Date: 19th Feb 2012

Trilateral summit

THE summit is over, Hamid Karzai and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have departed Islamabad, so what did the latest attempt to bring together key players in the so-called ‘end game’ in Afghanistan achieve? Arguably, and unsurprisingly, not much. In fact, if anything, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar’s riposte that it was “preposterous” of President Karzai to demand Pakistan deliver the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table has drawn unnecessary criticism for yet again muddying already terribly muddied waters. Leave aside for a minute the specifics of who Mr Karzai demanded Pakistan deliver — Mullah Omar — and Pakistan’s claim that it supports an ‘Afghan-led and Afghan-owned’ peace process, and ask the only hardnosed, reality-based question that matters: if Pakistan does not hope to facilitate reconciliation talks with the Afghan Taliban, then what exactly does it hope to achieve in Afghanistan?

The very reason Pakistan demands and expects a major seat at the table as the next phase of Afghanistan’s future is being decided is because it is known by one and all that Pakistan has some measure of influence, or at least a realistic hope for some measure of influence, over the Afghan Taliban. Convincing the Afghan Taliban to come to the negotiating table is the essence of Pakistan’s potential contribution to the reconciliation process. Surely, Ms Khar was not implying that Pakistan negotiate on behalf of the Afghan Taliban with the other players — the Afghan government, the US and other regional and international countries? That confusion at the heart of Pakistani policy on Afghanistan — what exac-tly does Pakistan want? — will need to be resolved soon. Wanting a Pashtun-heavy dispensation in Afghanistan to minimise Indian involvement in the country to our west in the present scenario may arguably cause the very opposite to occur. If the Afghan Taliban are not convinced about accepting that the other power centres in Afghanistan will have to be reasonably accommodated, it could push the country towards a meltdown, with devastating consequences for Pakistan. The prospect of political and economic refugees pouring across the border again when the economy doesn’t have the capacity to absorb them or the state the ability to manage ethnic tensions within parts of the federation is a downright frightening one.

The Iran-Pakistan connection was more of a sideshow at the summit. Pakistan may have urged Iran to not let its deepening problems with the US spill over into the Afghan theatre and focus on crafting a regional settlement to end the war next door but Iran may, for obvious reasons, not have much to offer on an Afghanistan solution at the moment. Still, engaging Iran is better than ignoring it.
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Doctors’ strike

IF the lawyers can go on a protest strike, so can we. This was the crux of the young doctors’ defence of the ‘inhuman’ shutdown of public-sector hospitals in Lahore recently. The doctors were protesting the suspension from service of some senior colleagues over the large number of deaths believed to have been caused by drugs handed out by the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. On Feb 17, the Lahore High Court warned the Young Doctors’ Association against ignoring a Supreme Court order which had asked for an end to the strike. A compromise of sorts was reached a day later when the PIC doctors were reinstated following an SC call. The young doctors ended their strike, which had led to the closing down of even the out-patient departments at public hospitals and had led to great hardship, even humiliation, of patients by the messiahs who had turned hostile.

In the PIC case, the doctors distinguished those guilty of approving a drug from those who had been marked for investigation only because they had prescribed the drug. The government chose to ignore this assertion, encouraging the doctors to shift to the familiar protest mode. Emboldened by the success of their protests in recent times, these doctors have learnt how to use the same images of ‘suffering hum-anity’ that are beamed to show their callous betrayal of their oath against a government which can itself ill afford such negative publicity. The government has in the past looked for a solution by trying to create a rift within the doctors.
It could alternately inject life into the much-needed watchdog, the health commission formed under the 2009 Healthcare Act — just as, having proven their trade union skills, the doctors must now undertake an exercise in finding a balance between their rights and their responsibilities.
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Parachinar blast

SECTARIAN terrorism returned to the volatile Kurram Agency on Friday when over 30 people were killed in a suspected suicide attack in a Parachinar market. Among the dead were protesters the security forces reportedly fired upon following the explosion. The incident has severely jolted the fragile government-backed peace accord that has held between the area’s Shia and Sunni populations. Normality was slowly returning to the neglected region and displaced families from both communities had begun to return to their native areas. The arterial Thall-Parachinar road, which was reopened in October last year after several years of closure due to militant attacks, has been closed indefinitely. Though the road was still largely unsafe for civilians, traffic had been running as people had no choice, considering it is the only viable route connecting the region with the rest of Pakistan.

There are quite a few unanswered questions about this incident. Firstly, how could a bomber sneak past the considerable security presence in the area?

It is also unacceptable that security forces fired on protesters when effective non-lethal methods of crowd control exist. And while militant Fazal Saeed, who leads his own faction of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for the attack because “the Shia community of Parachinar were involved in activities against us”, many are circumspect about this claim.
Though Saeed is a notorious militant, other factors need to be considered and the bombing needs to be investigated, as the mainstream TTP’s involvement — which is at odds with the Saeed faction — cannot be ruled out. The bombing may have been the result of intra-militant feuds and the Fazal Saeed claim may be a false flag. Whoever is responsible must be brought to justice and militants of all stripes in Kurram need to be eliminated. As we have said before, it is the state’s responsibility — specifically that of the security forces — to keep the Thall-Parachinar road open and safe for travel and to neutralise the militants.

Unfortunately, the security establishment has failed miserably on all these counts, to the detriment of the people of Kurram. It needs to act now to prevent the resumption of sectarian violence in the agency.

IN a more rational world, Pak-US relations would be conducted in a calm and reasonable manner against a backdrop of mutual respect for and understanding of what animates the other country’s interests. Alas, in the world we do inhabit many of those traits are missing when it comes to the business of Pak-US relations. Taking the bait of Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Pakistani officials have fallen over themselves to express outrage at the congressman’s attempt — doomed to failure from the outset — to get his fellow American legislators to support a Baloch right to self-determination. On Saturday, Prime Minister Gilani himself denounced Mr Rohrabacher’s resolution. Politicians will be politicians and, given that Mr Rohrabacher was the one who chose to deliberately provoke, perhaps it was too much to hope for that Pakistani officialdom would not react. Amidst all of this, the US administration has tried to put some distance between itself and the troublemaking Congressman Rohrabacher but the assurance that US government policy very much respects the existing boundaries of Pakistan is already drowned out by the conspiracy brigade here that sees grand plans to arm-twist or undermine Pakistan behind every move that originates in the US.

But playing politics with international relations comes with its own set of dangers. In a more functional world, the government here would have understood that while protesting Mr Rohrabacher’s initiative was necessary for the purposes of domestic politics, some rationality also had to be injected into the debate by clearly indicating that Mr Rohrabacher was not the face of the US administration and that his is a minority point of view in US foreign policy circles. The dangers of whipping up anti-Americanism are well known to anyone who has followed the security establishment’s use of such tactics as a buffer against American demands: sooner than later, the state here becomes hostage to the very anti-Americanism it fans to try and gain a tactical advantage.

Consider that one of the reasons the recommendations for revamping Pak-US relations have not been laid before a joint session of parliament is believed to be the government’s concern about the reaction of right-wing groupings, most notably the Difaa-i-Pakistan, that have mobilised in the country in recent months. Given that the right-wing wants a complete break in ties with the US, and that’s something good sense and reality would dictate against, the government is content to delay the normalisation of ties with the US. This is what happens when mindless anti-Americanism is rampant. So, condemn Mr Rohrabacher by all means but also take care to not stoke passions to which the state itself becomes hostage.


NEARLY a month and a half later, the crisis that has brought higher education in Sindh to a standstill only seems to be getting worse. This is despite the existence of some fairly straightforward solutions that could quickly be implemented if the provincial administration really wanted to solve the problem. Public universities across the province remained closed in protest this week — Sindh University had already been closed for over a month — and the issue, sparked by the murder of an SU professor in January and the subsequent demands for the removal of SU’s unpopular vice chancellor, has now descended into a series of ugly legal battles between the faculty and administration. It is time to take some simple steps that can quickly resolve the problem and get Sindh’s young men and women back into their university classrooms.

For one, the SU VC has clearly lost the confidence of teachers and students for a variety of reasons ranging from procedural problems with his appointment to his alleged nepotism, corruption and mismanagement during this and previous tenures. The provincial administration is apparently concerned that his removal will open the floodgates for other universities demanding the removals of their VCs, but the degree of mistrust among this particular faculty, and the fact that his removal is the primary sticking point in this tussle, should be recognised as a unique case. Some speculate that political links or corruption are behind his continued retention; whether or not this is true, this reputation confirms that it will be impossible for a working relationship to continue. Once this major demand is met, other demands can be negotiated for a mutually acceptable position. The faculty has called for a judicial commission to investigate the murder, replacing police and Rangers with university security on campus and the restoration of student unions. It might not be possible or desirable to meet all of these fully. But by removing the VC, important progress — and a demonstration that the government stands for competent and honest university administrations — can be made.


RELATIVE peace may have been established in Sri Lanka, but questions are being raised about the costs involved. A resolution is to be tabled at the forthcoming session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva following a preliminary investigation by the UN which found that Sri Lanka’s “conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law”. Survivors’ accounts and video footage that have emerged since the war ended indicate that during the first half of 2009 the Sri Lankan military bombed and shelled indiscriminately. Hundreds of thousands of civilians who were trapped in a small enclave in the north of the island were killed. Up to 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in five months alone. Crimes against humanity were committed by the Tamil Tiger rebels too, who refused to let civilians flee the war zone and used their own people as human shields. After the war ended, 280,000 survivors were detained in a giant refugee camp, with 11,000 suspected rebels being locked up in the world’s largest mass detention without trial. Tamils claim that summary executions, torture and gang rape continued for months beyond the war.

While Sri Lanka has held its own inquiry, it has been criticised for focusing only on the excesses committed by the rebels and not on the military’s role. But accountability is a requirement under international law, and those guilty of perpetrating rights abuse during times of war must be brought to justice for the sake of setting strong precedents no less than for the sake of the survivors.
Many states, including Pakistan, have considered the quelling of armed insurgencies inevitable for the survival of the country.
How peace is achieved, however, is of critical importance. In no case can the abuse of human rights or the committing of war crimes be tolerated.

__________________
Regards,
CHAIRMAN MAO

Revising targets

THE federal government’s decision to scale down many of its mid-term budgetary framework targets for the next financial year is understandable. The government has missed the MTBF targets in previous years and will miss them again this year and the next. It is difficult, even if not impossible, to achieve the major macroeconomic targets of a relatively faster economic growth rate, a slower inflation rate and a narrower budget deficit as envisaged in the MTBF given the persisting challenges of growing energy shortages, deteriorating security conditions, a falling tax-to-GDP ratio, rising unproductive expenditure, increasing revenue leakages, etc. The slower economic growth has actually forced the
government to substantially cut development spending in the last few years. And it is again considering the downward revision of its development budget for the next year to Rs350bn from the projected Rs470bn.

At the same time it plans to get out of social-sector development and transfer this responsibility to the provinces from the next fiscal. This should help it to partially correct the fiscal imbalance created by the significant increase in the provincial share and reduction in the federal share from the divisible pool under the NFC award. It should also prove an incentive for the otherwise reluctant provinces to effectively tax the untaxed and under-taxed sectors falling in their domain, like agriculture income and real estate, to raise resources for financing their social-sector development. The decision will save cost and time overruns, and help to cut the throw-forward of Rs581bn in over 1,250 Public Sector Development Programme schemes worth Rs822bn in the social sector, launched since 2005. More importantly, it will give the federating units greater autonomy in the selection of the projects that are important for their people in line with the objectives of the NFC award and the 18th constitutional amendment that devolves most functions to the provinces.

While this policy change is likely to take some financial burden off the government’s shoulders, it is also expected to pave the way for restructuring the PSDP in view of the decreasing resources for development and in accordance with the New Growth Framework. The latter, for a change, focuses more on developing human resource, enhancing productivity, increasing competitiveness, etc than on erecting brick-and-mortar structures to please the politicians. The PSDP, shows a recent Planning Commission study, remains the mainstay of Pakistan’s development and growth policy. It is hoped that the NGF will remove
several flaws that have crept into the planning system and restore the PSDP’s role in the economic growth of the country.


IT would not be wrong to say that mismanagement is the primary reason for Pakistan’s failure to eliminate the polio virus. As reported on Monday, around 94,000 children up to age five in Karachi were not vaccinated against the crippling disease in 2011. Nine victims were infected in the metropolis last year, out of 198 nationwide. If that is the situation in the country’s largest city, one shudders to think of the circumstances in the conflict-ridden and remote areas. The report observes that non-availability of polio teams was one of the major reasons children were missed, while outright refusal to have the drops administered was the cause behind a quarter of the children not being immunised. Also, many vaccinators were apparently ‘not up to the mark’. Perhaps, then, the Pakistan Medical Association was correct in its assertion that ‘corruption’ was the main reason for the failure of Pakistan’s anti-polio effort. At the Karachi release of the annual Health of the Nation report, PMA officials said those in charge were not running the programme properly and that the system lacked checks and balances.

As if these challenges weren’t enough, certain politicians and others have made some highly irresponsible remarks in the media regarding the polio vaccine, criticising the ‘ill effects’ of ‘spurious’ vaccines. The fact is that heat exposure can render the polio vaccine useless and maintaining the cold chain is essential, but compromised vaccines are not deadly and do not cause polio, as some ill-informed commentators have alleged. Already, many in this country are suspicious of the drops, largely due to propaganda by semi-literate clerics. Hence such thoughtless comments should not be made as they can cause irreparable damage to the fight against polio. As experts from the PMA suggested, implementing the routine immunisation programme properly would go a long way towards eradicating polio. India has had tremendous success with its anti-polio campaign, arguably because the Indian state has owned the programme and given it the priority it deserves. The Pakistani government needs to display similar resolve when it comes to fighting polio.

Women’s rally

SOME large political events have been organised recently at Karachi’s Bagh-i-Quaid, but the ‘women’s rally’ staged by the MQM on Sunday is noteworthy. First, the size of the gathering testifies to the party’s organisational and communications capacity. More striking, however, is the fact that the crowd of tens of thousands comprised mainly women. While Karachi’s urban character has played a role in this, the fact remains that the country has not seen women in large numbers on the side of progressive causes for a long time. In fact, with a few exceptions, the demands for which women have come out on the streets in recent years have been considered regressive. For example, Karachi recently saw women from a religious party protesting against Valentine’s Day, while the memory of Islamabad’s Jamia Hafsa students laying siege to a library has still not faded.

It is a curious paradox that although women’s profile in politics has become more visible in Pakistan, it seems to be eroding at the grass-roots. Recent years have seen the formulation of crucial pro-women legislation and women have taken their place as equal partners in the power corridors. Political parties need to take matters further in this direction. Admittedly, mobilising women in a society where in some areas even their right to vote is questioned, and where public spaces are far from female-friendly, is not easy. Yet one way of countering such attitudes is to raise the level of women’s political participation, particularly in the post-Zia generation. Progressively inclined women need to remind themselves that their invisibility only provides more space to retrogressive elements. Meanwhile, the MQM must follow through with this display of good intent by awarding to more women, when the opportunity arises, tickets for direct election on general seats. Nothing else would send a stronger message about gender equality.

__________________
Regards,
CHAIRMAN MAO

STRANGE are the ways of politics in Pakistan sometimes: a PPP provincial government in Sindh appeals to a PPP-led federal government to make public the report into the death of the leader of the PPP. Stranger yet, the federal government sends its interior minister to the Sindh Assembly to give a rambling and disjointed briefing that ends with the chief minister and speaker appreciating a self-indulgent presentation and declaring that since the trial of the seven suspected of involvement in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has yet to be completed, little more can be said at this point in time.

But what the PPP won’t say, others can. It appears that stung by the criticism of Sindhi nationalist leaders that their party has
not been able to identify or punish the killers of Ms Bhutto, PPP politicians in Sindh decided to show that they had not in fact forgotten about the matter of who murdered their iconic leader. With elections coming up in the next year or so, the PPP has to protect its flanks from the potent criticism of opponents on its home turf in Sindh. Hence the political stunt — and that’s what it really amounts to — in the Sindh Assembly yesterday where the party tried to show its great concern for what has become of th investigation into Ms Bhutto’s assassination.

To be sure, the death of Ms Bhutto was a personal as well as a political tragedy for the PPP leaders. Her loss was and is felt greatly by the party. Equally, the party does genuinely fear that pursuing the matter of Ms Bhutto’s death too aggressively could imperil the PPP’s future, or even the present. There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the PPP’s fear of the nexus between militancy and shadowy elements of the state is fairly legitimate. That said, for a government that is about to begin an unprecedented fifth year of its term, that has seen off all manner of challenges to its rule and that has navigated a tricky political terrain with dexterity, taking up the investigation into the assassination of Ms Bhutto with seriousness of purpose ought to be something that can and should be attempted. Pakistan has for too long buried its leaders without knowing who killed them and why. To exorcise the ghosts of that bitter past, the truth has to come out. The PPP, having suffered heavily, has enough of an incentive to establish the truth. But playing politics with the death of Benazir Bhutto is a disservice to her memory.


OF late, a mixture of rhetoric and restraint from both sides has char-acterised the West’s nuclear stand-off with Iran. Reports indicate that on Monday Iran conducted military exercises as a warning it would guard its nuclear facilities against a potential attack. On the same day a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran for talks on the “possible military dimensions” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. Iran also suspended oil exports to the UK and France ahead of the July deadline the European Union had earlier decided on to stop importing Iranian crude when placing sanctions on the Gulf country. Though the suspension was large-ly symbolic as neither European state imports much Iranian crude, the Islamic Republic said it would turn off the taps for other EU members, which import relatively higher volumes of oil from Iran, if “hostile actions” continued.

Meanwhile, the US and Europe have been warning Israel against a possible strike targeting Iran. A senior US security official was in Tel Aviv Sunday to discuss the matter with the Israeli leadership, while chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey publicly criticised Israel’s war talk. The British foreign secretary has also said uni-lateral Israeli military action would not be “wise”. The unusual American and European criticism of Israel comes in the wake of feverish speculation that the latter may launch a disastrous attack targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities. It is a positive development then that Iran has shown willingness to re-engage the P5+1 — the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany — in talks to resolve the nuclear issue. Iran’s overtures should be responded to and Tehran must not be further isolated by imposing harsh and ultimately counterproductive sanctions that have only vitiated the atmosphere. Iran, on its part, must fully cooperate with the IAEA to dispel fears it is pursuing a weapons programme. The West must continue to rein in Israel; the Israelis in the past took surprise unilateral action targeting Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. However, a repeat of such adventurism must be avoided at all costs as unprovoked aggression against Iran will result in highly destabilising consequences for the world community.


IT is at long last that a sum of Rs100m has been allocated to maintaining, conserving and building some facilities at Moenjodaro. Much more is needed for the effort to be meaningful. The magnificent site that should have been the pride of Pakistan has been neglected so much that it was virtually taken off the tourism map for sheer lack of facilities to and at Moenjodaro. What lies ahead is the difficult task of rehabilitating this ancient Indus Valley Civilisation site on the tourism map, with hopefully some money going to the critical head of conservation. A rising underground water table and high saline levels have over the years caused much damage to the prehistoric remains. Moenjodaro lay unattended due to lack of initiative and funds on the part of the federal archaeology department, which was the erstwhile custodian of the site. Now that it has been handed over to Sindh after the passage of the 18th Amendment to the constitution, the provincial government would do well to form a committee of experts and set about conserving this most spectacular of our prehistoric sites.

Given its years of apathy, the Sindh culture ministry should now look at creating awareness about the historical value of Moenjodaro so that it comes to be owned by the people and becomes an emblem of pride for them. This is necessary because conservation of the site as well as the setting up of tourism facilities to and at Moenjodaro cannot be done in isolation of the public’s sentiment and its association with it. This means that more needs to be taught in schools about the significance and the global appeal of the Indus Valley Civilisation besides encouraging field trips by students to Moenjodaro. Given the conservation challenges alone, international expertise and funds must also be sought to help conserve the prehistoric site.

__________________
Regards,
CHAIRMAN MAO

NEARLY three months after Salala and a month after the Parliamentary Committee on National Security submitted its recommendations, parliament is yet to conduct its review of the US-Pak relationship. Intelligence cooperation between the two countries does seem to be taking place, and the foreign minister is meeting her American counterpart in London today. But from the Foreign Office and the army chief to the US State Department, senior officials on both sides have positioned the review as the action that is needed before any meaningful resumption of the relationship can take place. If the ball really has been placed in parliament’s court, the review needs to happen as soon as possible. This particular relationship is not one that can be put on hold for months at a time, for important reasons that include such things as cross-border security, Pakistan’s precarious external accounts position and the reconciliation process with the Taliban.

Partly the delay has occurred because the government has been grappling with pressure from a number of directions, and for a while this month parliament was caught up with the 20th Amendment. And with both Houses now prorogued, it seems unlikely that a joint session will be called before Senate elections in early March. To some extent, then, the slow progress is the natural cost that comes with increasing parliament’s role in policymaking. In fact, the hope is that this, more than intimidation in the face of pressure from outside parliament, has led to the delay. Elements such as the Difa-i-Pakistan Council have the potential to make news and create disruptions if there is a move forward in the relationship. But succumbing to this pressure would defeat the purpose of having parliament play a role, however minimal in practice, in defining it.

Regardless of the reasons behind the delay, the review should now take place as soon as possible, ideally without waiting until next month. The reality is that whatever comes out of it will likely include only broad principles for guiding policy. It will address such issues as the relationship with Nato and drone attacks, but the task of negotiating specific terms will end up with the administration and the military. Also, the PCNS is a broad-based group that includes several political parties. Whatever recommendations it has come up with after nearly two months of deliberations are unlikely to run into significant opposition in parliament. All of which means there should be no reason to delay this procedure any longer and hold up substantive negotiations on the shape of the US-Pak relationship.


TWENTY-eight out of the sanctioned strength of 40 judges of the Sindh High Court have yet to be appointed, while in Lahore 25 slots out of 60 are vacant. Is the superior judiciary in a crisis? A closer scrutiny of the problems in Sindh and Punjab suggests a varied set of problems. In Sindh, qualified lawyers appear to be reluctant to give up lucrative private practices for the privilege of joining the bench, while an unspoken rule about balancing the Sindhi- and Urdu-speaking candidates for judgeship appears to be fuelling disagreement between the Sindh government and the SHC, whose chief justice initiates the appointment process for high court judges. In Punjab, disagreements about the ratio of district judges to practising lawyers to be appointed has delayed the nomination process somewhat; the last batch of judges appointed was overwhelmingly drawn from district judges and the nominations this time are overwhelmingly loaded in the lawyers’ favour. There is a further problem, one delicately broached in legal circles: when the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Chaudhry ousted the so-called ‘PCO’ judges, many happened to be appointed not by President Musharraf but by the Dogar court on the advice of the present federal government. By ousting so many judges at once and blacklisting them, the supply of judicial candidates has temporarily been reduced. A further problem: the 18th and 19th amendments have made the process of appointment judges a drawn-out one and perhaps turned off potential candidates facing a lengthy and public appointment process.

Can anything be done to quickly fill up the vacancies and to ensure the problems of the SHC and LHC at the moment are not repeated? One suggestion may be to lower the entry age, perhaps by five years down to 40, enabling more candidates who have yet to hit the truly lucrative stage of their careers to consider taking a bite at the judicial apple. Another is for the disputes at the nomination stage, between bar and bench, and bench and the governments, to be addressed more purposefully and quickly.
Justice demands that the public’s needs be catered to as expeditiously as possible.


COMMENTATOR’S curse — is that what they call this? Too strong an expression perhaps to be used for sport, but it is not nice to hear these protests and reprimands when Pakistanis hardly had any time to celebrate their 3-0 triumph against England in the Tests. England have beaten Pakistan in the ODI series 4-0, and emotional Pakistani fans have been forced to find refuge in the purist’s defence that rubbishes all brands of cricket but the Tests. It is, however, a defence that cannot hide popular disappointment where hopes of a good Pakistani performance in the 50-over games were justifiably raised by the team’s success in the longer version just a few days ago. It is not about losing but the way Misbah-ul-Haq’s side went down. There has been criticism of the selection, but more than those who played it is the way they played which validated calls for corrections. Pakistan lost; but more importantly, the team failed to entertain.

‘The batsmen must score and the bowlers must try and stem the runs…’ The obvious statements that accompany cricket are often a source of amusement on their own to the very knowledgeable Pakistani enthusiasts. The Pakistani approach to the ODI series illustrates how some basics must always be adhered to. The limited-overs game requires the competitors to be aggressive and innovative, whereas the Pakistanis were cautious to the extent of being timid and old-fashioned. This style was probably influenced by their tactical supremacy over England in the Tests. But these thinkers under Misbah’s command needed to realise this was a different ballgame altogether. England did in the ODIs what they had been so rightly advised to do in the Tests earlier.
They were positive with the bat in their hand and caught Pakistanis somewhat lacking in imagination. They were worthy winners.

__________________
Regards,
CHAIRMAN MAO

Balochistan APC

IF he maintains the stance he took on Wednesday, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has made an all-parties conference on Balochistan almost impossible. The party’s preconditions for the conference are clearly political in nature; if the APC is put on hold to wait for arrests in the Nawab Akbar Bugti case and the recovery of the missing Baloch, it will not happen any time soon and certainly not during this government’s tenure. Meanwhile, it was Mr Sharif himself who called for an APC earlier this year, and of late he has taken up the Baloch cause, and especially the current government’s failure to do much about it, with great gusto. A senior JUI-F leader took a similar line on Wednesday when he said that detainees need to be released before an APC is called. It is true that the current administration has failed to make progress in addressing Baloch concerns; in fact, the dead bodies of missing people began turning up during its tenure. But despite the solidarity with the Baloch that political leaders of all stripes have started touting of late, the politicisation of the issue calls into question their own commitment to resolving it.

Their stonewalling could not have come at a worse time. Bramdagh Bugti’s public statement on Wednesday calling for an independent Balochistan and welcoming foreign assistance for that cause points to the urgent need for dialogue. Unfortunately the situation has deteriorated to the point where a number of prominent nationalist leaders have said they will not attend the APC, which would defeat the purpose of the conference. Even the interior minister’s decision to quash all cases against separatist leaders may not end the disillusionment. What opposition parties could have offered to do, if they were genuinely concerned, was to try and bring some of these leaders to the table, or at least to attend the conference with the goal of developing a strategy for somehow initiating dialogue.

There are legitimate questions about how much an APC will achieve; in the past such conferences have resulted in watered-down resolutions that are designed to please a wide cross-section of stakeholders and are forgotten as soon as the conferences are wrapped up. And in the case of Balochistan in particular, words have not been backed up with action. But this is also an issue on which a face-to-face exchange of views would itself be an important step forward. Over the next few days the focus of politicians across the spectrum should be to backtrack on their initial snubbing and find ways to bring Baloch leaders to the table.


ANOTHER petrol price hike is imminent, with the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) indicating that the international price of oil warrants an increase of Rs3 per litre for petrol, and a likely similar increase for other petroleum products, starting March 1. The logic of the price rise is straightforward, at least according to the Ministry of Finance: the petroleum levy that was supposed to raise Rs75bn from July-January came in at only Rs32bn, a significant hole that has to be plugged. Part of the reason appears to be that the estimated levy on diesel was Rs8 in the budget calculations but has averaged only around Rs3. This happened after coalition allies in parliament put pressure on the government to control the price of petroleum products, always a sensitive political issue.

Can anything be done to reduce the price of petroleum products? Built into the cost at the pump are roughly 35 per cent of taxes and levies on petrol, diesel, etc. While high, the room for further downwards adjustments has been substantially reduced with changes to the margins of oil dealers and the deemed duty that refineries collect. The only real way to cut the price of petrol and diesel would be to switch the indirect taxation on petroleum products to some other head. But the government has shown little inclination to raise new taxes or tighten the tax net. In fact, the capital gains tax has been watered down, presumably under pressure from the big players in the stock market, rather than enhanced. The option of borrowing to subsidise petrol products is highly problematic: while a direct rise in prices pushes inflation upwards, an indirect rise through printing money as the government is wont to do is believed to have more pernicious and long-lasting effects on the rate of inflation. Essentially, the lack of political will to create a fairer and just taxation system means that ordinary Pakistanis will continue to suffer. Indirect taxes are easier to collect but they are more harmful to the less-well-off segments of society. Unless the price of oil declines internationally, Pakistanis will have to suffer high prices.


THOUSANDS have taken to the streets in different parts of Afghanistan in recent days to protest the reported burning of copies of the Quran at the US airbase in Bagram. A number of people have been killed in clashes between protesters and Afghan security forces. Expectedly, the Taliban have taken advantage of the situation, urging Afghans to attack foreign military bases. Though President Barack Obama has apologised to his Afghan counterpart for the incident, it will do little to assuage the anger of the people. This is not the first time incidents of this sort have been reported involving US military personnel; similar behaviour – specifically desecration of religious texts – has been reported from Iraq and the American military detention facility at Guantanamo, while the video of US Marines urinating on the corpses of what were believed to be Taliban insurgents caused global outrage.

Incidents such as these prove that far from winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, foreign troops are seen as an occupying force ignorant of local culture and religious sensitivities. What is surprising is that despite over a decade of occupation of a Muslim country, American forces remain insensitive to the implications of such an emotional issue. It would also be fair to ask what 10 years of foreign military presence has given to the troubled country. While some development may have taken place in Kabul, much of the rest of Afghanistan is still bedevilled by violence, with the Taliban far from defeated. Hence the high levels of anti-Americanism, which can trigger responses similar to what we are seeing now. Occupation is the easy part; nation-building is a much more difficult proposition. As seen in the Iraqi and Afghan examples, alienating the population is hardly conducive to advancing geo-strategic goals.

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Regards,
CHAIRMAN MAO

28-02-2012(Tuesday)
Oscar win
PAKISTAN has hardly ever figured in the star-studded world of the Oscars, but Karachi-based documentary-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy appears to have reversed this trend by putting it on the award-winning list. On Sunday, Saving Face, co-directed by Ms Obaid-Chinoy and Daniel Junge, won the Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 84th Academy Awards in Hollywood. Seeing Pakistan being talked about in such a positive context in the international press makes for a welcome change, prone as the country is to being discussed for myriad errors of omission and commission. Ms Obaid-Chinoy’s success should inspire other Pakistanis, too, for the country has no dearth of talent. It should also remind the state and society of their responsibilities in terms of encouraging and promoting people who choose to work in fields that are often under-funded or overlooked altogether in the country. While the television business has taken the country by storm, less attention has been paid to related areas of endeavour such as documentary-making or the performing arts. The dividends to be gained from plugging this gap are illustrated by Ms Obaid-Chinoy’s triumph in the Oscars as well as in the Emmy awards in 2010.
Nevertheless, the subject of Saving Face leads to the sobering realisation that much remains amiss inside Pakistan. The film follows British plastic surgeon Dr Mohammed Jawad returning to the country of his origin to perform reconstructive surgery and literally save the faces of acid attack victims. It also follows one such victim in her fight to have her persecutors brought to book.
Acid violence is a particularly despicable form of assault, and statistically most victims tend to be women. It has a catastrophic effect on the entire family which must bear the cost of complex medical interventions. While formerly such violence was considered by the law as assault, Pakistan now has legislation specifically criminalising acid attacks. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2011, originally presented as the Acid Control and Acid Crime Bill 2010, was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari towards the end of last year. This was a welcome step, but controlling this crime requires more than laws. It has been suggested that stringent restrictions be imposed on the sale and purchase of acid, and certainly the country needs to see more prosecutions in cases of acid attack. Yet fully controlling such violence will mean changing a vengeful and patriarchal societal mindset in which crimes against women are considered justified when the male notion of ‘honour’ is challenged. In this context, Ms Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary brings to the fore the trauma of disfigured women and indicates where the actual remedy may lie.





By-poll trends
THE recent by-polls for 10 seats provide a useful basis for analysis at a time when everyone is talking about general elections. The PML-N has made gains. The PPP’s tally includes the two NA seats it retained in Punjab and two PA seats in Sindh. However, it lost one PA and NA seat to the PML-N, although it won the important NA-148 in Multan from where the prime minister’s son Ali Musa Gilani was the fourth member of the family to be returned to the current assemblies. His success was expected but it was being debated whether he could get more votes than the then PPP candidate — Shah Mehmood Qureshi — who had won the seat in the 2008 general election. As a Gilani scion out to replace a Qureshi who had changed loyalties, Mr Gilani would have left the task half done had he not outscored Mr Qureshi by 10,000 votes.
The turnout was generally good. This was due to the approaching general poll, the presence of two strong political camps with power in their hands and in part also because these were mostly rural constituencies where the candidates find it easier to draw the voters out. Many of these votes were necessitated by the switchover by MPs to the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf, and it was only logical that the parties which are already a part of the assemblies projected this as proof of the PTI’s irrelevance. Imran Khan’s case may have been strengthened by the horrifying slapping and firing that accompanied the by-elections, the media’s own quest for change of political culture being a huge factor favouring Mr Khan. Yet the PTI would have preferred the voters to stay home as an endorsement of its views of the existing assemblies as being hopeless and in need of being speedily replaced. In reality, there is little to suggest that the system is under threat. The PTI committed itself to the same brand of politics when at long last it launched its search for ‘winnable’ candidates. It should realise that there are a few ‘winnables’ out there already flexing their muscle.




Bin Laden compound
IN an operation which began Saturday night, the authorities on Monday finished demolishing the three-storey house in Abbottabad’s Bilal Town where Osama bin Laden was discovered and subsequently killed by American forces last May. However, it is not clear what prompted the state to send in bulldozers several months after the world’s most wanted man was hunted down in the garrison town. Is there any justification for erasing a structure that, notwithstanding its uncomfortable implications for the country’s security establishment, was a potent symbol of the ongoing war against terrorism? As head of the Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind a wave of terrorism that left communities divided and changed the course of history. Hence, the fact he was living in relative obscurity in Pakistan for several years undetected was a major embarrassment to the authorities.
While some countries have indeed attempted to erase uncomfortable symbols of their past, many others have retained them as reminders of the oppression they once witnessed or even perpetuated. Nazi concentration camps and segments of the Berlin Wall are prominent examples in Germany. Structures such as the now demolished Bin Laden house too have symbolic significance and should be left intact so that present and future generations can view them as a past that should not be repeated. Meanwhile, the wholesale demolition — that too virtually overnight — of Bin Laden’s home could raise some uncomfortable questions: for instance, did the authorities have something to hide or were they just in a hurry to get rid of a lingering symbol of their ineptitude? The theory that the house would have become a shrine to the Al Qaeda chief does not hold, for apart from a small jihadi fringe which lionises him, most Pakistanis remain indifferent to his death.

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Recite a Darood Shareef on Our Beloved Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him at least once and now.

THE revival of the Asghar Khan case, to be taken up by a three-member Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry today, has attracted much attention nationally. But while the subject matter may be high-octane and may yield embarrassing headlines for the army and certain politicians, the petition before the SC is unlikely to become a transformative moment in the history of civil-military relations. For one, the petition does not seek any specific punishment against Gen Aslam Beg (retd), Gen Asad Durrani (retd) or Younis Habib.
At best there will be a declaratory judgment along the lines of the one that said the Emergency declared by Gen Musharraf in 2007 was unconstitutional. Those expecting that jail terms or other punishments will be awarded are likely to be disappointed.
For another, the politicians and others implicated of taking money from the army/ISI aren’t respondents in the petition and so direct action against them is unlikely to occur.
Nevertheless, there is an opportunity before the court to underline or lay down important rules in how the business of politics ought to be conducted and how the state is run. At the heart of the ISI-buying-politicians-to-rig-elections story are two issues:
what constitutes a lawful command and how to regulate campaign finance. Aslam Beg’s defence for authorising the doling out of millions of rupees to politicians was that he did so on the orders of then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan. If true, the question really is, when a command is overtly unconstitutional and illegal, ought an officer of the armed forces do what he is commanded and simply hide behind the defence that a superior ordered him to do so? While the chain of command in the armed forces is uniquely sacrosanct, it cannot and must not trump all other principles in every instance. A judgment by the SC elucidating on the boundaries of what an officer is lawfully required to do under instruction from a superior would be unique in Pakistan’s history and would arguably strengthen the armed forces in the performance of their core duty.
The other issue at stake is that of campaign finance. With elections scheduled to be held in the next year or so, the SC could use the Asghar Khan case to lay down fresh guidelines on how campaigns are financed. At the moment it’s a bit of a free for fall, despite legal rules and limits, and even Imran Khan, the self-styled ‘clean’ politician, avoids discussing the matter. Ultimately, though, much will depend on how seriously the SC takes up the case.

Women`s votes
IN the 2008 general elections, according to Election Commission data, over 560 female polling stations — nearly 480 of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — saw a zero per cent turnout. Over 580,000 women were registered at these stations. As the next countrywide polls approach, recent by-elections indicate that this unacceptable state of affairs may well continue. In by-elections held on Saturday, women were effectively barred from voting at certain polling stations in Mardan and Mianwali.
These are not cases of women being physically held back from going to cast their votes. Instead, pandering to the conservatism of certain areas of the country, political candidates in those areas develop informal agreements, or at least understandings among themselves, that they will not try to bring out the female vote. Over time this regressive approach has taken hold to the point where voting for women in some constituencies has become as taboo as going to the mosque or walking into the male section of segregated wedding functions. It has, in other words, become the cultural norm, one perpetuated by those in a position of power.
What is particularly alarming is that this is true of parties across the political spectrum. The ANP and PPP are dominant in the Mardan constituency that was contested on Saturday and the PML-N in the Mianwali constituency. These are all significant and mainstream parties, and at least the former two clearly position themselves as being secular and progressive. Yet Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the ANP and PPP have dominated in 2008 and since, is the province where this problem is most acute. The National Commission on the Status of Women and the Free and Fair Election Network have called for the by-election results from the relevant polling stations — and therefore the constituencies in which they are located — to be scrapped. This is a perfectly legitimate demand; political parties need to be held accountable for failing to make it clear to their candidates that creating conditions that effectively bar women from voting is both unconstitutional and against the spirit of democracy.

IT was the same old story all over again. Pakistan’s bowlers shined while the notoriously brittle batting line-up collapsed once more to lose the T20 cricket series against England on Monday. Chasing a modest total, it was expected that Pakistan would canter to a victory but that, unfortunately, was not to be. Pakistan lost the match and with it the series decider. A team that has performed exceptionally well over the last year or so could have done better in conditions that suited them more than the opposition. Still, T20 is something of a lottery — not ‘real cricket’ as the purists might put it — and there ought to be no shame in losing a battle of equals. But the 2-1 loss came on the heels of a whitewash in the one-day series and opened up old wounds that only recently appeared to have been healed. Pakistan were on the up but came crashing down rather too rapidly.
That said, it must not be forgotten that Pakistan beat a top team 3-0 in the Test series. It was an extraordinary achievement and accolades are due to Misbahul Haq and his men in green. Test cricket is the real test of calibre and Pakistan proved their worth on that front. We as a cricket-loving nation should take strength from that showing because that was no easy feat against a formidable side like England. Perhaps changes are needed, particularly in the opening batting line-up. Mohammad Hafeez makes up for batting failures with his uncanny spin bowling and enthusiastic efforts as a fielder but he must do more. He should retain his place but serious thought needs to be put into the choice of an opening partner. Also, calls for a change in captaincy in the shorter formats are premature. Cricket fans need to look towards the positive.

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Recite a Darood Shareef on Our Beloved Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him at least once and now.

IN her poignant collection of poetry, Ojagiyal Akhiyun ja Sapna (‘Dreams of Waking Eyes’), Amar Sindhu, a professor of philosophy at the Sindh University, writes of the ‘Ideal Woman’ (aadarshi aurat) and warns her that to move with society she will have to toss away her dreams and idealism like “gand kichre ain faltoo saamaan” (garbage and waste goods).

It is a sad but true observation for International Women’s Day ( March 8 ) that after decades of struggle for emancipation and empowerment, we still have women in Pakistan who are denied their dreams — especially if they don’t conform to society’s mores. Age is no consideration. Even innocent baby girls if they are unwanted have their lives snuffed out at birth.

Without our realising it, female infanticide has descended on us as a curse. I began investigating this phenomenon when the media reported recently that five foetuses — two preserved in formaldehyde in jars — were found in a garbage dump in Mehmoodabad (Karachi).

My search for answers to the questions that nagged me and caused me sleepless nights led me to the Edhi Foundation which has been collecting these tiny bundles that are like Amar Sindhu’s gand kichre ain faltoo saamaan to be discarded.

The Edhi spokesman, Anwar Kazmi, a gentleman with monumental patience and deep reserves of empathy that he has imbibed from Pakistan’s grand old man of philanthropy, Abdul Sattar Edhi, gave me figures of the bodies his workers have collected from the dumps all over the country. They are beyond belief. The toll reads: 2008 recorded 890 dead infants recovered; 2009 recorded 999; 2010 recorded 1,210 and 2011’s figure dipped to 480. This year, 70 bodies have already been recovered in Karachi alone (the total for the entire year in 2011 was 120). Kazmi insisted that these figures were just the tip of the iceberg as many more are killed and buried secretly. As though that was not shocking enough, the Edhi spokesman dropped another bombshell. “Ninety-nine per cent of the infants killed are girls,” he informed me. These tiny baby girls, who should have been a cuddly bundle of joy, are so unwanted that they are disposed of like garbage. Boys in a similar situation escape this fate.

Strangely, this phenomenon has attracted little public attention. The only exception has been Bilquis Edhi who responded many years ago by initiating her jhoola scheme. She has installed 335 cradles outside her centres all over Pakistan with the plea to parents to leave unwanted infants in them.

No research has been done on this social evil and so it was virtually impossible for me to collect conclusive evidence on this crime against humanity. While giving me the data, Kazmi explained how the Edhi Foundation is left holding these innocent products of our collective guilt.

The story begins when the Edhi Centre’s emergency number is informed by a member of the public or the police about a suspicious-looking package that has been thrown in the garbage. Edhi volunteers recover the dead infant who is kept in the mortuary at Sohrab Goth for a few days before being buried. The police are always informed but are disinterested in investigating this crime.

Dr Sadiqua Jafarey, chairperson of the National Committee on Maternal and Neonatal Health, was initially sceptical when I mentioned this ghastly happening. But unlike other medical professionals she encouraged me to investigate the story and along with Imtiaz Kamal, president of the Midwifery Association of Pakistan, accompanied me to the Edhi Centre.

This is no less than infanticide. Of course no autopsy is done but it is clear even to a layman that the bodies are of fully developed newborn infants who have been strangled or choked.

Who are these infants and why are they disposed of so callously? Conventional wisdom has it that these babies are born out of wedlock and have to be killed to conceal the ‘mothers’ shame’. Bilquis’s cradles are no longer receiving as many infants as before.

Dr Jafarey, who has also been creating awareness about unsafe abortions, challenges this assumption. She wonders why unmarried women would carry an unwanted baby for nine months and then kill it after it is born and if it is a girl? Nevertheless the preponderance of female infants does show the gender bias.

Dr Jafarey also quotes from the Population Council’s survey on unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Its categorical finding is that the preponderant cases of induced abortions are of older married women who have four or five children and do not want any more. This is a clear indictment of the family-planning programme and its failure to meet the unmet need. As for younger women, the report states, “If the woman is young and never married, no time is wasted and the pregnancy is aborted as quickly as possible.”

To me it is clear that these babies are born to mothers who are victims of poverty and rape — including marital rape — and are so poor and have so little control over their own lives that even abortion is not a choice available to them. They give birth without medical intervention and the unwanted baby is tossed away like garbage with no questions asked.

There is need to investigate the huge street populations of Karachi and other urban centres. Many are organised and controlled by mafias with police protection. There are beggars, gypsies and other migratory tribes who are visible but who do not come on the radar of social researchers. Their gender equations and power dynamics work against their women, including female infants thrown on garbage dumps.

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By Zubeida Mustafa

THE State Bank’s mid-year report on the economy brings some good news. But it also raises areas of serious concern, raising doubts about the optimism with which the government has been talking about supposed improvements. The overall picture that emerges from the report is that several indicators that have improved — and that politicians have touted — are in fact at risk, and other indicators are worsening. Take inflation, for example. It finally dipped below 10 per cent in December, supported by better-than-expected agricultural output, but is expected to be back in the double digits by the end of the year. Or GDP growth: the SBP’s estimate of between three and four per cent for 2011-12 beats last year’s, but misses the target of above four per cent. The fiscal deficit has come down, but will be larger than planned for the year by one to two per cent of GDP.

A couple of developments over the last half-year have contributed to this scenario. For one, Pakistan’s external account position has worsened sharply. The prices of imports, especially oil, have pushed the trade balance into the red. Expected foreign inflows from such sources as American Coalition Support Funds, PTCL privatisation and 3G licence sales have not been realised. Send more money abroad than is coming home, and this sets off the expected chain reaction: a weaker rupee and increased domestic government borrowing (which more than doubled versus last year). Both have kept prices higher than they would otherwise be and will only make inflation worse in the months to come.

Some of these developments are beyond the government’s control. But what isn’t is the creation of a productive economy able to withstand these external shocks. Behind the broader statistics a picture emerges of an economy whose problems are deeper. The government did use up a large chunk of credit, but despite a falling interest rate, loans to the private sector in the first half of this year grew at a rate less than half of what it was a year ago. More worryingly, loans for investment were paid back by a larger amount than was borrowed last year. Pakistanis aren’t investing, and the SBP points to unsurprising factors: energy shortages, law and order, excess capacity. Some of the same reasons are behind the decline in textile exports. Political instability, corruption and law and order are leading to falling foreign investment. An economy that no one is investing in will grow slowly, yield lower taxes, continue to run a deficit and remain vulnerable to external developments. It is a vicious cycle, and short-term solutions will not be enough to break it.




AS summer approaches, the country is mentally preparing itself for a long season of power outages and riots. On Tuesday, there were protests in many towns of Punjab including Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Toba Tek Singh and Sheikhupura. They were staged by industrial workers who had seen many of their colleagues dismissed from jobs because of the energy crisis. But domestic consumers are no less affected. A recent report in this paper said that, excluding those exempted from loadshedding, ‘ordinary’ Pakistanis were getting only 30 per cent of electricity against the demand of more than 14,000MW. There are areas which have electricity for 18 hours and there are those that don’t have it for the same length of time. The power ministry contests the figures, but the 50 per cent shortage that it does admit to is daunting enough and is making consumers dread the hotter months ahead when the electricity demand will be far greater.

The ministry admits there are exemptions — such as defence installations, VVIP connections and theoretically at least, hospitals. Hearing a case about the non-supply of electricity to hospitals, on Tuesday the Lahore High Court asked for the submission of an exemption schedule on April 2. The exempt list accounts for an estimated 2,000MW. Perhaps, it could do with a bit of revision for the benefit of all those who cannot help but come out shouting on the streets. Matters are painful enough at the moment, but the absence of a plan for the future is even more frustrating and leads to routine displays of violence by power rioters. The government had promised to end loadshedding within a few months after it came to power four years ago. Given the sensitivities of the PPP and the urge to provoke the government, the temptation is to equate the power promise with Gen Zia’s infamous vow of holding polls in 90 days. The power riots may have behind them some politicians wanting to embarrass the government, but it is a genuine issue on its own. Surely there is a case for linking the denial of energy to people with the government’s own grip on power.



THE younger brother of one of Osama bin Laden’s widows, Amal Abdulfattah, has filed a legal challenge in the Islamabad High Court against criminal cases filed against Ms Abdulfattah and five minor children of the Al Qaeda chief. From what the authorities have disclosed, they entered the country illegally. Perhaps the state believes that because of their proximity to the world’s most wanted man the family can provide crucial information. If this is the case, the authorities need to make it clear; otherwise it can be argued that these people are high-profile examples of the manner in which women and children in this shadowy war are written off as negligible collateral damage by militants who head households as well as the security network in pursuit.

In many cases, the militants jeopardise their families’ security by keeping them in the area of active operations. It is hard to imagine that the women and children have a choice in the matter. And when the men are targeted, via drones or bombs or raids, those affected include people whose crime was simply to be irrevocably tied to a suspected terrorist. Some argue that the militants’ intention is to use their families as human shields. Do those planning a strike against militants take such collateral damage into consideration? From the many examples, including that of Baitullah Mehsud’s wife who was killed along with her husband in a drone strike, it would appear not. The onus lies primarily on the men who drag their families with them. But military planners are not absolved of the moral responsibility for the death or victimisation of those who have no proven links with terrorism. The fate of Osama bin Laden’s family, then, becomes a litmus test. If the only charge against them is of illegal entry, the humanitarian answer lies in deportation.

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Sangdil Riwajoon ki ya Imart-e-Kohna Toot bhi Tou Skti hay
Yeh Aseer Sehzadi Choot bhi tou Skti hay