Beijing calling

The Nawaz Administration’s China-focused diplomacy appears to be paying off: Beijing appears to be ramping up its economic assistance to Pakistan and, by all accounts, it is in the sort of capital intensive infrastructure projects that are likely to have a sustained positive economic impact on the country’s future. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in Islamabad later this month with the intention of signing up to $10 billion worth of project assistance in Pakistan, which would be a welcome change from the meaningless platitudes and memoranda that were signed during the previous administration. However, with the political temperature in Islamabad reaching record levels, and the Sri Lankan president cancelling his Pakistan visit owing to the turmoil, this high-level Chinese visit may also be called off, which will not augur well for an economy which can benefit much from China. In total, the Chinese government is expected to provide financing for 14 infrastructure projects, all of which are absolutely vital and long overdue. The Lahore-Karachi motorway is expected to cut travel time through the length of the eastern half of the country by half, enabling far greater commerce. The Pak-China Economic Corridor is likely to produce little by way of transit trade from Western China to the Middle East, but it will most likely upgrade the transportation infrastructure of the western half the country to be more comparable to the eastern half. This, in particular, is an important project: Punjab and Sindh are relatively more prosperous than Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in large part because of the infrastructure built by the British to transport goods and people from Punjab down to the port in Karachi. If a similar infrastructure is built leading from Chitral to Gwadar, that half of the country is likely to see substantial economic gains, and perhaps an alleviation of the sense of deprivation that too often manifests itself violently in insurgencies in those provinces. In addition, the energy projects that the Chinese state-owned enterprises are likely to invest in can help reduce or even eliminate the severe energy deficit in Pakistan.

If these projects involve the use of more local sources of fuel, such as coal and natural gas, or even hydroelectricity, then the energy thus supplied is likely to remain sustainably affordable. However, while the Chinese assistance is welcome, Pakistanis would do well to remember that the assistance is hardly charity. The financing will come in the form of loans, albeit some of them are expected to carry relatively low interest rates. And the projects are likely to be subject to the condition that the Government of Pakistan hire Chinese state-owned contractors to build them. In essence, the money will leave one Chinese government bank account and end up in another, accruing some Pakistani taxpayer funded interest along the way. All of this, of course, does not mean that the assistance should not be welcomed. It just means that the government of Pakistan should not sacrifice its own interests to those of Beijing out of a false sense of gratitude. For instance, while the Chinese initiative to set up a development bank outside of the US-sponsored Bretton Woods framework is interesting, Pakistan should not participate in it at the expense of its participation in the existing set of Western-led global economic institutions that have largely served us well. There is no harm in being a member nation of the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank, but Islamabad should remember that the World Bank and IMF still hold access to a far larger capital market. Aggravating the latter in the hopes of assistance from the former is likely to be a temptation that the finance ministry will no doubt soon find itself facing, but it is one that they must resist at all costs. Just because Beijing has finally started to help Pakistan in substantive ways does not mean that we forgo a constructive relationship with Washington.

ISIS emerges in Pakistan?

What was feared most in recent times has arrived, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has made its first public appearance in Pakistan with the distribution of pamphlets in the suburbs of Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The appearance of such pamphlets, seeking the establishment of a Khilafat, at a time when the country is going through one of the largest political crisis in years, while the military is engaged in one of the largest military operations in North Waziristan and newer militant groups have formed alliances is indicative of a larger problem which, if not resolved tactfully, forebodes a disaster in the making — not only in Peshawar, pro-ISIS graffiti also appeared in Balochistan. The ISIS, the largest and richest of militant outfits in the world has gained strength from anarchy. It’s a combination of split warring factions which is now aided by fighters from many countries. While reports of presence of Pakistanis fighting along the group have been denied officially, there is evidence from social media and jihadist forums to believe otherwise. The presence of dozens of militant outfits actively working in Pakistan could prove to be like a hatchery for the ISIS. But what is more disturbing is the distribution of the pamphlet which asks for support for the transnational militant outfit in Afghan refugee camps. There are at least three renowned militant commanders in Afghanistan that have offered their allegiances to Abu-Bakar al-Baghdadi, the self-declared Caliph of the Islamic State. With sectarian tensions ripe within the country, it’s impossible to think about the implication is such a movement gains momentum? The government should not take the distribution of such material lightly, with Nato wrapping up its decade long project across the border and the rise of the Taliban in across the border, Pakistan is marred with serious security concerns that need to be dealt with immediately. We have a pre-requisite in the form of the TTP which spread from the tribal areas to the entire country — can we combat a new enemy?

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2014.

We have all but forgotten the war continuing in our northern areas amidst all the political turmoil we have recently been facing. But this war of course is a crucial one, vital to the future of our country and all that it stands for. We should be watching developments within it at closer range. A recent ISPR statement gives us some idea of what is going on. The news is good. The statement says that more than 900 militants have been killed in action since operation Zarb-e-Azb began in June, most of them in North Waziristan. This agency is of course the centre of turmoil in the current war. In exchange for the large number of militants, 82 soldiers lost their lives. They deserve to be hailed as heroes for what they have done for us and for the generations yet to come. Although the militants are not ready to admit this, and groups within them have been speaking of only scores rather than hundreds of deaths, the reality appears to be they are suffering very big blows as the fighting continues.

At the same time, crucial development work is also being undertaken by the military, according to the ISPR release, with major roads put in place and towns connected to one another. The key need now is for the government to build on these successes. The military alone cannot be responsible for all that happens or for keeping militancy at bay in the future. Alongside the military operation, other measures have to be taken to win people away from militant hands and persuade them of the need to stand with State forces. This can best be done by undertaking development works in all areas afflicted by conflict and putting in place schemes to rehabilitate those who have been brainwashed over many years by the Taliban. We have seen such efforts at rehabilitation in Swat and other places. They must be backed by other initiatives to provide employment and opportunity to people in these most deprived parts of our country so that there can be no resurgence of militancy after the current operation is finally over.

Double the misery

A Sri Lankan court on september 1 ruled that the Sri Lankan authorities were right to seek the expulsion of a group of Pakistani asylum seekers, saying that they were a threat to the public health and security of the island state. The state in making its case to the court appealed against an earlier ruling that suspended the deportation, saying that there was evidence that the asylum seekers were bringing malaria into the country — patently nonsensical as malaria is not transmissible human-to-human only by the bite of an infected mosquito — and that they were ‘committing crimes’. Pakistani asylum seekers who end up in Sri Lanka have not had an easy time of it, and many of them are members of the Ahmadi community, which has been persecuted in Pakistan for decades and is discriminated against constitutionally. The Ahmadis are by nature peaceful and whilst it is not impossible that they are involved in crime in Sri Lanka, it seems unlikely to be anything on the scale of organised crime.

The asylum seekers are now open to deportation, back to the country which many of those of them who are Ahmadi had good cause to flee. The very fact that they have attracted attention to themselves by going to Sri Lanka is a virtual guarantee that they will be on the receiving end of some unwelcome attention when they arrive back in Pakistan — they will have been doubly cursed by virtue of their faith. The United Nations refugee agency reports that 88 Pakistani nationals have been deported since the first of August in what it claims is a breach of international law. There are another 75 awaiting deportation. The UN is adamant that those claiming asylum for reasons of religious persecution must have their cases particularly closely investigated. Unfortunately, for the asylum seekers Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention — a fact most will be unaware of before they took flight. These people got no protection in Pakistan, and are being ejected from Sri Lanka on the thinnest of pretexts. Injustice knows no bounds.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."

Punjab under water

Once again Pakistan has fallen victim to the elements, and dozens have died in rain-related incidents over the last couple of days. Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir have in parts been lashed by rain continuously for almost two days and the meteorological department has cautioned that more is to follow. This particular storm system has been forecast as lasting till at least tomorrow. The casualty list is expected to rise as a consequence. Once again, as in previous monsoon-related disasters the army has been called by the civil administration which is once again overwhelmed by the magnitude of the flooding and destruction. Crops and livestock, housing and infrastructure such as roads and bridges have all been extensively damaged. The army has asked people to vacate their homes particularly in areas where house construction is poor or very simple and where the risk of roof collapse is highest. Roof collapses have accounted for the majority of deaths thus far. Lahore has been particularly badly hit, with the Metro bus services being suspended because the roads are flooded. It is reported that the majority of underpasses in the city are flooded and the canal is bursting at the seams. Beneath this there lies a story — and it is one of failure yet again on the part of the city and provincial administration. In the recent past the city Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) and the Lahore Development Authority have written in detail to the office of the chief executive of the province requesting funding for the rehabilitation and expansion of the city sanitation system as well as upgrading the underground drainage system. But to no avail, and schemes such as the Metro bus project — which was completed in just 11 months — were pushed ahead at the expense of properly maintaining the essential water and waste management infrastructure, which is not as attractive vote-wise as is the Metro bus system.

A high-level team was sent to Istanbul last year to see what lessons could be learned from the Istanbul water and sanitation system. Experts from Turkey reciprocated and came to Lahore. Wasa sent detailed maps, data and drawings to its Turkish counterparts making suggestions as to how to improve the system. A range of recommendations emerged from this consultative process which included the construction of new nullahs, the separation of sewage and rainwater run-off and the installation of water treatment plants to convert the waste into water suitable for irrigation. It was also recommended that there be a campaign to raise public awareness as to the best way to dispose of waste and rubbish. Little has come of considerable effort. Few if any of the recommendations have been taken up let alone acted upon. The government has prepared a Rs9.2 billion plan for the rehabilitation of the Lahore city drainage system in its entirety, but there appears to have been no move to implement the plan in whole or part. The government has also established the Lahore Water and Sanitation Company, but it is dormant.
The situation in Lahore is probably mirrored to a greater or lesser degree in cities across the country, where the neglect of infrastructure and investment in prestige projects such as motorways, flyovers and underpasses and Metro bus systems, are in direct competition for scarce resources. What use is a Metro bus system if the roads beneath it and the feeder roads are flooded and impassable? For flood-hit rural areas there is little remedy beyond appealing to people to build safer houses — but if you are poor you build what you can afford and if that is mud-and-straw then so be it. More will die and lose their livelihoods before the end of the 2014 monsoon, most needlessly, and ‘building back better’ is not an option for most.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."

Struggling for competitiveness

This week witnessed the release of yet another report outlining why the Pakistani economy is one of the least competitive in the world. This time around, it was the Global Competitiveness Report, issued by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It makes for dismal reading. Indeed, the rankings are so bad that it is actually easier to count Pakistan’s ranking from the bottom rather than the top. But the bad news does not stop there. On virtually every measure of economic vitality, Pakistan is not only one of the worst performers in the world, but is actually doing worse than its own performance in previous years. Not only are we lagging behind the rest of the planet, we seem to be hell bent on going backwards. That virtually nobody in Islamabad takes governance seriously is by now abundantly clear. For all the attempts of the Nawaz Administration to create a more empowered Planning Commission, there is still no clear strategy for the country’s economic direction. Vision 2025, the government’s much publicised plan for revitalising the economy, is nothing more than a wish list and a series of empty platitudes. It does not actually constitute an action plan. To be sure, the government does frequently initiate development projects every now and then. And some of them are indeed very good ideas, like the Lahore-Karachi motorway or the corridor that will run from Chitral to Gwadar. But there is no consideration for how all of these projects — and the countless others that get started and then abandoned — would work together. Everyone is minding their own little piece, nobody is minding the whole. Meanwhile, the country continues to drift along, neglected by leaders who are too small-minded or incompetent to take care of even the little things that are not necessarily hard to do. The WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report lists many items such as law and order, education, and healthcare that are long term projects that will take several decades to fix.

But what about the simple things like reducing bureaucracy? Surely the government can try to undertake simple reforms like removing unnecessary paperwork requirements for entrepreneurs seeking to do business? Or are we so beyond hope of competence that we cannot even accomplish small tasks? The truth is that, in order for Pakistanis to take global competitiveness seriously, we need to gain both a sense of proportion for the scale of the problem, as well as the drive to move out of our aid-dependent malaise. For example, there is virtually nobody in Islamabad who believes, or has seriously tried, to create a balanced budget that does not rely on any foreign assistance whatsoever. This is not an easy task, to be sure, but at the very least, can the government try to create a plan to make that happen? We would like to think that the answer is yes, but we realise that in all likelihood, the government has other things on its mind. Meanwhile, Pakistani businesses continue to struggle to provide for themselves the kind of basic infrastructure needs that their competitors in other parts of the world get from their government. There is truth in the argument that it feels ludicrous to pay taxes and then have the government provide few of the essential services one needs to succeed (though we reject the idea that this is a good excuse to avoid taxes). Some would argue that it is difficult to make the case for the kind of long-term reforms that are necessary to create a highly competitive economy. We would argue that it is a lack of talent on the part of our politicians that they are not able to make that case to the Pakistani people. It is the job of a statesman to go beyond just what is politically possible but to expand the realm of possibility itself. On that count, every single Pakistani leader since independence, including all the dictators and democrats, have been sorely lacking.

A postponed visit

Pakistan is a country that needs all the friends it can get, and it has precious few friends that have been there through thick and thin, but China is undoubtedly one of them and perhaps the most important. Without China there would be no Gwadar port, and no upgrading of the Karakoram highway to an all-weather link. Without China the proposal for a north-eastern trade corridor would never have seen the light of day — and the list goes on. China is a close ally in every conceivable way, from the joint development of military hardware to huge infrastructure projects. This is not mere philanthropy on the part of the Chinese; they are investing in Pakistan in order to benefit their own economy and it is in the best interests of Pakistan to maintain the warmest of relations with our powerful neighbour and benefactor. It is thus with concern that we note the postponement of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping scheduled for mid September, a development announced by Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz. Before the president of any state visits another there are months of preparation, and in these dangerous days there is a visit by a team of security specialists to the host state. Their job is to make a risk analysis — is it safe for their president to visit the country of choice. In this instance the Chinese security team refused to give a security clearance on the grounds that there was political instability centred on the ongoing protests in Islamabad against the sitting government. Sartaj Aziz said that the postponement may cause “irreparable harm” and that every effort was being made to get the visit rescheduled. Mr Aziz may be overstating the case somewhat as the Chinese are not just going to walk away from a key strategic partnership, but there is truth in his words. The protests have already cost the country billions of rupees and undermined foreign confidence. The longer they continue the greater the cumulative damage. The Chinese deferment sends a powerful message to the Nawaz government. We hope it is received and understood.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."

Afghan presidency audit

The struggle to make the transition from the era of president Karzai to his successor as president has once again run into difficulty. The run-off election between two candidates, neither of who secured an outright victory in the first round was itself inconclusive. Both Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani claimed victory with allegations of massive fraud, vote rigging and ballot box stuffing. The logjam was broken by US Secretary of State John Kerry who brokered a compromise — the recount of every vote cast and an examination of every voting paper to determine its validity. This is all too easy to say and sounds at least reasonable, but far harder to deliver in practice. Both candidates have withdrawn their observers from the UN-supervised audit of votes and the hoped-for transition before a crucial conference in London later in September from which now looks likely to be absent the Afghan president. Former president Karzai has said he will not be attending but will send a ‘senior official’ — which is not the result that Nato, the UN and the coalition of countries that fought a protracted war in Afghanistan — were looking for.

There are eight million ballot papers to be scrutinised. Each one has to be agreed or rejected by at least three people — representatives of the candidates and the UN scrutineer. With representatives withdrawn the audit continues, and is tentatively scheduled to be completed around September 10, but even if it is the likelihood of both candidates accepting the result is faint; and even fainter is the likelihood of the wider Afghan populace accepting whatever the audit decides is the final result. The UN continues to try to get both parties back to observing — and accepting — the audit and a UN representative has said on record that it is likely that Ashraf Ghani will be declared the winner on the basis of the audit thus far. The future of Afghanistan is literally in the balance. A future that is closely linked to the stability and internal security of Pakistan. A failure to resolve the disputed election opens the possibility not only of a vacuum at the head of governance, but a return to the ethnic violence that preceded the rule of the Taliban. Ashraf Ghani is a member of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pakhtun. Abdullah Abdullah is part Pakhtun and part ethnic Tajik.

Geographically, Abdullah holds sway in the centre and north of the country, Ghani to the south and the east. The two groups have been at odds for centuries. Even before the current dispute over the audit there were profound difficulties surrounding the creation of a government of national unity that was also a part of the Kerry brokerage. There are unconfirmed — but not denied — reports that some senior ministers are considering setting up an interim administration to take power when president Karzai finally vacates the presidential palace. Such a move would create yet another fault line in the much-fissured political landscape of the country, another supra-political bloc.
Afghanistan is not a country at peace with itself in any sense of the word. The war against the Taliban was not won by Nato and coalition forces, and they remain powerful in much of the south and east. In Kandahar and the surrounding areas they run a parallel administration. The Afghan National Army (ANA) may be no match for them in the event of protracted conflict, and find itself outgunned and outfought. The ANA will be losing the vital air-cover provided by the coalition forces, and loyalties within the ANA have proved negotiable to say the least. None of this bodes well for Pakistan. A failure of mainstream but profoundly polarised politics in Afghanistan is unfortunately mirrored in Pakistan today, and both countries have shaky democratic provenance. The army has come to the rescue of the politicians in Pakistan, but the ANA will not be doing the same for Afghanistan.

Death of a bookstore

The one-by-one closure of bookstores has been on the rise throughout the world with even major franchises affected. However, whereas in most countries bookstores are closing due to a shift in trend towards e-books and increasing online readership, that of the Saeed Book Bank in Peshawar is more due to a lack of reading culture in the province altogether as the reason for its closure. Indeed, for a province forced into cumbersome times with a tumultuous state of security, this is a gloomy outcome. Books are avenues to creation, imagination, entertainment and critical thinking. They contain vast knowledge about the world as the reader knows it, as well as through the lens of a fellow citizen of the world. Books broaden the mind and allow people to dream, think and formulate ideas, opinions, and understanding of life. The sad ending to the Saeed Book Bank means it is the end of imagination and of one of Peshawar’s last forums of art and entertainment. Of course, the bookstore could have also met with a future terrorist attack as the province is regularly in the line of militant’s fire and the people have had to incorporate this reality into their daily lives. It is unfair that this last source of entertainment and escape from the claustrophobic influence of the Taliban in the region could not be saved. Here, there should have been government support to save the bookstore business because it served a purpose to humanity. Alas, we continue to hinder the nation’s progress. Instead of opening more bookstores and libraries to implement more reading programmes for adults and children in our provinces, we allow meaningful entities, such as this sole bookstore in Peshawar, go out of business. With the recent educational reforms in the province to improve access to and quality of education, this trend of bookstores shutting down may perhaps be stopped. We continue to pump more rupees in defence programmes and shopping malls, which is fine, but it should not lead to the neglect and closure of bookstores, which is a reflection of our society and evidence of its lackadaisical attitude towards literacy and education.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."

The surge cometh — again

Pakistan has once again been overtaken by a natural disaster and floods are sweeping southwards, compounding the damage being done to the economy by the stagnant pool of protesters in Islamabad. A red alert has been issued in South Punjab preparatory for the mass of water that has built up in the river systems that are both life-blood and death-warrant for many. The government has made sure that as many get the message as possible by sending SMS alerts to registered mobile phone numbers in the province. The TV channels are all giving extensive coverage and politics has had to make way for coverage of disaster relief. Although the floods are hopefully not going to be as massive as those of 2010 which covered a fifth of the country and left about seven million homeless and killed about 10 million livestock, it is becoming ever clearer that Pakistan is in a cycle of exceptional weather events that are annual and always going to cause severe damage. The 2010 monsoon was exceptional in that it occurred further north than was usual and hit areas that normally had relatively low levels of rainfall even in the worst of their monsoon season. Meteorologists have noted a gradual change in our weather systems over the decades, with the monsoon shifting northeast and away from the Punjab watershed where it has historically been located. The mountainous north with its narrow valleys and equally narrow and fast river systems channels the deluge southwards, a deluge that has added weight and volume as higher temperatures in the mountains had led to higher rates of glacial and snow melts annually. The period of the fastest melt occurs at the time the monsoon hits the area, an unhappy confluence.

There are still people in Sindh and Balochistan that are displaced or homeless as a result of the floods in 2010 and 2011. The years since have seen accusations of corruption surrounding the provision of relief and rehabilitation, and of the politicisation of aid to the most needy. As the flood works its way south as it inevitably will they will be hit again, and communities and cities that had previously escaped may find themselves at risk. Massive flooding is going to present what comes close to being an existential threat to Pakistan such is the damage it inflicts with increasing regularity. Questions have to be asked about the viability of some communities given their propensity for flooding, and relocation may be a grim last option. About 200 people have died thus far, though the figure is disputed — as was the toll from the 2010 floods which was officially pegged at 1,800 — and it may be higher. Most of the deaths have been in Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Indian Prime Minister Modi, on September 7, went and saw for himself the devastation wrought in his own country as rain and rivers are no respecters of national borders. Civil agencies have been stretched in terms of disaster response, and the army has come to the rescue in innumerable instances. Measures are in place to protect cities such as Multan by breaching dykes and the National Highway at key locations — emergency responses that themselves have long-term damaging effects on both infrastructure and agricultural productivity and standing crops are lost and the flooded land unable to be brought back into productivity for as long as a year. The implications of that in what is in parts a triple-cropping zone are as yet incalculable. The floods of 2014 are still a ‘work in progress’ and although the rainfall is dying away the land will progressively drain to the south in coming days. Disaster preparedness and timely well-planned relief operations are going to be necessary into the foreseeable future; the flood problem is not going to magically disappear — and the battle to save the country from drowning is infinitely more important than the battle of egos in Islamabad.

India and uranium

On September 5, India and Australia signed an agreement that barely made news anywhere in the world outside the two countries concerned. Australia is to allow the export of Australian uranium to India for the purposes of power generation. Australia sits on around one-third of the world’s uranium deposits and is keen to export as freely and widely as possible, and in an energy-hungry world there is always going to be a ready market. Currently, India generates most of its power by burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. Expansion of its nuclear generation capacity is an obvious way forward — but there is a snag. India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and historically this has been a barrier to any deal such as the one recently signed that allows the import of uranium. Similarly, Australia is very careful about which countries it exports uranium to, and strict conditions are applied to any deal. The previous Australian government had agreed to civil nuclear energy cooperation with India, and both have been negotiating a nuclear safeguards agreement with strong verification protocols since 2012. Deal done, it is now full speed ahead.

In principle, there is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with the deal, but it does expose some of the hypocrisies that surround the trading of uranium. No cries of fear and outrage were to be heard from those countries keenest to police nuclear non-proliferation, no concerns expressed about the possibility of the Australian uranium being converted to weapons-grade material. The world at large seems relatively relaxed about India going shopping in the nuclear supermarket, and one wonders if it would be similarly relaxed if Pakistan did the same? One suspects not. Everything is negotiable. The Americans signed a deal with India in 2008 which allowed India to buy American nuclear fuel without scaling back its nuclear weapons programme. It is seeking a similar deal with Japan (which ironically is abandoning nuclear power in the wake of the Tsunami disaster in 2011) and nuclear non-proliferation is shown to be not a one-size-fits-all garment, ‘adjust to fit’ being the watchword.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."

Pakistan & India flood relief

Monsoon rains have wreaked havoc on both India and Pakistan once again, leaving thousands homeless, killing hundreds. Despite the extent of the damage, the offer for help to victims across the border from both leaders is welcome. It is encouraging that whatever the circumstances of the ever-suffering India-Pakistan relationship, both Indian and Pakistani prime ministers have kept their enmities aside to deal with the humanitarian disaster and offered each other help. It is heartening that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has responded warmly to his Indian counterpart’s concern. A collaboration on the flood relief front is opportune not only because it allows for concerted efforts on the disaster-mitigation level, but also because it fosters camaraderie at a time when Pakistan- India relations have been marred by bitterness owing to the calling off of critical meetings, LoC violations and tiff on the construction of the Kishanganga Dam. As it is, since climate change and natural disasters acknowledge no state boundaries, particularly in the geography of the subcontinent where common river basins are straddled between the two states, inter-state efforts are perhaps the only effective way to mitigate disaster.

With weak infrastructure and a poor, agrarian population that is almost completely dependent on the rains and rivers for livelihood, both India and Pakistan are acutely vulnerable and hence it makes sense for them to cooperate on this issue. Emergency relief is a start. A freer exchange of aid across the border may help rescue teams in assisting victims that would otherwise be inaccessible. But the need for cooperation on disaster relief and preparation is precisely when there isn’t one, so that the two countries have adequate time to prepare. Cooperation between India and Pakistan on water-related issues is a necessity beyond just the need of the hour. India’s decision to build the Kishanganga dam has tremendous consequences for Pakistan and its already inconsistent water supply. These issues are complex, and require extensive research, planning, negotiation and cooperation. Both countries need to build on this current sentiment if they have any hope of mitigating future disasters that, scientifically, are only going to be more frequent and more intense.

Workplace harassment

A recent case of sexual harassment at the workplace from Peshawar shines the spotlight, once again, on the issue of the lack of female safety and rights at the workplace. That a nurse was first sexually harassed and then verbally abused by the ward orderly — a male — is a pattern none too unfamiliar.
The truth is that we have always lived in a male-dominated Pakistan. Women are encouraged to stay at home and tend to household duties and this is supplanted by the fact that at any given time, there are usually more males than females on the street going to and returning from workplaces. Eight similar harassment cases against nurses have cropped up in the past three months because the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act of 2010 lacks implementation. Nurses complete patient care tasks that sometimes doctors are too busy, proud or untrained to do and hence we need them in our hospitals. The incidents, however, will discourage women in all fields from wanting to work and hold a career. Since a working woman is still not the norm and is a big deal to a family, this will further damage women’s morale to take part in our economy and be empowered.
A proper set-up to handle harassment cases at workplaces would not be to have a sexual harassment committee in every department; this current set-up is inefficient and a wasteful use of resources. One committee should exist through human resources departments to deal with such cases and stop men from taking advantage of the fact that many women in our society are taught to act inferior to men and are often questioned by men on their words, behaviours and actions. All of this points to a society which views man as the superior creation. This ideology gives men in our society the ghastly belief that they can treat women poorly without consequences or accountability, such as the ward orderly in this case. Of course, the accountability issue arises because laws in Pakistan are not enforced, nor are they for everyone to follow.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2014.

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"I am still learning."

Naval dockyard attack

As the hours pass and further detail emerges of the attack on the Pakistan Navy Dockyard in Karachi, alarm bells should be ringing in a number of locations. The attack was reportedly mounted from the sea, and if correct, this points to a significant failure of vigilance on the part of the navy and the coastguard, or, and this is even worse, collusion by personnel of one or both in the attack. Reports say that the attackers boarded a frigate, were spotted and there was a two-hour gun battle with commandos of the Special Services Group (SSG). There appears to have been little significant damage to the vessel. The PNS dockyard is supposedly one of the most secure military locations in the country, yet the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan that has taken responsibility for the attack, has said that it had “inside help”. Taken with the defence minister’s remarks on September 10, when he said that “some naval officials” were involved in the attack, this can only mean the presence of sympathies in the service. Also previous attacks on PNS Mehran Base, GHQ and PAF Kamra had suggested a similar possibility.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, speaking in Parliament, revised the numbers of attackers saying that three had been killed and seven apprehended, injured and otherwise. At least one had connections to North Waziristan and there is confusion about the part in the attack played by Ovais Jakhrani, son of Sindh Police AIG Ali Sher Jakhrani, whose body was reportedly recovered from the sea. There is much the public does not know about this incident, and questions must also be raised about the justification for the media blackout on reporting at the time it was in progress. Overdoing media coverage as in case of the Karachi airport attack is not encouraged, but the relay of some kind of news was necessary. The public were unaware of what had happened until almost 24 hours after the incident concluded. This attack largely failed, but there will be others similarly facilitated. An audit of internal military security is essential — quickly.

Attacks on Sikhs

Like tumbling dominoes in a perpetual sequence of cascading failure, non-Muslims in the country have been targeted one after another regardless of geography. The squeezed space for existence for the already displaced Sikhs from the tribal areas is further shrinking. As adherents of different faiths are continuously targeted throughout the country, it’s the Sikhs in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa that are now on the list. While Sikhs in the tribal areas were forced to vacate their villages in the tribal areas because of the conflict that surrounded them there, their new abode has not been as pleasant either. At least two Sikhs have been killed in incidents of targeted attack in the last one month alone, while another was found murdered under mysterious circumstances in his shop in Mardan district. A chronology of attacks reveals incidents of violence against the community from Charsadda to Dera Ismail Khan in the last year, which in other words means the entire province, where the community exists.

The question is why are the Sikhs attacked? Historically, Peshawar has been a hub of cultural and religious diversity, the Sikhs have always been part of history of the city well before 1947. What new kind of extremism is now a part of the social fabric and why? While security officials have failed to protect the lives of the marginalised community, the murder of Harjeet Singh, the most recent of the victims, hints at the failure of the apparatus implied for the protection of the citizen on one hand but at the same time an ugly premonition of more attacks against the community cannot be denied. There have been no responsibility claims for the attacks against the Sikhs. The silence is even more troubling. While we have set dangerous precedents with the kind of protests in this country, there needs to be an outcome this time, for some visible justice, particularly for minorities before they set off to protest once again.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2014.

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"I am still learning."

Floods rage on

Pakistan is going to have to get to grips with the reality of massive flooding on an annual or bi-annual basis. The climate is never static, and whatever position is taken individually or nationally at government level on global warming, the fact is that Pakistan and the sub-continent generally are susceptible to severe weather events. This year both India and Pakistan are very badly affected, and the damage to crops and livestock is going to impact on levels of food insecurity and poverty several months hence. Floods such as those currently ‘in process’ take months, sometimes years, to recover from and some communities have never recovered. Some insight into the effects of large-scale floods in Pakistan is provided by a joint survey conducted by the United Nations and the European Union which examined the effects on households of flooding between 2010 and 2012. A new phrase has entered the lexicon of misfortune — households which experience serial natural or man-made disasters are said to live in a ‘state of complex vulnerability’. The report sees an obvious linkage with poverty in terms of the worst affected households. Those dependent on the income of a daily wage or those households headed by women were the most vulnerable. Very few households that were affected by floods in Balochistan have recovered to the same levels of livelihood and food security as they had before being flooded. Households reported that they experienced greater difficulty in recovering if they were still recovering from an earlier inundation — a result that is hardly surprising but has serious long-term implications. The pivotal event was the flood of 2010 which covered one-fifth of the total landmass of Pakistan. In parts of Sindh, the land had still not drained when the floods of 2011 and 2012 happened — and now the floods of 2014 are going to compound the effects of the previous three floods. Levels of household debt have risen as people borrow money to make up for lost income. Even middle-class families are badly affected, and they are the largest group now carrying additional debt.

Food insecurity was raised considerably post-flood, and only 15 per cent of those interviewed reported their consumption as ‘adequate’. Twenty per cent reported ‘poor’ consumption and 65 per cent ‘borderline. Most of the communities that took part in the survey are in the areas most likely to be affected by the 2014 floods. Around 500,000 residents of Jhang district are affected, and the city of Jhang has only been saved by making breaches in dykes that have themselves flooded more than 100 villages. In all about 1,100,000 people have been affected thus far and that number is going to rise as the floods roll southwards. More than 100,000 acres of farmland have been flooded around Jhang alone, and standing crops destroyed. The 2014 floods will eventually subside and recede from most places, but they will have added to the damage done in 2010, 2011, and 2012 and sapped still further the capacity of households and communities to recover. There are going to be floods of similar magnitude in years to come. This government is thus presented with a planning and management problem of surpassing magnitude and importance. Floods of this frequency and severity present a national threat to the security and stability of the nation, and are going to impact negatively on the nation’s ability to sustain itself in the short to medium term. The floods are a national emergency that cannot be left only to the provinces to fend for themselves as best they can. The army does its best — it always does in these situations — but it has real battles to fight elsewhere. The development and implementation of a national flood management and recovery strategy that is realistic and transcends petty politics has become of vital importance, and this government needs to devote appropriate resources to that end.

Mosque roof collapse

The tragic collapse of the roof of a mosque in the Daroghawala area of Lahore on September 10 has taken the lives of at least 24 and injured another nine. The DCO Lahore has said that there are no more dead to be found under the rubble, and Pakistan adds yet another incident in which suspect construction standards lead to fatal accidents. The mosque was built in a congested area, with narrow lanes and encroachments making it difficult for rescue services to get to the scene. Although it is too early to say it is possible, as in with many other structures in recent days, that torrential monsoon rains had weakened it. Coupled with possible sub-standard building materials and methods this adds up to a recipe for disaster. There is a national epidemic of building collapses. Many of them fail to make the headlines and it is only when there are large numbers of casualties that they gain any prominence. The numbers of collapses are certain to grow as badly made buildings thirty or forty years old (but some much younger than that) reach the end of their structural integrity and simply fall down.

There is little or no oversight, such building regulations as there are, are imperfectly enforced if at all and widely flouted. Additional storeys are built atop approved structures, stressing the floors below beyond their designed load-bearing capacity. New structures are erected in areas — such as the one in which the Daroghawala mosque was situated — that are completely unsuitable and present a danger not just to those who use the unsafe buildings, but to anybody who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they cave in. Memories tend to be short — a factory collapsed in Lahore in 2012 killing 16 women and four children. Poor construction blamed. The Margalla Towers apartment tower fell in the 2005 earthquake killing 78. Again faulty construction was to blame. There will be more. President Mamnoon expressed his condolences; he would have done better to call for better standards of building nationally.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12th, 2014.

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"I am still learning."

Useless efforts on the polio front

There was a clamour of protesting statements right from the grassroots level to the Parliament of the country when Pakistan was fettered with travel restrictions after a failure to curb the spread of polio virus. Five months since then, the battle against polio has just gotten worse with the number of polio cases throughout the country now at a towering 146 cases and still counting. Experts fear that the cases this year will rise beyond 200, a statistic that does not come without implications. One hundred and ninety-nine cases of polio were reported in the year 2000 and since then, there has been a significant decrease in the number of cases till 2011 when the graph shot up, and now we find ourselves in a situation where an entire campaign after 14 years has come down to nothing. Even worse, cases of polio keep sprouting up on a weekly basis at a time when there is a polio emergency within the country. There have been a reported 23 cases of polio in this month alone. The largest number of cases has been reported from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and it is no surprise that the majority of these cases from the tribal belt are from North Waziristan, while Khyber Agency is following up fast. Both areas have been in conflict and have witnessed large scale enforced migrations in the recent months. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is in second place with 25 cases followed by 11 cases in Sindh, one in Punjab and two in Balochistan. While the cases from Fata are mostly those children who have not received a single dose of polio vaccination, the one from elsewhere have had a history of irregular immunisation.

The usual discourse of the polio campaign includes the TTP’s prohibition towards administering vaccines in the Waziristan agencies and the continuous targeted attacks against vaccination teams but the security parameters are not the only markers that have affected the results of the vaccination drive. While a larger population from North Waziristan remains in accessible areas, there seems to be little effort to make up for time lost. The minister of state for health has already stated in Parliament that one main reason for the entire collapse of the system is that the provinces lied about the results of the vaccination drive. After the Eighteen Amendment, under which health is a provincial subject, polio still remains under the ambit of the vertical projects governed by the federal government as well as the provinces. There is the prime minister polio cell, the chief minister’s polio cell as well the international organisations who are supposed to work with the government have their own independent setup. The solution for the polio campaign is that the government should admit its failure and the entire structure which has failed to deliver should now be revamped. Polio in Pakistan is not just viewed as a disease but it is now a larger political issue having global significance. Over the years, millions of dollars have been poured into the campaign but have failed to produce the desired result, the advantage has now become a liability. If the government cannot guarantee successful anti-polio drives, the programme should be outsourced to a third party. This is not a time to trifle with such an important cause. After travel restrictions, even countries like Syria and Cambodia have not reported a single case of polio. The World Health Organisation will now be meeting later in November this year and the writing on the wall does not make for a happy reading, Pakistan might face more travel restrictions after its performance of the last six months is reviewed. Even if nothing else is understood, a single statistic of 200 would probably be enough to show the failure of the government and international organisations to battle polio. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done fast, before we are quarantined by the world.

Karachi killings

There have been several killings in Karachi in the last week that confirm it as one of the most dangerous cities in the country — if not the subcontinent. The murder that made headlines briefly was that of a 35-year-old mother of two who was shot in the head as she sat in her car waiting to pick up her older son from his computer classes. There is no clear motive for the killing but the woman’s purse and cellphone are missing so it may have been a mugging. A life lost for the sake of a few rupees and a mobile phone. The murderer was on a motorbike, fired a single shot and sped away. Area residents say that mugging has become commonplace in the areas otherwise known for their affluence and relative security. The police seem helpless to stem the steady flow of violent crime. On September 11, a member of the armed forces was kidnapped and killed allegedly by gangsters in Lyari. He was home on leave, had gone to get his cellphone repaired, and fell prey to criminals possibly seeking revenge for the killing of one of their number by the police on September 10. On the same day, a Shia homeopathic doctor was shot in Korangi 15 by ‘unidentified assailants’ who arrived by motorbike and murdered him in his dispensary.

The casual, almost arbitrary manner in which these killings were carried out has become commonplace, almost unremarkable, and no citizen anywhere in Karachi, be it the upmarket areas or the teeming slums, can ever feel entirely safe or sleep easy in their beds. Violent crime and gang warfare dominate the city, and the effects of the much-vaunted ‘operation’ to clean up the criminals seem to have been short-lived as well as ineffectual when it comes to catching the big fish that run the criminal underworld. They, having had prior notice of moves by the law-enforcing agencies, quickly left the country for safer climes. Law and order has to all intents and purposes, broken down. Fixable? Possibly, but you would have to fix the politics first.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2014.

__________________
"I am still learning."