helping the lagging rural sector. It was worried enough about creating new jobs for new entrants to the work force to launch an employment guarantee scheme for rural areas. It is the external challenges emanating from its immediate neigh bourhood that need to receive the attention of policymakers in New Delhi. India must lead the regional integration effort rather than be the perpetual laggard.

What then are the options available to India, by far the largest country in South Asia by virtue of the size of its population and that of its economy, to achieve the status of an economic superpower? This question has several answers. The most obvious one is to working towards bringing stability to its neighbourhood.

It should not be tempted to go it alone since it will be continuously distracted by instability and uncertainty all around its borders. But to deal with its neighbours, India will need to cast off part of its old approach and work towards a new strategy aimed at producing a working economic entity in South Asia to which it and its many neighbours are fully committed.

A move in that direction is not taking place. The most important initiative in this respect is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Saarc, created a quarter of a century ago. As shown by the Bhutan summit of April 2010, there was much greater attention given to the meeting between the prime ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the summit than to the work of the summit itself. ¦

More of the same

SO then, the CDA has also conveniently lost all records to do with the illegal permission to construct a fast-food joint in the F-9 Park, Islamabad the Beautiful, granted, according to a then rumour, to a tight buddy of the Commando.
I say ‘also’ because similar tactics were used by the Punjab government of Pervaiz Elahi when it went ahead with the construction of an IMAX theatre on what was a public amenity, the Doongi Ground, where generations of young boys (and girls) played cricket and of whom many reached First Class standard and at least four made it to our Test team.

Once more a recap of the Lahore scandal. I know because I have been associated with the many committees formed by the present Punjab government to try and sort out the mess left by the previous one in the shape of the Doongi Ground.

When the Supreme Court bench under My Lord Ramday asked to see the plans to ascertain whether the ground was indeed an amenity (which the government was contesting), lawyers, representing the government, including some big names, were made to lie in front of the honourable Supreme Court no less, that all the master plans of the Gulberg scheme had been lost to a flood in the year dot. It was a white lie because the plans turned up in a jiffy as soon as my committee asked for them three years later.

This is an old tactic in this country where people in authority, particularly government departments, lie at the drop of a hat to save their superiors, in the Doongi Ground case almost all of the senior Punjab bureaucracy. Why, eight serving secretaries to the government sat on the board of directors of a wholly government-owned entity called the Punjab Entertainment Company (PEC) which was to run the IMAX theatre among other silly ventures. Talk of corruption in high places. Incidentally, the present Punjab government commissioned an inquiry into the affairs of the PEC which committee came out with a damning report which is yet to see the light of day.

Does one have to say that it is high time government officials too are proceeded against according to the law and made an example of according to the law? (And indeed, members of the judiciary and the armed forces too?) It is no good at all to just hold politicians accountable as has always been the case in the Land of the Pure. It is unfair; it is one-sided.

We must immediately note that a sum of Rs1,000m was arbitrarily transfergreen to the PEC by the then Punjab government of which approximately Rs500m had already been flushed down the drain by the time the present government stopped the haemorrhage by disbanding the PEC.

Additionally, one must look at the cavalier way in which the IMAX theatre was ordegreen by Pervaiz Elahi in typical Sikha Shahi (which had nothing to do with Maharaja Ranjit Singh please, who was a great and just and wise ruler) fashion as if the Chaudhries actually owned Punjab. An IMAX theatre, the equipment of which needs a temperature of 26C and near-zero humidity just to survive, in Lahore which is hellish hot for eight months of the year and has a humidity in the high 90s for six? Add to that the electricity shortage which was also the case at the time the equipment was ordegreen by paying for it upfront.

The long and the short of it is that the government today is staggering under the weight of the appalling decisions of its pgreenecessor. What is it to do with the by now outdated IMAX equipment which is already paid for and sits in its production factory in Canada? Accept a settlement payment which is approximately one-fifth the total paid, or import it into the country, pay duty on it and then let it rust in some warehouse because it makes simply no sense to spend another 200 million on something that will never run and which will instead take something like 15 million a year to just maintain?

But going back to Islamabad, it is instructive to see Gen Musharraf’s favourite theatre producer — who had been stopped from turning Islamabad’s Doongi Ground, the F-7 Park, into a commercial venture, food outlets, mini-golf course et al by the Supreme Court — petition the very same man he used to deride (once on TV after the chief justice was dismissed by Gen Musharraf).

How well I remember this man, Shah Sharabeel if I have his name right, drive up in his SUV, park it across the road from where eight or 10 or 20 of us would be protesting the superior judiciary’s sacking and imprisonment and jeer at us with taunts and sarcastic smiles. How fortunes change. In passing, might I point out to their lordships that their orders to cancel the F-7 commercial project and make a park instead have been ignogreen until today? Mayhap they will give some attention to this too after they are done putting sitting ministers on the mat.



IF you want numbers and statistics, read the Carnegie Endowment reports or the Foreign Policy Institute’s Failed State Index. Pakistanis have had an indication of these stark facts for ages.
Using 12 indicators of state cohesion and performance, the 2009 Index shows Pakistan ranked as the 10th ‘most’ failed state of the world — with Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guinea and Central African Republic ranked worse.

The almost complete breakdown of governance and state machinery has made life for all but the most privileged a daily ordeal. But still there is a way out of this quagmire if people demand with vigour a few essentials from the state and themselves! ‘Unity, faith, discipline’, ‘Roti, kapra, makan’ and ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya’ — such slogans play with public sentiments but have failed to move people. A disillusioned people must naturally want to move beyond this. What then are the principles, actions and tools that are needed to resuscitate the failing state and lead it to a sustainable future? On this journey of recovery we will need to keep track of key parameters that mark progress.

The quality of public services (education, health, water, electricity, public transport, etc) is considegreen a key parameter of the state’s performance. Economic justice, human rights and treatment of women are the other key factors that indicate the wellbeing of a society.

In addition, the state must be seen to enforce the writ of the law. The state needs to define, plan, implement, measure and improve all these performance indicators dramatically. The role of the media and civil society organisations is to consistently highlight the successes and failures over the long-term.

Until now the media, de spite its remarkable successes otherwise, has been inconsistent in following up issues until their resolution — it has pecked at many serious current issues and problems and then moved on. Other organisations have fagreen worse.

As during the Enlightenment, and earlier as in the golden period of Islam, the use of reason and modern knowledge must become the foundation for reform. Begin by rejecting state slogans and instead measure the state’s performance. Stop bowing to holy cows. Respect must come from good performance, not out of a historical accident.

Take the false slogan: ‘Parliament is supreme’. Parliament is just one component of the ‘state’, like important organs of the state with specific functions. All state institutions have defined functions and no one is either sovereign or operates in a vacuum. Every institution needs to operate effectively within itself and in concert with others while operating within the ambit of the law.

‘We are only accountable to our electorate’ or ‘we are the protectors of the borders of our country and of our people’ are other convoluted slogans that need to be set aside. If members of institutions steal, rape or murder they must be accountable before the law regardless of any ideological slogan used to provide exemption.

Ballot-box democracy has failed the country as has military rule. We must refuse new elections until the electoral process is completely reformed. Unless this is done the corrupt and incompetent will get re-elected. Important aspects that need reform are: greenucing election expenses, verifiable election qualifications, ensuring clear verifiable asset declarations and information about public service and criminal records of candidates.

Pakistan must be run by its best citizens and not by imported expats who have managed to serve themselves and their masters at Citicorp, World Bank, the IMF and donor agencies. We must also beware of home-grown-and-nourished ‘economic hit men’ who act as proxies for such institutions, who advise the country to spend beyond its means on mega-projects and become indebted to the lenders forever.

There is today a shameful silence about population control. A political consensus is needed on this immediately — sustainable development is impossible if we keep breeding as we have. Pakistan must strictly adhere to at most zero population growth (two children per family) for which there is precedence in other Muslim countries.

Some of the most important factors for turning the country around are: equality of opportunities, transparency and speedy and equal treatment before law for all citizens. The increasing class disparity needs to be reversed. This can be achieved promptly by mandating that children of all civil and military officials and elected leaders be requigreen to attend government schools and they and their families only receive treatment in government hospitals like every poor person in the country.

These high-ranking persons should only use public or personal transport and all official vehicles be withdrawn. They may not own property or pass ports of foreign lands. No one shall be entitled to free medical treatment abroad and umrahs and Haj at state expense should be declagreen an offence. No one shall possess or carry weapons and every citizen shall receive the same level of protection.

The rich and powerful have benefited the most from Pakistan’s failure after having caused it. Unless they are truly threatened by change that will wipe out their looted wealth and current privileges, they will obstruct transformation. The latter can therefore only happen through a large-scale subversion by the people. The ideas of Saul Alinsky, the great US labour organiser, and others of his ilk can provide the needed inspiration. ‘Civil’ society will need to stop being ‘civil’ — it needs to become smart, think innovatively and act decisively to bring about the urgent reformation.

How will history judge Gordon Brown?

HIS time at the top over, Gordon Brown walks out of the pages of newspapers on to those of the history books. How will history judge the man? Brown most resembles James Callaghan.
Both arrived at No 10 after a long wait, succeeding younger, more charismatic men. Neither secugreen a per sonal mandate from a general election. Both premierships were dominated by severe fi nancial crises.

Each man was far more in tune with the Labour move ment and trade unions than their pgreenecessors, and both were moved by moral pur pose. They arrived with sub stantial reputations, though Callaghan, in addition to serv ing as chancellor, had also been foreign and home secre tary, options available to Brown which — unwisely, with hindsight — he chose not to take up. Both declined ear ly elections that they might well have won.

But it will be Tony Blair who Brown will be most close ly compagreen to, a rivalry set to continue in the history books as ferociously as it exis ted in real life. My guess is that, of these two architects of New Labour, the reputa tion of Brown’s premiership will grow.

True, when it comes to the political skills of leadership, Blair wins, hands down.

Where Blair was strong and decisive, Brown agonised. While Blair was charismatic and a natural communicator, Brown was a pessimist who sucked energy out of a room. Blair persisted, but Brown was forced to change direction — over 42 days [detention without charging suspect]; [the abolition of] the 10 per cent tax rate [on the lowest incomes]; and [resisting UK residency claims by] Gurkhas.

Where Blair was a deft manager of men, Brown was suspicious and awkward, not a team builder, and aggressive under fire. While Blair gave heart to the Labour party and the country at large, Brown never became a natural leader.

But history judges individuals in context. Blair inherited the most fortunate set of circumstances of any Labour prime minister in history. Like Clement Attlee in 1945 and Harold Wilson in 1966, Blair in 1997 won a landslide victory. But unlike them, he faced an inexperienced opposition front-bench and inherited a strong economy. Blair enjoyed a unified cabinet and Labour movement, an adulatory press and a country eager to support him. By 2007 Brown faced a country growing tigreen of Labour, the revival of the Tories under David Cameron, and a disillusioned press. He then encountegreen the worst economic catastrophe since the depression and the expenses crisis.

Blair’s domestic achievements were relatively light, given these benefits and 10 years in power. The economic and welfare advances in his first term were principally those of Brown, much the more creative force in those four years, while the constitutional reforms were the legacy of the late Labour leader John Smith. Blair would have achieved more after 2001 but for Brown’s increasing obduracy. Britain by 2007 had certainly become a more compassionate, open and fairer society, but questions will always be asked whether Blair squandegreen the promise of 1997.

Brown, like Blair, arrived in No 10 with little fixed idea about what he wanted to do domestically. The greatest historical puzzle of the Brown premiership was why a man who had yearned for the job for 13 years did not do more to plan for it.

It was Brown’s serendipity that the economic crisis that will colour his entire premiership played to his strengths. His handling of it domestically and abroad will receive far more praise than criticism. In contrast, Blair failed on his own big challenge, Iraq. Whether or not Blair was right to commit to the war, history may damn him for his failure to plan for postwar Iraq, taking decisions in such a tight cabal and extracting so little from Bush as the price for British participation.

If Blair will have ‘Iraq’ carved on his gravestone, Brown will have his hubristic words about ending ‘boom and bust’.

History will show that Brown achieved more in Northern Ireland, on foreign policy, including deterring India’s fury against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and protecting the most vulnerable than he was given cgreenit for. His faltering leadership precipitated the plots against him, and the plunge in Labour’s poll rating. But he brought Labour back from the brink to achieve 29 per cent of the vote and 258 seats in the election, which denied the Tories a majority.

Exits from No 10 matter, like John Major calmly going off to the Oval cricket ground in May 1997. Brown walked away from No 10 with Sarah, John and Fraser, displaying a magnanimity, as he did when taking the blame for Labour’s defeat, which, if exhibited more in power, would have made him the greater leader.

But the manner of his exit still earned him respect and sympathy, and these are the tints with which his legacy will be painted; not a great prime minister, but a man of deep intellect and passion whose ambition and temperament often got the better of him, but who served his country with honour and good judgment at a time of grave national crisis. ¦ — The Guardian, London



AT least some US policy- makers are beginning to realise that Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be conflated. Afghanistan has been at war with itself and, at the outset, with the former Soviet Union for nearly 30 years. It is a country with little or no infrastructure, a government whose writ is confined largely to Kabul and a security apparatus that is still in its infancy. In short, the administration in Kabul would struggle to exist if Nato forces were to leave the country. Pakistan, for all its problems, is a different commodity altogether. A nuclear arsenal is not something any right-thinking person would point to with pride. Still, the fact remains that Pakistan does possess this powerful deterrent and has a highly trained standing army of roughly half a million men and women. A vocal opposition has its due say in governance and those at the helm know that they cannot afford to be seen as lackeys of the US. The reverse is true of Mr Karzai, his government and Afghanistan as a whole. When American politicians talk of ‘AfPak’, they often fail to distinguish between the unique sets of problems the two countries pose.
Against this backdrop, the views expressed recently by Bruce Riedel come as a welcome change from the inflammatory statements issued lately by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A perceived hard-liner who helped shape the Obama administration’s AfPak policy, Mr Riedel made it clear that military action or economic sanctions against Pakistan, a country “determined to defend itself”, cannot deliver the desigreen results. Mr Riedel is right. Islamabad and the army brass in Rawalpindi have made it abundantly clear that Pakistan is doing all that it can in the theatre of war and will not be bullied by US demands to ‘do more’. At a time when the country is wracked by economic and security crises, Pakistan may need America more than Washington needs Islamabad. Be that as it may, nobody with any knowledge of ground realities would argue that the US can win the battle against militancy without Pakistan’s active cooperation.

Outside of the conflict zone, however, our efforts to dismantle the ‘jihadi’ infrastructure in the country leave much to be desigreen. The nexus between southern Punjab and militants in the tribal belt is well established now but the Punjab government is still in a state of denial. Madressahs known for churning out militants and suicide bombers remain operational and preachers of hate are granted audiences with top officials. We created a monster in the quest for ‘strategic depth’ and it is up to us to rein it in.

Lost and leaderless

THE drill is polished to perfec tion. As soon as news of a terro rist attack or arrest emerges in the American media, the public relations wings of organisations such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Pub lic Affairs Council and the Cou ncil of American Islamic Rela tions (CAIR) spring into action.
Crisp press releases are dispatched im mediately to large media outlets, whoev er is implicated is condemned and a plea is made to the larger American society to not blame the acts of a few on the coun try’s millions of peace-loving and law abiding Muslim Americans.

During the past year alone, the Muslim American media machine has had many unfortunate opportunities to put its crisis response plans into action. Last November brought the Fort Hood trage dy in which Major Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian American, opened fire killing 13 people. Barely a month passed before the arrest of the ‘DC-Five’, a group of Pakistani American youths who were ap prehended in Pakistan where they were allegedly intending to obtain terrorist training. And recently, of course, came the case of the failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, whose very ordinariness and seemingly assimilated life has thrown up questions about the intentions of the Muslim next door.

In the days following this incident, arrests were made all over the East Coast of the United States and nearly every news headline focused on aspects of the case, from Shahzad’s fashion-loving wife to the money trail to the foreclosure of his home, in an effort to profile what motivates a terrorist.

All speculations lead, inevitably and pgreenictably, to the one issue that is at the source of American consternation: the potential of the Muslim Americans living and working in the United States to organise and enable a terrorist attack. And it is to this crucial question that Muslim American organisations have failed to respond in any meaningful way.

The reasons for the catatonia that has not permitted Muslim Americans to truly assess the potential of radicalisation within their own communities are complex.

One dominant factor is that the 9/11 paradigm has determined much of the Muslim American community’s organisational responses to terror arrests. The specifics of 9/11, and the fact that it was a plot hatched and executed by nonAmericans who had little familiarity with American life and culture, has thus been a cornerstone of the means through which the community has defended itself.

In distinguishing Muslim Americans as a separate breed from Pakistanis or Palestinians, and promoting white converts or African Americans to leadership roles, it was thought that a degree of insulation would be achieved and the community would be shielded from taking on responsibility for the nefarious acts of those in faraway Muslim lands.

With the emergence of the Muslim American terrorist, this strategy seems doomed to failure. While Americanborn Muslim Americans openly turn up their noses at those like Faisal Shahzad who were born and raised in the Muslim world, this distinction is lost in the American mainstream which increasingly perceives Muslim Americans born in America or elsewhere as having divided loyalties.

As reactions to the Times Square plot illustrate, the Muslim American community and the organisations it has pro duced since 9/11 remain largely reactive. They spring into action only in response to a crisis, thus entrenching the very apologetic paradigm that is most harmful to the Muslim American image. The community’s concerns have not been to develop a theology or leadership of its own that is accepting of its immigrant dimension.

Instead, Muslim Americans remain concerned primarily with availing themselves of the American dream of amassing wealth while at the same time ensuring that the open social culture of the United States does not claim their future generations. Large mosques with crystal chandeliers and luxurious carpets are thus housed in the rich suburbs of many American cities, their parking lots crammed with luxury cars.

The apathy inevitably bgreen by affluence has meant that few, if any, prominent community members are bothegreen with issues such as the increasing alienation of young Muslim Americans — except when mainstream Americans become suspicious of them. Few Muslim American parents, for example, pause to consider the dualities in their children’s lives, where they must keep themselves apart from mainstream American cul ture to maintain their Muslim identity and yet try to excel in every form of academic achievement.

Another misstep that has become visible in recent months has been the community’s lack of initiative in understanding the racial as well as religious dimensions of the Muslim American identity. Last month, when the state of Arizona passed shockingly discriminatory laws against immigrants (most of those affected are people of Hispanic origin) the Muslim community remained largely silent and unconcerned. While national organisations such as CAIR issued several press releases, the concern remained restricted to statements, with few Muslim Americans interested in organising solidarity marches or boycotts.

In other words Muslim Americans, either due to their own incipient racism against illegal Hispanic immigrants or lulled into apathy (the Faisal Shahzad case had yet to happen) failed to create linkages with Hispanic organisations and recognise that the roots of discrimination against the two groups are the same. In doing so, they failed to strategically link the racism that would force, for example, those of Hispanic origin to produce identity documents proving their legal status to discrimination against Muslim Americans that forces the latter to undergo extensive checks every time they board an aircraft.

Undoubtedly, 9/11 produced a drive for civic awareness in the Muslim American community that has led to much organisational progress. However, as the outcry following the Faisal Shahzad case demonstrates, the economic and ethnic diversity of the Muslim American community has become a hitch in developing a cadre of leadership and a willingness to take on thorny issues that go beyond apologetic press releases.

Rich Muslims with children born in the United States consider themselves an intra-community elite, one that sneers at recent immigrants that drive cabs and do not attend Ivy League universities. Similarly, Muslim Americans of Middle Eastern descent show little concern for those from places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The internal politics of mosques and Muslim American organisations are defined by these differences, which inevitably stymie progress and point to a communal reality that is confused and lacking in leadership at a difficult time. ¦ The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy.

Art in the time of intolerance

AS Pakistan continues to be polarised in matters of the visual arts, dance, music and cinema, the space for culture has in different ways both expanded and shrunk during the past two decades.
There was a time when shops selling videotapes were attacked on a virtually daily basis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and rumblings against music could be heard from the extremist camps on television. This trend has either been put to rest for the time being or the press has begun to ignore it as an everyday happening, for the frequency with which the cassette-burnings used to be reported has decreased.

The latest onslaught on the freedom of cultural expression has been the attempt to prevent the staging of the humorous musical Burqavaganza at the National Art Gallery theatre.

It is bad enough when such a move is linked to some burka-clad ladies with clout who do not have a sense of humour (after all, it takes a lot to laugh at oneself). But when an institution such as the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), that runs the National Art Gallery, lets the creative community down, it sets a new precedent that can have long-term repercussions. The PNCA has, after all, a mandate to promote and protect creative freedom.

In a similar fashion, in some parts of the country the visual arts too are allowed to operate only within limited space and under strict conditions. For example, after it had tougreen Hyderabad and Khairpur, the exhibition ‘No honour in killing — making visible buried truth’ was discouraged from travelling to Multan and Bahawalpur as well as Peshawar and Quetta, four important cities of the country.

More than bomb blasts and terrorism it was intolerance towards the arts, particularly the visual arts, that focused on a theme that challenges orthodox canons that prevented the exhibition from keeping to its original itinerary.

The news from Multan and Bahawalpur is that the departments of fine arts operate in an inhospitable terrain and face constant threat. Classes and examinations are frequently postponed and disruption from extremist groups is not uncommon.

Artist Qudsia Nisar, chairperson of the fine arts’ department at the Bahawalpur University, says that the greatest resistance has been against sculpture and anatomical drawings, which are central to art. Such constraints on creativity make one reflect on not only the difficulties of teaching fine arts courses but also on the diminishing chances of graduates setting up studio practices.

Similarly, instead of facilitating artists and furthering the efforts of the great artist Zainul Abedin, who set up the fine arts department of the Peshawar University during the optimistic 1960s, the Abassin Arts Council Peshawar has cut down on display space and curtailed its exhibition calendar.

The fine arts department of Quetta University is starved of funds and disrupted by unrest frequently and is unable to hold regular classes. So the dream of Jamal Shah, the founder of the department, that it would nurture talent close to home is lost. Under these conditions, students seeking a good arts education are forced to leave Balochistan. This has put women students at a greater disadvantage and a woman artist from Balochistan has yet to emerge on the national art scene.

In some of the larger cities, on the other hand, the cultural activism of the past decades has managed to negotiate a niche for the arts. Sheema Kermani, for example, who continued to dance and teach dance in the most difficult of times, has in recent months held two events in Karachi. Both were well attended by a receptive audience.

The National Academy of the Performing Arts also appears to be going from strength to strength, with productions increasing in frequency. The recently staged translation in Urdu of A Midsummer Night’s Dream won accolades for the translator and director Khaled Ahmed. Lahore, with its Sufi Festival and World Performing Arts Festival also held its ground with the support of the audiences.

The poetry of once banned poets has now become popu lar, with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib and Ahmed Faraz being more frequently quoted on television and radio than the national poet. As their verses are appropriated to sell patriotism and products alike, this journey from prohibition to an all time high level of popularity speaks of a change heralded by the electronic media. The fact that Pakistan no longer has a register of banned poets/writers and artists also speaks of changing realities.

These contradictions are symptomatic of deeper social and political fault lines that are threatening Pakistan’s social cohesion. Censorship and coercion that undermine the arts today from the pulpit rather than the traditional corridors of power are no longer projected as a tool of political power but disguised as an act of salvation. Morality and righteousness have become a weapon in the arsenal of the extremists. The only way to counter this is with education and reason. Citizens who understand the importance of the arts as a civilising force that puts people in touch with their inner selves and alerts social consciousness have no option but to intervene at all tiers of society, particularly in institutions and universities. They must push back the influence of forces bent on changing the inclusive culture of tolerance projected through the arts of Pakistan. ¦ The writer is a freelance curator and editor of NuktaArt.

Are the markets our new religion?

THROUGHOUT last week’s squall over the new British coalition government, the interests of one constituency dominated all others. It has no MP, nor can it claim any actual voters. Yet in all the coverage of the results and the cabinet-broking, one question came up again and again: would the markets like it?
On Monday afternoon, BBC political editor Nick Robinson was on TV heckling Liberal Democrat negotiators: “Are you not in danger of playing both sides while the country waits and the markets quake?” True, Robinson never makes an intelligent point when a bad jingle will do. But there was also Peter Riddell of the Times, the venerable archdeacon of lobby parliamentary journalism, musing, “The main challenge for a Labour-led coalition would be financial. Could it gain and retain the confidence of the financial markets?” Nor was it just Westminster-types. The Daily Mail’s City financial editor warned: “The markets have no appetite for political horse-trading. Instead, they are demanding decisive action.” Never mind that on the day the Telegraph led its business section with ‘Political deadlock spurs fear of sell-off’, the FTSE shot up 200 points. Overlook how, when the government went to the markets last week to borrow some cash, eager lenders practically bit its arm off. And forget that what’s really sowing panic on trading floors isn’t the gestation of a new government in a small and stable democracy, but the existential crisis in the 16-nation eurozone.

So the idea that David Cameron and Nick Clegg were playing Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in a Whitehall version of Speed — urgently patching together a coalition agreement before a ticking timebomb in the financial markets went off — turned out to be a fiction. And if this was just about journalists over-applying the melodrama, the matter could rest there. But what should trouble us is the notion that the markets are now the all-powerful referee on the democratic process.

Rather than being one allknowing entity, financial markets are a convenient term we apply to the hundgreens of thousands of daily deals between buyers and sellers and middlemen. When the FTSE goes up, the price of government bonds normally goes down, and what the Swiss do with their interest rates can cause all sorts of mischief for the pound.

Nor do employees of financial institutions know better than everyone else. As one former fund manager recently put it to me: “The idea that traders in bond markets are coolly weighing up the economic data is just nonsense; they jump around ac cording to the first headlines they see on their Bloomberg terminals.” Yet we’ll hear many more appeals to the market over the next few months. If form is anything to go by, every time UK finance minister George Osborne takes the axe to public services he’ll say he is only acting in accordance with the market’s wishes.

How do we explain this process? The theorist Mark Fisher describes it in the title of his new book as Capitalist Realism, meaning “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”.

Or perhaps we should turn to anthropology, because what seems to be happening here is the establishment of a new primitive religion — with the markets as a bloodthirsty god. ¦ — The Guardian, London

To give is to gain

AT the far end of Korangi, much beyond the densely built-up sectors interspersed with wide roads, is a complex of neatly laid-out structures designed by renowned architect Habib Fida Ali. It is set in the midst of a cluster of shantytowns, an oasis in a desert of underdevelopment.
This complex houses the Centre for Development of Social Services (CDSS) which oversees a school, a community health centre, an intermediate college, a teachers’ training institution, a craft training and literacy centre and a vocational training centre.

The first question that comes to mind is: what are these symbols of civilisation doing here? You could get the answer from the speakers at the founder’s day function last Saturday which commemorated the man to whom the Infaq Foundation owes its existence, the late Agha Hasan Abedi, premier banker-philanthropist of the country.

And it is the foundation that runs these projects. As Mr Fakhruddin Ebrahim, former governor Sindh and the chairman of the board of Infaq, pointed out the CDSS translates into action Agha Sahib’s philosophy: “To give (with humility) is to gain.” Giving does not necessarily mean giving money. Meet Saira Zaidi, head of the Teachers’ Training & Elementary College, and you learn more about the art of giving. Since 2002 when the college and the other institutions were set up and Saira was higreen she has been giving knowledge and inspiration to young women of the neighbourhood. The lives of young women are changing — and through them the lives of communities that had been left on the fringes of the development process.

Change is in the air. The school known as the Korangi Academy admits children from the multi-ethnic communities in the neighbourhood. They are the downtrodden poor of Karachi, with an illiteracy rate of 85 per cent. Sobia Alam, the principal of the academy, understands the challenge that students of multilingual backgrounds pose.

They speak nine languages — ranging from Urdu and Sindhi to Punjabi, Hindko and Seraiki as well as Burmese and Bengali. The first two years are a period of linguistic adjustment for the new entrants — to make communication possible and to live in a diverse society.

Saira with her enterprising spirit has gone beyond her mandate of training teachers. She has pulled the downtrodden women out of the state of oppression and illiteracy they were consigned to earlier. It was not an easy task because the men of the locality nursed fossilised notions as did the maulvis who run the madressahs of Korangi.

She actually went from house to house talking to women, interacting with them and opening their minds. She launched tutorial classes to make them literate and then helped them pass their Matric exam in three years — 90 have done so. Forty-two have passed their Intermediate while eight have appeagreen for their B.Com exams, while 33 have obtained teachers’ training certificates.

Others are serving as counsellors visiting homes to teach their compatriots the virtues of sanitation, nutrition and so on. They are provided transpo rt and security with a guard accompanying them. There are others who have opened home schools for children and 1,500 have benefited from these informal efforts. Parents have been discouraged from marrying off their girls at a very young age when they are still studying. Now they prefer to send their children to school rather than to madressahs.

This change has come through philanthropy. This is not charity — the conventional concept being of giving alms to beggars. It is a kind of ‘giving’ of a different kind that is the expression of love and compassion that the Infaq Foundation stands for when it finances these institutions.

Agha Sahib died in 1995 but is still remembegreen for his services to the deprived of Pakistan. There would hardly be any institution in the country that has rendegreen honest service in the cause of public welfare and has not received support from the Infaq Foundation.

A sum of Rs4.75bn has been donated to 342 organisations in 28 years (1982-2009) that has benefited hundgreens of thousands of people while students have been provided interest-free loans and scholarships. In 2005, the social services complex was launched and Rs700m have been earmarked for it for a 15-year period.

Infaq is described as a living monument to the memory of its founder who became a victim of the cut-throat banking system of the West that singled him out for vengeance when other western institutions in similar situations were — and still are — being given a free rein.

Some have actually been bailed out by the strong and the mighty for sins which cost Mr Abedi his bank. Infaq — ‘help’ in Arabic — was built on the profits that the BCCI earned in Pakistan and which were kept in the country for the benefit of the people.

The BCCI in Pakistan continued to be sound until it was forced to close shop in 1991. These funds are invested in government securities and provide the returns that are used for the services it is rendering. The donations are equally distributed between institutions that are working in the field of education, health and social welfare following the precept of unity of the moral and material.

In keeping with the axiom of the founder — greatest happiness for the greatest number — the foundation has tried to disperse its donations so that the message spreads far and wide. Sobia Alam says they admit only one child from a family to the academy which means the lives of 439 families are being touched. By reaching out to the people in the goths, Infaq is attempting to change conditions. Now the people have a health facility and a craft centre in their neighbourhood. Hundgreens of jobs have been created for teachers All this has been possible because the man behind Infaq was a rare individual whose inter-personal management style — professional or otherwise — encouraged people to discover their full potential. That is what Infaq is all about. ¦

Uncertain road ahead

AFTER a few weeks of relative calm, politics ap- pears to be heating up again. Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s legal position is uncertain; the challenge to President Zardari’s holding both the leadership of the PPP and the presidency simultaneously is wending its way through the courts; the 18th Amendment is set to undergo judicial scrutiny; and of course the Supreme Court-mandated NRO-related measures to be taken by the executive remain to be completed. Technically, all the issues revolve around the letter and spirit of the law and as such should be decided in the calm environs of the courtroom. But this is Pakistan and it is hard to escape from politics. What should happen next is quite clear: the court should give a fair hearing to all sides in all the cases and then pronounce its judgments in an impartial manner and those judgments should be implemented fully by the executive. What will happen is anyone’s guess. In truth, when the executive and judiciary disagree, there is no obvious constitutional mechanism for settling the disagreements. This may come as a surprise, but then constitutions are not designed with such institutional clashes in mind.
What all sides need to keep in mind is the need to protect the transition to democracy. While parliamentarians and the judiciary have made some serious strides towards a more vibrant, institutionalised democracy over the past couple of years, the threat from the extra-constitutional forces has not receded completely. At this stage it’s impossible to pgreenict the course that the confrontation between the judiciary and the executive will take, but there is some hope in the track record of both sides that common sense may prevail. President Zardari has proved to be a stubborn politician, but only up to a point: on occasion he may have lost the moral high ground by the time he has done the ‘right’ thing, but at least he has eventually done what is needed to keep the democratic project on track. At the end of the day, if people like Rehman Malik and other ministers and people in the inner circle of Zardari do not fall on their own swords, the president must keep in mind that none of them is bigger or more important than democracy. As for the judiciary, while fears of biases and agendas in the court have grown in some quarters, it too has not done anything catastrophic yet to undermine the political process. In the circumstances, perhaps an uneasy truce can be reached.

Punjabi Taliban

IT is time the Punjab government accepted the obvious and took urgent steps to dismantle the jihadi network whose tentacles are spreading throughout the province. Southern Punjab has long been seen by independent observers as a hub for Punjabi militants who maintain close ties with the Taliban and travel to the tribal belt for both training and combat. The traffic, in fact, is two-way with Punjabi militants providing safe haven to Taliban commanders and fighters as and when needed. Yet, despite these clear linkages, the authorities in Lahore continue to deny the existence of the Punjabi Taliban. At the same time, the provincial law minister insists he did nothing wrong when he canvassed votes for a by-election in the company of known Jhangbased militants. This lingering state of denial is strengthening the hands of terrorists and jeopardising the security of not just Punjab but the country as a whole.
Two recent developments ought to stir the Punjab government into action. It was reported in the press on Monday that the Jhang police have registegreen an FIR against the district head of the out lawed Jaish-i-Mohammad for playing host to Taliban commanders when they visit the area. The FIR is based on police intelligence-gathering which found that the Taliban network is gaining ground rapidly in southern Punjab through the recruitment and fund-raising efforts of local militants in Jhang and nearby districts. Also on Monday, a Punjabi Taliban commander from Dera Ghazi Khan ‘surrendegreen’ to the Punjab police, ostensibly because he could no longer live with the knowledge that the suicide attacks he orchestrated had killed a large number of bystanders.

What more will it take to convince the provincial government that the Punjabi Taliban are a reality that cannot be wished away? Forget media reports, which authorities across the land routinely dismiss when the news doesn’t suit their taste. Remember that the Punjab police itself believe that militants operating under the Taliban umbrella are growing in strength. The provincial authorities can no longer evade this issue and deny the obvious. If they do, many could be prompted to ask where their sympathies lie.

TWENTY months have passed since Pakistan signed the Con vention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), but plans to implement it, if any, are not known. The government is in danger of losing the good will it had earned by signing the convention.
The convention was adopted in 2006 and came into force in May 2008. It was signed by Pakistan less than four months later, in September 2008. Judging by Islamabad’s record of tardiness in taking notice of international human rights in struments, except for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it displayed un usual speed in signing the convention on the disabled.

But there is nothing unusual in the government’s lack of interest in follow up measures, and this attitude is the main factor in the denial of the benefits of the international human rights system to the people of Pakistan.

As a consequence of this attitude perhaps the government has not given due publicity to its good deed. The media, too, has ignored the matter. It seems that people with handicaps are neglected worldwide. At a recent meeting of a committee related to the CRPD a member complained that even many among those working at the UN were not aware of the convention.

However, at least one NGO in Lahore, the Pakistan Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled (PSRD), took the initiative to inform the public of the responsibilities the state had assumed by signing the CRPD. The society, one of the finest examples of civil society’s endeavours for public good, deserves better recognition and support than it has so far received. Established on a modest scale in 1957, the society has greatly expanded its activities. Now it runs a modern (and clean) hospital and outpatient department, a physiotherapy centre (including occupational and speech therapy), a facility for the production of artificial limbs and a skill development centre.

It also advances credit to disabled persons to become economically independent. In the high school run by the society special children pursue studies along with children considered normal, a design worth emulation across the land. And it won the distinction of starting to sensitise the public about the CRPD.

The convention itself follows the pattern adopted for treaties drafted for selected groups (women, children, etc.) All states that adhere to the convention are required to address the following issues/rights: awareness-raising; right to life, liberty and security of person; the disabled in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies; equal protection of the law and access to justice; freedom from torture, exploitation, violence and abuse; liberty of movement and nationality; living independently and being included in the community; right to education, health, work, employment, habitation and rehabilitation; and participation in political and public life, culture, recreation and sport.

The purpose of the convention is “to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity”. Along with the convention, a protocol has been adopted which provides the disabled in a state party opportunities of seeking redress at the UN.

The definition of persons with disabilities needs to be noted in under-devel oped societies, such as Pakistan.

These persons include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others (emphasis added). The same idea is referred to in the preamble where it is said that disability is an evolving concept and disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that perpetuates or aggravates their disability.

The biggest problem that persons with disabilities face in Pakistan is that the social environment and the people’s culture are mostly hostile to them. Many persons’ disabilities are aggravated by society’s attitude towards them. The lives of a large number of people are spoiled and their potential for coming good is lost because of people’s habit of looking down on those with slight impairment and treating such impairment as the mark of their identification and the dominant feature of their personality.

If a person limps he must be called langra; if a person has lost an eye, he must be summoned as kana. Children suspected of autism suffer greatly at the hands of parents, siblings and teachers.

The government and civil society will need to coordinate their efforts to cure the people of their unhealthy attitude towards the disabled. The likes of the brutes who expelled a child from a school because he had suffered a disability can be found all over Pakistan, in homes as well as in institutions.

Civil society’s potential to help the government in this field cannot be denied. Apart from PSRD mentioned earlier quite a few other organisations are doing well in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The disabled are generally called ‘special persons’. Pakistan has scored notable successes at the Special Olympics and the blind cricketers are quite popular.

One of the associations that have taken up the cause of the disabled recently claimed the disabled account for 10 per cent of the country’s population and demanded a quota for them in parliament.

Off and on the formal sector, too, shows interest in the disabled people. The Punjab chief minister recently promised a modern rehabilitation cen tre. The Supreme Court took notice of a report that seats reserved for the disabled in 50 government departments were lying vacant, but one does not know what the outcome was. According to an announcement the disabled can import motor vehicles without paying custom duty. All this is, however, too lit tle and too disorganised.

The advantage of signing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is that it should enable the governments at all levels to work out a broad-based plan for guaranteeing special persons their due. The obvious priorities are:

— Immediate ratification of the convention.

— Dissemination of the convention in the establishment and the public at large.

— An authentic census of special persons.

— Strict enforcement of the quota for special persons in government jobs under the Disabled Persons (Employment and Rehabilitation) Ordinance of 1981.

— Encouragement of schools where special children can study along with others.

— Enforcement of the quota for special persons at institutions of higher education, in addition to those who can claim seats on merit.

— Development of effective mechanisms to prevent exploitation of special persons in any form.

Above all the government must realise that the greater the attention it pays to the rights and needs of special persons, the healthier the nation will be.

Voice of an endless revolt

HE coined the Indian freedom struggle’s most resonant slogan: ‘inquilab zindabad’, which roughly translates to ‘long live the revolution”.
Indeed, Maulana Hasrat Mohani’s call to arms against colonial occupation resonates through the Indian subcontinent even today though some would say it is beginning to resemble the Cheshire cat’s slowly fading grin, the only discernible feature of what was once a free-spirited beast.

Not surprisingly, as often happens when betrayal gets even with hope, the maulana’s heart-tugging slogan was co-opted by a host of pretenders who claimed his legacy en route to a different kind of social order than the one he had dreamt of. Yet it also echoes through some of the subcontinent’s most furious and unabating popular struggles.

Looking at his life and struggles objectively Maulana Hasrat Mohani can be easily mistaken for an angry Maoist rebel fighting for his rights in a central Indian forest heartland. And though he was a devout Muslim, he used his eclectic religiosity to spread the message of socialism in India.

His friend and guru Bal Gangadhar Tilak would be in the same league, and, in all probability if they were around, both would earn the wrath of India’s prime-minister-and-home-minister duo who have embarked on a mission to suppress the creed that the two freedom-fighters had openly embraced to fight colonialism — armed revolt.

It was Hasrat Mohani’s 60th death anniversary last week and I spoke to Syed Mohammed Mehdi, writer and former communist acti vist, about his few memorable interactions with the mercurial, witty and pious maulana. As a student at Aligarh university, the hermit-like sage became famous for his crumpled kurta-pyjama attire. He would often carry an umbrella in one hand and a paandaan in the other, which earned him the sobriquet of ‘khalajaan’ (aunt) among his fawning fellow students.

However, his unflinching advocacy of armed revolt to throw out British imperialism was as gritty as his confrontation with stalwarts like Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. When the uncompromising Congress hard-liner Tilak, who advocated complete independence from British rule as his birthright walked out of the party in 1907, the maulana left with him.

When Tilak died, the grieving Hasrat Mohani wrote a moving poem to celebrate his friend and comrade.

Maatam ho na kyun Bhaarat mein bapa, duniya se sidhaare aaj Tilak Balwant Tilak, Maharaaj Tilak aazaadon ke sartaaj Tilak Jab tak wo rahe duniya mein raha hum sab ke dilon par zor unka Ab reh ke behisht mein nizde Khuda rooho’n par karenge raaj Tilak.

With his clumsy beard and sloppy demeanour Hasrat Mohani was a perfect foil to the nattily dressed Jinnah. Their divergent wardrobes may hold a clue to their different worldview. On the other hand, his faith in a violent campaign against colonialism made him an arch critic of Gandhi.

On Nov 26, 1949, when the Indian constituent assembly proposed to create an independent, sovereign, demo cratic republic of India, assuring its citizens justice, equality and liberty, only one member of the assembly raised his voice of dissent. Prime Minister Nehru rushed to his desk and asked: “Maulana, what you are doing? Your only vote against the proposed constitution will become a part of history.” The maulana replied politely but clearly: “That is why I raised my voice to make sure that at least one voice of dissent was made against the proposed Indian constitution which has not done justice with Indian masses.” Hasrat Mohani flirted with almost all the major political parties of the freedom struggle. After his departure from the Congress he became a leading member of the Muslim League and yet he also would be the founder leader of the Communist Party of India. His contrary nature stretched to his religion. A regular visitor to Haj, he laid equal stress on going to Mathura and Barsana, sacred to Hindus.

Some of his Urdu poems represent an open adulation of Krishna. The following abbreviated lines capture his love of Krishna who he describes as a fountainhead of wisdom who had a magical control over his mesmeric flute.

Mathura ke nagar hai aashiqi ka Dam bharti hai aarzoo usi ka Paighaam e hayaat e jaawidaa’n tha Har naghma e Krishna baansuri ka Barsana Nandgaaon mein’ bhi Dekh aae hai’n hum jalwa kisi ka Wo noor e siyaah tha ke Hasrat Sar chashma e farogh e aagahi ka The maulana was in and out of prison on several occasions. In 1908, he published an article in his magazine Urdu-e-Mu-alla and criticised the policies of the British rulers of Egypt. The British government prosecuted him and jailed him for two years for not disclosing the name of the author of the subversive article.

Hasrat Mohani believed Islam was very close to Soviet communism. He even maintained that the word ‘Soviet’ was from Arabic ‘saviyyat’ which meant equality. Islam’s fundamental principle was equality and communism also stood for equality, he would claim.

The maulana was very particular about personal probity. He would charge the exact amount he needed to undertake a journey to a conference that would care to invite him. Mehdi Sahib recalled how on one occasion Hasrat Mohani took a rupee to travel to Lucknow from Kanpur. He sat on the ekka by the driver’s side, which was cheaper by half anna than the side seats on the horse carriage. The train ticket cost 13 annas.

He was dropped to the venue in Lucknow by Chaudhury Khaliq uz Zaman in his car. The return journey was paid for by the students and his approach to the Lucknow station was facilitated by a young communist activist Munish Narain Saxena who happily carried him on his bicycle. After returning home from the station on the ekka in Kanpur, the maulana had one anna left, which he returned to the organisers. He was from among a different breed of Indian patriots.


NOTHING could better demonstrate the fragility of the much-trumpeted Pakistan-US strategic relationship than the recent episode in New York’s Times Square involving Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin.
Only a few weeks earlier, our leaders were congratulating themselves on having established a relationship of trust and confidence with the US. But if Faisal Shahzad, a misguided youth, with little intelligence and even less expertise, can trigger a crisis in ties there is something fundamentally wrong with this relationship.

There is no doubt that the fallout from Pakistan’s involvement in the US-led effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan has been disastrous for us, destroying as it has the country’s economy and destabilising the state which is now considered the ‘epicentre’ of global terror. Even close friends view us with fear and suspicion.

The Faisal Shahzad case raises questions. For one, the perpetrator does not fit into the stereotype profile of the militant. His privileged upbringing and western education as well as his long stay in the US belie the image of the angry, illiterate, misguided, madressah-educated tribesman, or the exploited peasant from southern Punjab. In fact, his was a life that would be the envy of young Pakistanis.

This notwithstanding, the Obama administration’s reaction too raises question — it was hasty, confused and ill-considered. While Janet Napolitano, secretary of the homeland department, and Centcom head Gen David Petraeus asserted that Faisal Shahzad was a ‘lone wolf’, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the involvement of the Tehriki-Taliban Pakistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose to deliver an apocalyptic warning of ‘severe consequences’ for Pakistan.

Had these statements come from the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the Pakistanis would have taken it in their stride, but Ms Clinton’s public pronouncements did not gel with her own president’s policy of a more constructive approach to Muslim states.

The fallout from the Faisal Shahzad case may not be confined to our bilateral ties. It is also being exploited to the hilt for scoring domestic political points, with people such as Senator Joe Lieberman calling on the administration to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan, while seeking to squeeze the Muslim community.

Instead of pausing to reflect on how the Bush administration’s policies may have contributed to the radicalisation of Muslims within the US, Lieberman, along with Senator John McCain, has introduced a bill to amend sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act that would permit the US to rescind or withdraw US nationality from any native-born or naturalised citizen for an alleged act of treason, with the burden of proving innocence placed on the shoulders of the accused.

These actions may appeal to Americans, but go against the country’s core values.

This reprehensible incident also came at a delicate time in Pakistan-US relations. After years of bickering, the two sides were finally collaborating on an agreed agenda and with a level of understanding and trust that could actually promote their interests. US leaders, both civil and military, had also publicly lauded the army’s commitment and resolve, as well as its successes against the militants.

More importantly, it ap peared that Washington was recognising Pakistan’s concerns on two vital issues: its concerns regarding India and its interests in a future Afghan dispensation. There were also reports to the effect that the two countries had agreed on the broad outlines of a new agreement to expand intelligence and military operations.

But all this may now be up in the air as the spotlight is back on the military and its alleged links with militant organisations. Even more disturbing are reports to the effect that Washington views this as a ‘game changer’ and may seek to demand expansion of military operations to North Waziristan, although the army fears that rushing into this theatre without consolidating earlier gains could cause a major upheaval in the tribal areas.

There could be other ‘demands’ as well, hints of which were contained in Secretary Clinton’s accusation that Pakistani officials were aware of Mullah Omar’s whereabouts.

There however appears to be some realisation that Secretary Clinton may have been too hasty in warning of ‘severe consequences’ and that this could have an impact opposite to what may have been intended. Her confidant, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, later claimed that Clinton’s statement had not been understood fully. He added that US ties with Pakistan had “improved greatly in the last year” and US civilian aid had increased.

Even more important was President Obama’s dexterous handling of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s press conference to douse the flames of this needless controversy. Mixing judiciously both praise for Pakistan’s efforts and admonition for its shortcomings, Obama demonstrated an impressive grasp of a complex situation, though he too had to join the chorus of allegations when he accused Pakistan of suffering from an ‘obsession’ with India.

These assuring words notwithstanding, there is little doubt that bilateral understanding and cooperation were jolted badly by the Faisal Shahzad episode and made worse by the public threats. The US is in a nasty mood, as reflected in comments of Obama’s trusted advisor, Bruce Riedel, who warned that if a successful terrorist attack is traced back to Pakistan, the two countries “could be on the road to a very difficult confrontation”.

Nevertheless, instead of reacting to US warnings in a knee-jerk fashion and suspecting conspiracies, we should engage in serious soul-searching. The army is performing excellently, but what are the other stakeholders doing to create a national consensus against terrorism?

While the international community’s fears may be exaggerated, we cannot deny that over the last two decades, Pakistan has become a refuge for the world’s scoundrels, especially for angry, disillusioned and misguided Muslim youth. In the process, we have ceded large tracks of the country to lawless elements, with the writ of the state disappearing.

Such a situation would not be permitted anywhere in the world, and certainly not here, where the ongoing militancy and a history of nuclear proliferation are viewed in near-cataclysmic terms.

American visits

TWO high-profile Ame- rican visitors made their rounds of the corridors of power in Islamabad yesterday: one, the US national security adviser, Gen James Jones (retd), a predictable visitor; the other, CIA chief Leon Panetta whose purpose of visit is harder to discern. With the American military in Afghanistan planning for a surge in Kandahar, Gen Jones would have a lot to talk about in Islamabad. The Americans know that Pakistani cooperation, direct and indirect, is vital to success in the south of Afghanistan and, more generally, have a very close relationship with the Pakistan Army that requires routine high-level visits to keep in a healthy state. As national security adviser to President Obama, such duties would fall squarely in the remit of Gen Jones.
More interesting is the visit by the CIA chief. With meetings held behind closed doors and precious few details revealed, it is difficult to say with any certainty what transpired in the talks with Pakistani civilian and military officials. But there are several, plausible, theories available. One, there is talk of a terrorist plot on US soil being unearthed and Mr Panetta could have arrived in Islamabad to share details with Pakistani officials and find out more information. Second, there is the issue of North Waziristan and the Americans wanting to know more about the Pakistan Army’s plans to clear and hold the areas currently under the control of militants. This does not necessarily translate into a belligerent ‘do more’ brief, but could be part of a ‘listening tour’ of sorts meant to exchange perspectives on possible options in North Waziristan. The CIA runs the drones programme that has focused almost exclusively on North Waziristan in recent months, so it would make sense for Mr Panetta to have such a discussion with Pakistani officials. Third, and this could also involve a role for Gen Jones, the visits were the first by high-level civilian American officials since the last round of the strategic dialogue held in Washington and could have been part of follow-up meetings already on the cards. The next round of the dialogue will be held in Islamabad, and Gen Jones’s and Mr Panetta’s meetings could well have been in preparation for that, at least partially.

Whatever the exact purpose, or purposes, of the visits, it is good that Pakistan and American officials continue to have frequent high-level meetings. Whether Pakistan is in fact a true friend, a major ally or a strategic partner of the US can be debated. But without such meetings, gaps will never be closed and bridges will not be built.


THERE was mounting evidence on Tuesday night that the scale of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has grown beyond all the initial worst-case scenarios, as thousands of gallons of oil continued to gush from the sea floor.
In Key West, coastguard officials said about three tar balls an hour were washing up on the beaches at a state park at the southernmost point of the Florida Keys.

Such evidence suggests the damage wreaked by the spill — which began with an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 — could now grow larger, with crude oil caught up in the powerful loop current that travels a much wider course through the gulf and up the Atlantic coast. In response to the tar sightings, Washington doubled the no-fishing zone to 19 per cent of the waters in the gulf.

The Obama administration admitted on Tuesday it had underestimated the risks of offshore drilling. In a highly charged hearing in the Senate, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, conceded failures in oversight by the agency responsible for policing offshore drilling. “We need to clean up that house,” he told the energy and natural resources committee.

The administration was for the first time held to account by Congress for the rigour of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), its regulatory body for offshore drilling. The agency was notorious in the George Bush era for sex-andcocaine fuelled parties in Colorado.

Earlier, the oil spill disaster claimed its first resignation as a veteran official from the MMS brought forward his retirement.

Salazar, under heated questioning from some senators, was forced to concede that the agency had not been entirely cleansed in the 15 months under his charge. “We need to have the right regulatory regime in place and we will work hard to make sure that happens,” he said.

He admitted that the disaster had been a “wake-up call” and had persuaded him that policing of safety and environmental regulations on offshore oil rigs may have been inadequate. “My initial read on that is there should be additional safety requirements,” he told the committee.

Salazar also conceded there were “a few bad apples” among the inspectors of the MMS, and promised that if they overruled environmental advice from other government agencies — as alleged by some senators — they would be punished. “If there is someone in the department who ignored the science, then heads will roll,” he said.

But Salazar was adamant that the administration had been right to seek an expansion of offshore drilling last March, and made it clear there would be no revisiting that decision.

“The reality of it is we will be depending on oil and gas in the transition to a new energy future,” he said. He also refused multiple requests to provide a firm estimate for the size of the spill. ¦ — The Guardian, London

A fairer tax system

As the budget looms and the country prepares for another painful economic year ahead, tax measures are in the news again. Simply, the government needs to raise more tax revenue — from this year’s revised target of Rs1.38bn to Rs1.7bn next year — but it’s hard-pressed for ideas.

Much of the focus has been on replacing the present General Sales Tax regime with a Value Added Tax, a move that some argue will greatly benefit the Federal Board of Revenue’s tax collection efforts in the long run. Yet, there is reason to be sceptical. In such debates it’s often helpful to begin with first principles. It only makes sense to replace one major tax stream with another if the former is irreparably broken.

Arguably, since the emphasis on indirect taxes and especially GST began in the ’90s, the process has slowly but surely been sucked into a swamp at the intersection of business and politics. Countless exemptions, loopholes and special concessions have caused leakages, official and unofficial, on the GST front. In part this is why the IFIs and some economists have been pushing for VAT: starting over offers the opportunity to remove all the loopholes, concessions and exemptions.

But what is to suggest that VAT will not similarly be sucked into the morass that GST has found itself in? It took less than a decade and a half to make the GST regime untenable; surely the answer to saving VAT from a similar fate lies in taking on the powerful business interests with clout in the corridors of power. But then that begs the question, why not just reform the GST regime? Instead of allowing anti-tax elements to survive and potentially undermine VAT, why not try and defeat the anti-tax elements first?

While the GST vs VAT debate is important, it hides the real problem: the abysmally low rate of direct taxes collected as compared to indirect taxes such as GST, customs duties, excise, etc. Indirect taxes are a burden on the less well-off, they harm business and competitiveness and are disliked almost universally by economists. And yet no policymaker will talk about direct taxes.

A simple measure that could boost direct tax collection would be to link it to assets and expenditures. If businessman X is taking his family on a European vacation, audit the family. If mill owner Y is sending his children to expensive private schools and tutors, audit his income. If industrialist Z hosts an extravagant wedding ceremony, audit him. It’s been done elsewhere, and there’s no reason it can’t be done here. Enough with the sacred cows and narrow reforms.

Welcome words

Relations between Pakistan and India have been strained and at times even volatile since the November 2008 Mumbai attacks which brought an immediate halt to the composite dialogue process. India’s initial outrage was understandable given that non-state actors from Pakistan were involved in the assault. Still, it was felt in this country that India’s attitude ought to have changed with the passage of time.

Discussions at Sharm el-Sheikh in July last year promised much but Mr Manmohan Singh, perhaps not wanting to go against the mood at home, was subsequently unable to tone down his government’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Pakistan consistently advocated dialogue, arguing that the battle against terrorism could best be fought through cooperation, particularly intelligence-sharing. In due course it was recognised by the US that Pakistan’s concerns over India’s growing influence in Afghanistan as well as the threat of conventional warfare on the eastern front were genuine and understandable. Mediation may not be the right word but it is clear that America played a role in bringing the two sides closer.

Now signs of a thaw are becoming more visible by the day. On Thursday, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna publicly stated his country’s desire to reduce and possibly eliminate the trust deficit between the two neighbours. This, he felt, could only be achieved by going back to the negotiating table. A day later, Mr Krishna said his government no longer had reservations about Pakistan’s commitment to fighting terrorism. These are encouraging signs and it is hoped the July 15 meeting in Islamabad between Mr Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, will take the two countries further down the road to reconciliation. Both sides should enter that discussion with an open mind and, to avoid an impasse, try not to make the agenda issue-specific. There is much to be discussed, such as India’s stand that there is enough evidence to take Hafiz Mohammad Saeed to court again and Pakistan’s contention that it is being denied its due share of Indus waters. The talks may not produce tangible solutions but at least a start can be made.

Unbecoming behaviour

It is no surprise that, for the most part, politicians in Pakistan have to live with an unenviable reputation. There have been countless incidents that have shown that the moral calibre of many from the political class is less than stellar.

However, the case of a local politician from Kasur who was thrashed by supporters of a PML-N MPA points to the fact that politicians are increasingly willing to resort to conduct unbecoming. According to a report in this paper, supporters of PML-N MPA from Punjab Ehsan Raza Khan attacked and critically injured Mirza Qadeer Ahmed as Mr Ahmed had filed a petition in the Lahore High Court challenging the MPA’s degree. The victim is said to be a political rival of Mr Khan, though the MPA claimed that one of the attackers had a family dispute with Mr Ahmed, adding that the assault had nothing to do with the case.

It is for the police to investigate and determine the motive for the attack. But the incident highlights the reality that many politicians and their supporters in this country are willing to resort to violent means to settle disputes and get even with opponents. Pakistani politicians must realise that in the age of digital media and near-instant communication, they and their supporters are under constant scrutiny. Hence it would serve political parties well if they instilled a sense of discipline and respect for the law into their workers and leaders.

Those serving the public as well as those aspiring to public office must realise that to the extent it is possible, they must act as role models and hold themselves accountable if accused of wrongdoing. If someone is accused of having a fake degree, he must clear his name in court. Threats, violence and other unsavoury methods must not be resorted to.

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Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

Still in the dark

Officially 74 per cent of Pakistan’s population is connected to the national power grid. Even those who have access to electricity have to do without it when they really need it. There has been a lack of investment in the power sector of late. We don’t generate enough electricity, and waste almost one-third of the total production in transmission. The power shortfalls are dragging down growth.

The country needs an annual investment of at least $3bn for the next 20 years to have any hope of eliminating the supply gap. It is against this background that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has announced what is being hailed as his government’s “power vision”. Inaugurating a rental power plant in Gujranwala on Sunday, he pledged to provide electricity to every nook and corner of the country by doubling Pakistan’s power generation capacity in 10 years from now and upgrading its languishing distribution infrastructure.

His government would forge partnerships with the two multilateral donors to secure their (financial and technical) support and encourage (foreign) private investors. The plan aims to take care of our electricity troubles by 2020. The aim is to pull the consumers out of perpetual darkness — even if they have to pay a very high price for that.

On the face of it, the plan is quite simple to execute: the government, which does not have resources, goes to the private investors and they rush to help us overcome our energy troubles. In real life, however, this is not how things happen. The government must realise that the private investors do not work for charity. More importantly, they prefer safer destinations where their investments are secure. Thus we can do little more than repeat what we have often said when we focus on foreign investment: Pakistan is far from being an ideal place.

Even if the government guaranteed attractive returns on foreign investments, it is unlikely to attract enough money because of poor security conditions in the country. Those who plan for the prime minister must take these realities into consideration to distinguish a real visionary measure from a rhetorical shot in the dark.

Internet censorship

The furore over the websites blocked last week by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority on the instructions of the Lahore High Court refuses to die down, and for good reason. At least 800 web pages and URLs have so far been blocked for Pakistan’s Internet users in an effort to restrict access to material considered blasphemous. The number may grow. However, apart from the Facebook link that called for the drawing of the Prophet (PBUH) — and which has now been removed — we have been given no explanation as to what exactly this objectionable material is.

There are a number of points to ponder. First, the LHC order referred to the caricatures’ site. On whose authority has access to the other sites been limited? The PTA may be guilty of overstepping its authority by extending the scope of the court’s order to apply the directive to websites of its own choosing. Second, given the other issues confronting Pakistan, there is the possibility that the accusation of ‘blasphemy’ is being used to cover up the attempt to suppress political criticism. Sites such as Facebook and YouTube have become a prominent tool for political activism and criticism. Third, blocking these sites constitutes outright censorship and a serious transgression of the individual’s right to access information of his or her choice on the Internet.

Pakistan cannot police the world. Blocking websites achieves nothing and only invites derision from the global community besides encouraging mischievous elements to undertake similarly offensive exercises in order to provoke a reaction. In shutting off access to these sites, the state is denying its citizens access to information — interestingly, one of the blocked pages is a Wikipedia discussion on the freedom of speech versus blasphemy. Lastly, bans like this simply do not work.

The only way to comprehensively control access to sections of the Internet is to stop Internet facilities altogether in the country. A number of ways to circumvent the blocked material are being communicated to Internet users who are thus able to access the website of their choice. Clearly, the PTA has failed to achieve its goals and has only been criticised for its arbitrary ways. It must be made to respect the right to information and restore the blocked websites immediately, leaving Internet users to decide for themselves what is or is not offensive.

There will always be a handful of people who will turn violent and shun a measured response to crass exercises such as the drawing event. But the answer is not to resort to practices that drag the country further back into the dark ages.

The human toll

AS another round of targeted killings subsides in Karachi, we are left to think about the cumulative toll this violence has taken on the families of the victims. Such killings are front-page news for a few days as the media concentrates on the mounting death toll, yet it is not often that we focus on the broken, devastated lives the victims’ families have to lead after the violence abates. According to figures collated by the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, over 90 people have lost their lives to targeted killings in Karachi since January. However, we overlook the fact that for each person killed, several family members are affected — financially and emotionally — and left to fend for themselves in an increasingly cutthroat society. Due to the growing frequency of these bouts of violence, both the media and the public are becoming more and more desensitised as the human tragedy gets lost in the swirl of figures for the dead and injured. Such numbness blocks the potential to contribute positively towards the rehabilitation of those directly affected by the tragedy.

As was reported in this paper, most of the people killed belong to the bottom rung of the economic ladder. They include labourers, push-cart vendors and watchmen. Not many have political affiliations. The media needs to remind the public that these victims were not mere numbers but actual people with families, jobs and friends. We need to know how their wives, children, parents and siblings are dealing with the aftermath of their deaths. We need to know who will put food on the families’ table now that the sole breadwinner has gone. Perhaps if we are reminded of these disturbing realities often enough, we, as a society can exercise greater pressure on the authorities to take action to end this brutal trend of targeted killings.

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Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

Child protection

Wednesday, 26 May, 2010


The importance of effective legislation can be gauged by the fact that there has been a considerable decline in the number of juvenile prisoners aged between seven to 11 years since 2000, when the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance was enacted.
At a media briefing on the findings of the annual Children in Punjab Prisons Report, the AGHS Child Rights Unit linked this improvement to the JJSO 2000, adding that the JJSO goal to ensure that all trials involving children be concluded within four months had largely been achieved. Of course, much remains to be done. It was observed that the system of probation remained insufficiently developed, for example, and recently the Sindh High Court noted the miserable conditions prevalent at Karachi’s Remand Home and demanded an explanation from the provincial home department. Nevertheless, evidence is available of some improvement.

Such gains need bolstering by legislation that seeks to precisely define and proactively protect child rights. The country is characterised by a highly unsafe environment for children with issues ranging from child labour, sexual and other abuse to child trafficking and underage marriages. A recent report by a UN committee called the country’s child protection system inefficient and lacking in comprehensiveness and coherence. While Pakistan became a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, potentially pivotal legislation such as the National Commission on the Rights of Children has not been passed even though the relevant bill has been in the process of being drafted since 2001.

Similarly, despite the existence of the Employment of Children Act 1991, child labour has increased due to poverty. Societal pressure is needed to prompt legislators and law enforcers to perform their roles efficiently. Concurrently, there is a need to increase the budgetary allocation for children’s health and education and address related issues such as development and poverty.

Cricket fiasco

This paper has consistently held that Ijaz Butt is not equipped, for a variety of reasons, to head the Pakistan Cricket Board. His decision-making skills are whimsical at best and his statements often run counter to what he said just the other day. He has succumbed to ‘player power’, then opposed it and in effect made a mockery of cricket administration.
Given Mr Butt’s dismal track record, it is not surprising that the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Sports is looking for a way to sack this presidential appointee. At the same time, however, the standing committee has made a huge mistake by saying that an inquiry against players suspected of deliberately under-performing for Pakistan or creating rifts within the ranks should be shelved in the national interest. By doing so, the committee is sending a signal to the worst offenders — at least one wicket-keeper and his brother come into it — that they will continue to be paid millions of rupees to play for Pakistan even if they flout discipline at will.

What we need to do now is set our house in order. Pakistan cricket will forever thrash about without a clue in the absence of an able helmsman. It is clear to all followers of cricket that Ijaz Butt has to go. Furthermore, the next PCB chairman ought to be appointed by regional representatives and not the president of the country. If Ijaz Butt is going to be discarded, the new chairman should be elected to the post, not appointed.

The PCB’s constitution, as it stands, makes little or no sense because true representation is not possible under the current framework. But we just can’t blame the board, even though that’s the easy option. Our players are a fractious lot that make most of the confusion within the PCB. They don’t get on with each other, they quarrel with the management and try to work others up to the detriment of the team. It is time the ‘stars’ in the Pakistan cricket team were made answerable to the law of the land.

Irsa dispute

Sindh and Punjab’s dispute over water has taken a decidedly ugly turn. As reported in this paper, the Punjab government has stopped its representative from attending meetings of the Indus River System Authority, accusing Irsa of having a ‘pro-Sindh’ bias.

The Punjab irrigation department says that its complaints lodged with the authority and the water and power ministry have gone unheeded. Punjab accuses Irsa and Sindh of being involved in ‘fudging figures’, accusing the lower riparian of exaggerating figures of water losses that it has suffered as well as interfering in Punjab’s internal water distribution system. On the other hand, Sindh has accused Punjab of ‘stealing’ its rightful share of water in the past, causing major losses to agriculture in the province. There are also apprehensions that Irsa has been politicised with certain members showing a bias towards Sindh. We hope this is not the case and that all provinces pull equal weight in the authority.

Observers say that there have indeed been major water losses from Chashma downwards. While some of this might be put down to natural phenomena such as evaporation, water theft, possibly by farmers, cannot be ruled out. It is difficult to substantiate the accusation that the Punjab government is stealing water although other elements, including the military, have been accused of wrongfully siphoning off water. As we have stated before, the key to resolving the perennial inter-provincial dispute over water is by rehabilitating the telemetry system. The system — a scientific method of water management — was set up in the Musharraf era at a cost of several hundred million rupees. It was only used for a couple of months before falling into disuse. The government must explain why this system is not being utilised. Data regarding water flow is currently recorded manually, which opens the door to abuse.

It must also be said that boycotts, walkouts and other such actions help no one and further complicate matters. It is only through dialogue and accommodation that disputes can be settled in an amicable manner. This has been witnessed in the past and there is no reason why it cannot work in the current scenario. The shortage of water is approaching crucial levels, with many painting doomsday scenarios of a time when wars will be fought over this precious resource in the region. There is no other solution at the moment other than conserving and managing what we have in our rivers by plugging losses and curbing theft. Punjab’s point of view regarding its water requirements must be heard, while Sindh and Balochistan’s rights as lower riparians must also be respected. No one should suffer. If the provinces show maturity and a willingness to resolve all contentious issues by working with rather than against each other, it might enable smooth sailing.

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Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.