Death of a dictator

December 20th, 2011

A satellite image taken over North Korea at night shows the country plunged into darkness, while its neighbours are brightly illuminated. This is the legacy for which Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s brutal dictator who died on December 19 at the age of 69, should be remembered. Kim should have been just another tinpot dictator, impoverishing his people and giving the world a headache, but he turned out to be so much worse. Once he acquired nuclear weapons, Kim became untouchable and immune to outside pressure. This allowed him to further gorge himself at the expense of his impoverished people. It is hard to overstate just how much North Koreans suffered at the hands of Kim and, before that, his father.

Kim was a menace, not just to his own people but also to the outside world. South Korea, a country that showed how to transition from dictatorship to democracy and from basket case to economic powerhouse, lived in constant fear that Kim would strike at it with his nuclear weapons. Unpredictability was at the heart of everything Kim did. He was a movie buff who kidnapped actors and directors from South Korea and a scotch lover who spent aid, mostly from the Soviet Union and China, to procure more alcohol for himself. His death should be accompanied with relief not mourning.

North Koreans can take some measure of relief in the fact that whatever’s next is very unlikely to be any worse than Kim. But it may be some time before things get appreciably better. For North Korea to get the international aid it so desperately needs to survive, its new rulers will have to compromise on their nuclear programme and move towards some form of representative government. Simply having the military or a relative of Kim’s take over the reigns of power will not be sufficient. The transition from a militarised police state to a democracy must begin now. Certainly, it will be many years before North Korea can hope to match its neighbours in terms of liberty and economic growth. But Kim’s death has made it more likely that day will come.

Return of the president

December 20th, 2011

The winds generated by the aircraft that brought President Asif Ali Zardari back to the country from Dubai blew away a huge cloud of rumours, as it touched down at the PAF Masroor base in Karachi.

For over a week now, since President Zardari left suddenly for medical attention abroad after suffering a transient ischemic attack, there have been rumours that he would not return, that he would use his health issues to escape to safety and that he was anxious to evade any persecution under the NRO or the other crises in the country, including the one generated by ‘memogate’. Evening after evening, TV anchors have been fixated on this scenario. President Zardari’s calm return to Bilawal House proves all their dire predications wrong and should also dampen the wave of uncertainty and speculation that had risen chiefly as a result of reams of conjecture and a plethora of speculative press stories.

These should fade away even further once the president starts holding the series of meetings scheduled over the coming days and business gets back to normal.

The events we have seen over the past days tell us a great deal about how quickly stories of all kinds can be built. They should never have been believed. We know for a fact that President Zardari is a fighter — unwilling to give up even when pinned to the ropes. He has, after all, spent over a decade in jail and hardly seems likely to chicken out of things too quickly. No matter how much derision he has faced, President Zardari — like the other leaders of his party — cannot be faulted for a lack of courage.

Now that he has squashed the ceaseless speculation, the president’s next task will be to take command of the reins of a shaky state. It is true much needs to be hauled into line, but this will be easier to achieve with him back on the scene and evidently determined to bring some order to the situation as quickly as possible, by resuming the task of decision-making at a moment when much planning is needed.

Grounded

December 20th, 2011

Pakistan International Airways (PIA) has the highest ratio of employees-to-aircraft of any airline in the world, a ratio that is only getting more skewed as the state carrier has to ground more of its fleet both because of technical faults and to cut down on costs. A full 18 of PIA’s 39 aircraft have been grounded, leading to an unprecedented number of flight delays and cancellations. This comes on the heels of news that the European Union may be considering banning PIA’s A-310 planes for technical faults, a move it had also taken last year.

There are two main actors at fault here: PIA itself and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is supposed to regulate the airline. One huge mistake PIA made was to contract only one company to buy all its spare parts when it would have been better to keep multiple vendors close to the international locations where PIA operates. This way, fewer flights would be delayed for technical reasons as spare parts could be more easily obtained. In the long run, PIA has to get itself on a sound financial footing. That means taking on the unions and downsizing the staff. The unions also cannot be allowed to stop sensible deals like the one that would have allowed Turkish Airways to take over some of PIA’s routes. By spending so much on unneeded staff, PIA is cutting corners when it comes to safety and is unable to make a dent in its Rs100 billion debt.

Safety will only improve once the CAA starts doing its job. Regulatory oversight in the country is weak, mainly because the CAA is staffed with many ex-PIA employees. An undeniable conflict of interest exists when employees of PIA go on to work for the very agency that is supposed to monitor the airline. The CAA must be unafraid to ground the airline’s fleet if safety concerns call for it. Under the current revolving-door policy, that is unlikely to happen. That means that PIA must be trusted to get its own house in order, something that is unlikely to happen on its own given the decades of mismanagement that led to this point.

Correcting the civil-military imbalance

December 21st, 2011

In her capacity as the lawyer of former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani, Asma Jahangir appears to be employing a public defence in the memogate case that has the virtue of being true: that her client, as a member of the civilian government, is being held to a higher standard than the military. On December 19, she said that ISI chief Shuja Pasha should have resigned after the May 2 Abbottabad raid, much as Haqqani did soon after the US confirmed the existence of Mansoor Ijaz’s infamous memo. This line of attack may not be enough to spare Haqqani should his role in the controversy ultimately be confirmed, but by bringing the matter to public attention, Jahangir is fighting the worthy cause of civilian supremacy.

If indeed it turns out that everything Mansoor Ijaz has said is true, then, along with Haqqani, Pasha, too, should be forced out of his job. According to Ijaz, Haqqani only began plotting against the military after the military first considered removing the government from power. In Ijaz’s leaked BBM exchanges, allegedly with Haqqani, he says that the ISI chief had sought permission from Arab leaders to force President Asif Zardari from office in the days after the May 2 raid. In theory at least, the military is supposed to be subservient to the elected government and so to seek foreign help to bring down that government is a gross violation of the Constitution. While hearing the case against Haqqani, the Supreme Court may want to expand its remit and look into these far more serious allegations too.

But as history has painfully taught us, the military does not tolerate outside accountability. For the government to have even a chance of fighting back, it needs the support of both the Supreme Court and the opposition parties. This is where the changing rhetoric of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has been such a disappointment. He has used the memogate controversy to fan the flames of public anger against Haqqani in particular and the government in general. What makes this even more disappointing is that Nawaz had been one of the more clear-eyed critics of the military. After May 2, he was one of the few politicians courageous enough to call for accountability for those in uniform. And indeed, as recently as December 19, Nawaz met with veteran Baloch nationalist leader Ataullah Mengal and agreed with Mengal’s accusations at a press conference, where he blamed the military for killing and suppressing the Baloch. It is noteworthy how the problems in Balochistan are being pinned almost entirely on the shoulders of the army, with nary a word against the civilian set-up. This is because the Baloch know, as does the rest of the country, that, elections aside, true power rests with the generals.

The Supreme Court, which has dogged the government as it does every time, seems less worried about the power of the military. Even though it has publicly disavowed the doctrine of necessity, which has been used to justify every coup in the country, the court has not pursued the military with the same verve it has shown in holding the government accountable. The same is true of the Abbottabad commission, which in its questioning of Haqqani and ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, seems likely to pin much of the blame for that fiasco on the government. General Kayani was fully on board when the NRO was first agreed upon by Musharraf and Benazir; it would now be ironic if that is what leads to further ruptures in civil-military relations.

It is also important not to get caught up in the minutiae of everyday politics to such an extent that we lose sight of the bigger picture. The military always escapes accountability but brings down all its force on civilians who have displeased it. This imbalance in power needs to be rectified immediately in the greater national and public interest since all state institutions need to be subservient to parliament and the executive led by an elected prime minister.

The PTI’s swelling ranks

December 21st, 2011

Imran Khan’s rising popularity is swelling his political party’s ranks and received a significant boost on December 19, when 30 politicians announced that they have joined hands with the former captain. These included big names like Jahangir Khan Tareen, Ishaq Khan Khakwani and Jamal and Owais Leghari, two sons of late President Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari. Supporters of Imran Khan can take comfort from the fact that the PTI’s appeal to the masses, particularly the youth, has forced entrenched politicians to discard their earlier dismissive impressions about Imran Khan’s political fortunes. He is no longer languishing on the political fringes but is emerging as a real political threat to both the PPP and the PML-N. Imran’s latest allies, who ironically call themselves ‘clean politicians’ had earlier been toying with the idea of forming their own political party. Most of them come from influential families of southern Punjab and were part of General Pervez Musharraf’s government. Some would argue that the acceptance of these old faces within the PTI’s folds is hardly the change against the status quo that its chief has been promising in his rallies.

Mr Khan is himself aware of this criticism and has been forced to modify his position by saying that he cannot find angels in Pakistani politics and has to rely on “relatively clean politicians”. In his press conference, Mr Khan said that the time for taking turns in the government has passed. Was Imran humouring himself or his latest political teammates? It is hard to tell but it speaks of the predicament he faces as he treads forward in the political landscape. Having electable, established politicians adds weight to the PTI but, at the same time, taints his message and raises questions about his strategy. Some might start looking at the party with far more scepticism now. Furthermore, the latest additions to the party will also serve to reinforce the perception among many that the country’s establishment is throwing its weight behind Imran Khan. The political bigwigs of southern Punjab are known to be shrewd and calculating politicians, who have the uncanny ability of gauging which way the political wind is blowing. Their pragmatism clashes with Imran’s idealism.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Hurtling down the abyss

December 22nd, 2011

The recent Pakistan Defence Council (PDC) rally in Lahore was ‘mammoth’, orchestrated as it was by some of the most organised religious parties in the country. The idea was to cross the benchmark established by Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf earlier — and it was probably crossed. The reigning presence was that of the Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), as its followers outnumbered the Jamaat-e-Islami ones, the next big cadre party in the country. In all, 30 religious outfits were present, including the single-leader party, the JUI of Maulana Samiul Haq. Imran Khan’s party was present in the person of a senior representative, who read out his party chief’s speech to the people gathered. There was Sipah-e-Sahaba too, its status made unclear — more or less like Jamaatud Dawa’s — through litigation after it was banned by the UN Security Council. There were the expected appendices from the non-religious world: Hamid Gul, Sheikh Rashid, Ijazul Haq, etc, who once represented the supremacy of the army in the country. This is what the leaders — led on the occasion by Hafiz Saeed of the JuD — said: “The rulers should immediately dissociate themselves from the US war on terror, permanently cut off the Nato supply line and prepare the nation for jihad in case the US dares invade the country”. The ‘mammoth’ show of force, seen after a long time since the disbandment of the MMA alliance, underlined yet another policy directive: don’t give the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India and decide against allowing a trade route to India through Pakistan, because there are disputes to be resolved with India and revenge to be taken from it for the crimes it had committed against the Kashmiri Muslims and because it had tried to destroy Pakistan through a ‘water war’. The issue of Babri Mosque was added to the list of battle cries against it — and the solvent of all the challenges faced by Pakistan was jihad fought by the proxy warriors organised by the religious parties. Both the US and India were the targets of this pledged Armageddon.

It was the biggest Wahhabi-Deobandi gathering seen in a long while. The Barelvis were not there but Allama Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), speaking elsewhere in the country, asked the Supreme Court to get rid of the PPP government by forcing a midterm election held under a neutral caretaker government prescribed by the honourable court. The message to the military was: if the Nato supply routes are reopened, the jihadis will attack the trucks. Maulana Samiul Haq raised the rather grandiose slogan: “We will attack Indian, US, Russian and Nato forces if they try to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty”. JuD leader Hafiz Abdur Rehman Makki was more specific: “Our men are trained to use rifles and Kalashnikovs. When they head towards India with weapons, no one can resist them”. Sipah-e-Sahaba’s chief, Maulana Ahmad Ludhianvi, boasted that 4,000 young people he had sent for jihad had died.

This is the consequence of a number of vectors aligning themselves: the break between the US and Pakistan Army after the Salala attack; the consensus built by the PPP government in parliament in favour of the Pakistan Army against the US; the public mind as moulded by the media in favour of an isolationist policy under which jihad becomes possible; the memogate affair and the case related to it at the Supreme Court asking it to decide whether the PPP leadership was guilty of treason against the state by endangering its national security as represented by the Pakistan Army. Jihad, which has demonised Pakistan in the eyes of the world and given rise to proxy warriors gone haywire inside Pakistan after affiliating themselves with al Qaeda, is once again seen as the prescription. The power of the clerics who organised the ‘mammoth’ rally is beyond question. It is supplemented by militants fighting the military in Fata and by the synergy provided by a consensus for the demand that there be Sharia in Pakistan. When such rallies take place, there is cause for worry because an implication of their success is that the state is becoming dysfunctional, approaching the prototype of failed states like Somalia, where only jihad prospers.

HRCP’s report on honour killing

December 22nd, 2011

The HRCP’s recent report on honour killings in Pakistan indicates that the average woman continues to be victimised by patriarchal, clannish traditions even as legislation is passed to criminalise such abuse. The report states that 675 women were killed in the name of ‘honour’ between January and September 2011. Several aspects of this horrifying trend must be analysed in order to understand its persistence and halt its onslaught. On the one hand we can focus on the judicial system’s loopholes. We can insist that women be given adequate and impartial access to police protection and legal aid, and we can press for perpetrators to be dealt with harshly so as to deter further acts of violence against women.

On the other hand, we can seek to address the widespread cultural biases women face — biases that are often the motivating factor behind honour killings, acid attacks and similar abuse. These biases against women are so pervasive that often women are not considered independent, equal members of society even in Pakistan’s most advanced urban settings. A woman’s fate is tied to her (invariably) male guardian’s fortune throughout her life. Importantly, she is seen as both a reflection and a source of her guardian’s status in society. This ensures that she can be bought, sold, blamed and exonerated at the community’s will, in accordance with whatever her family believes will increase or restore their ‘honour.’ These cultural biases may be the hardest to overcome, but ultimately social awareness is the only way that honour killings will gain widespread public disapproval. It is essential that women be made aware of their right to live free from the tyranny of arbitrary dispensations of justice. It is equally important that women’s participation in public life be enhanced, so that they are valued and viewed as more than easily disposable accessories. In the absence of concerted government efforts to eradicate honour killings, most women have no choice but to submit to whatever punishment their community metes out to them simply because they have nowhere to turn. In the meantime, short-term measures like establishing safe havens for women who choose to flee their homes instead of submitting to sweeping tribal judgments may have a positive impact on the chilling death toll presented to us.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Hear hear, Mr Prime Minister

December 23rd, 2011

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani needs to be thoroughly commended for his very timely and brave speech on the floor of the National Assembly on December 22. In it, he said many of the things that need to be said at this stage, by the country’s elected chief executive, as tensions between the civilian government and the military simmer to a boil. Perhaps responding to the ministry of defence’s reply to the Supreme Court of a day earlier, which had suggested that the army and the ISI were not under its control, the prime minister very rightly said that there “can’t be a state within the state; [and that] they [the establishment] would always be answerable to parliament”. He added that all institutions of the country are answerable to parliament and this is how things should be in fully functional democracy where rule of law and the Constitution is supreme. The prime minister is also correct when he says that it was the civilian government which put its full weight behind the establishment after the May 2 raid in Abbottabad or after the Salala raid of November 26. For that, he feels, it is getting a very raw deal. Perhaps, one particularly telling remark of his was when he indirectly referred to calls being made regarding the alleged issuance of visas to Americans by the country’s former ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, saying that he wanted to know how Osama bin Laden was living in the country for six years.

Of course, it doesn’t help this government in particular, in that its record on governance and delivering public services to citizens is most inadequate. However, the issue in question is not the performance of the present government per se, but rather that of which institution is supreme according to the country’s Constitution, and whether the powerful military is to be subordinate to parliament. Since the latter represents the popular will of the people, as manifest through the holding of general elections, it necessarily follows that the parliament be sovereign in its role as the nation’s supreme decision-making body, and all other institutions of state be answerable/accountable to it. The reality is otherwise as many of us know. The establishment is in charge of large sections of foreign policy and in many instances also calls the shots with regards to domestic policy. It has appropriated to itself the states policies towards important matters such as ties with America, with India and the country’s participation in the war on terror and the fight against domestic militancy and extremism. What is being advocated is not exactly heretical or extraordinary. It happens, by and large, next-door in India, where an elected civilian government, albeit with allegations of corruption and a tainted public image, has a military that is subordinate to it. The reason that India never had a military coup is because its civilian leaders asserted themselves and the country held regular elections. Parties contested them, the winners making a government, and if they did badly and failed to deliver, the people voted them out at the next election. This, indeed, is how things are done in a mature democracy, something Pakistan can, for now, only aspire to.

In this context, Prime Minister Gilani’s remarks make eminent sense and should be welcomed by all those who want to see the country as a state that operates as a fully functional democracy and not one where the military dominates all other institutions, and where policies formulated by the establishment guide the nation. It goes without saying that in a democracy, all institutions of the state are answerable and hence subservient to parliament. This stand should have been taken by the PPP, which has fought several dictatorships in the past, in the first place, but better late than never. While the prime minister rightly made a strong case for the government to be allowed to complete its term, he did say that the military was “disciplined” and that it “followed the Constitution”. This is also welcome because it does not make for a blame-game and in fact, suggests an attempt by him to assuage the powerful institution, while at the same time clearly saying that whatever is happening will not be taken lying down by the PPP-led government.

State of the economy

December 23rd, 2011

Government reports have a tendency to state the obvious in the most obscure manner possible. The State Bank’s annual report on the economy seems to be somewhat of an exception to that rule, laying out in plain language exactly what went right and what went wrong in the economy during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. For this, one must be grateful to the central bank. The report itself revealed no surprises. Government borrowing from banks, inflation and the energy deficit all exceeded their targets while economic growth and investment were far below their previous levels. None of these numbers were unknown, especially since the State Bank utilises many of the data sources that the finance ministry uses when compiling the Economic Survey of Pakistan. The value of this report, therefore, is not the data but the analysis, which serves as a useful internal check on the government’s own claims about its economic management.

The verdict delivered by the central bank is damning. The government’s failure in reforming the energy sector resulted in the budget deficit far exceeding its targets, reducing the ability of the private sector to borrow and constraining the energy supply and by extension, economic growth. In a year when the country was hit by a severe natural disaster, the government should have at least avoided man-made management crises. The government’s handling of the flood got reasonable reviews from the central bank, although once again, the praise was for the short-term handling of a crisis that was made worse by long-term neglect of infrastructure development. While the overall picture painted by the report was not bright, we are at least grateful that there is a government institution that has both the intellectual capacity, as well as the independence, to speak plainly and authoritatively about just what is going right and what is being done wrong by the country’s economic management team. The reason this is possible is because the State Bank is an independent institution whose staff members are not beholden to the hierarchy of the federal civil service. We hope that, as the Senate considers the State Bank Act of 2010, it will preserve this important check on the government.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

The army chief’s statement

December 24th, 2011

So complete is the military’s hold over politics that a mere statement will perhaps not be enough to lower currents tensions in the country’s polity. Still, Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s statement that the army is not plotting a coup against the elected government is welcome and should lead to some reduction in the tension. That it came a day after Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani openly voiced his fears that the moves were being made to send his government packing shows that at least for the moment the army probably will not risk an overt coup. As anti-government as the sentiment among many in the country may be, a military coup is the last thing anyone wants.

That said, even if the army has decided that an overt coup is not plausible right now, there are other ways in which it has in the past interfered with the democratic process. It is an open secret that the military leadership is not happy with President Asif Ali Zardari and they could engineer his resignation while allowing the government to serve out its term. In that context, disavowing a coup is not the same thing as promising to be subservient to a civilian government and to parliament. The government indirectly admitted its weakness when in an affidavit it submitted to the Supreme Court, the ministry of defence said that it had no control over the military. The army chief’s statement does nothing to change that.

In an ideal world, the civilian government would not have to worry about the military, which should be under its control, just like any other institution of the state. However, the fact is that the government will have to wrest control back piece-by-piece. It must begin by standing its ground on Memogate and should demand that if at all the actions of one person are to be investigated, then those of the other, also mentioned in the transcripts, should be probed. Additionally, the PPP needs to be more open about the challenges it faces and not equivocate on issues when it needs to take a stand. In that context, the prime minister’s speech on the floor of the National Assembly on December 22 was most timely and one hopes that the party will now perhaps find its voice which held it in good stead during many years of military dictatorship.

After the Salala probe report

December 24th, 2011

The much-awaited report on the Salala attack by a Nato-Isaf airborne force on November 26 is out and it will not satisfy the Pakistan Army and the Pakistani nation at large. It accepts some blame but links the incident to lack of trust, lack of coordination and ‘first fire’ from the Pakistani side. The report, however, acknowledges that ‘efforts to determine who was firing on the US troops and whether there were friendly Pakistani forces in the area failed because US forces used inaccurate maps, were unaware of Pakistani border post locations and mistakenly provided the wrong location for the troops’. Pakistan did not cooperate with the Pentagon inquiry.

Pentagon’s Brigadier-General Stephen Clark, who led the investigation, however, made it clear that ‘US forces were fired on first and acted in self-defence’. The biggest flaw in the probe is that while it claims that the US forces reacted in self-defence, it is not sure who really fired the first shot. Additionally, ‘US officials gave Pakistan liaison officers the wrong location of the firefight and were told again that no Pakistani troops were in that region’ and ‘US troops did not know that two relatively new and spare Pakistani outposts, reportedly called Volcano and Boulder, were just over the border from the village that was the target of the operation’.

This means that the US will not apologise, Pakistan will get no satisfaction, and the Nato supply line through Pakistan will remain blocked. As it is, Pakistan has almost given its final verdict on the issue saying it will not take a simple apology, although some quarters hoped that some such gesture from Washington would soften the stance of the Pakistan Army and the supplies would be resumed. The reaction to November 26 in Pakistan was intense and consensual, which means that anger rather than realism would propel any further development. The Pakistan Army has been backed by parliament in Islamabad, by the sitting PPP government, the media and the man in the street. This additionally means that any gesture of conciliation towards the US will arouse ghairat (sense of national honour), which is never fulfilled unless it is accompanied by honourable self-damage.

Politicians and clerics have united behind the army’s decision to confront America. The clerics have actually given a call to jihad in Lahore’s Minar-e-Pakistan, warning the government that if the Nato supply line is reopened, their non-state actors will attack the Nato trucks and set them on fire. The national consensus has thus been joined by the non-state actors, who not long ago were seen attacking innocent Pakistanis ‘to teach Pakistan a lesson for allying itself with America’. The escalation of ‘ghairat’ this time is more intense because of the shame felt at the way the affair of CIA agent Raymond Davis was handled by the government in February-March. After having announced that Davis would be hanged for killing two Pakistanis, the government had buckled and let him off the hook on a blood-money (diyat) payoff.

Unless the GHQ in Rawalpindi relents, the spiral of escalation of hatred will continue and lead to more incidents. TV anchors note that since Pakistan started acting tough, the Americans have backed off from their drone attacks, giving Pakistan the longest reprieve so far. More ominously, they take account of the fact that after Pakistan began taking on America, al Qaeda and its affiliates have stopped their suicide bombings against innocent Pakistanis. This kind of thinking is dangerous since it presumes that the army, finding itself either unwilling or unable to respond to the challenge of al Qaeda’s terrorism, has succumbed to the organisation’s strategy of causing a rift between Pakistan and the US.

According to the latest State Bank midterm report, the national economy is facing a meltdown. This means that, in the coming months, a tsunami of unemployed and hungry people will hit the roads and paralyse the country, making even minimal governance impossible. The non-state actors now backed by the state are actually working for al Qaeda and will be harmful to Pakistan after they have ‘defeated’ the US as they did the late Soviet Union. They tried to kill General Musharraf three times and have attacked the GHQ once.

__________________
Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Supreme Court holds the key

December 25th, 2011

Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on December 23 that there would be no takeover of the government through a coup d’état, calling all speculation about it “misleading” rumours aimed at diverting ‘focus from the real issues at hand’. This was his answer to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s statement that there was conspiracy afoot to get rid of his government. He had also made an oblique reference to the army making an issue out of the ‘memorandum’ issue. General Kayani, however, insisted that issues of national security had to be handled on merit, which confirmed that he was not about to let the PPP government off the hook from the memogate case being heard at the Supreme Court. The PPP assembled its core committee to deliver its own rejoinder to General Kayani, warning that institutions of the state should not trespass into one another’s domain. Here is the concealed objection to the Supreme Court and the army interfering in the work of the executive. The army chief’s statement, taken together with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s clearly expressed opposition to any coup by the army, has been welcomed by the opposition parties and the media discussants. For the PPP, however, all these are interested parties who want to see the back of the government sooner — deemed against the Constitution — rather than later, which would be some time in 2013 through a general election.

If one reads between the lines, it could be a case of the military seeming to be relying on the honourable court to do what most people in Pakistan, apart from the PPP and its coalition partners, want: removal of the government one way or another. The Supreme Court is the linchpin in this and the entire nation thinks that an activist Supreme Court is actually an independent Supreme Court, apart from the lawyers’ community that appears at the apex court and thinks — through its annual election of the Supreme Court Bar Association — that an activist Supreme Court is also obliged to exercise judicial restraint. Of course, in this is lost the debate over who should invoke the national interest. The army chief seems to have done it but surely it is in the nation’s interest that its Constitution be paramount and all institutions abide by its dictates.

Chief Justice Chaudhry has already given us a glimpse of what will happen if President Zardari is impugned: if the government thinks that the president is immune from litigation under Article 248 of the Constitution, it should come before the court and ask for this immunity. Although some eminent lawyers like Aitzaz Ahsan think that the presidential immunity is blanket, many others don’t agree. They say that: ‘Article 248 gives protection to acts done in good faith and cannot be construed to extend blanket cover for unlawful and unconstitutional acts. It is more or less certain that if presidential immunity is sought it will be refused and President Zardari may be ‘impleaded’. If he is found involved in the memo case, the court may direct the state under another article to carry out its orders after the negative verdict. If that were to happen, there will be a moment of decision for the army chief: will he leave the executive under which he functions to carry out the order, or will he pressure the government to leave, or will he do nothing? Of course, if the PPP led government is bundled off this way, it will emerge as a martyr.

Had the Supreme Court wished, it could do a bit of the suo motu thing and pause on the federal affidavit lying with it saying the federal government had no control of the army and the ISI. The Constitution does not accept that the army should de facto or de jure be exempt from the writ of the popularly elected executive. The opposition headed by the PML-N knows full well what is meant by the content of the affidavit because it was toppled in 1999 after a disagreement with the army chief over foreign policy. But it will not react because it is the PPP that is losing this time. No one can deny today that the army still runs the country’s foreign policy, joint resolutions by parliament notwithstanding. The national consensus against the PPP defies the rule of majority embedded in the Constitution.

An endangered minority

December 25th, 2011

Given the scope of problems facing the people of Balochistan, from a security establishment that abducts at will anyone it considers a threat to chronic underdevelopment, the plight of the Hindu community in the province has not been given the attention it deserves. Estimated to number about 200,000, Hindus in Balochistan have been the victims of a campaign of kidnappings and killings that is causing them to flee the province en masse. The most recent incident involved the killing of a young Hindu trader, Ravi Kumar, after his family could not rustle up the one-million-rupee ransom that his kidnappers had demanded. The Hindu community is alive to the threat it faces and has taken out a protest in front of the Balochistan Assembly demanding protection from the government. It is now time that the authorities start to treat the problem with some amount of seriousness.

A report released by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in September of this year, revealed that over 50 members of the Hindu community have been kidnapped for ransom in the last three years, many of whom have been killed if the money is not paid. There is no evidence that the provincial government has been complicit in this assault on Hindus but it is surely guilty of negligence. According to the report, families of victims are fearful of reporting the crimes to the police because they have no confidence in the authorities and rather are fearful that it will only make it harder to recover their loved ones. So fraught is the situation that more than 100 Hindu families have migrated from Balochistan and are seeking refuge in other countries.

What makes the crimes against the Hindu community even more disturbing is that Balochistan has a rich Hindu heritage and, until recently, was thought to be a more hospitable environment for the community than anywhere else in the country. Hindu pilgrims from India make the annual trek to the Makran coast for a four-day ritual at the Hinglaj Mata temple, where Hindus believe that the head of their goddess Sati had fallen, and these pilgrimages have been taking place for decades without incident. But as more Hindus flee Balochistan, the province’s Hindu heritage is sure to suffer from neglect and a lack of interest.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Zone of conflict

December 26th, 2011

The war in the country’s northwest is continuing. The media headlines may have declined in number or prominence, since that time in 2009 when troops surged into Malakand. But the fact is that there has still been no obvious victory. Even in the Swat Valley, people fear a militant comeback at some point in the not very distant future. But while life is back to something resembling normalcy in this region, the same cannot be said for other areas such as Orakzai, where in the last few days some 30 insurgents have been reportedly killed in the skirmishes and battles that take place. The lack of media access to these parts makes it almost impossible to ascertain the precise truth, and there is really no way of saying how many troops have died. Reports of the abduction of paramilitary forces have come in from Tank and other such incidents occur periodically.

The military, which is more trained to fighting a conventional war, faces a guerilla-like insurgency. This indeed is the weakness of conventional armies everywhere. As a result, Nato forces in Afghanistan have suffered, too. But even so, we must ask quite why there have been so many claims of victory in South Waziristan, in Bajaur and elsewhere. The people of these regions do not feel secure at all. There is still a very long way to go. And what is most unfortunate is that people are not being told the truth about what is going on. The residents of the tribal regions, who have watched what is happening at close range, also ask questions about the degree of army commitment and how genuine the will to battle the Taliban combatants is. The fact that few top leaders have been arrested and some allowed simply to walk away in Swat and Dir, according to local accounts, makes the situation even more complex — and disturbing.

These are all factors we need to think about. We have one of the largest standing armies in the world; the effort to defeat the Taliban has been on since 2002. As citizens we need to know why success has been so hard to achieve, especially given the mayhem that they have wreaked on ordinary Pakistanis and on hundreds, if not thousands, of military and paramilitary soldiers.

Attack on mobile phone outlet

December 26th, 201

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The attack on a Telenor franchise outlet in Karachi that left two people dead on December 23 appears at first to be a crime without a motive. The two gunmen did not demand any money or goods, nor did they seem to be targeting any particular employee. With all the usual reasons for such an attack ruled out, the crime may have been spurred, theorised the police, by ideological reasons. The franchise is linked to a Norwegian company, and newspapers in Norway had re-published the controversial cartoons, which originally appeared in a Danish newspaper. The connection may be a tenuous one but it takes very little to spark religiously-inspired crimes in Pakistan, as the original protests against the cartoons back in 2005 showed. The spree of attacks inspired by the cartoons include the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad in 2008, a letter bomb being sent to a hotel in Copenhagen in 2010 and about 100 deaths in the Muslim world attributed to riots.

Needless to say, attacks like the one on the foreign firm’s franchise are counterproductive. Like most multinational companies, it has sold the franchise for the use of its name to a local business and thus it is the local owners, and not the Norwegian conglomerate that suffered the consequences of such an attack. A similar phenomenon has been on display during anti-US protests in the country for the last decade, when protesters would make their point by torching the outlets of American fast-food companies, again not realising or caring that the restaurants themselves are owned locally by businessmen who have bought the right to operate the franchise. By resorting to violence, extremists are giving credence to those who would try to wrongly paint. Their faith as one that justifies violence. Such people do know service to Islam by their actions.

Open halls

December 26th, 2011

Many in Lahore will be delighted to hear that the Al-Falah Cinema, which occupies a prime position on the central Mall Road and for decades had claimed a status as the best cinema hall in the city, has again put up its screen, its stereo system and its projectors. After a seven-year closure, during which it had converted itself to a theatre, the Al-Falah, under a new management team, hopes to begin playing movies once more by early 2012. A final NoC is awaited.

The trend witnessed since the 1980s, as cinemas lost their audiences, has begun to be reversed. This is welcome news. Restrictions on which movies could be aired during the Zia years, coinciding with the arrival of VCRs and video tapes, had been a key factor in this. The decline of the Pakistani film industry added to the issues faced by cinema owners, with dozens simply closing down or being converted into giant shopping plazas in a new age of consumerism. Many who grew up through the 1980s have never known the pleasures of the cinema, with its whirring reels of film or the vendors walking along the aisles to sell items ranging from hard-boiled eggs to candy floss.

The plush cineplexes, now running in most major cities, were the first to bring the magic of the big screen back. But it is a fact that they cater only to the elite, with their expensive tickets and luxury trappings. It is important this world of entertainment be made available to a wider audience everywhere. The planned reopening of the Al-Falah helps set this pattern in motion; perhaps others among Lahore’s better known cinemas will follow and bring back a part of the past to a city that had lost it for too long, and by doing so revive a part of heritage that was snatched away, narrowing avenues of entertainment open to people still further. The signs of change in this oppressive environment are to be celebrated.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

Punishing Benazir Bhutto’s killers

December 27th, 2011

At the fourth anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Rawalpindi, all the questions remain unanswered, as in the case of the assassination of General Zia in 1988. Because of some of the pointers in the various investigations into the killing, the PPP government has hesitated in grasping the nettle. It asked the UN to investigate the case, pointing to international culprits to avoid naming an internal suspect. Then it ignored the UN report which was quite clear about the flaws in the way Pakistan was looking at the murder. Now everyone in the opposition — and breakaway leaders within the party — are accusing it of not coming clear and have used that equivocation to hurl all kinds of allegations.

The 60-page Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto had focused on the ‘flaws’ of investigation into the murder by the Pakistani agencies. Some names had cropped up in this connection, leading the media and the opposition to call upon a much-weakened PPP government to take steps to punish those who were remiss in their job. The government was brought to its knees by the Supreme Court; and any attempt to get at the ‘big fish’ would have offended the military, which the PPP could not afford. The result was that its own interior minister and others in the inner circle of the government began to be blamed because they were seen as not acting on the report.

The UN Report deviated from the commonly-held views in Pakistan. It trusted the telephone intercept indicting then Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, referred to an al Qaeda announcement in Italy that an “American asset” had been eliminated and focused on the strained relationship between Ms Bhutto and the establishment. It noted the charge against her that she was willing “to compromise Pakistan’s nuclear programme and allow greater western access to it”. The UN Report stated in Para 216: “Many sources interviewed by the Commission believe that the establishment was threatened by the possibility of Ms Bhutto’s return to high public office and that it was involved in or bears some responsibility for her assassination”.

In Para 217, it said: “Several of these sources spoke of the existence of elements within the establishment who saw her return to an active political life in Pakistan as a threat to their power. These elements included, in particular, those who retain links with radical Islamists, especially the militant jihadi and Taliban groups, and are sympathetic to their cause or view them as strategic assets for asserting Pakistan’s role in the region.”

In February this year, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the murder arrived at the following finding: “Based on evidence and statements, it is prima facie established that Musharraf is equally responsible with criminal mens rea [‘guilty minds’ in Latin] for facilitation and abetment of assassinating Benazir Bhutto through his government’s failure in providing her the requisite security protection her status deserved as twice prime minister.”

Ms Bhutto was attacked earlier the same year, on October 18 in Karachi, and was nearly killed. Once again the attacker was linked to the Taliban, although his family was based in Karachi. The attack killed 150 people and the man responsible was Abdul Wahab Mehsud who fled to Waziristan after the incident. He was the son of a retired policeman in Karachi. The others accused belonged to non-state actors from a jihadi outfit.

The remnants of the team of assassins that came to Rawalpindi are in state custody. The JIT report also confirmed that the killers of Ms Bhutto stayed at Madrassa Haqqania in Nowshehra. Incidentally, that seminary is run by JUI-S leader Maulana Samiul Haq, who is one of the leading lights of the Defence of Pakistan clerical-jihadi conglomerate spearheading Pakistan’s anti-American drive and indirectly empowering the establishment’s new isolationist policy. So the question is: when will Ms Bhutto’s killers be caught and tried in a court of law? And when will they be convicted of their crime?

Commanding mass appeal

December 27th, 2011

If Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) coming-out party was the rally in Lahore, the Christmas Day jalsa in Karachi was the coronation. In a city where few parties other than the MQM have been able to command mass appeal, Imran and his ever-burgeoning cast of characters seemed to have out done them all. Whatever reservations one has about the PTI’s agenda, one has to admire the verve of its supporters and the inclusiveness of its rhetoric. Speaker after speaker, including veteran politicians like Javed Hashmi and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, celebrated the virtues of diversity and pointed out that the crowd was made up of every possible ethnicity. Imran’s speech, in contrast to some of the more lacklustre ones he tends to deliver, struck all the right notes. His apology to the people of Balochistan was particularly heartfelt and, although other national politicians have made similar apologies before, it shows that at least the PTI feels the need to give priority to this issue. A speech at a massive rally is not the time for laying out a technocratic agenda but Imran’s promise that new inductee Jehangir Tareen would be producing policy papers on all issues at the rate of two per month is reassuring. We all know that the PTI as a party stands for change; now it is time to find out what that change will mean.

Successful though the rally may have been, there were some disturbing moments as well. Imran kept his anti-US rhetoric to a minimum but the speakers that preceded him did not show similar restraint. Javed Hashmi remarked on the preponderance of Aafia Siddiqui banners and proceeded to paint her as a martyr and demand her release. Hashmi may consider Aafia a daughter of Pakistan but had no words for Aasia Bibi — another Pakistani who is incarcerated, but this time in our own country. Azam Swati, meanwhile, launched a diatribe against Hussain Haqqani, a man who is no longer even in office, for his alleged role in memogate. As an opposition party, such irresponsible rhetoric can be crowd-pleasing but it will have to be tempered if the PTI comes into power. These complaints aside, one cannot be too churlish about the Imran Khan phenomenon. For the first time since Zufikar Ali Bhutto launched the PPP, a political leader is on a crusade to win over the entire country and not just one province. That vision and desire is to be celebrated.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

The PM’s statements

December 28th, 2011

It is hard to know what to make of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s increasingly erratic public pronouncements. A few days ago, he said that the people would have to decide between their elected representatives and having a dictatorship and he was seemingly blistering in his criticism of the military. On December 26, he appeared to make something of a retreat from his earlier statements, saying that generals are not fired in the midst of war. He also praised Army Chief Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani as a supporter of democracy and denied the existence of any tensions between the government and the military. Strange though it may be that Gilani is now scotching rumours that he himself ignited, it may actually be good news for the government that he now considers being conciliatory to be the best course of action.

Gilani’s earlier public statements, cathartic though they may have been, signalled the last stand of a desperate government that knew its time was up. The magnanimity the prime minister is now showing to the military could be a hint that that the army now realises that the PPP is not going to give up without putting up a fight. And even though both Kayani and ISI Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha may not be removed from office, that does not mean the government is caving in. In an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court in the memogate case, the federal government has criticised Pasha for reporting on his meeting with Mansoor Ijaz to Kayani rather than Gilani.

As fretful as the last few weeks have been for well-wishers of democracy, this very public fight between the civilian representatives and the military may end up being the best thing that happened to Pakistan. The people have clearly shown that no matter how much they dislike this current set-up, they are in no mood for an overt coup. For once, the army has been challenged on its wielding unbridled power in the country. Everyone thought the civilians would roll over but they have proved up to the fight. This does not mean that the military, most likely with an assist from the Supreme Court, won’t end up removing Asif Zardari as president. But the government has made it substantially harder for the military to get its way this time.

Beyond the Salala probe

December 28th, 2011

The tense debate between Islamabad and Washington after the Salala tragedy of November 26, in which the Pakistan Army lost around two dozen of its officers and men in the worst-recorded incident of cross-border operations-induced fatalities since the beginning of US-led military operations in Afghanistan a decade ago, seem to be gaining some closure. However, there are lessons to be learnt in the latest developments — the most critical among them regarding the increasing gap of trust between Pakistani, Afghan and Nato/Isaf forces deployed in the region.

The US military’s report on Salala, made public after more than a month of investigations which received no input from an angry Pakistani military, appears to verify certain facts that the Pakistanis had said on the tragedy. It also makes some worrying revelations about gaps in Nato/Isaf’s operational and command structure. For instance, after receiving a message from the Pakistani side to cease fire, a Nato officer delayed notifying a senior commander by 45 minutes. There is also a new disclosure that a US AC-130 gunship flew two miles into Pakistani airspace to target local troops and this cannot possibly be considered to support the US military’s claims of using ‘appropriate force’. However, the report fails to confirm the Pakistani military’s position that its troops did not engage US/Afghan forces across the border first — and that may remain a point of tension.

While immediately implementing the corrective actions recommended in its own report, the US should continue to engage the Pakistani military, especially in Nato/Isaf’s tactical, operational and strategic plans till 2014 and after. The coalition forces will surely be gone one day. But Pakistan will continue to be a source of potential stability or instability in the region, depending on how the next few years go. It would thus be best for the US to consider Pakistan an equal stakeholder in this region and support it to make the right choices.

India-Pakistan CBMs

December 28th, 2011

The Pakistan-India peace process is slowly inching forward with officials from both countries holding talks in Islamabad to discuss confidence-building measures (CBMs) on conventional and nuclear matters. Some of the proposals that may be adopted give hope that the two sides are ready for peace. Among the suggestions being floated is one regarding the repatriation of people who accidentally cross the border and the demilitarisation of the Line of Control. The former proposal is an important one to consider since the indefinite imprisonment of fishermen who accidentally cross unmarked maritime borders is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict between the two countries. The latter proposal is equally vital since the removal of weaponry on both sides of the border would be the first step towards an eventual resolution of the Kashmir conflict.

India is likely to once again ask Pakistan to join it in agreeing to a no-first-use policy with regard to nuclear weapons. This was an issue that former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, now with the PTI, railed against at his party’s rally in Karachi. Hyper-nationalists like Qureshi should be ignored. Pledging not to be the first country to use nuclear weapons does not hamper our nuclear capability; it simply acknowledges that the effects of a nuclear strike would be so horrific that neither country should contemplate using it even in case of war.

The talks over the CBMs are important not just for what they might achieve on their own but because they reflect a continuation of the resumption of the peace process since Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited New Delhi. Since then, the two countries have vowed to increase cross-border trade, Pakistan has granted most-favoured economic status to India and promises have been made to simplify the visa process. Ensuring that this thaw continues should be a priority of both countries to show that they have moved beyond the mistrust caused by the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

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Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga

The president’s address

December 29th, 2011

President Asif Ali Zardari’s annual address on the anniversary of his wife Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was less significant for what he said then who he said it with. Accompanying on stage was formerly estranged Aitzaz Ahsan, rather than his son and party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. In fact, Aitzaz was even allowed to deliver the address after President Zardari and he used the speech to attack the PTI, a party that has already been attracting disgruntled PPP members. This not only signals Aitzaz’s return to the frontline of PPP politics but should also be seen as a political master stroke, bringing back to prominence and using as a weapon one of the PPP’s oldest and most respected political members.

President Zardari’s speech itself was less combative than the addresses given by Gilani in recent days. He never overtly mentioned the military or its machinations and reserved his harshest words for Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, saying that he had taken no action in bringing to justice Benazir’s killers. That he would criticise a Supreme Court that has eagerly taken up the memo case and seems bent upon nullifying the NRO and the president’s immunity from prosecution, is understandable. But his choice of criticism left much to be desired since President Zardari’s own government has been strangely lethargic in pursuing Benazir’s assassins.

Equally curious was his assertion that his government has fulfilled 80 per cent of its agenda. With so many problems, plaguing the country, the boast rang hollow. In fact, the president seemed to equate the mere presence of democracy with good governance. He told the crowd that democracy can and will deliver, but questions remain whether a scandal-plagued government widely perceived as corrupt can actually deliver on its promises. The sentiments President Zardari expressed about democracy are welcome at a time when there is a severe strain in civil-military relations but the president needs to be careful not to whitewash his government’s poor record with rhetoric.

Beyond paper

December 29th, 2011

Just recently, two women were made victims of an acid attack in Karachi, after one of them refused a marriage proposal. Such incidents continue to take place, despite that fact that we have in our statute books more laws protecting women than at any previous time in our history. Most have been introduced by the present government. We also have more women in assemblies than many other countries. The harshest provisions of the dark Hudood law have also gone and since 2008 more legislation has been added offering women protection against domestic violence, against harassment in the work place and safeguarding them and their rights by putting in place tougher penalties for acts such as forced marriages, the deprivation of property or traditional customs such as vani. A new law on acid attacks has also been introduced and made its way through parliament.

All this is obviously good news for women who remain among our most vulnerable citizens. But despite the pieces of legislation introduced over the years, we haven’t seen change in the status of women on the ground. Perhaps it is too early to expect so much. But given the urgency of our own situation and the number of fearful crimes committed against women, perhaps, we need more action. In fact, worryingly, several reports produced over the last few months have noted that atrocities against women appear to be increasing rather than declining.

First of all we must think about creating greater awareness about the laws. This effort should be concentrated on police and administrative officials as well as the general public. We need to go even further. There are too many laws in our country which have remained nothing more than words inscribed on paper year-after-year and decade-after-decade. This must not happen in the case of the laws against women and for that we need to take proactive action at many levels, beginning with media campaigns and changes in school curriculums.

Energy crisis

December 29th, 2011

The cost of an ill-thought out energy policy is being felt acutely this winter, with a two-month ban on gas supply to CNG stations contemplated in Punjab, gas supply closure to industrial units in Sindh and Balochistan and non-supply of gas to domestic consumers.

The blame, of course, lies in the Musharraf-era policy of promoting a fuel whose reserves were unknown but ignorantly declared abundant, with the result that today demand for gas has soared to eight billion cubic feet (bcf) while supply is a paltry 4.2 BCF. While both consumers and industry are suffering, perhaps the worst affected is the fertiliser industry which uses gas as an essential raw material and has no other alternative.

Load-shedding is merely a stopgap measure and a massively unpopular one at that. The key question is, what energy resources are being developed for future use? At this juncture the government needs to develop a new exploration policy for domestic gas reserves. While Iran has massive gas reserves, the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project seems unlikelier by the day, given the current geo-political scenario. The US is strongly opposed to the pipeline and has been nudging Pakistan towards the hopelessly complicated TAPI pipeline project instead. On December 23, the National Bank of Pakistan refused to finance the IPI pipeline because of the threat of sanctions by the US. A recent purchase agreement signed with Turkmenistan has given some hope that a steady supply of gas may be achieved via TAPI by 2016, but that project is marred by numerous security threats.

It is crucial that we start looking to tap other sources of energy to prevent an energy crisis such as the one we are currently facing, from engulfing both consumers and industry in the future. It is imperative that the government exhibits the political will needed to execute both the IPI and TAPI projects. Above all, energy policy needs to be based on sound research after thorough number crunching, not mere bluster.

__________________
Kon Kehta hy k Main Gum-naam ho jaon ga
Main tu aik Baab hn Tareekh mein Likha jaon ga