The American illness
Charle​ ston incide​ nt is emblem​ years—gun violen​ atic of two defini​ ce & racial hatred​

US President Barack Obama has during the course of his presidency stood before a microphone more than 12 times and issued statements of sorrow and condolence at mass shootings in America. Such mass shootings are dangerously close to becoming accepted as a part of the American way of life. President Obama stood before the microphone again in the immediate aftermath of the killings at the church in Charleston, South Carolina, where Dylann Roof, a white male, aged 21, had murdered his way into the history books. Roof killed nine people, all black, six women and three men, mostly senior citizens, and one of them the pastor of the church who was also a state senator. A survivor said that Roof told his victims that “they (blacks) raped our women and children … and had to be killed”. He used the .45 calibre pistol he bought with money given to him by his family to do just that.
This event is emblematic of the two defining American preoccupations of recent years — gun violence and racial hatred, particularly as expressed white-on-black. It is almost as if the struggles of African-Americans for their civil rights had never taken place, and there is a gradual reversion to a darker time. As for gun violence, President Obama has tried and failed to bring sanity to the madness of American gun culture. Powerful lobbies protect and support it, the National Rifle Association is a virtual sect of the Republican Party and millions of Americans say they would rather die than have their guns taken away from them — and quite probably they would, if any American government was unwise enough to try to do that. Already there are apologists for Roof’s actions and there are some who will quietly — for now — hail him as some sort of hero. The murderer was just the average white racist with a Facebook page proclaiming his affiliation to the cause of white supremacy. President Obama can expect to stand before the microphone at least a few more times before his presidency ends, because the American illness runs viscerally deep.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22nd,* 2015.
http://tribune.com.pk/opinion/editorial/

Powerlessness in the power sector
The government, desperate in its attempt to collect some of the amount pending vis-a-vis electricity bills, has decided to offer a 30 per cent discount to power defaulters if they clear their dues by July. Additionally, the discount offer will lessen to 25 per cent by August and see a similar slash if dues aren’t cleared by September. If dues still haven’t been cleared by then, the cases of defaulters will be referred to the National Accountability Bureau. This desperate measure is a result of the private sector — mainly huge industrial units — owing Rs342.7 billion in power dues of which, according to a summary sent by the water and power ministry, only Rs181.8 billion are recoverable. The low number that the government thinks it can collect is a shame in itself. It should also be noted that the discount to power defaulters is being offered on the amount that the government thinks is recoverable and not the full amount that is owed to it, showing its levels of desperation.
With a toothless power sector, rife with outages, and transmission and distribution losses, power theft is an added issue. Even if the authorities are able to identify defaulters, they are happy in bending over backwards and offering them a discount in the hope of collecting at least some money. It has also proposed a five per cent reward for officials at power distribution companies who ‘help’ recover dues, giving the impression that this is not the reason why they receive their salaries in the first place. Ostensibly, helping their employer recover money that is legitimately owed to it is an ‘added’ job which must be rewarded. For all law-abiding citizens who clear their power dues in time, this is nothing less than an absurdity. For all the honesty and diligence of citizens, the government, in response, does little to give them any incentive or reward and continues, at times, to overcharge them to compensate for those who don’t pay at all. It is clear that huge industrial units have better bargaining power in this equation while honest citizens continue to face power outages even in this searing heat.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22nd,* 2015.
http://tribune.com.pk/opinion/editorial/

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"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling ,but in rising every time we fall". (Nelson Mandela)

Big Brother is alive and well

Pakistan is becoming increasingly Orwellian as the years pass. In a digital age information is tightly controlled — the YouTube ban is perhaps the most obvious — and the actions of organisations such as Pemra that is currently busy giving warnings about criticism of a ‘friendly’ state, all serve to curb our freedoms. The state also wants to know a lot more about us than it already does, and it already knows a substantial amount courtesy of NADRA. Federal security agencies are distributing pro-formas at universities that require sectarian identification of the faculty members as well as students and other staff in Jamshoro, which has three large public-sector universities. Additionally, individuals are required to submit police verification reports as to their political, ethnic, religious and sectarian affiliations, a gross invasion of privacy to say the very least.

The burden that is being placed on the police is considerable, and begs the question as to how the police are to perform such a mammoth task of data collection and then set in place a process whereby individuals make an application for the verification of the data sought by government agencies. Students are also being asked about their current and permanent addresses and how far they live from the border, Line of Control or the Working Boundary. It is just possible to admit that there may be legitimate purpose in this attempt to gather data widely, and agencies may argue that it will help them understand and identify trends in population concentrations, extremist hotspots and the like — but equally the collection of data in this manner within universities may also be used as a vehicle for the harassment of individuals or worse by agencies that have little public accountability. There is clearly a justified need for data such as this to be gathered from those seeking jobs at sensitive sites — any nuclear installation, for instance — but to run a catch-all exercise across an entire campus from vice-chancellor to chowkidar is of doubtful practicality, and we would urge at least a rethink by Big Brother.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7th, 2015.
source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/968373/b...live-and-well/

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Or do you think that the Fellows of the Cave and the Inscription were of Our Signs wonderful?

Criteria behind censorship

Is there any logic or coherence in the way the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has tried to block objectionable online content? The short answer is ‘no’. Last month, the PTA had provided internet service providers with a list of over 400,000 domains that needed to be blocked for pornographic content. According to the PTA, it had been asked by the Supreme Court to “take remedial steps to quantify the nefarious phenomenon of obscenity and pornography that has an imminent role to corrupt and vitiate the youth of Pakistan”. It has now emerged that among the hundreds of thousands of websites on the list provided by the PTA, there are countless websites whose content cannot be considered obscene by any stretch of the imagination. Among these is the microblogging website ‘Tumblr’ as well as websites for photography, ecommerce, blogging and business.

While not all of these websites may have been blocked yet, their mere presence on the list is disturbing, indicating that the PTA has little understanding of the nature of online content. It is completely baffling to comprehend how ‘Tumblr’ could possibly be considered a “nefarious phenomenon of obscenity”. Some time back, even Instagram, the popular photo and video-sharing social-networking service with nearly 400 million users globally, was blocked for some days. Clearly, there is no system or transparency behind these actions. What the PTA has ostensibly ignored is that people who want to access blocked content will be able to do so through the use of proxies and VPNs. The YouTube ban lasted for over three years. And who suffered? Mostly people who were not tech-savvy enough to find ways to access content blocked by the government. YouTube and social networking websites, among other online content, provide an avenue for people to educate themselves, find entertainment, launch businesses and expand their careers. Yet, the authorities conveniently snatch this access away from citizens with there being little or no accountability. It is time freedom of information is recognised as a basic right in this country in the true sense of the word.

Fixing healthcare in K-P

Reforming anything in Pakistan is fraught, the more so when years of neglect or political interference has led to deficits in public services that are deeply systemic, only reformed by radical intervention. Hospitals in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) are in need of root-and-branch overhaul and have been for many years, and as for many other entities, privatisation has been floated as a possible solution. As is common, whenever anything that smacks of privatisation, or a version thereof, is proposed, mayhem ensues, and such is currently the case in K-P. In broad terms, we support the K-P government in its desire for reform but yet again there is evidence of chronic ineptitude, nay incompetence, when it comes to complex and sensitive changes to systems that are highly resistant to revision of existing practice.

Imran Khan has clarified that no privatisation was under way when it came to the province’s hospitals; merely an improvement in standards and their management. He further said that the imposition of the Essential Services Act by the K-P government was in reality the provincial authorities acting in accordance with a decision by the Peshawar High Court on December 7, 2015. This has seemingly mollified nobody. There were strikes at some hospitals, partial strikes at others and no strikes at all at yet others. The Insaf Doctors Forum has condemned political interference, patients’ relatives have held protests and burned tyres and the PML-N leader Amir Maqam has stirred the pot by going to Hayatabad Medical Complex and appearing to incite doctors to strike. This has led Mr Khan to ask the chief minister to file an FIR against him and, in the midst of the political grandstanding, patient services are pushed aside and healthcare in general takes another step backwards. A poverty of competencies lies at the heart of the problem. Difficult as it may be, and inconvenient, stakeholder consultation prior to implementation is essential if the evident chaos is to be avoided. Un-making corrupt and bad practice is never easy, be it in healthcare or anywhere else. We prescribe a dose of management training for all concerned.

Getting back in the air

With any luck, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is gradually going to resume what passes for normal operations, with the strike called by its employee unions finally coming to an end. A range of pressures from outraged passengers who found their tickets worthless to a government that appeared obdurate and invoking the Essential Services (Maintenance) Act 1952, conflated to bring about a partial resumption of work. The government and the unions are meeting in an attempt to repair the damage — lives were lost in a still unexplained shooting incident involving striking workers — and move to a position where restructuring of PIA, in whatever format, can go ahead.



There have been innumerable attempts to right the wrongs of an airline that is desperately overstaffed, inefficiently managed and even today used as a tool of political preferment. With the payroll now at over 700 personnel per aircraft and the government haemorrhaging billions every month to prop up the national carrier, it is obvious that cuts have to be made somewhere, whether PIA is privatised or not. The government wants to sell off a percentage of the stake. The unions see that as the thin end of the wedge, and as has been witnessed, are vehemently opposed to this. The Engineering Division of the airline that keeps the aircraft airworthy and to international standards of safety holds the trump card. If the engineers say there is ‘no fly’, then there is no fly and who can gainsay them? By mid-afternoon on February 10, the leader of the PIA staff union was quoted as saying that he was satisfied with the way the initial talks with the Punjab chief minister had gone, but the matter is far from resolved.

A spark of light has been provided by PIA announcing a halving of fares, which had skyrocketed as soon as the strike took hold, and is doubtless designed to bring back those passengers forced to use other carriers. The airline lost its chairman at the height of the strike and it is not going to be easy to attract a person of the necessary competencies to turn things round, and as elsewhere in a country wracked by industrial disputes, competencies are no less deficient on the government side.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11th, 2016.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

LNG deal with Qatar

The $16 billion dollar LNG deal signed between Pakistan and Qatar on February 10 is being hailed by analysts and industry representatives as a step in the right direction and perhaps rightly so. Most quarters have pointed towards the benefit of importing the fuel to bridge the widening demand-supply gap in the country, moving a step closer to addressing the power crisis. The deal will see Qatar export the fuel to Pakistan for 16 years to meet our domestic energy requirements. According to the agreement, LNG will be transported to Punjab where power plants are being set up. The aim is to generate more electricity and also to convert the fuel to provide it to CNG-based stations. On paper, everything seems to be working for the PML-N. Pakistan will buy LNG from Qatar at 13.37 per cent of Brent crude price, which amounts to $4.68 per million British thermal units when oil is sold at $35 a barrel. This also includes port charges of $320,000 a vessel. This is a much better deal than what was originally planned and government officials have not stopped talking about how they have saved millions.

But there are other issues that need to be sorted out. Sindh has expressed its displeasure at the LNG-based power plants being set up in Punjab and this is where it could all get ugly. We have already seen smaller provinces resenting projects that are based in the PML-N’s stronghold of Punjab, as they point towards the lack of development taking place elsewhere. With LNG being imported to meet domestic requirements, Sindh wants a piece of the action as well and the federal government should address its concerns. The fact is that LNG is cheap and could greatly improve the country’s energy mix, where a piling circular debt has had to be parked in a holding company to reduce the burden on the budget. For now, the PML-N will celebrate the deal and use it to garner more votes come the next election. However, it must not ignore that the use of imported LNG needs to go beyond Punjab. The concerns of the smaller provinces must be heeded.

Plain words at last

It has taken the Director General of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Aftab Sultan, to finally give the nation’s politicians a salutary reality check regarding the presence of the Islamic State (IS) in Pakistan. This newspaper, along with a range of other media outlets and platforms, has been sending out alarm signals for over a year. There are well-sourced and researched reports on IS penetration in the country. Time and again, those reports have been rubbished by senior politicians, some of them fond of making ludicrous statements to the effect that “not even the shadow” of the IS would be tolerated on the soil of Pakistan. The Senate Standing Committee on Interior was informed on February 10 by Mr Sultan that the IS was emerging as a threat within the country, and that it had linkages with the banned groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba to name but two, though there are others. He said that these organisations had “a soft corner” for the IS and its ideology. The IB has broken up an IS network in Punjab — no surprise given the presence of extremist groups leading untroubled lives there — and Mr Sultan pointed out, as have innumerable analysts and knowledgeable observers, that terrorist groups are “reorganising”. Indeed they are.

This briefing for the Senate Standing Committee should finally and conclusively draw a line under the serial denials of reality by politicians whose motives for doing so in the light of this information appear at least suspect. Foot-dragging and denial have created a space into which the IS has flowed, doubtless grateful at the opportunity it has been provided. It has proceeded to do what it does best — exploit local weaknesses in terms of countervailing activity and connect to the plug-and-play mass of unfocused but latent extremism across the country and pressed the ‘send’ button. Its message has been received and understood from Khyber to Karachi and all points between. Interestingly, Mr Sultan squashed another popular myth, namely that it was “foreign hands” behind the majority of terrorist attacks. Not so said Mr Sultan, the majority are home grown and emanate from the tribal areas. Whether our tin-eared Interior Ministry heard any of this, never mind understood it, remains an open question.

Justifying domestic violence

Anew study has revealed that over half of the teenage female population in Pakistan and India has twisted and misinformed notions about domestic violence. The report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), “Sexual and Reproductive Health of Young People in Asia and the Pacific”, found that 53 per cent of teenage girls in both countries believe that domestic violence is justified. A high percentage of adolescent boys believe the same according to data collected from India and other developing countries. It is indeed a tragedy that the youth in our country and in the wider region is growing up with such medieval beliefs.

Regressive attitudes regarding gender roles have seeped so deeply into culture and society that often victims and potential victims of domestic violence or violence against women in general believe that there is nothing wrong with such abhorrent behaviour. There is a tendency to blame victims of violence for their own plight, with the perpetrator all but absolved of responsibility. Our patriarchal societal structure, widespread gender inequality, twisted notions of honour, a weak legal framework and a general increase in violence in society have all contributed to domestic violence being considered an acceptable part of life. It is as if our society is suffering from the psychological phenomenon of the Stockholm Syndrome, wherein victims develop feelings of sympathy towards their captors or offenders. This mindset is setting young women up for lifelong violence. Their children will be exposed to the same violence and be susceptible to the same beliefs later on.

One way to alter this mindset is by addressing our woeful education standards as this was positively associated with such beliefs in the UNPF report. Unemployment and a history of family violence were also positively associated, both of which can be found in abundance in Pakistan. Sex education can go a long way in educating young women about their bodies and rights. The responsibility to change medieval notions falls on society at large, and educators, the government and the media all need to play a role here.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2016.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

Sunday Feb 14,2016.

PTI & the politics of accountability

The PTI’s politics hinge on its vocal stand against corruption, but some of its actions in the province where it is in power, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), at times do not substantiate these claims. The most recent concern on this front was the tug of war between the K-P Accountability (Ehtesab) Commission and the provincial government. The director general of the accountability body, Mohammad Hamid Khan, recently quit his post after the K-P government amended the law governing the workings of the commission through an ordinance. The resignation raises several questions about the priorities of the K-P government when it comes to the PTI’s many promises on accountability. One of the amendments to the relevant law bars the commission from acting on anonymous complaints. But according to a letter from Mr Khan to the chief minister, nearly 70 per cent of complaints received are anonymous or are under pseudonyms but have enough information for action to be initiated. Another amendment requires the consent of the provincial or National Assembly speaker or the Senate chairman, as the case may be, before a legislator is arrested, while the consent of the provincial chief secretary will be required before a civil servant can be arrested.

Mr Khan sent letters to the chief minister’s office to highlight these and other concerns, and while this is not to say that the government should have readily accepted all the concerns raised, at least the issues brought up should have been debated upon. Some of the concerns Mr Khan raised do appear to have some validity. For instance, without space for anonymity, even those with genuine complaints will most likely hesitate in reaching out to the commission. The independence of the commission is also in danger of being compromised if it is to be expected to intimate provincial or National Assembly speakers and the provincial chief secretary before arrests. While the formation of the Ehtesab Commission was indeed a welcome step, recent events are disappointing. This does not bode well for a party that so actively advocates accountability.

An irregular CCI

The Council for Common Interests (CCI) is a body meant to increase cooperation between provincial and federal governments and resolve any policy disputes on a number of important matters. However, during years of military rule the CCI became dormant until it was dusted off and reintroduced with additional responsibilities through the 18th Amendment in 2010. As often happens with government matters in Pakistan, the CCI, too, failed to live up to its potential. A good idea in theory, it was never followed through in the manner described in the Constitution. According to the law, the CCI is meant to meet every 90 days but its last meeting was held on March 18, 2015. The Senate has now taken notice of this, and in its ruling on February 12, the government has been asked to convene a meeting of the CCI in 15 days. Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani has rightly pointed out that policy and supervisory matters, which fall under the purview of the CCI, would cease to have any legal effect if not approved by the body.

The PML-N government, it appears, is not interested. Any semblance of cooperation or democratic decision-making has fallen apart in recent times with important matters being decided without taking parliament’s input into consideration. Decisions on matters with far-reaching consequences for the entire country, such as those related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the privatisation of PIA have been pushed through in an autocratic manner. The PML-N is well known for its high-handedness and disregarding the CCI is in line with its usual approach. However, ignoring the Constitution and the framework of governance is not likely to win it many friends nor is its present approach about to foster inter-provincial harmony. While decision-making without following due process is faster, it is not necessarily constitutional nor is it likely to yield better results. A dictatorial decision-making style ultimately defeats the purpose of having a democratic government. It is hoped that the government will take the Senate ruling into account and the CCI will be given its due importance in the policy-formation process.

Terror never sleeps

The people of Karachi were beginning to get used to a security environment that was at least improved if still far from perfect. The incidence of terrorist and criminal attacks has dropped significantly in the last year, probably due to an assertive operation by the Rangers aimed at clearing the city of some of its worst elements. It is remarkably easy to engender a false sense of security, and the relative calm was shattered on February 12 with three separate bombings in dispersed locations. The blasts were of relatively low intensity and targeted a police station and two schools. Nobody was killed but one student was injured. The delivery of the devices was the same in each instance — men on motorbikes who delivered the package and sped away. The devices were locally made.

The targets might be deemed ‘soft’ and with a low casualty list and no fatalities, it might be assumed that these incidents were minor, unworthy of concern — but that would be seriously wrong. Law-enforcement agencies appear to have been wrong-footed. They were no less working under a false sense of security than were the rest of the populace, and what is evident is that the terrorist groups that had Karachi by the throat for so long are alive and in excellent operational health. No organisation has thus far claimed responsibility.

What is troubling is that since the beginning of the year there has been a steady increase in low-level attacks such as this, particularly in District Central. The targets have been Rangers check posts and police vehicles and there have been no arrests. The operation to clean up Karachi on this evidence still has some way to go, as reality acknowledged by DG ISPR Lt General Asim Bajwa at a press conference. He gave details of a major terrorist operation that had been foiled, with hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives and a variety of weapons seized. He spoke of terrorist groups cooperating, and not only in Karachi. Terrorism has a great facilitator in the extremist mindset that today permeates the national paradigm, and until that changes, the fight against it will not be won.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

Thursday Feb 18, 2016.

Feeling the heat

The tendrils of suspicion always begin to advance when any government seeks to limit its own watchdogs. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) operates under the National Accountability Ordinance 1999, and its sole purpose is to eliminate corruption using what is described as a holistic approach that encompasses “awareness, prevention and enforcement”. It is the latter that is giving a soupcon of unease to the ruling dispensation. The NAB has been getting distinctly long-fingered of late as those that run the show in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) have been discovering. This extension of the digits of accountability is not sitting easily with the corporate paradigm that dominates Punjab, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is giving every indication that his government will take pre-emptive action if, as he opines, the NAB is “harassing” government officers to the point at which they are afraid of taking decisions, signing off on project files and “hindering them from performing their duty”.

Accountability is seemingly fine so long as it is at arm’s length and firmly under the federal and provincial government’s thumbs. The prime minister has indicated his displeasure at the activities of the NAB which, he says, has entered the houses of “innocent people” sans any authentic reason for doing so. Further partiality is alleged by the PPP in Sindh. In K-P, the DG of the Ehtesab Commission resigned in the last week protesting against the promulgation of an ordinance by the provincial government amending the Ehtesab Act of 2015. In the PML-N back-garden, the NAB is enquiring closely into projects such as the Metro Bus and the Orange Line train in Lahore. Discomfort abounds.

Whilst we in no way condone the NAB exceeding its mandate, the level of corruption and its presence in every corner of public life and service is such that any investigation is going to ruffle feathers on every bird in the nest. No political party and no state institution are anywhere near free of malfeasance. Every project, no matter how well planned or intended, has corruption somewhere inside it. The NAB may need to be a little more prudent, but have its wings clipped? Certainly not.

Good news for Hindus

The Sindh Assembly passed the Hindu Marriage Bill on February 15 and in doing so has taken a landmark decision. Legislation which is to the facilitation or protection of any religious minority in Pakistan is exceedingly rare. Such legislation as there is, rarely gets implemented and the rights of the minorities are routinely either sidelined or trampled upon. This makes Sindh the first province to pass such legislation and it is much to be hoped that every other province follows the lead taken by it. In the previous week, a National Assembly panel had cleared — despite some dissenting voices — the Hindu Marriage Bill which was the way-paver for the creation of new regulations on the registration of Hindu marriages, inheritance and divorce.

Whilst this move is worthy of our support, indeed praise for the Sindh Assembly in itself a rare occurrence, we do note that this is a step taken almost 70 years late. There has not been unanimous support across the political spectrum, and opposition lawmakers wanted further referral to the standing committee, claiming that there needed to be more input from minority stakeholders. This attempt to derail progress was thwarted by Sindh Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro who ruled out the need for any such step, saying that the assembly had already consulted members of the Hindu community — and there is ample evidence to the effect that this is correct. Interestingly, it is being recommended that the Bill be retrospective in respect of the registration of marriage that is going to make life considerably easier for those already married. The challenge now is going to be implementation. The agency which is going to have to make some adjustments is NADRA, along with Union Council and Ward administrations across the land. Bureaucracies are slow to change and adapt, and can be highly resistant. There is no expectation that this legislation is going to be immediately implemented — no legislation ever is — but we would urge the relevant bodies to have a spring in their step in righting a long-standing historical wrong.

Reforms of the educational kind

Amidst the terrorist attacks on educational institutions, images of school teachers carrying firearms while conducting lessons and reports of mismanaged security drills, education in Pakistan has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Long ignored by governments, increasingly controlled by privately-owned institutes and now under threat from extremists, it is safe to say that education has never been much of a priority. However, with the approval of minimal standards of teaching criteria during the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference held recently, there is some good news for this beleaguered sector. The criteria which focuses on learning environment, curriculum and teaching methods is expected to “rejuvenate the years-old methods of educating students”, according to the Minister of State for Federal Education and Professional Training.

These reforms have been a long time coming and it is a relief to know that education is finally being prioritised to some extent. However, the implementation of the criteria by our fractured education system — a motley mixture of government-run and privately-owned institutions, as well as madrassas, each with their own agendas — remains to be seen. Creating buy-in for the new educational criteria amongst all these stakeholders will not be easy. There is no doubt that education in Pakistan needs to be reformed, and soon. Our system is producing individuals unable to cope with industry demands and with poor critical thinking skills. Often, their minds have been shaped by a diet of extremism. This coupled with an inability to form independent opinions makes them ripe for exploitation. Then there are the millions who have never seen the inside of a classroom, and grow up with little chance of improving their situation. An inclusive environment, trained staff and greater outreach in remote areas are needed. However, none of this will be possible without adequate budgetary allocation and a steady commitment to change.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

Date: Friday, February 19, 2016.

Steer a middle course

Uncertainty muddles perceptions around exactly what should be the role of Pakistan in the 34-member coalition assembled by Saudi Arabia tasked to fight terrorism and extremism. The 34 members do not include three troubling omissions — Iran, Syria and Iraq. Questions have been raised in the National Assembly of Sartaj Aziz, the prime minister’s adviser on foreign affairs, who was as vague as he ever is. That he responded in writing rather than in person is perhaps indicative of the distance the government wants to put between itself and parliament in this matter.



Perhaps Mr Aziz is as much in the dark as the rest of the nation, though he did say that the six-point objectives of the coalition were shared with Pakistan in the last week. There were also questions about our participation in the ongoing military exercises in Saudi Arabia, and it transpires that those of our military that are participating are drawn from a standing cohort of around a thousand that are a permanent fixture there, and no new forces have been deployed from the mainland.

Questions and yet more questions — and a ringing silence in the answers’ department. Pakistan welcomed the announcement made on December 14, 2015 by the Saudi Arabian press agency regarding the 34-member coalition — but appeared to have little by way of foreknowledge of what was being proposed. If there was any detailed consultation prior to the announcement, it is not in the public domain. Other states were likewise somewhat taken aback.

In broad terms, the government is supportive of any move at a multilateral level that provides a counter to the terrorism that is sweeping the world today, and we support that. Yet we would urge a degree of caution in terms of our engagement with what Saudi Arabia is proposing. Pakistan has already, and rightly, declined the option of participating in the war that Saudi Arabia is fighting in Yemen, and our long-held policy of only participating in UN-sanctioned overseas operations must be maintained. Saudi Arabia is most certainly one of our most important allies — but not the only one.

PIA privatisation — complexities abound

Intricate details of PIA’s privatisation have not yet been finalised, but initial recommendations suggest that non-core businesses of the airline could be carved out of the holding company before it is offered to prospective bidders. This essentially means that the business of real estate, all hotels and the Precision Engineering Complex that operates under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Defence would not be offered to bidders. However, flight operations, cargo, charter services and mail services will most definitely be up for grabs as the government continues to pursue a privatisation process that has caused it plenty of headaches in the past few months. Proponents of PIA’s privatisation feel that its accumulated losses and debt burden have taken it to the point of no return, where only an established business can turn things around.

But given PIA’s balance sheet, which shows total liabilities attributable to shareholders to be around Rs190 billion as of September 30, 2015, no prospective bidder would show an ounce of interest if the government does not wipe the slate clean. How it intends on owning up to billions on its books is yet to be finalised. How it intends to tackle the employee unions also remains a question mark. If liabilities are transferred to the new owner, the PIA business won’t prove to be an attractive one. If they aren’t, the government — already under a mountain of debt — will incur a massive burden. These questions are not easy to answer. Therefore, it makes sense that financial advisers want to segregate PIA into two and find a middle ground, easing the pressure on the government as well as the buyer. The government’s progress on its privatisation policy has so far been unimpressive. It has only managed to sell stakes in profit-making entities and hit a dead-end in the case of loss-making companies. Given this history, PIA’s privatisation serves as a cruel reminder that the issue is not just of the PML-N’s failure to get everyone on board. It is a mirror for all governments to look at and reflect — they all had a part in ruining what was once a profitable entity and turning it into a mountain no one wants to climb.

The bombings in Turkey

Once again, Turkey has been the target of bombers operating in the overspill both from purely internal conflicts with the Kurds in the southeast, and the civil war in Syria. Bombs on consecutive days saw 28 killed in a suicide attack in Ankara, 26 of them army personnel, and another six killed in a bombing on the road between Diyarbakir and Bingol in the southeast, on February 18. According to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the Ankara bombing is being attributed to the Kurdish YPG militia, which is based in Syria and is working in collaboration with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Nine arrests have been made in connection with the Ankara bombing, none, nor is there any claim or attribution, regarding the bombing of the military convoy on February 18.

The conflicts that now envelop Turkey are extremely complex. The Turkish government is actively fighting the PKK and has been since 1994. It is hostile to but not necessarily actively fighting, the Syrian Kurds of the PYD, which is aligned to the PKK. It is friendly towards the Iraqi Kurds and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and its peshmerga forces. The PKK, PYD and KRG are all fighting the Islamic State (IS), as is the Turkish government which has in the recent past been targeted by the IS in a series of suicide attacks. All of these conflicts are interlocked and none of them is susceptible to an early resolution or a cessation of hostilities. Further adding to the complexity, the group attributed to the Ankara bombing, the YPG, is closely allied to the US, which is backing it militarily and logistically in its fight with the IS. The Turkish government regards virtually all Kurdish groupings with the exception of the KRG as terrorists and thus fair game for air strikes and other military actions — which put it at odds with the US and other interested parties such as the European Union. Add in the massive burden of Syrian refugees both in transit and camped in Turkey, and the future of this complex, multilayered conflict seem far from any resolution.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

Date: Saturday, February 20, 2016.

A NAB too far

If the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is causing such discomfort to a range of politicians across the country, then it stands to reason that it must be doing something right. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is so exercised that he is seemingly mulling a revision in the way in which matters relating to accountability are pursued and managed. Few politicians anywhere in the world welcome their affairs being scrutinised, even fewer in a country where corruption and political skulduggery are the norm rather than the exception. Corruption is rife across the entire political spectrum, from the lowest ward level to the highest offices in the land.

Of late, NAB has been knocking on any number of doors and finds itself accused of overreach, going beyond its mandate. The prime minister delivered a thinly veiled warning that action would be taken if this continued unabated — and he now appears willing to be as good as his word.

If ever a country needed a body that was able to investigate abuses of power and privilege, it is Pakistan. To be scrupulously fair, we would not support the harassment of individuals who are free of taint or suspicion, all too easily done, but we would also not support any development that served to insulate those in power from scrutiny, no matter how exalted they might be. Investigative bodies do need to have their terms of reference and mandates clearly delimited, but we wonder if the creation of the supra-commission currently under consideration is the right way to go. The government might argue that it is merely ‘guarding the guards’ but it looks uncommonly like a knee-jerk reaction to some uncomfortable, if opportunist, digging by NAB. Nothing is about to happen overnight but revision of accountability processes is on the agenda and likely to be pursued with some diligence. That some form of revision was in the mind of government in the historical past may be true, but it should not be allowed to inhibit investigations into some senior members of the ruling party in Punjab by NAB. We will follow closely and with interest.

The Kisan package — a mirage

The Kisan package, announced by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif around the time of the local government elections, has not just faced incessant delays in its implementation, but some of its components are just a repeat of the budget measures announced in June 2015. In a recent briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance, it was revealed that the government’s half-hearted attempts have resulted in most parts of the Rs341 billion package not being implemented, casting a huge question mark on the PM-level announcement. The much-trumpeted cash assistance was restricted to Punjab, as other provinces have so far been unwilling to delve into their wallets. However, some areas where progress has been made is subsidising the purchase of fertilisers and supporting sugar mills in exporting the commodity.

Repeating and remodeling measures and compiling them into a Rs341-billion package may manage to win the hearts of the farming community for a while, but persistent delays will not keep it quiet for too long. The package was announced supposedly to support low-income farmers bear the wrath of falling commodity prices. It was meant to uplift the low-income group and facilitate it in acquiring loans for machinery and raw material. Floods have not helped the farmers’ cause and the package was meant to mitigate some of their losses. But when the country’s finance secretary admits — five months after the package and eight months after the budget was announced — that it will take another two months to implement it on a larger scale, there are bound to be some raised eyebrows. For once, we would like the PML-N to act like a democratic, forthcoming government. Farmers can see through its shenanigans. It seems that true progress is usually only made close to the general elections when the government is in need of votes, and not when it is trying to pacify the IMF through a reduction in the budget deficit. It is all about timing for this business-minded government.

Inefficient in innovation

During the past few days, Dr Nergis Mavalvala was in the news for being part of a team, which had made a historic scientific discovery by detecting gravitational waves. Her Pakistani background was highlighted and celebrated. Everyone from the prime minister downwards expressed their pride at her achievement. However, the fact that Dr Mavalvala’s success is not reflective of the state of education and scientific innovation in Pakistan was largely ignored. This point has now been brought home by the Global Innovation Index Report of 2015 in which Pakistan ranks an abysmal 131 out of 141 countries. This is not surprising, since according to the Ministry of Science and Technology, the current allocation for research and development is only 0.29 per cent of GDP. There is no clearer way than this to indicate our lack of interest in higher education and science. This, after all, is the country which tried to give the world the car that ran on water.

Pakistanis have managed to do great work in a variety of highly demanding and technical fields but usually they do it when outside their homeland. The infrastructure and money required for quality education and research is simply unavailable here. There are only 10,670 PhDs in the country, a tiny number, especially when considering that according to HEC guidelines a university is required to have atleast two PhD faculty members in order to offer MPhil and MS programmes. In order for there to be innovation, educational institutions should have a culture promoting curiosity and critical thinking. Unfortunately, the current atmosphere only encourages the attainment of the highest grades through the retention of facts memorised from books. Questioning conventional wisdom and forming independent conclusions are not encouraged. The Ministry of Science and Technology now claims to have developed a strategy to reverse this trend. One can only hope that it will be implemented and the next Dr Mavalvala will not have to move abroad to make a scientific breakthrough.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!

Date: Sunday, February 21st, 2016.

An existential battle

It is no exaggeration to say that the battle to educate the children of Pakistan — and their parents because there is almost as much work to do there — goes to the heart of its very existence as a modern state. There are innumerable systemic ailments that beset the national body, but the most damaging in the long term is the failure to get to grips with adequately educating a burgeoning population. Historically, education has never received either the attention or the budgetary allocations that would see it prosper, and the nation along with it. Underfunded and undervalued, generation after generation of children has been indifferently served. Dissatisfaction with state education has led to the mushrooming of the private sector which has grown in parallel with the middle class. Where parents can afford, a choice few would opt to send their child to a state school, and those that do, know that their children are getting a poor second-best.

With the state failing to adequately discharge its duty, a duty enshrined in the Constitution, other non-state actors have entered in the last 15 years — those that would actively seek to discourage education and are not afraid to destroy schools and colleges across the country and kill and maim children in pursuit of their goals. Extremist groups view education as a threat and will do all in their very considerable power to break the desire of the people to seek betterment for their children.

The state education system in Pakistan may be in large parts broken or indeed absent, but it is not beyond fixing, and the current dispensation is making some attempts to redress historical wrongs. There is alongside this an emerging understanding that the provision of security for schools, whilst a duty of the state is not one it can wholly fulfill, at least to the point at which every parent can send their child to school without fear. It is simply unrealistic to expect the army to deploy to every school in the land, or for local and provincial law-enforcement agencies to guard every gate and entrance to the hundreds of thousands of government schools.

This was to the forefront of the mind of the prime minister when he visited the first Montessori section in a public school in Islamabad on February 19. He called for “escalated” security provisions at every school, saying that raising walls and topping with razor wire was insufficient given the level of threat presented by extremist groups to education as a whole. The establishment of Montessori sections is part of the prime minister’s education reform programme under which 422 schools and colleges that are administered by the Federal Directorate of Education will be upgraded. Splendid as this may be, it is but a drop in the ocean of unfulfilled need, and the extremists recently gave a powerful demonstration of their reach.

The mere threat of attacks by the Taliban was enough to prompt the closure of all public and private schools in Punjab for three days in January; the army also closed its own schools. In the event no school was attacked, but untold thousands of children lost days of education and more importantly from the Taliban perspective, a sense of fear was engendered in parents. It is that fear that undermines confidence and erodes often fragile commitments to education by parents who may be food-insecure and in grinding poverty. Girls are most likely to lose out in the education lottery, and the cohort of educated children that would take Pakistan forward into the knowledge economy in 15 years’ time is not being grown.

Taking back both the education agenda as well as the narrative from the extremists is a mighty challenge. Seen globally, Pakistan suffered the greatest number of fatalities caused by attacks on education between 1970 and 2014. Over a dozen terrorist groups have committed these crimes, with the TTP the biggest killer of our children. The battle is going to be long and hard, but we cannot afford to lose it.

Slow progress on Pathankot

It appears that neither side is disputing that the attack on the Pathankot airbase in India had its origins in Pakistan. On January 2, a group of at least six gunmen crossed the perimeter of what was deemed a high-security airbase and proceeded to wreak havoc for three days. They killed seven Indian soldiers and wounded others. India claimed, very quickly, that the attack was carried out by the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and cited phone intercepts as evidence of links to Pakistan. The attack came at a crucial juncture in the bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan and was in all likelihood mounted with the sole intent of derailing the talks and taking both sides back to square one. As previously noted in these columns, this has not happened. Talks have been interrupted and briefly looked like they may be killed off by both sides, but wiser counsel prevailed. They are still alive and the investigation into what happened at Pathankot goes ahead — if painfully slowly.

An FIR has now been filed in Gujranwala by the Punjab counter-terrorism police citing unidentified suspects and significantly not naming the JeM nor does it name any leader of that organisation, which is known to be headquartered in Bahawalpur. The filing of the FIR is allegedly a condition set by the Indians as essential to the resumption of foreign secretary-level talks. The move is the product of talks between the National Security Advisers (NSA) of both countries, presumably tasked with crafting the modalities and protocols that will allow the talks to proceed, and in that sense, are to be welcomed.

It is now for Pakistan to proceed with the investigation with all speed, and any further foot-dragging or procrastination is going to be sending the wrong signal to India. The FIR once again brings into focus the presence of extremist groups in south Punjab. There has been persistent criticism of the government that its implementation of the National Action Plan has been highly selective, and that south Punjab in particular has enjoyed something close to immunity. Those concerns need to be addressed and dispelled, not only in pursuit of peace with India but in pursuit of peace within our own borders.

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"Allah is sufficient for us;an excellent guardian is He!