05 March 2013.

Destined to Fail

WE can go on talking about the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi till we’re blue in the face. Or about the specific forms that sectarian violence takes in flashpoints such as Quetta and Karachi. But as long as we continue to pretend that Pakistan’s militancy problem is that limited in scope, innocent civilians will continue to die. The real challenge has to do with the way in which the state is approaching the issue — as if it is simply an inconvenience for the public in certain parts of the country, a series of minor and isolated problems to be addressed in a piecemeal and localised way. As if the relentless campaign of sectarian violence is the equivalent of loadshedding in Quet-ta or traffic congestion in Karachi or any of the other local hassles Pakistanis suffer on a daily basis. In reality, it is a national emergency, and what is missing is an acknowledgement that the problem is far broader than just the LJ or other blatantly violent organisations. Focusing on them will be pointless without a crackdown on all the various faces of sectarianism that are tolerated — and in some cases actively fostered — by the state, from politicians and sections of the media to law enforcement and the military.

What, for example, does it mean for there to be an interior ministry ‘ban’ on Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, a reincarnation of the proscribed Sipah-i-Sahaba? The ASWJ has also lost members in reprisal killings of late. Unfortunate as that is, the police believe it has close links with the more overtly militant LJ. Despite this, the organisation’s president is invited by the JUI-F to attend, alongside the country’s major political parties, a conference on what to do about militancy. He has led funeral prayers for slain policemen attended by some of Karachi’s senior-most police officers, appeared on television naming politicians from the country’s biggest parties who have courted him for votes in their constituencies, and been used by the state to bargain with militants. And the ASWJ is not the only example. It has held public rallies alongside Jamaatud Dawa, the not-banned face of Lashkar-e-Taiba, that are also attended by the mainstream Jamaat-i-Islami. No wonder we can’t control those responsible for spreading hatred. We are pretending we don’t know who they are.

Along with turning a blind eye to the dubious links of certain renamed or banned organisations there is also, for example, increasing talk of talking to the Taliban. Except that groups like the LJ and the TTP don’t exist in isolation from each other or from Al Qaeda, or the Afghan Taliban, or other foreign militants in the tribal areas. So while all these groups may not have common agendas, their support for each other means cracking down on them selectively is a strategy that has already failed to prevent violence and will continue to. The Pakistani Taliban and the LJ are not one and the same. But their links are obvious enough to demand a serious rethink of the plan to hold effectively unconditional talks with the TTP, particularly from the position of weakness the state is clearly in today.

Perhaps the only aspect of the current situation to be relieved about is that the sectarian attacks haven’t yet turned into a communal conflict. The Shia community has shown restraint, and both Shias and Sunnis recognise that these extreme beliefs are limited to a small group of violent radicals. And reprisal killings have so far been restricted to militants or members of banned organisations. But Sunday’s attack in Karachi also set a worrying precedent with the potential to aggravate the conflict. Following the Feb 16 attack on Hazara Shias in Quetta, it was one of the first instances of a residential locality being bombed. In a way, this means the anti-Shia campaign is only growing more callous — attacking Shias in markets or on pilgrimage targeted them in the public sphere, but these incidents have reached them in their homes. And for Karachi, where most sectarian conflicts take the form of target killings or attacks on Muharram-related processions, Sunday marked a new and even more disturbing tactic. This is an increasingly inhuman campaign. And yet the state continues to behave as if arresting a few dozen alleged LJ members after a public outcry will solve the problem. Without a broader, braver and more honest effort, matters will only get worse from here.

Empty Skies

SPRING is here and the sky above Lahore ought to have been filled with colourful kites. But the kites are sparse, the enjoyment surreptitious and the city that had become synonymous with Basant until only a few years ago is deprived of a cultural event that had put it on the regional map. The ban on kite flying dates back to the mid-2000s when the Lahore High Court decided that the best way to deal with the hazards posed by illegal, razor-sharp kite string was to ban all kites from the sky. Eventually, the Punjab government got in on the act and passed the Punjab Prohibition of Kite Flying (Amendment) Bill, 2009, also ostensibly done to protect the lives of Punjab’s, and especially Lahore’s, citizenry from the few errant kites. While the ban is always justified by its defenders on the grounds of safety, there is a subtext at work here too: culture wars between the Punjab of old and the one that has come of age since the era of Gen Zia.

Given the enthusiastic patronage and promotion of Basant under the ‘secular’ Gen Musharraf — which is when the festival really caught the imagination of Pakistanis and even foreign tourists — the religious right pushed back against an ‘imported’ and ‘un-Islamic’ festival that, because of its emphasis on fun and light-heartedness, was seen as a threat to a more austere form of Islam that has taken root in sections of society. The PML-N provincial government, which simultaneously talks about modernism and traditionalism, was always going to come down on only one side of this debate: placating the religious right at the expense of wider society. So the ban on Basant remains in place, even as the Punjab government talks of the need for promoting cultural and recreational activities.

At some point, though, the illogic of the ban must be addressed. On a practical level, there is no way of banning kite flying altogether: especially during spring, the pastime is a favourite of the densely populated, less well-off parts of the city, meaning kites are still to be found in the sky. Moreover, the threat of killer kite string was never as great as it was made out to be and the cooperation of string makers can be had. After all, it’s better to sell safe string to the wider public and earn more money than just cater to a small group of diehards. But that still leaves the culture wars and it’s here the Punjab government has to show more spine

Forgotten Victims

WHILE laws have been framed to counter terrorism in Pakistan, hardly any legal framework exists to address compensation issues facing victims of terrorism and their heirs. Administrative orders regarding state help are issued on an ad hoc basis, usually depending on the severity of the incident and the number of fatalities. Hence it is welcome that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has registered people disabled in acts of terrorism and natural disasters as well as widows of victims. Nationally, there are no definitive figures regarding the number of fatalities due to militancy, though nearly all projections say the number of civilian victims is higher. Various government officials cite a total of 40,000 dead, though other sources dispute this figure. Therefore there is a need to establish a central database of victims and their dependants to better facilitate compensation. While the military takes care of its own, civilian victims, in the absence of a social safety net, are left out in the cold, though compensation for members of the police force is considerably better, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A thorough legal framework both at the federal and provincial levels is needed to address issues of compensation for the dead and injured. Disabled victims need special attention so that they can be rehabilitated. Timelines must be set so that people are compensated within a reasonable period. Legal provisions should also be made to look after the health, education and household expenses of victims’ families, especially in cases where the deceased was the sole earner and for those from low-income families. Disbursement of funds should also be hassle-free; there have been cases in the past where victims’ families have been asked for a cut of the funds by corrupt officials before releasing them. While taking care of the victims is primarily the state’s job, considering Pakistan’s social milieu, where clan and community play important roles, community leaders with means should also play their part to rehabilitate those affected by terrorism. Monetary compensation and state support may never fill the void; but it will send a message to victims that the government stands by them.

Military business


EVERY once in a while, some facet of the vast business empire of the military comes under fleeting scrutiny — and then, just as quickly, disappears from the public radar. But what transpired at Monday’s meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence is worth reflecting on. Why, a committee member asked, are the Defence Housing Authority administrators appointed by the army chief and not by the defence ministry? The question is an especially loaded one because DHAs have come to represent all that is wrong with the army’s system of perks and privileges. From legislative cover not extended to other housing authorities — something the PML-N recently made a show of resisting in the National Assembly over DHA Islamabad — to converting land into staggeringly expensive parcels and farming them out to army officers, the DHA model is a system that allows vastly preferential treatment to an already coddled class of society.

Start with the theory behind DHAs: giving military officers an investment opportunity in that most prized of possessions — land. Already objectionable enough in theory, the reality is profoundly more disturbing. Take a random sample of any DHA society today and the ratio of civilians to ex-army officers living there is vastly skewed in the favour of civilians — meaning that DHAs are being administered by the army while largely catering to rich civilians. The reason is straightforward: the cost of living in DHAs is so high that many officers prefer to sell the plots or rent out/sell the houses they build on the plots granted to them by the state. The real trick behind DHAs is to acquire land at knockdown prices (which land authority can resist the army when it comes calling?). It is then developed through public money — by definition, whether generated from private business or received through the exchequer, all money controlled by the military is held in a public trust — and the plot assignees are then allowed to dispose of their gift as they see fit.

There are many ways to describe the design of DHAs and “institutionalised corruption” would not be too off the mark. Someone equivalent to a brigadier or major general in the private sector, say a mid- to senior-level banker, cannot afford after a lifetime of working in the private sector what the military routinely grants to its own in vast numbers. While it is the responsibility of the state to look after those who have spent their lives defending it, surely minting millionaires was not meant to be part of the equation. More scrutiny of DHAs will help expose the inherent unjustness.


A common enemy


THE changing pattern of violence seems to have forced two of Karachi’s old political rivals to do some fresh thinking and realise there is a common enemy. On Sunday, Altaf Hussain made a highly conciliatory statement and not only apologised to the Pakhtun community for any wrong committed by him, he also asked Mohajirs to forgive the Pakhtuns if they had reason to feel aggrieved by the latter. Addressing party workers based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the telephone, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief said there was no conflict of interest between the two communities and claimed that the change in the province’s nomenclature would not have been possible without his party’s support. The MQM chief’s sentiments acquire significance when we note that Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali has been expressing similar views, pointing out that not all Pakhtuns belonged to the ANP, nor was every Urdu-speaking person an MQM supporter, and that it was the two parties’ activists who were being murdered. Another significant statement was made by Bashir Jan, Sindh secretary of the ANP, in the wake of MQM legislator Manzar Imam’s assassination in January. He said the two parties had a common enemy and it was their duty to come together.

The ANP and MQM have a relationship mired in three decades of violence in which politics, crime, turf wars and ethnicity have combined to result in several bouts of bloodshed in Karachi. But now, the changing nature of killings appears to have forced the old antagonists to realise that religious militancy has come to pose a common threat to them and to Karachi’s peace. It goes without saying that the vast majority of the people, irrespective of their ethnicity and sect, wish to go about their business in an atmosphere free from strife. And if the leaders of the ANP and MQM — political parties with significant stakes in Karachi — so decide, they can reach some kind of a peace deal with each other. This would not only bring relief to the residents, it would also strengthen the two parties’ hands against religious militancy in the city.


Cruelty to animals


THE season of dogfights is upon us. Literally so, with canines being unleashed on each other to provide entertainment to crowds. As we reported the other day, the practice is actively under way in Punjab’s Chakwal district these days. Perhaps it is only in keeping with our martial spirit that other animals too are made to indulge in such blood sports — cockfights are even more common in the country and very little is being done to discourage this cruel practice. Where preventing such barbarism is concerned, the country’s laws are antiquated and the only act that takes cognisance of such cruelty is the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1890 which specifies a penalty for “baiting or inciting animals to fight”. However, even this colonial-era law has hardly been implemented, judging by the callous attitude that we,
as a society, continue to harbour towards birds and beasts.

In fact, blood sports are only a more extreme manifestation of cruelty towards animals: we tend to take for granted the sight of overloaded beasts of burden on the roads, children pelting cats and dogs with stones, and birds packed like sardines in cages being sold at street corners. It is unfortunate that this mentality has also seeped into zoos in this country, which are theoretically supposed to cater to animal welfare and showcase various species in a way that they do not feel removed from their natural habitat.
There is an urgent need for animal laws to be revised and updated, for penalties to be enhanced, and for local administrations to crack down heavily on all manner of blood sports. However, a comprehensive law will only solve part of the problem. The bigger challenge is to change attitudes and sensitise society to the needs of those who cannot communicate their misery.

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If Winter comes,
Can Spring be Far Behind...??

(7th March 2013)

A sensible decision

AFTER months of veiled threats, the PML-N has agreed to dissolve the Punjab Assembly in sync with the other assemblies to allow provincial and National Assembly elections to be held on the same day. This, a victory for good sense and the democratic project, was long overdue, but the decision was held hostage by another complication: the nomination of the caretaker prime minister and provincial chief ministers. The PML-N has long been angling for some kind of concession from the PPP in the caretaker nomination stakes and the Punjab Assembly’s term extending for 20-odd days beyond the National Assembly’s had become a crucial bargaining chip. In addition, it helped the PML-N distance itself from the ‘friendly opposition’ tag by seeming to drive a hard bargain in pre-election negotiations between the government and the opposition.

What, then, is the PML-N hoping to win from the PPP? The selection of the caretaker prime minister is commonly assumed to be the PML-N’s central demand, but in truth the PPP and PML-N are not far apart on the kind of candidate they want: a caretaker prime minister who will first and foremost ensure that polls are held on time and will resist any attempt, or inducements, to implement the so-called Bangladesh model. With both parties wanting essentially the same thing from a caretaker prime minister, the selection isn’t as problematic as it has been made out to be — as borne out by Chaudhry Nisar announcing his party’s three nominees yesterday. In fact, both parties would rather avoid the selection of the caretaker prime minister being taken out of their hands and given to the ECP to resolve. What is problematic is the choice of caretaker provincial chief ministers. Punjab in particular is the big prize: with the PPP having big stakes in south Punjab and the PML-N regarding north and central Punjab as its route to power, the PPP can’t afford an N-League nominee as caretaker chief minister and the PML-N is extremely reluctant to cede ground on home turf. Behind that tussle lies another reality: the provincial caretaker set-ups are far more relevant to the electoral process than the federal caretakers.

Still, the matter is far from un-resolvable and now that the PML-N has publicly agreed to hold Punjab Assembly elections on the same day as the other assemblies, the two parties must be close to a final agreement. If caretaker nominees are announced in the days ahead, it would underline an emerging truth: give the politicians time and space and they do produce agreements within the confines of the law and the constitution.

Tired Ideas

AS Karachi slid into unrest again on Wednesday, the reaction of the government and Supreme Court to the city’s law and order situation provided some idea of why they are failing to get a grip on the problem. Yesterday’s heavy firing in multiple localities struck fear into the hearts of Karachiites already shaken by Sunday’s massive bombing. It was a living example of the complexity of crime and violence in the city, one vulnerable to both terrorism and political, ethnic and sectarian agendas. In contrast to this are the uninspiring efforts of the Supreme Court and the interior minister to address the state’s failure to protect life and property.

The new bench established by the apex court in response to the Sunday bombing seems to be taking the same unsuccessful route as the bench that was created in 2011 to look into law and order in the city. It has ordered, for example, the suspension of several policemen, and the provincial government followed suit by removing from their posts two senior officers. But what significant and lasting change has ever been achieved in Karachi by firing and transferring law-enforcement officials? The older bench’s orders have also included such impractical measures as deweaponisation and delimitation. Nor has the interior minister sounded any more effective, busy as he has been avoiding the terrorism problem by shifting responsibility to the provincial governments. Just because law and order is a provincial subject doesn’t mean the interior ministry can sit back after passing on intelligence. And while the Punjab government is widely believed to be soft on militancy, the interior minister’s focus on that piece of the problem feels opportunistic and political. Despite all their public statements, then, neither the court nor the government are focusing on the bold and promising solutions that are needed. For example, there is an obvious need for a central, well-equipped, well-trained counterterrorism authority that reports directly to the prime minister and coordinates across provinces and agencies. Instead of moving forward with new ideas, both the administration and the judiciary that is trying to hold it accountable are reheating the same tired tactics.

Chavez bows out

WITH the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, global politics has lost a charismatic star. A modern Simon Bolivar who fused the ideology of Che Guevara with the charisma of Fidel Castro, Chavez’s impact was felt not only in Latin America but across the world. He ruled for 14 years, using his country’s oil wealth to bring subsidised food and free healthcare to his people. He was adored by Venezuela’s poor due to his wealth distribution policies. He also used his country’s considerable oil wealth to help leftist Latin American allies including Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador. Venezuela is believed to possess the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Mr Chavez maintained good relations with countries beyond the region such as Iran and Syria, also in the anti-American camp where geopolitics is concerned. The late leader was not in Washington’s good books for trying to pull South America out of the US orbit and push it towards greater regional integration. A soldier of humble origins, he tried to grab power in a failed coup in 1992 but later took the democratic route, being first elected to the Venezuelan presidency in 1998.

Local opponents criticised him for his alleged autocratic tendencies and put him down as a brash populist who squandered oil wealth on social programmes. However, Mr Chavez was unbeatable at the polls. His rule was not perfect, but in the post-Cold War era where unipolarity has become the dominant global norm, he presented an alternative system of governance which focused on the well-being of the people and the use of state resources for the betterment of the citizenry. While communism may have failed as a viable political system after the fall of the USSR, Chavez demonstrated that a socialist order was workable. History will be the ultimate judge of his experiments in political science.

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Yes We Can Do It!

Controlled Chaos

KARACHI may be a city of 20 million people, but a few hours on Wednesday demonstrated, in highly concentrated form, that it can be controlled as easily as a puppet on a string. All it took was heavy firing into the air in several localities by “unknown miscreants” to send the city into a panic and shut down businesses and clear traffic from the roads. An MQM call at a press conference for an indefinite strike over the Abbas Town bombing was reversed in another press conference a couple of hours later. Better sense had evidently prevailed, and the fear and uncertainty that had gripped the city disappeared as quickly as it had descended, underscoring the still-astonishing fact that Karachi can be switched on and off at whim.

But what really defined Wednesday’s events, and so many other periods of uncertainty and upheaval in Karachi, is that we still don’t know why they happened. All sorts of speculation did the rounds: parties demonstrating their importance in time for the polls, the arrests of suspected militants, a growing rift between the MQM and the government, tensions between various political and religious parties, differences of opinion among them about who should address the sectarian issue and how it should be addressed. And that was just on Wednesday. Other sets of theories, such as plans to derail the polls, have appeared and disappeared during previous days and periods of unrest. The only thing that is clear is that the residents of Karachi are at the mercy of forces they have no control over and which they don’t fully understand. Decisions get made behind closed doors at the highest levels of political parties, and most seem to have motivations that have everything to do with power games and self-preservation and very little to do with governing the city — as is apparent from the serious inconvenience strikes cause to citizens.

An estimated Rs10bn are lost for each day Karachi shuts down, as markets, banks and petrol stations remain closed and workers can’t get to their jobs. The list of inconveniences is endless, from insufficient staff to attend to medical emergencies to day labourers missing wages and students missing school. Then there are the long-term effects of the uncertainty that haunts Karachi on a daily basis, including the unwillingness of businesspeople to invest and the emigration of young workers and educated professionals looking for more security. Responsible for all of the above are political machinations that remain mysterious to most ordinary people, who are asking for little more than the ability to simply live their daily lives.

Hans Blix’s warning

HANS Blix should know, for his name is inextricably linked to the Iraqi war drama that destroyed the country’s infrastructure, pauperised what was a prosperous nation and led to a minimum of 200,000 civilian deaths. The sectarian fallout of the US-led war continues till this day. Speaking to a group of journalists in Dubai, the man who headed the UN’s Iraq inspection team warned of consequences if world powers repeated their mistake — this time in Iran. After completing his inspection and verification mission, Mr Blix had told the Security Council in 2003 he had discovered no weapons of mass destruction which Baathist Iraq was suspected to have in plenty. Despite Mr Blix’s categorical declaration that he had found no “smoking gun” the Bush administration still chose to launch an invasion whose aim, according to Mr Blix, was to “eradicate weapons of mass destruction that did not exist”. This time, he said, the powers wanted to “eradicate intentions that may not exist”, a reference to fears among Israel and Nato powers that Tehran intended to produce nuclear weapons.

Even though talks between Iran and P5+1 have dragged on for years, the Almaty meeting recently wasn’t a failure. There was no breakthrough, but the two sides reached some understanding, with Iran giving what Mr Blix called “positive signals” to their interlocutors. Sanctions are biting Iran, and the understanding seems to centre on Tehran’s willingness to reserve the enriched uranium for research reactors, in return for the sanctions to be eased. This presumes that both sides will lessen confrontation and create an atmosphere in which further talks leading to substantive results could take place. Unfortunately, Israeli bellicosity is one of the major reasons for Iran’s hard line. On Sunday Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned once again that Tel Aviv could use force to stop Iran from going nuclear. Warning against war, Mr Blix said an attack on Iran could “develop into a terrible conflagration in the region” and, more significantly, cautioned that if Iran had not made up its mind to produce WMD now, it would do so “after the war”.

Unregulated Hordings

PAKISTAN has yet to learn to benefit responsibly from the financial potential of the modern advertising industry. Since this sector started opening up in a meaningful sense, it has climbed to breathtaking heights, with the flow of money generally washing away considerations of ethics, safety and even at times proportion. Nowhere is this attitude more evident than in outdoor advertising or hoardings. As soon as the realisation dawned that there was money to be made — often hand over fist — the cities’ fathers in various capacities lost no time in selling/renting every spot possible. Now, most well-traversed routes, particularly in urban areas, sport dozens upon dozens of hoardings of unregulated size, design and content, in every space that can support them — and never mind city aesthetics or even public safety. In several civilised parts of the world, it has been realised that unregulated hoardings constitute not just civic issues but can also contribute to traffic accidents by obstructing views.

It is not that city managements in Pakistan have remained uniformly blind. For example, after storms brought down several hoardings in Karachi in 2007, killing several people, the provincial government murmured something about bringing those responsible to justice. In Lahore, efforts have been made to cleanse heritage and classical buildings of advertisements that deface their architectural grace. Most recently, on Wednesday, the Punjab government announced the formulation of a policy empowering authorities to determine and regulate the location, size, type and density of outdoor advertisements according to the predominant land use of the area. This was done after a survey showed that 750 of the city’s 1,139 billboards constituted impediments of various sorts. The new policy, which covers several areas, is a step in the right direction; other cities need to follow suit. It is time that the making of money through outdoor advertising was rationalised.

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Tainu Kafar Kafar aanday,,,,tou aho aho aakh (Bullhay Shah)

Small Victories

THE old stereotype of woman as the mother of generations and nations, as a junior partner of and a second fiddle to the more empowered man, is coming under increasing pressure. Above the worthy/unworthy, genuine/ condescending titles of honour bestowed upon her as nation-builder and homemaker, exposure and experience has emboldened her, as an individual, to assert her right to choice.

This change is reflected in the diversified topics of discussion chosen by various organisations for this year’s International Women’s Day that was observed yesterday. The UN’s theme this year was violence against women, but the day was used to discuss so much else. The woman as nation-builder was very much there, but proudly and confidently flanked by other women, such as the entrepreneur the bank is ready to trust with its loan. These images show that the argument which invokes the conventional model to deter and intimidate those who want to move forward is more determinedly countered today than ever before. Women all over are emerging out of their erstwhile supporting roles and acting as individuals who are setting standards, fixing objectives and leading the thrust for change.

These small victories have come after long, fierce battles. In Pakistan, in a tribute to the rights activists’ consistent efforts, parliament has in recent years taken up some serious legislation to benefit women. In a country where discrimination against women has over time been institutionalised in legal code, the recent laws have been described by some activists as a real leap. But if not a huge stride forward, these certainly signify progress. Whereas all forward looking legislation affects women, specifically, the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Act 2011 and the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010 are two laws Pakistani women had long been fighting for. This shows that there was greater emphasis on women’s rights during the assemblies’ current term, though it actually reflected an accentuated expression of the tone set by the previous assembly that functioned from 2002 to early 2008. This must be interpreted as a sign of maturing of politics, tempered and nourished as it has been by the rights movement in the country. On the other hand the activists must also keep in mind the tendency of governments and legislators to appease intimidators at the expense of women as well as other ‘weak’ groups such as religious minorities. There is only one way for a society seeking change to counter such an approach, which in turn is also the route to greater freedoms: keep on moving forward.

PML-N MANIFESTO

THE PML-N’s manifesto has been unveiled and the party claims to have kept its goals both realistic and very much achievable. But are they? Going through the list of pledges, the PML-N appears to have described a country that everyone would like to see five years from now: slowly sorting out structural impediments to growth, for example, the power sector; increasing basic services delivery by doubling allocations to health and education; and addressing sundry political challenges (new provinces) and even civil-military relations (focusing on “seniority and merit” in appointing service chiefs). The gap, though, between what is desired and what actually transpires is often very large. Start with the obvious benchmark for the PML-N’s ability to deliver on electoral promises: the performance of its government in Punjab over the past five years.

The PML-N has promised to raise tax-to-GDP ratio from nine to 15 per cent over five years, while, oddly enough, promising to cut taxes across the board — presumably because a six per cent rise in the tax-to-GDP ratio can be achieved, in the PML-N’s thinking at least, by closing loopholes in the tax laws and documenting the informal sector. But how much has the Punjab government done to help boost overall tax revenues in the past five years? Agricultural income tax, a provincial issue, is still a taboo subject and when the federal government had mooted the idea of a Reformed General Sales Tax, designed specifically to help document the economy and business chain better, the PML-N rode to the defence of its trader base. Doubling expenditures on health and education can also sound like a very promising measure — though really a worn-out pledge of many a government — but after the 18th Amendment, both subjects are in the provincial domain. So what is the PML-N’s promise supposed to achieve? Similarly, going through the list of economic proposals, they are long on promise and short on specifics, particularly on how political resistance to reforms will be overcome. And perhaps most stunningly, militancy continues to be treated by the PML-N as a side issue that can be addressed through jobs and growth.

KCR PROJECT AT A STAND STILL

WILL the revival of the Karachi Circular Railway remain a pipe dream in a city in dire need of a mass transit system for millions of commuters? Over the years, there have only been half-hearted moves to resuscitate the KCR. The question at the moment is whether the government’s decision on Wednesday to exempt the KCR from a number of taxes to make it financially viable will help expedite the project. Undertaken during the Ayub era, the KCR was a useful project. It transported workers from the outlying colonies to the industrial area, which was connected to the harbour and to the railway main line for cargo movement. Over the decades it suffered ruination, especially because of ticketless travelling. More important, the city grew rapidly, and what was a railway line on the periphery now runs more or less through the city. This is an advantage and should be utilised to ease pressure on the buses and other type of vehicles to give Karachi a mass transit system, even if in an embryonic form.

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency has shown more interest in the KCR than the governments in Islamabad and Karachi have. The JICA offer has been there for more than a decade, but somehow there has been a considerable lack of interest at our end. It has offered a soft loan — $2.4bn at 0.2 mark-up payable in 40 years — but bureaucratic delays and the absence of political will have stood in the way. When — and if — completed in 2017, the KCR’s first phase, partly elevated and partly underground, will carry 700,000 passengers daily. A general election is round the corner, and it would be a pity if bureaucratic or other administrative changes serve to delay a project meant to ease the pressure constantly witnessed on Karachi’s roads.

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Tainu Kafar Kafar aanday,,,,tou aho aho aakh (Bullhay Shah)

(10th March 2013)

Without autonomy — Passage of Nacta bill

FROM December 2009 to March 2013, that’s how long it has taken for the National Counter Terrorism Authority to go from inception to standing on the verge of getting legislative cover with the passage of the National Counter Terrorism Authority Bill, 2013 by the National Assembly on Friday. First mooted as an intelligence coordination, research and international liaison organisation in response to the wave of terrorism that gripped the country in the late 2000s, Nacta has been a case study of institutional turf wars, political disinterest and civil-military tensions. Now, with a raft of pending legislation being rushed through parliament, new life has been breathed into Nacta’s cause. That is the good news.

Unhappily, last-minute changes to the bill that was vetted and approved by a parliamentary committee have left question marks over Nacta’s future efficacy. Thanks to these late insertions, Nacta can now be headed by an army officer, policy matters can only be approved by the board of governors if all members — including the DG ISI and DG MI — are present, and Nacta personnel are to be vetted by the military’s intelligence apparatus. What was meant to be a civilian-run entity can now be effectively controlled by the armed forces, defeating the very purpose of a cross-institution coordination body that was meant to bridge the gaps between the civilian and military security apparatus. If that seems like an exaggerated version of Friday’s changes, then consider how a holistic counterterrorism strategy can be crafted by Nacta when its very organisational structure reinforces the old hierarchy in civil-military relations. Who can propose a fundamental rethink in national security strategy when the generals are still in charge?

The sense of a missed opportunity is compounded because the Nacta bill, until the last-minute amendments, had incorporated the input of technical experts. There is a genuine need for a high-powered Nacta that is adequately resourced and given the time and space to bring about a change in intelligence and bureaucratic culture. For example, the lack of coordination between the various tiers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies and between the civilian- and military-run organisations means that even the most basic inter-provincial coordination when it comes to tracking down sectarian outfits is missing. By acting as a clearing house for such information, Nacta can help change insular organisational cultures of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. But it needs to be seen as independent of existing power centres, something it may have failed to achieve.

NAB failure — Rental power case

WHETHER or not the prime minister was involved in corruption in the rental power plants project remains an open question. But his request to the Supreme Court on Friday to replace the National Accountability Bureau investigation with a one-man commission is the best way forward at this point. The NAB investigation has been languishing for months now, plagued by delays and controversies, complete with the sinister death of an officer assigned to the case. It is difficult to see how the probe could credibly continue with the same people at its helm, and if those people are replaced by an opposition party’s candidates after the elections, a new set of biases could come into play. So the prime minister’s suggestion that a trusted person outside NAB be appointed to look into the case is probably the only chance the investigation has of being completed and its findings widely accepted. But that, too, has its challenges; the Arsalan Iftikhar case was also moved from NAB to just such a commission, and that investigation has not held anyone accountable or announced any results.

The real challenge that both these cases reflect is the all too familiar, long-running problem of the lack of an effective accountability body in Pakistan. In their various guises over the years, these bodies have been seen as little more than tools of political victimisation or, at best, as being too soft on the party in power. That in turn has had a lot to do with the way these bodies are appointed and who they report to. The real need is for an organisation that is financially and administratively independent, as far as possible, from the government of the day, and whose head is appointed through a truly bipartisan process. The delays and disagreements over the National Accountability Commission legislation are proof that Pakistan still hasn’t come up with such a set-up and process. This government managed to delay the creation of the commission long enough to complete a term without it. The hope now is that the next government has the integrity to move forward with it.

A treasure restored — Pak Tea House reopens

NOT all attempts at cultural revival are impossible in Pakistan. Where the government decides to intervene, these revivals are that much more likely. On Friday the Pak Tea House re-emerged on the Lahore scene after 13 years in oblivion. It has survived the tyranny of the market. The building’s possessor wanted to set up a tyre shop in place of the literary venue. The Punjab government, in this instance working through the chief minister’s son Hamza Sharif, took up the case. Once this happened, the obstacles on the way to resurrecting this cultural icon of the city were cleared smoothly, and the honour of reopening the Pak Tea House went to PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif. It was pleasing to spot the greats of literature such as Intizar Husain and Abdullah Hussain there to savour the return of the literary centre, along with other prominent literati and, inevitably, some journalists with knowledge of letters.

So much for the official role, such patronage can lead to a dilemma. The next crucial step for writers and ‘writer-types’ would be to steer the Pak Tea House out of the domain of official influence and re-establish it as a place for a free exchange of ideas. The officials in the meanwhile can build on this promise by carrying out some other urgently required restoration work. They can find plenty of opportunities to intervene in this city of contrasts, a once proud site for cultural cohesion. Just when Mr Sharif was reopening the Pak Tea House on the Mall, a few kilometres away, in Badami Bagh, Christians were being targeted by a group incensed by an individual’s alleged crime. This is a terse reminder that a more complete restoration can only be possible with prompter, non-selective and unqualified intervention in all areas.

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Yes We Can Do It!

The silent spectator — Attack on Christians

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Emulating West, East is preparing its grave.

(12th March 2013)

Moment of hope: IP pipeline inauguration

AFTER long delays and many uncertainties, the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline took a major step forward yesterday. For all its potential risks, and uncertainty about where the remaining $1bn of funding will come from, the inauguration by the two countries’ presidents of the construction of the Pakistan portion of the pipeline brings with it the promise — if Pakistan capitalises on it — of preventing even more damage to the economy from the country’s growing gas shortage.
Investment for domestic gas exploration and development has not been forthcoming. Other schemes to import gas have been stalled by mismanagement and possibly corruption. The existing supplies are so insufficient, and have been so badly managed, that they have severely impacted major industries, rendered consumers unable even to cook or keep warm, and driven up energy prices and the circular debt by increasing reliance on furnace oil for power generation.

There is the risk, of course, of ending up on the wrong side of American sanctions on doing business with Iran. But the United States-favoured Tapi pipeline through Central Asia and Afghanistan looks untenable given the security situation in the region, and Pakistan’s energy problems — together with their economic, political and security implications — are severe enough to warrant that exceptions to sanctions be made in this case. Pakistan should cooperate as far as possible by routing this business through Iranian companies and financial institutions that are not connected to that country’s nuclear programme. But beyond that, the US must recognise that Pakistan needs to balance its own economic needs with its responsibilities as an ally.

However, as Pakistan moves forward, one thing that must be kept in mind is that no amount of imported gas will be useful as long as the country doesn’t whip its energy and power infrastructure into shape. If they aren’t tackled, power-sector failures such as transmission losses, poor dues collection and insufficient diversification away from furnace oil for power generation will continue to hold the economy back. And the lack of a gas management plan that is actually followed and intelligently balances the needs of the residential, commercial, transport, industrial and power sectors will mean that we won’t be using the imported gas in the most efficient way possible.

Whichever new government comes into power should keep in mind that, as it formulates its energy and power policies, it has an obligation to make the best use of the gas from the IP pipeline.

Missing Baloch: Bodies dumped in Karachi

THE issue of missing Baloch people appears to be taking a worrying new trajectory — one that may be reflective of the air of impunity that law-enforcement agencies have for years been accused of by those who maintain that the missing are mainly in undisclosed custody. The wall of photographs at the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons camp outside the Karachi Press Club has become distressingly familiar. But on Saturday, two pictures were removed.
The bodies of Babu Iftikhar Baloch and Maqbool Ahmad Baloch, who disappeared on Jan 24 from near Karachi’s Baldia Town, had been found — they had been brutally tortured and killed. Sunday saw two more bodies of missing Baloch men — schoolteacher Abdul Rehman and student Zahid Hussain — found in the city’s suburbs. Their bodies bore strangulation marks and the men had been shot in the back of the head. The VBMP’s Abdul Qadeer Baloch (who started the camp after losing his son in a similar tragedy in 2011) maintains that so far the bodies of 11 missing Baloch have been found dumped in various Karachi areas.

It is imperative that the state and administration adopt greater urgency in bringing this issue to a resolution, once and for all. The Baloch are not the only ones at the receiving end of a suspected ‘kill and dump’ approach; similar allegations are levelled with regard to the militancy-hit zones in the northwest. Persistent inquiry by judicial and other quarters, though, has proved instrumental in the provision of answers in some cases. Just last month, for example, the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances managed to trace 19 of the hundreds of missing people that it is looking for. Greater urgency needs to be brought to bear on the issue of the bodies of missing Baloch being found in Karachi, too. Those responsible for these and other cases of disappearances, torture and killing cannot be allowed to operate with such impunity.

Tomb raiders: Smuggling of antiquities

PAKISTAN is a land of contrasts. While on one hand it is good to know that excavators have dug up new objects from the Gandhara civilisation near Taxila, it is also a matter of concern that efforts to smuggle antiquities out of the country continue. On Sunday authorities in Sukkur opened up an impounded container bound for Karachi and found 28 boxes filled with artefacts reportedly stolen from sites and museums in Punjab. The antiquities included pieces from the Gandhara and Muslim periods. A similar raid in Karachi last year uncovered hundreds of artefacts. The trade in illegally sourced antiquities is a profitable one; local smugglers find ready buyers in foreign countries willing to pay large sums for pieces of Pakistan’s rich history. Corrupt local officials let the smugglers excavate without hindrance once they are paid off. Hefty fines and jail sentences are on the books for those who illegally smuggle antiquities. Yet these have failed to deter the smugglers.

Though the state is making efforts, as the Sukkur raid shows, perhaps what is needed is more vigilance at the archaeological sites by increasing the number of guards. Better intelligence is also required in order to dismantle the smugglers’ networks. Illegal digging remains a problem in Taxila, a Unesco World Heritage Site. In fact Taxila is still virgin territory: there are said to be over 100 unexcavated sites in the area. This bonanza can either be tapped for the benefit of the people, or it can be whisked away for profit. The state must decide whether it wants to preserve these treasures, or if it prefers to look the other way as short-sighted criminals fill their pockets by shipping off Pakistan’s history piece by piece.

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Yes We Can Do It!

(13th March 2013)

Vote fraud: Rigging at booths for women

ACCORDING to reports, the National Database and Registration Authority has issued more than 40 million computerised national identity cards to women. However, there is still a difference of 3.3 million in these statistics and the tally displayed on the website of the Election Commission of Pakistan. There are also a large number of Pakistanis over the age of 18 who have yet to be entered on the electoral roll. Some political parties have taken up this issue, avowedly wanting to enfranchise, and hoping to enlist the support of, youngsters. Yet even in the case of parties loudly claiming to work for change, a specific thrust for bringing in a greater number of women voters into the equation is sadly missing. According to ECP figures, there are more than 48.4 million male voters in Pakistan, as opposed to 37.3 million female voters. That is a gap of 11 million — three times the size of the electorate in Balochistan, and this is just the start of the story.

The climax to the discriminatory act comes at the polling booth on election day. This is when votes cast by women are lost under the heavy weight of ballots stamped by the males. There are routinely reports about women being stopped from voting as also of polling booths set up for women being used for rigging. Experienced poll watchers say the candidates find it easier to carry out vote fraud at booths for women as opposed to those for male voters where the atmosphere is much more charged and prone to violence and where a more efficient regime to identify the voter is in place. Experience tells us that bogus votes are more likely cast in polling booths for women.

There are many factors that have prevented a more clear analysis of this problem — not least significant a strange ECP policy. There are exclusive polling stations for women in the country as there are those for men. But then outnumbering these are ‘combined’ polling stations with separate booths for men and women where piles of the women’s votes are mixed with those of the men before a count is undertaken. It shouldn’t be too difficult for a reform-driven ECP to count the ballots cast at a women’s booth separately from the ones collected at the men’s booth. This will be in aid of fairer polls and can go a long way in truly enfranchising one half of the Pakistani population.

Law to protect minorities: What will it achieve?

IT is obvious what fuelled Monday’s demand in the National Assembly for the formulation of a law aimed at preventing attacks on minorities. Public reaction over the shameful acts of arson in Lahore’s Badami Bagh on Saturday — that followed the Quetta and Karachi blasts targeting the Shia community — has been fittingly strong. It has finally become obvious to all that such violence is not only spreading, its intensity too is increasing. While it may be argued that laws regarding transgressions such as arson, looting and harassment — all of which can be applied to the Badami Bagh tragedy — are already in place, it is also true that targeted laws criminalising specific practices and protecting specific groups have their value. This is evident, for example, in the body of laws that countries continue to develop to protect vulnerable groups such as women and children.

What is difficult to make out, though, is what the new law demanded by our parliamentarians might be expected to achieve in actual terms given the ground realities. The neglect of minorities’ rights has been an issue for decades. The demand for installing a new legislative framework has come at a time when there is less than a week to go before the assemblies are dissolved thus making the proposal appear as a sop to the public, especially with general elections on the horizon. However, more pertinent than this is the cravenness of the political and administrative elite whenever the issue of the misuse of the blasphemy laws or the persecution of minorities has come up.

At every juncture, they have caved in before the hard-line right. Consider merely the way Monday’s demand in the Assembly was worded: “[…] carry out necessary legislation, if so desired, to prevent such unfortunate incidents in the future”. This hesitant request encapsulates the problem: protecting minorities means standing up to those who persecute them — but sadly, too few are willing to take that bullet in the chest.

Far from reality: Sindh CM on crime rate

WITH elections on the horizon, the incumbents will no doubt trumpet their achievements, both real and imagined. However, there needs to be a modicum of reality attached to their claims. While Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah told the provincial assembly on Monday that the law and order situation in Karachi was “fragile”, his assertion that the overall crime rate in the metropolis has come down under PPP rule and that the crime graph is also down in Sindh’s rural areas is hard to digest. If anything, lawlessness has been Sindh’s biggest problem over the last five years. Admittedly, terrorism is a nationwide problem, but the provincial administration’s efforts to deal with even routine crime have been lacklustre. At the same time, the MQM criticism of PPP rule, particularly on the law and order front, is strange. After all, the Muttahida just moved to the opposition benches in Sindh last week after spending most of the last five years as the PPP’s coalition partner. Whatever the PPP’s performance has been, the MQM shoulders equal responsibility for it.

The chief minister himself admitted in the house that around 4,000 people had been killed in Karachi during the current government’s tenure. Street crime is so rampant in the metropolis that people don’t even bother reporting it any more. The rest of Sindh is no better, with kidnappings and highway robberies common. In some parts of Sindh people are advised not to use the highways after sunset for fear of criminals. Hence, where law and order is concerned, the current government has failed miserably. We can only hope Sindh’s next administration will do a better job and take the steps necessary to restore order throughout the province.

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Yes We Can Do It!

(14th March 2013)

Going too far: ECP’s nomination forms

THIS is an exciting moment in Pakistan’s history, with the country heading into its first democratic transition. And part of what makes it promising is the presence this time of a bold, active and independent Election Commission of Pakistan that is willing to step on some influential toes to make elections freer and fairer.

The ECP should function independently of the president, so the law ministry’s demand that the amended nomination forms for election candidates needed his approval had no merit and the commission took an important step by proceeding with the printing of the forms anyway. The move sent a strong message that the ECP is beholden to neither the government nor the head of state as it prepares the country for polls.

But reformist zeal doesn’t have to mean creating needless complexity and treating all politicians as if they have something to hide. Critics of the amendments have a point: several of the new questions are unnecessary and intrusive. Graduation is no longer required for contesting elections, so the continued focus on documenting educational qualifications, for example, feels like a witch-hunt rather than a constructive move forward. Details about assets already appear on the tax returns candidates will submit with their applications. Whether or not candidates are living within their means is a matter for the Federal Board of Revenue to investigate, so the need for the ECP to ask detailed questions about travel and other family spending remains unclear. If the FBR doesn’t have returns on file or complete information about a person’s financial situation, or the numbers don’t quite add up, that would warrant a deeper look to see if a particular candidate is evading taxes. But the ECP has neither the time nor the resources to sift through reams of data supplied by every applicant.

Perhaps the least defensible question of all, though, is about what candidates have done for their constituencies. That is for nobody but voters to decide. The notion that our politicians are incompetent is entirely justified, but that doesn’t warrant asking them to prove their contribution in any court outside that of the people. Together with some of the other questions, this one too reveals a suspicion of democratic politics that runs through the new nomination forms and, given Pakistan’s history, has the potential to feed the dangerous perception that perhaps civilian governments are not right for this country.

A welcome offer: LNG import cost

QATAR’S offer to annually supply two million tons of liquefied natural gas at a discounted price raises hopes of Pakistan overcoming its gas shortages — albeit only to some extent — in the near term. Islamabad had signed an MoU with Doha some time ago for importing LNG, but the plan did not materialise due to pricing issues. Now, says the government, the Gulf state has agreed to substantially cut its earlier price demand of $18 per mmbtu. The government has not disclosed the new price, but some reports suggest it is in the range of $14 to $15 per mmbtu, 16 to 22 per cent lower than the previously quoted rate. The gas will be supplied on a government-to-government contract basis in line with the recommendations of a private sector-led energy committee last year. The exclusion of private contractors from the deal should help the government move more quickly towards the early implementation of the project.

The rapid completion of the LNG import project is important not only to keep gas shortages for the power and industrial sectors to a minimum in the summer but also in view of the delays in the implementation of the two LNG import projects of 400mmcfd a day, each through the award of contracts to the private sector. The first project has been stalled because of minor violations of public procurement rules. Any further action on this project has been stopped by the Supreme Court, which took suo motu notice on the basis of some media reports. In the past, the government had to scrap a similar project because of the intervention of the court. It is hoped that the court will decide the matter at the earliest in the larger interest of the country’s sliding economy. The materialisation of Doha’s offer will add only about 300mmcfd gas a day to the network of the two public utilities facing shortages of over 1000mmcfd, and the country will be resigned to gas scarcity unless the stalled private-sector LNG import projects are also implemented.

Violent ‘discipline’: Corporal punishment bill

THOUGH the Prohibition of Corporal Punishment Bill, 2010, had been in the works for a while, it is welcome that the private bill was finally passed by the National Assembly on Tuesday. The provisions outlaw corporal punishment in public and private educational institutions as well as in childcare institutions. It is unfortunate that violence against children is rife across the country. While the media often reports extreme cases — such as when parents or teachers cause grievous bodily harm to children who sometimes sustain injuries that prove fatal — mental and physical hurt of relatively lesser proportions meted out to children goes largely unreported. Hence it is important to ensure that the law also addresses non-physical punishment. For many youngsters, physical violence is an unfortunate part of life in school, at the madressah and at home. There is widespread acceptance in Pakistani society of this practice. While all four provinces have taken administrative steps to ban corporal punishment at school, implementation has been lacking. It is generally observed that lack of implementation is the central issue, along with society’s changing attitude towards violent punishments. As a first step, teachers need to be trained and sensitised about other, more humane ways of instilling discipline into children without resorting to tactics of violence or humiliation.

The law does not clearly address corporal punishment within the home. Perhaps when the cruel practice is eliminated from schools work can begin on addressing the more sensitive matter of physical violence at home. Due to the prevalence of corporal punishment in society an incremental approach is required to eradicate it. Nevertheless, the goal must be nothing less than eradication, for when children are exposed to violence at home and at school, they end up becoming violent adults themselves, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

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Yes We Can Do It!