Editorial: The Express Tribune
 

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]READING OBAMA RIGHT[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[RIGHT][B]November 9th, 2010[/B][/RIGHT]

By and large, headlines in Pakistan regarding US President Barack Obama’s visit to India have been positive. The president was primed with advice on what to say in India. Hence, the good headlines: “Be a good neighbour, Obama tells India”; “Stronger Pakistan in India’s interest”; “Obama pushes India to talk to Pakistan”; “Stable Pakistan best for India”, etc. There was only one exception: “Carrots for India, sticks for Pakistan”.

Given the generally morose Pakistani reaction to Pakistan’s own strategic dialogue with the US earlier, one expected that the mere idea of Obama’s visit to India would be off-putting. But the newspapers in Pakistan have interpreted the presidential words in a moderate manner. Given the high level of anti-American feeling among the public in general and media men in particular, this is a good augury and presages a period of objective analysis of what is happening in Pakistan and the region.

The news anchor of one TV channel that specialises in the economy had to calm down one of its reporters, who insisted that the US was never a sincere friend of anyone in history and that India was not a good neighbour of anyone in South Asia. He compared America’s refusal to let Pakistan ply concessional trade with it while giving India trade worth $10 billion. It was sad to note that an economic reporter did not know the difference between what Pakistan wanted and what President Obama has promised India. The other thing that could have rubbed us the wrong way was the spectacle of the top couple of America dancing with children to popular Indian tunes. The ease the world feels with India is owed to India’s ‘soft image’ which our ideology and our weak state situation do not allow us. The truth is that our hard ideological environment repels global capital as investors feel jittery visiting Pakistan. These days, even expat Pakistanis don’t visit readily for fear of being kidnapped for ransom.

What should help us overcome our paranoia are some of the things President Obama said. He said it is in India’s interest to have a stable Pakistan next door. If you don’t decide to wave that aside as a picayune gesture, it should address our not always honest plaint that India is destabilising Pakistan in collusion with all sorts of unlikely partners. President Obama also recommended normalisation of relations and an India-Pakistan dialogue that would resolve the outstanding issues between the two. It is unfair to pretend to feel angry that he did not say the word Kashmir. Not many heads of state visiting India say that.

When it comes to India, we think black and white. The world appears to us in all sorts of political distortions through the prism called India. We are already hurting from the nuclear deal that the Republican administration – traditionally closer to Pakistan than India – gave to New Delhi. We are hurting even more that America is not only not giving us the nuclear power stations we desperately need but is opposing China’s decision to give us a few. Aren’t we the front line state in America’s war against terrorism? Instead, President Obama hinted in New Delhi that Pakistan needs to show more enthusiasm in fighting terrorism. Here comes the problem of an inward-looking state that no longer cares how isolated it is in the world. The news going out of Pakistan says the country hates America and the West in general because it is pushing Pakistan into a war that is not its own. There is a stream of news about how the terrorists – home-grown and imported – are killing innocent Pakistanis and that these terrorists are, at times, described by Pakistan’s own media as Islamabad’s ‘strategic assets’. Lacking objectivity and relativism grown out of realism, we ignore the difference of approach between the American president and the British prime minister while in India.

If the Americans hold on to pledged funds, much of it must be linked to our own fair assessment of the abysmal level of governance in Pakistan, and the confession by Musharraf about what he did with the aid he received. The Obama visit has been carefully orchestrated not to offend an excessively sensitive Pakistan.

For the coming days, Pakistan must learn to develop a more differentiated and supple approach to the world outside. Habituated to a confrontational foreign policy – because of the subordination of our Foreign Office to the military point of view – Pakistan has been adopting postures that gratify the domestic urge for ‘ghairat’ (honour) rather than its economic interests. In a recent speech made by a retired foreign secretary, the US was described as a state unfriendly to Pakistan’s interests with a history of going against Pakistan at crucial junctures. This attitude will be of no benefit to Pakistan, given its inherent domestic weaknesses.

In today’s world, defeat can be described in one way only: international isolation. Yet the concept of honour can only be realised through standing alone and fighting for a cause. Be it Kashmir or any other issue, principles don’t help if they cause isolation, pointing to martyrdom as justification for national honour. We must learn from China’s non-confrontational approach to its rival, the US. Beijing knows that the US is looking at South Asia as an arena where China could be challenged but its relations with Washington remain mostly intact. In our black and white Manichaean mind, we can prove our loyalty to China by vociferously opposing the US. The ambiguity of benefiting from maintaining friendly relations with both China and the US at the same time does not appeal to us. We prefer keeping things clearly defined; for instance, the US and India on one side and China and Pakistan on the other. That is not how China looks at India, nor India at China. Pakistan must learn to be more objective about the crisis it is facing internally because of its past operation of foreign policy in the region. Ironically, today Pakistan can sort out this crisis through self-correction.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A permanent UN SC seat for India?[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[RIGHT][B]November 10th, 2010[/B][/RIGHT]

US President Barack Obama, in New Delhi, has reconfirmed his country’s support for India’s nomination for a permanent seat in an expanded UN Security Council. His exact words on November 8 were: “I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.” This is read as a ‘full endorsement’ of India’s candidacy and a new salience in India-US relations.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman has politely opposed the endorsement, saying it will complicate the process of expanding the UN Security Council and increasing the number of its permanent members. He has referred, as has been done on several past occasions, to India’s bad record on human rights, unsatisfactory relations with its neighbours etc. But the question does not devolve on what Pakistan says.

It is not clear to many why the Security Council should be reformed and how. It was squeezed after the Second World War after learning some bitter lessons from the failure of the League of Nations where the Council had an unlimited number of members and all of them had the power of veto. Such was the dominance of the idea of state sovereignty that the League could take no action during most crises. The UN was based on the ‘realist’ principle of ‘preferred’ sovereignty of a few states.

Under former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, a document called the Razali Plan (2004) proposed enlarging the Security Council by a further nine seats and presented two alternative models (A and B) outlining how this could be done. Model A responded to Africa’s demand for a region-based increase; Model B was more complex and soon lost support. The new 22-member Security Council will have to be endorsed by a two-thirds majority from over 190 members of the UN. After that, the veto-bearing current permanent members of the Security Council will have to pass the plan.

If the US wants to set up India as a rival of China in Asia, the Chinese veto will block the expansion plan and India’s entry. If India moves to counter China and looks at China’s cooperation with Pakistan as a hostile act, the realpolitik of this expansion will go haywire. Yet the India-China equation is not all bad. Indians have invested in China and visits by Chinese leaders to India have been without any big complications because India does not practically challenge Beijing on Aksai Chin the way Pakistan challenges India on Kashmir.

India has a good international image and has a lot of support even from countries that Pakistan habitually considers its friends — in 2003, Pakistan’s big Arab friends wanted India in the OIC. India has secured the backing of three serious regional contenders for the Security Council — Japan, Germany and Brazil. Among the five permanent members it had France, Britain and Russia already backing it. Now the US is on board too.

India has a democratic system that most Pakistanis now openly envy. Its economic reform under Manmohan Singh since 1991 has succeeded and its variation on the free market doctrines has saved it from the more lethal fallout from the 2008 global crisis. Pakistan’s view of India will not mean much to the international community because of its exaggerated bias. But there are other complications.

Expanding the Security Council means making the UN less able to act in crises needing immediate collective response. It will be like going back to the League of Nations and its incapacities. It will be an acceptance of a multi-polar world, going ideally horizontal but losing the realistic vertical system that delivered. This expansion will take long in realisation because our multi-polar world, with its proliferation of regional rivalries, will not be able to agree readily on a region-based new permanent membership.

If India-China rivalry grows in the region — if that is what America wants — then the expansion plan will be further delayed. But if India and China handle their contradictions well — and that also means Pakistan sorting out its ‘non-state actor’ problems with a more pliable India — then a new 22-member Security Council will become feasible.

[CENTER][B][SIZE="5"]Sugar price manipulation[/SIZE][/B][/CENTER]

[RIGHT][B]November 11th, 2010.[/B][/RIGHT]

The influence of industrial lobbyists on the government appears to be getting out of hand. The latest example of this is the rapid rise in sugar prices, an increase severe enough to have a noticeable effect on the overall measure of inflation: the consumer price index. While consumers struggle to cope with the rising prices shrinking the purchasing power of their incomes, the government seems content with taking only cosmetic measures.

The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP), the regulatory body charged with preventing collusive behaviour amongst industrial groups, has on more than one occasion pointed to oligopolistic behaviour amongst the sugar industry. It is alleged that the sugar industry creates deliberate shortages of supply by hoarding sugar in large warehouses in a bid to create an artificial price increase. Consumer lobbyists allege something further: that the Trading Corporation of Pakistan was pressured to deliberately mistime its purchases of sugar in order to ensure higher import prices so that domestic prices remain high. These are serious allegations indeed and given the CCP’s earlier misgivings and litigation regarding the sugar industry, they deserve to be investigated.

We would also like to point out some of the techniques that the government has used in the past to create the illusion of action. Perhaps the most commonly used one is that of price controls. Even the courts have been persuaded to establish a legally binding price at which it is declared that a given commodity must be sold. The problem with this approach is that, to the common man, it sounds like a solution whereas it does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem. As proof, sugar is retailing for Rs120 per kilogramme when its legally mandated price is Rs45 per kilogramme. Prices are not high simply because the sugar industry deems it so. They are high because market conditions have been manipulated to force buyers to pay more. The difference may seem subtle, but it is critical. In order to bring prices to normal levels, collusion within the sugar industry must be effectively banned. It is time for the government to swing the regulatory bat of the recently passed Competition Act.

[CENTER][B][SIZE="5"]Learning from India[/SIZE][/B][/CENTER]

[RIGHT][B]November 11th, 2010[/B][/RIGHT]

Two top Indian politicians were asked to resign on November 9 by the country’s ruling Congress party, due to corruption charges, while investigations were launched to look into accusations against them. Suresh Kalmadi, the infamous chief organiser of the Commonwealth Games held in October, was asked to hand in his resignation as Congress party secretary due to the embarrassment India suffered under his management of the Games. From falling bridges to human excrement found in the flats set up for visiting players, it seemed Kalmadi could do no right. India was pounded by the media whilst visiting teams gave ultimatums of cancelling their participation.

The second politician asked to step down,by Sonia Gandhi, according to Indian media, is the Maharashtra chief minister, Ashok Chavan, for allegedly selling apartments reserved for war widows to politicians and military officers. In both cases, the crime has not yet been proven but the politicians have resigned to preserve the sanctities of the positions they held. India’s record for tackling corruption is by no means stellar but these actions are a step towards transparency and accountability, the hallmarks of democracy.

In Pakistan, we ignore corruption charges. Recently, several politicians were accused of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own lands. Calls for an independent inquiry to ascertain what happened were resisted by the Sindh government. Measures to ensure that flood management guidelines are followed in the future may be too much to hope for. And herein lies the contrast with India.

Though corruption is endemic in both South Asian neighbours, India has lived up to its status as an emerging major player, ready for bigger and better things, by holding its leaders accountable. Pakistan must do the same to ensure that the cycle of corruption is broken once and for all.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Karachi’s Brazen Attack — Many Questions[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[RIGHT][B]November 13th, 2010[/B][/RIGHT]

We ask the same questions over and over again after every terrorist attack. We ask why security remained helpless — even in zones where barriers and police pickets stand along every street; why there was no intelligence to warn us of the risks; why such daring attacks continue even when military authorities say terrorists have been virtually eliminated in the North. We wonder if this is actually the case, or if we are being told only half-truths.

The attack on the Crime Investigation Department (CID) offices in Karachi’s main (apparently) high-security zone, a stone’s throw from at least two five-star hotels, the chief minister’s house and several other highly secured locations has added to the sense of insecurity across the country. There are fears that with some 140 people among the injured, the death toll of 17 could rise. The attack — predictably enough claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as revenge for killings in the North — mimics what we have seen before in Islamabad, Lahore and other cities. The gun attack which preceded the bombing, carried out by ramming a vehicle laden with over a thousand kilogrammes of explosives into the building, was intended to engage guards and open up the way for the attackers to unbar gates and enable the van they used to make its way past barriers. We have seen exactly the same methods used in attacks on the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad in September 2008 and later in bombings targeting government and security forces buildings in Lahore. It should not be too much to ask that a strategy be developed to counter such tactics, those on guard duty forewarned to watch out for the use of this game-plan and the requisite training and equipment provided to them to prevent terrorists from succeeding.

As things stand now, the security in the cities really serves only limited purpose in that it seems to be more cosmetic than anything else. While the rows of policemen or personnel from other security agencies standing behind heavy-duty barricades may make it seem as if we are safe, it is quite obvious that they can do little to prevent attacks. Karachi’s brazen attack goes to show that simply placing barriers and barbed wire around sensitive areas does not deter the terrorists, who always seem to be two steps ahead of the security and law-enforcement agencies. Indeed, by striking at locations inside high-security areas in major cities with seeming impunity, the TTP seems almost to be mocking the claim of the government that it is winning the fight against militancy and terrorism. They must be laughing too at a vast intelligence apparatus that apparently remains unable to penetrate the terrorist groups or gain any kind of advance information as to their plans. We ask then what the purpose of such agencies is or why we retain them at considerable cost. This aspect of the problem needs to be assessed and analysed.

The attack in Karachi reminds us that we are still in the grip of terrorists. At best, their grasp has been slightly loosened. But they quite evidently retain the capacity and the manpower to plan and carry out operations of the kind seen at the CID offices. Do these bombers and their handlers get information or assistance from the inside? How are they able to scout for locations with such ease given that the targets are usually in areas teeming with law-enforcement personnel? How come none of the attackers who opened fire before the attack were caught? Why aren’t our intelligence agencies — some of whom are said to be among the best in the world — able to penetrate the terrorist networks which finance and plan such operations? Why can we not learn undercover techniques from other countries where they plant agents inside organisations and then take out the senior leadership?

Surely, there must be a fair number of senior officials trained in these matters to be able to draw up some kind of plan to break into these networks because that is really the only way that such attacks can be prevented.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]Tax reform in a season of turmoil[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 12th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

A besieged government has been forced by its creditors to enforce the ‘reformed general sales tax’ (RGST) to raise its tax-to-GDP ratio and have enough money devolved to the provinces to help an economy that is in the process of contraction but under high risk of inflation. The cabinet, on November 11, also gave concrete shape to an earlier warning by Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh, that the well-to-do will have to be taxed to lessen the burden of compensations the government has to make to the flood-affected population. But the well-to-do also include salaried people who believe, and perhaps rightly so, that they already pay more than their fair share in tax.

Needless to say, the measures have been immediately opposed from within the ruling coalition and the powerful Punjab government. This is not a good augury for a state that is definitely in for a period of belt-tightening while resting in the oxygen tent of the IMF. Tragically, Pakistan’s resort to the IMF too has been politicised and a very ill-informed and isolationist rhetoric is being unleashed by TV commentators on the ‘slavery’ of the Fund which is ‘determined to destroy Pakistan’. The truth is that if Pakistan is not on the IMF roster no one will do business with it and it will not have enough dollars in the kitty to buy its imports.

The ongoing sugar crisis, ill-advisedly interfered with by the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court in 2009, is still with us and being exacerbated by TV coverage showing people, who should be abstaining to bring the prices down, actually announcing ruefully that they are buying it at Rs110 per kilo as against the price of approximately Rs50 by the courts in 2009. Last time when the suo motu courts got the provinces to clamp down on the ‘sugar chain’, it caused the private sector trucking business to stop plying, which the state was simply in no position to replace.

Luckily, there are young people in the business programmes of TV channels saying that the RGST is unavoidable, IMF or no IMF. That is true, even in these days of massive economic contraction. The general sales tax (GST) had simply withered away as an efficient taxation tool with the passage of time. The taxation gap continued to linger and the tax-to-GDP ratio actually declined during its operation. There were exemptions in it that spared the agricultural sector — where income tax stayed uncollected because of the incapacity of the provinces — and the fast growing services sector was allowed a holiday.

This gradual failure of GST as a revenue collection device kept Pakistan’s retail sector out of the tax net; the economy remained unregistered and those not announcing their business to the Federal Bureau of Revenue were able to accumulate wealth that undermined the economy. Over the years the GST system was adversely affected by the ‘concessions’ that various powerful lobbies were able to extract from the government. And the system of refunds that came with it persisted in its malfunction and will now have to be massively reformed if the RGST is to succeed.

The RGST will target consumption, barring food and education, and therefore will fall on the well-to-do in the population. It will be collected at various stages and at each stage the seller will charge ‘output tax’ from the consumer on the value of supply of goods or services and will deduct the ‘input tax’ he has paid earlier on a monthly basis. At each stage, the economy will become ‘registered’ and this will make it easy for the state to impose a better system of collection in the future. The retail sector, which is out of the tax net altogether, will thus become a source of revenue, even if this will not happen fully in the first year because of the exemption given under the present RGST to a large segment of it.

The RGST will net an extra Rs200 billion, but the government is in dire straits for the post-flood subsidy it wants to give to the flood-affected. Another Rs70 billion is targeted through a 10 per cent tax for six months on those who earn over Rs300,000 annually. As per the conditionalities it has agreed with the IMF on, not subsidising oil and gas — and removing the old subsidy gap — the government is also ratcheting up petrol prices. If you count all the money the government wants to squeeze out of an economy being made to contract with high interest rates, it looks like a bombshell that the people won’t survive.

Even if the economist tells you that the RGST is not going to hit the poor and the middle class, the scenario is tailor-made for the politics of toppling governments in Pakistan. The most ominous reaction has predictably come from the MQM, whose leader Altaf Hussain has put on the war paint on the RGST and has warned that his party will campaign against it. If Karachi doesn’t pay up — and segments of the economy there are already protesting the tax — then Sindh will have less revenue to work with and the centre will come under pressure. Luckily, the MQM boycott of the RGST can be watered down with political concessions that the party would like to receive.

The revolt of the PML-N is also in high gear in parliament. And despite Nawaz Sharif’s low-tone aggression the party seems to be gearing up for a mid-term change of government, with its leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan saying ‘removal’ is possible even if the army doesn’t intervene. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has raised the standard of revolt against the petrol price hike, hoping that unrest among the transporters and the common man will strengthen his hand. He could actually be responding to yet another move by the PPP and the PML-Q to deprive him of his majority in the Punjab Assembly after the 18th Amendment has made it impossible for PML-Q rebels to bail him out.

Nowhere in the Third World does economic discipline sit well with democratic politics, unless it is leveraged with some mixture of authoritarianism, as happened in Indonesia, where the army stands behind the elected government. In Pakistan, we have an army that has not yet been sensitised to the economy.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Evading corruption charges[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 14th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Anyone who doubted the maxim that it pays to have friends in high places will surely have their minds changed by the case of Ayaz Khan Niazi who, as chairman of the National Insurance Company, was accused of massive corruption. According to a report in this newspaper’s November 13 edition, Niazi is hiding in the home of an unnamed politician while another accused, Mohsin Warraich, has managed to flee to Dubai. Additionally, considerable pressure is being put on the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to turn a blind eye to this whole matter. The director of the FIA, Zafar Ahmed Qureshi, was removed from his post and only reinstated after the intervention of the Supreme Court.

This case seems to provide further proof that accountability is a one-way street in Pakistan, with only those who aren’t close to the levers of power being held responsible for their crimes. Niazi has been accused of corruption on a breathtaking scale, with figures in the billions of rupees being bandied about. Yet, because of his political connections, he has managed to evade capture. Even with Mohsin Warraich, whose father was a federal minister, it has been suggested that political connections facilitated his escape from the country.

However, unlike with past administrations, this time the government has to deal with a Supreme Court that is antagonistic to it. Indeed, it was the Supreme Court that, by taking suo motu notice of the alleged fraud that Niazi, Warraich and over half a dozen others had perpetrated on the National Insurance Company, ensured that an investigation was carried out. Then, by reinstating the FIA director to the post, they made sure that the investigation would not be derailed and buried under the carpet. Now, it is up to the judiciary to ensure that Naizi is located and anyone who played a role in helping him hide is also brought to task. While the Supreme Court has often been criticised for involving itself in political battles, this is a clear example of when its supposed activism can serve a useful purpose. By taking on a case that the sitting government does not want to pursue, one branch of the government can serve its function by acting as a check on another branch.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The plight of the Khwaja Siras[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 15th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Though the November 11 report in this newspaper on Khwaja Siras — a catchall term for the population of transsexuals and transgender people in the country — being denied medical checkups may not shock the average reader, who is used to much more violent news regarding their harassment, it is a telling illustration of how difficult life is for this community. The court has summoned the chiefs of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Hospital, Civil Hospital and Nadra on a complaint filed by Khwaja Siras from the Gender Interactive Alliance saying that they are being denied medical care. It is distressing that public hospitals, which exist to serve citizens, should reject patients merely on the grounds of their gender. Difficult as it is for ordinary citizens to get a response from state institutions, it is infinitely more gruelling for a community which faces rejection, ridicule and physical abuse on a daily basis.

Despite the media spotlight on them following Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s interest in their welfare, not much has changed. Action on the court’s 2009 injunction that they be issued national identity cards specifying their gender as ‘other’ has been sluggish, mainly because of the insistence that they be medically examined to determine their gender. This has been opposed by many in the community since it can potentially stigmatise them further. Without ID cards, employment options for these eunuchs are few and they carry on working in degrading conditions.

The persecution of Khwaja Siras will persist as long as society endorses their treatment as second-class citizens. Recent developments such as the employment of Khwaja Siras as tax collectors points to a welcome shift in attitudes but more needs to be done. The only thing more worthy of condemnation than a state which does not care for its citizens is a society which does not care for all its members.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Deeper divide[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

The PML-N’s altered line of a more aggressive policy against the government continues. In an unusual move, parliamentarians have been stopped from holding ‘direct’ meetings with the prime minister or members of the Cabinet. We wonder what the PML-N is scared of and why it has such little faith in its own members. Rather like school boys who require to be kept in strict line, they will now be required to inform top party leaders if ‘unavoidable’ contact was made. It is unclear if these orders will apply to encounters at wedding receptions or other social occasions when PPP and PML-N leaders are likely to meet. The inter-linkages between political families whose members hold seats in parliament are well-established and in a number of cases relatives are aligned with parties who now stand on opposite sides of the fence.

The PML-N chief, Mian Nawaz Sharif, has said he does not wish members of his party to seek ‘favours’. We would imagine that this is possible anyway, over telephone lines or through messages, and is a matter of party discipline or ethics. A simple instruction to members to avoid doing so should have been sufficient. The new hostility from the PML-N is, however, disturbing. While the opposition is free to criticise government policies, it should not be necessary to openly display animosity in the manner adopted by the PML-N. Cooperation between opponents is a hallmark of mature democracy. The agreement on this between Democrats and Republicans after the recent setback suffered by President Obama’s party at polls is an example of this.

In 2008, the PML-N had promised to play a constructive role. It can do so whether as a government ally or in opposition. However, petty measures of the kind adopted now only bring back bitter memories of the 1990s and the role played by political parties to bring down the government, in order to propel themselves to power. In the process, both the PML-N and the PPP suffered damage. The biggest loser, though, was democracy. As things stand now, everything possible must be done to avert a repetition of such a scenario.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Al Qaeda and terror in Karachi[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 16th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The November 11 terrorist blast that destroyed the Sindh Police’s Crime Investigation Department (CID) offices has understandably evoked shock at the national level; and one is not surprised that the Sindh and federal governments have reacted to it energetically. The officials of the investigative agencies, whose knowledge is considerable even though stymied by political obstacles, have been swooping down on the strongholds of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and are expected to get to the origin of the plot that matured into the destruction it caused.

Investigators in Sindh and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are on the scent of the killers while Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik is in his usual over-confident mode about how the terrorists will soon be caught and punished. His remark that he was betting his ‘smart money’ on the TTP being ‘solely responsible’ for the deadly attack appears to emanate from a lack of understanding of how the TTP operates and in combination with what other elements. Anyone who has followed al Qaeda’s spoor in Pakistan will tell you that the TTP cannot be ‘solely responsible’ for an action as big as the CID blast.

There is a general consensus among the public that our politicians and officials should not repeat the mantra ‘no Muslim could do it’ because it sounds hollow. If the TTP has announced its complicity in the blast, it should be accepted as such unless our own investigation proves that it was some non-Muslim organisation sent in by our enemies, the US, India and Israel. When Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah said it, the nation already knew that it was not a non-Muslim terrorist but our own TTP who, together with al Qaeda, claims to be better Muslims than the government of Pakistan which is a ‘mere slave of America’. That al Qaeda and its adjuncts like the TTP are accepted as ideal Muslims is proved by the circulation of Al Zawahiri’s ‘constitution’ for Pakistan through the madrassa network of the country, including the Deobandi madrassas of Karachi.

The investigators also refer to Jandullah, the Karachi-based terrorist organisation that surfaced some years ago with a family of doctors taking care of the al Qaeda wounded in their hospital. Dr Akmal Waheed and his younger brother Dr Arshad Waheed were convicted in 2005 by an anti-terrorism court and received rigorous imprisonment totalling 18 years. The officers who say that Jandullah has been ‘restricted’ by them in Karachi should explains how Akmal Waheed succeeded later in transferring himself to South Waziristan to join his masters and then how he was allowed to escape to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after the Pakistan Army attacked the tribal area in 2010.

First, let us end the confusion of seeing TTP, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jandullah and al Qaeda separately. Someone has to get all the investigative officers together and run before them the information being spread by al Qaeda itself. Better still, the investigative agencies have to end their mutual insulation and allow the more informed officers to brief those who speak to the media and create a bad impression because of their indifference to facts. A website connected to al Qaeda’s military arm in Pakistan sprang up on the Internet around June 2010, and became active in early July. It is called The Brigade 313 website and blazons a flag with words “Al Qaeda Brigade 313” in the centre, while the text describing Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jandullah, and the “Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan” occupies the four corners of the flag.

The killers in Karachi are highly centralised in their planning and we know that Brigade 313 is being led by someone who once fought our war in Kashmir with great distinction, Ilyas Kashmiri. He is also a walking lesson on how not to create non-state actors because he has killed more Pakistanis than anyone else, and his victims have been many army officers, including a former chief of the Special Services Group Major-General Faisal Alvi in Islamabad, through another retired army officer, Major Ashiq, who also filled the coffers of al Qaeda through kidnappings for ransom. Ilyas Kashmiri has arisen in the ranks of the al Qaeda hierarchy and sits in on all the meetings of the Arab terrorist top brass. He is now being named the ‘next bin Laden’ by the followers of the terrorist ‘republic’ in North Waziristan.

By several accounts from various sources including the usually well-informed blog “The Long War Journal”, Brigade 313 is al Qaeda’s military organisation in Pakistan, and is made up of Taliban and allied jihadist groups. Members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jandullah (the Karachi-based, al Qaeda-linked group), and several other Pakistani terror groups are known to have merged with al Qaeda in Pakistan, and the group operates under the name of Brigade 313. It is absurd, after absorbing this information, to ignore al Qaeda while surmising about the terrorists who perpetrated the CID outrage, Karachi’s biggest to-date.

Who is abetting Brigade 313? That too has become clear repeatedly in the past incidents. There is an involvement of ethnic politics in it, which means the anti-ANP Pashtuns emanating from the Afghanistan and Waziristan diaspora filling the madrassas of Karachi; it also means a large number of boys from South Punjab who went to Karachi madrassas while Karachi was the world’s most significant headquarters of al Qaeda headed by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad; and it also means the human fodder keeping alight the intra-madrassa conflict in the mega city, with al Qaeda arrayed against the Barelvi school of thought.

Lastly, it will take a much better organised force with a healthy ratio to the population to face the Frankenstein we are up against. Since Brigade 313 also contains non-state actors that the state is protecting as proxy warriors against India, the institutions of the state — including the intelligence agencies — will have to be cleansed before we are on an equal footing with our foe. As far as the nomenclature ‘non-Muslim’ is concerned, it is we who are non-Muslims under al Qaeda’s doctrine of ‘jahiliya’, not the terrorists.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Eid and happiness[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[RIGHT][B]November 17th, 2010[/B][/RIGHT]

For many years now, our Eids have been sad occasions overshadowed by events that deter us from expressing happiness. Both Eidul Fitr and Eidul Azha pass with people trying their best to look as if they are celebrating, not spontaneously but in obedience to the Divine edict. Eidul Azha has the extra dimension of sacrifice which bares the growing economic weakness of the masses to anyone who cares to take note. This year, it is being observed amid an extra load of sorrow: the mega-flood still has millions of affected people in its grip and terrorism, perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims, is on the upswing.

There are certain economic laws that the media wants to defy when it depicts the negative side of the holy occasions of Hajj and Eid. Ever since the country’s creation, the price hike is portrayed as a shock that should be prevented. Yet, because of the entry of some young and knowledgeable journalists into these business programmes of TV channels, the hike is now described as helpful to farmers who raise sacrificial animals. The economy of sacrifice — from the rearing of the animal to its sale — is in complete conformity with the laws of economics; it is the common man who benefits on the production side and the charities who gain from the sacrificial spinoff of hides.

Media hype portraying the market negatively, however, cannot be ignored. Every Eid, there is a general rise of the price graph because of the spurt in demand when people feel like spending. Looked at closely, the chain of many sellers cannot be called profiteers. (In Ramazan, too, rising prices also benefit the makeshift handcart salesman who appears just for the duration of the month when even the poor consume a bit more than usual.) One can say that our Eids elevate the economy through heightened marginal consumption. But taking the camera to the market of sacrificial animals and making the buyer complain about how the ritual has gone out of his reach shows only half the picture of the economy of Eid.

There was ‘shock’ coverage of the goat that sold for a million rupees in Lahore. Why denigrate the occasion and portray Pakistanis as selfish and profiteering persons? If the market is thin on the supply side and demand is healthy why shouldn’t the livestock farmer make his extra buck? So what if a rich man has walked away with the prize goat, leaving the poor kibitzer standing by in despair? This time it is the not-so-rich livestock farmer who looks like he is ripping everyone off. Let it be said, however, that some media coverage also highlighted the risk the farmer took in travelling with his expensive animals through various official and unofficial bottlenecks on the road where he had to shell out ‘security’ money. The poor man, however, who brings in fodder for the animals has the post-flood market on his side.

Some awkwardness cannot be ignored no matter how optimistically you scan Eidul Azha. The railways issued salary cheques that bounced, as a result of which the railwaymen struck work which, in turn, left a number of Eid-related trains stranded. The economy is still on its way down and opinions differ sharply on how this downward slide can be stopped. Gloom results from the wrong portrayal of crises by our leaders and TV anchors telling people that defiance of the IMF conditionalities is the right way to go, and that any taxation enhancing the revenue of the state in these troubled times is an extortion.

If it is any consolation, the entire Islamic World has been described in the khutba of the chief cleric of the Kaaba as a polity in trouble of one sort or another. If you count Eid Milad also, our three Eids make us sad, which invariably concentrates our minds on where we have gone wrong. The chief cleric this year spoke less of the unfairness of the world against Muslims and more of the cruelty of Muslims against Muslims. Eid Milad has more often than not been marred by one major sect slaughtering the other. Let us hope that this Eid passes without violence.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Budget cuts[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

Perhaps somewhat belatedly, the government has decided to reduce its budget by as much as Rs300 billion, which represents 9.1 per cent of the combined federal and provincial fiscal outlays. This newspaper has consistently asked the government to put itself on a fiscal diet, as a measure of good faith, before asking the public to pay more in taxes. It is welcome to note that the government seems to be willing to take tangible efforts on that front. In the aftermath of the flood, it makes sense for the government to divert at least some part of the development expenditure towards reconstruction efforts. There are, of course, risks to this course of action, not least of which is the economic slowdown that is to be expected from reducing development outlays. Having said that, there is a strong case to be made for prioritising reconstruction over further development, especially given the scale of devastation.

Much of the revised budget relies on the imposition of new taxes as well as a revised mechanism for the sales tax. The finance secretary, Salman Siddique, has made it clear that if the government fails to gain parliamentary support for the newer taxes, it will reduce its own expenditures. This is the right approach and we applaud the finance ministry for stating the policy clearly.

Yet the revised budget is not entirely without its failings. Development, for instance, seems to be the only segment of the budget that has been cut. There has been no attempt by the finance ministry to reduce the operating budgets of what is described by many economists as a bloated government machinery. It seems that the finance ministry stands ready to sacrifice, so long as the budgetary privileges of bureaucrats and politicians remain intact. While there is a baseline below which it is difficult to cut government expenditure without reducing services, most economists seem to agree that the government of Pakistan is nowhere near that level.

Unless the cutbacks are visibly affecting both elected officials as well as senior bureaucrats, it seems unreasonable of the government to ask the citizenry to pay more taxes, such as the flood tax currently being contemplated. While we applaud the current effort to reduce government spending, more clearly needs to be done.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Pakistan’s ranking in terrorism[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 20th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

A recent ‘ranking by death’ study conducted by a ‘global risks’ advisory firm, Maplecroft, has listed 10 countries ‘at extreme risk’; and Pakistan is second in the count after Somalia. The list has the following countries in it: Somalia (1), Pakistan (2), Iraq (3), Afghanistan (4), Palestinian Occupied Territory (5), Colombia (6), Thailand (7), Philippines (8), Yemen (9) and Russia (10). Out of the 10, six are under threat from al Qaeda or its subsidiaries. Barring the Philippines, the killers and the killed were Muslims. Somalia killed soldiers from neighbouring states Ethiopia and Burundi, sent in by the African Union.

Somalia experienced 556 terrorist incidents, killing a total of 1,437 people and wounding 3,408 between June 2009 and June 2010. In the same period, Pakistan experienced nearly 1,500 deaths including some attributable to the ‘mafia’ and ethnic wars in Karachi. In Somalia, where al Qaeda is behind the youth organisation Shabab, deaths were caused by ‘foreign’ warriors too, thought to be 4,000 in number including some Pakistanis sent into Somalia after training in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Somalia may have beaten Pakistan in the ranking because of the virtual non-existence of the state there, but it is less of a trouble to the world — the Somali pirates are a problem but they fall in another category. On the other hand, Pakistan has a state structure with an army capable of taking on any external foe on the basis of its nuclear deterrence. Many in Pakistan would have thought that Afghanistan would beat Pakistan as a ‘high risk’ country. What, however, has to be taken into account is the quality of the presence of terrorist groups and the nurture Pakistan provides to foreign terrorists often killed by CIA drones in the ‘ungoverned spaces’ of Pakistan.

Yemen has been equally tumultuous with a population divided by religion and troubled by financial and physical interventions from Iran and al Qaeda, and complicated further by an ‘Iran versus the Arabs’ situation in the region. Its growing identification with al Qaeda was signalled recently when two Pakistanis — a British national girl who stabbed her local MP and the other American national Faisal Shahzad who planted a bomb in Times Square in New York — were persuaded on the internet by a Yemen-based terrorist to become a part of al Qaeda’s war against the US and its allies. Yet Yemen is not as much the global magnet for terrorists as Pakistan is. Foreign terrorists proliferate in Pakistan. A group of American-Pakistani boys was recently arrested before they could access the al Qaeda stronghold of North Waziristan.

The study has been done for businessmen interested in investments at the global level; therefore the risk is computed with ‘capital sensitivity’ in mind. For Pakistanis, however, the long-term implications of the presence of al Qaeda on its territory are more important. Judged by that yardstick, Pakistan is far more at risk than Somalia and Yemen or even Iraq. Trouble in these two small states is containable in the long run; in Pakistan trouble is sustained over the long-term by the level of development of the state, its economy and its growing religious nature. It is now accepted by scholars that a terrorist organisation like al Qaeda would be less interested in making its home in ‘thin and weak states’ with little financial capacity than in states where money and manpower are available from local sources.

There are ‘ancillary organisations’ in Pakistan that resonate to the message of al Qaeda. Even in cities like Islamabad, where Lal Masjid was attacked by Pakistan army commandos in 2007, the pro-al Qaeda madrassas have mushroomed. During Musharraf’s so-called anti-terrorism drive the capital city saw the setting up of 80 madrassas; it has since gone beyond 100, with most legal and illegal mosques functioning as recruiting grounds for terrorist organisations. (The boys who carried out the Parade Lane massacre in Rawalpindi this year mostly came from Islamabad.) After that, count the vast regions where there is no writ of the state, and the persistence of the ‘non-state actor’ militias which Pakistan refuses to ban, and you have a far more endangered state than either Somalia or Afghanistan.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]NATO and the exit from Afghanistan[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 21st, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Addressing the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) summit in Lisbon, Portugal, US President Barack Obama has reaffirmed that the US and its allies “will move towards a new phase, transition to Afghan responsibility, which begins in 2011, with Afghan forces taking the lead on security across Afghanistan by 2014”. He will start withdrawing American soldiers from Afghanistan next year, just as the ‘surge’ of American troops he allowed is beginning to have effect in the eastern theatre of war in the country.

The US is in Afghanistan together with 42 other countries out of which 28 are Nato members. There are nearly 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan under the Nato rubric of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the US, but many member countries either want out or will stay clear of the combat zone. After 600 deaths suffered this year at the hands of the Taliban — the highest yearly toll since 2001 — and the economic downturn in Europe, enthusiasm for war has significantly dampened. No one talks of ‘victory’ anymore and that means that Nato will have to change the way it is operating.

It certainly means withdrawal. Countries that have received the brunt of the Taliban assault — the UK, Canada and Denmark — want to leave much before 2014. Others have not agreed to be in harm’s way, keeping their forces in areas where there is not much fighting going on. Holland and Canada are in the process of bringing their soldiers back home as public support for this ‘collective defence’ venture, evoked after 9/11 under Article 5 of the Nato charter, dwindles. The American public is no less unenthusiastic but politicians in the US are more agreed about the need to retain some presence in Afghanistan even after 2014.

There is not much the US can do about the lack of enthusiasm among its Nato allies. Yet, President Obama was successful in getting the member states to send in 10,000 additional troops. There is no doubt that Nato states are worried about the threat of international terrorism radiating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hence there is some dissension among politicians responding to public pressure, on the one hand and strategists counting the number of times the European Union has been attacked or could have been attacked by al Qaeda cells, on the other.

One thing is certain. Nato members have become sharply aware of the failure of a purely military strategy in Afghanistan which ignores such ancillary civilian functions as reconstruction, local employment programmes and health aid, etc. After 61 years of what its supporters have called a successful existence, Nato has found itself bogged down in a season of bad economic news. One expert in the US says: “Although Nato still has value as a regional alliance, for demographic, economic and cultural reasons, it will be increasingly hard-pressed to generate substantial useful military capability.” It is also being made more abstract in its thinking by more European states wanting to join for reasons that hardly gibe with the founder members.

A German think-tank has put forward suggestions for the next phase of the Isaf presence in Afghanistan: “The foundation of our policies must be what the people want locally, not what we in the West see for Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need a new thought and solution approach from the bottom up and no perception of our designs in the hearts and minds of Afghans.”

It goes on to propose: “A new emphasis of German developmental aid policy should be in the particularly important tribal areas (Fata) in Pakistan, close to the border to Afghanistan, because these areas are significant for al Qaeda and the Taliban. From here, Afghanistan and Pakistan are attacked and terrorists are trained for missions in Germany.”

The Americans plan to stay during President Obama’s tenure in office. Till then, events on the ground are going to acquire more importance than most Pakistanis realise. Nato may be in the mood to flee today but its nucleus is worried about the region because of Iran which it perceives as a global threat. The Republicans now dominant in the US Congress agree. Pakistan’s importance will increase in the days to come but, if the mood in this country is any index, the relationship will become increasingly problematic. Pakistan lacks the ability to do what Nato wants it to do, but it puts up a posture of defiance based on a mistaken assessment that it can project its power into Afghanistan to offset the presence of India.

Pakistan’s threat of power projection into Afghanistan is clearly based on its presumed capacity to manipulate the Taliban and their master, al Qaeda. It sees a dichotomy of intent among the Taliban where there is none: the Taliban who kill Pakistanis are the very Taliban that have attacked Afghanistan and continue to do so. Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated that the non-state actors it uses against other states don’t necessarily take orders from it at all times. As in the case of Hekmatyar, it is also amply proved that the Afghan elements it uses to spearhead its power-projection also don’t follow its instructions when it clashes with their own objectives. There is increasing evidence that it is Pakistan, through its so-called ‘peace deals’, that actually takes instructions from its proxies.

Pakistan will be the most threatened state in the region after Nato withdraws from Afghanistan. Because of policies related to its military India-centrism, the state in Pakistan has become extremely weak. Its lack of writ in about 60 per cent of the territory has been compounded by the rise of criminal groupings, ready to align with local and foreign terrorists found in Fata and some big cities like Karachi. Governance across the years of war in Afghanistan has become problematic, encouraging many to flee the country with their investments. The Darwinist dictum was not that the weakest will die but that the one unable to mutate will die.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]New man at the CII[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 22nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

After a long interval following the retirement of Dr Khalid Masood in May this year, Senator Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani of the JUI-F has been appointed chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). A commitment to this effect had been made months ago to the party. The decision to implement it comes as a means to appease an ally angered by the appointments to the parliamentary committee for the appointment of judges. There can be no greater contrast between Dr Masood and Maulana Sherani. This has already been pointed out by NGOs and a host of other persons concerned by the appointment. As a scholar, Dr Masood had a sound grounding in Islam and all its many dimensions. During his tenure some of the decisions taken marked extremely important steps forward. For instance, women were given greater guarantees of rights to property and recommendations made for changes in other laws that had a negative impact on their status in society. The same liberal interpretation was taken forward to other areas of life.

Many fear that under Maulana Sherani just the opposite will happen. He is known to be a hard-line conservative who adheres to the same retrogressive views with which the JUI-F is associated. This does not augur well as far as a move towards more enlightened times is concerned. The government may have a point when it says that the Chairman of the CII does not have a veto power and that all decisions within the body are taken collectively by persons representing all schools of thought. However, symbolism also has an important part to play in the way things are perceived by people. It is also true, as we have seen in the past, that the chairman does indeed play a role in setting the direction taken by the CII. It would be a pity if we saw the good work of the past reversed for the sake of political point scoring especially when this move comes from a party that prides itself on its progressive credentials.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Political principles[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 22nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]
The petition put before the LHC by PML-Q MPA and son of party chief Pervaiz Elahi, Moonis Elahi, seeking a permanent ban on Google Blogger as it contained ‘hate’ material against him, offers us a telling insight into the minds of our political leaders. They need a reminder that around the world lives in the public sphere, notably as a politician, leave individuals open to all kinds of attack. Seeking a ban on websites used by millions does not offer an acceptable solution. Highly offensive material against US President Barack Obama can be found on many websites. He has not sought their closure.

The reply to the court by the director for telecom that links on sites can be blocked but that ‘globally useful’ websites cannot be shut off entirely is a sensible one. However, even closing down certain links amounts to a form of censorship. The internet offers an entirely free flow of information; this is its strength. Tools allow parents to prevent children from accessing unsuitable material. Beyond the childhood years, it is questionable if such material should be censored. Net users can decide which sites they choose to view. In this respect, the precedent set in the past by authorities is unfortunate. The temporary banning, a few months ago, of websites that included Facebook and YouTube served no useful purpose. The continued denial of access to many Baloch nationalist websites by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority is even more disturbing.

Mr Moonis Elahi, who in his petition has also sought that the owners of the website be asked to remove the material he objects to, should also keep in mind that in some cases certain actions lead to strong, perhaps inappropriate, reactions. He must attempt to assess if this is true in any way, and if it is, to reconsider conduct, assess why various actions surface and consider remedies that focus on himself rather than a demand that hugely popular websites be banned.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Unholy pligrimage[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 23rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Massive corruption and mismanagement in the conduct of Hajj affairs would seem to be the very bottom of the abyss anyone can sink to. It seems all the more ironical that the Hajj scandal that has been hitting headlines for some weeks now should take place in a country like ours — where a great display of public piety is often put on and claims of religiosity made by people everywhere. This is matched by what appears to be a growing lack of morality. The allegations of wrongdoing have been particularly widespread this year. We have already heard complaints made publicly by a Saudi prince who alleged that apartments given to pilgrims from Pakistan had rents that were exorbitant and that they were located much further from the Kaaba compared to other available housing. He further alleged that the reason for this was that officials had made money on the side and that he was willing to furnish evidence to this effect. The director-general in charge of the operation was asked to come back to Pakistan and eventually arrested — but only after the Supreme Court intervened. The matter did not end there. Hamid Saeed Kazmi, the religious affairs minister, has been accused of mismanagement and even one of his colleagues, the science and technology minister, has stepped in and suggested that Mr Kazmi cannot claim innocence.

In some ways ,of course, all this is hardly new. We have heard much the same many times before. It is, after all, no secret that corruption is rampant everywhere. But if we can sink to depths in matters that hold a central place in our religion, if we can so ruthlessly exploit poor people who have saved for years to make the pilgrimage, then what does all this say about us as a people? We are told the matter is being investigated. It has indeed created some embarrassment in Islamabad. But whatever comes of this inquiry nothing will change the fact that thousands have suffered during an occasion of key importance to their lives due to the unscrupulous actions of various individuals. We can only hope — and pray — they receive the punishment they deserve so that such acts are not repeated in the future, at least as far as the conduct of Hajj affairs goes.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The shame of Aasia Bibi’s blasphemy charade[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][RIGHT]November 23rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]
Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has gone to a Sheikhupura jail where a poor Christian woman bhatta mazdoor (brick-kiln labourer) has been sentenced to death by the sessions judge. She was accused of having blasphemed against the Holy Prophet (pbuh). The governor, unexpectedly for a politician, called it an outrage and has pledged to draft an amnesty letter to the president asking him to pardon Aasia Bibi. Most other politicians have kept quiet while human rights workers and NGOs working for women’s rights have protested at yet another shameful prosecution under the universally condemned blasphemy law in Pakistan.

Aasia Bibi did hard labour for the local bricklaying industry in Nankana Sahib and had the usual complaint about unfair and violent labour practices. She, however, also ran the gauntlet of living in the midst of an increasingly narrow-minded Muslim community of poor labourers presided over by a bigoted blasphemy law-loving cleric. Two reasons are related to why she was entrapped by an equally colluding police: that she was provoked by other women drawing water when they said that she was ‘napaak’ (impure); and that she had asserted to other women that the meat of Muslim qurbani (sacrifice) was haram (prohibited) for her.

Whatever the reason for her entrapment, the politician was stunned into silence. Only the Punjab governor proved that he was not a mere drawing room liberal but had the courage to rise to Aasia Bibi’s defence. No one from among the big politicians from small parties like the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Awami National Party raised their voice even after there was international outrage led by the Pope at the Vatican. The PPP, which had just handed over the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to a cleric of the pro-Taliban ferocious variety, was loath to follow Governor Taseer’s example.

The PML-N was expected to stay out of it — because of its past role in stiffening the accursed law further — reaping mileage when the clergy was to bare it fangs at Governor Taseer, although Nawaz Sharif had gone to a Christian charity school and had probably seen members of his family visit the city’s Christian charity hospital. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah criticised the governor’s action with his ear cocked to what the Sipah-e-Sahaba would say about the case. The clergy did not take long to respond. There was a collective frog chorus saying the blasphemy law could not be changed after a column appeared in this newspaper in which it was argued that the law be repealed. The Barelvis, crushed by the Taliban in numerous suicide attacks, came out saying Aasia Bibi could not be pardoned because pardon itself was un-Islamic.

It takes eight to nine years for a person convicted under the blasphemy law to get out of jail after a final benign judgement by the Supreme Court. The sessions judge, in most cases himself a bigot, is usually scared into handing out a conviction by the hostile madrassa clergy standing outside his court and baying for blood. Aasia Bibi, while agreeing to ask for pardon, has also appealed the case at the High Court; but the bitter truth is that finally it is the Supreme Court where ‘justice’ is delivered in the midst of a most defamatory campaign by concerned states at the international level. With their hopes at an end, human rights workers led by the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Asma Jahangir, have recommended that all blasphemy cases be heard at the High Court level instead of the sessions.

After the massacre of the Gojra Christians on the charge of blasphemy in 2009, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Human Rights had urged the government to re-examine the blasphemy law and improve its procedure. No one in the committee was convinced that anything could be done. In the past, procedural changes such as making blasphemy cases subject to the scrutiny of the divisional commissioner before making arrests and registering FIRs have been ignored. Minorities are increasingly under pressure from the mischief of this deeply-flawed law and there is no one who would agitate the way some of us are agitating for the release of Aafia Siddiqi from an American jail.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Privatisation through IPOs[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 24th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The decision by the government to use the stock exchanges to privatise state-owned enterprises is one that deserves to be welcomed. President Zardari indicated this the other day in a statement that he made on the subject saying that government organisations could be sold off using initial public offerings (IPOs) via the country’s bourses. If this plan is realised, it will turn out to be an important one in helping to develop avenues for small investors in Pakistan. State-owned enterprises are some of the largest companies in Pakistan. And while most of them make losses, they are all likely to attract substantial investor interest. If the administration follows through on this suggestion, then it will mean that foreign investors will have to channel their investment through the local exchanges.

Any foreign investment banks involved in underwriting the transactions will have to increase their presence in Pakistan, or create a presence from scratch. Local investment banks will also have a chance to burnish their credentials and add revenues. There may even be room for healthy collaboration between local and foreign banks, as was the case during the heyday of privatisation during the Musharraf era. So in addition to getting troublesome assets off the government’s books, the government would promote Pakistan as a destination for global financial institutions to invest.

There is a second, and perhaps more significant, advantage to privatisation through KSE listings. Local investors will have the opportunity to take advantage of initial public offerings that tend to be highly profitable. This will promote the idea of capital markets as an investment avenue for ordinary Pakistanis while also ensure the most lucrative returns are not restricted to highly connected insiders. A more transparent, functioning capital market that has the confidence of the public is in the national interest and this policy would go a long way towards ensuring that. In short, we welcome the president’s suggestion and hope that the administration will make it official policy. Pakistan’s economy needs a financial system that can help it grow.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The way of justice[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 24th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

he acquittal of lawyer Chaudhry Muhammd Naeem and his family accused early this year of the brutal murder of their 12-year old maid Shazia Masih in many ways adds to the risks faced by other domestic workers and especially children working in homes. The sessions court which heard the case in Lahore ruled that the girl had died of natural causes. It based its judgment on the evidence presented before it including a medical report from a local Lahore hospital. The courts of course are bound to go on what is presented before them. We have no way of knowing the accuracy and quality of investigations by police and other findings in the case. However it is apparent that the matter perhaps needed stronger inquiry and a greater desire to obtain justice for the underdog. At the time of the death there had been a public outcry over the death to the maid who it was alleged had died as a result of torture. A campaign by lawyers in favour of the accused appeared to tilt matters his way as far as police were concerned.

More worrying is the plight of all domestic workers across the country. Surveys have found up to 80 per cent of female workers in homes suffer harassment or other forms of abuse. It now seems this occurs not only in the citadels of feudal overlords but also in the residences of educated, and presumably civilized, professionals. Just days ago a horrendous account came forward of another young maid being sacrificed by her employers as part of some bizarre ritual. There is quite obviously a need for laws to better protect domestic workers who are not covered by any regulation or the rules that guarantee at least some rights to workers in other categories. There also needs to be a crackdown against domestic work by children who are least able to protect themselves, to draw attention to their plights and as such have been repeatedly subjected to the most brutal crimes.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Watan cards fiasco[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 24th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

There seems to be a significant disconnect between what Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani announces and what the government is actually able to deliver in terms of services to citizens. This became especially apparent on the prime minister’s recent visit to Dadu where he was forced to explain the delay in the distribution of Watan cards. The scheme is a good idea in that it allows the government to efficiently disburse aid while minimising the chances of theft and helping to document the undocumented. However, all of those benefits rely on the government actually distributing them amongst flood victims, which seems to be beyond the capabilities of the bureaucracy at the moment. While the prime minister distributed some in Dadu, the task of aid disbursement cannot be accomplished by him alone.

The prime minister has on several occasions expressed his frustration at the inability of the bureaucracy to follow through on his orders. One can understand his frustration and appreciate it as a sign of sincere effort. However, as prime minister he has powers beyond expressing frustration and he can order disciplinary action against any official. There also seems to be a certain adhocism to the government’s relief efforts. For instance, eight newly-wed couples were given Rs200,000 each as part of the flood relief effort. But there have not been any reports of any other flood victims being given the same. Such discrimination serves to further the impression that the current administration takes care of only well-connected supporters. Of late, the prime minister has often spoken that the government will complete its term and those who want to see a new one in power could then use their vote at the next election. The performance of the ruling party at the next polls depends to a great extent on how it oversees the flood aid and relief distribution.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Corruption in India but…[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 25th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The opposition in India has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resign for lack of action against ministers guilty of corruption. India’s Supreme Court also earlier asked Mr Singh to explain why he had failed to act against the person responsible for a case of massive corruption in the telecommunication sector of the economy. Former telecommunications minister, A Raja, since ousted, came under the scrutiny of the national audit, which reported that he had probably walked away with $40 billion.

Other reprimands on how the Congress government has misgoverned have surfaced too. A US-based research group says India lost an estimated $462 billion taken out illegally in the past 60 years. Significantly, tax evasion and corruption have increased after India got rid of its low-growth ‘licence-raj’ economy in 1991. Unlike Pakistan, however, the corruption has surfaced mostly in the private sector where tax evasion and under-invoicing (exports) and over-invoicing (imports) are rampant.

Some other India scams are worth mentioning. The recent Commonwealth Games exposed India to global ridicule when the arena was found to be defective because of corruption in the award of contracts. Ashok Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra, was involved in the Adarsh scam worth billion of rupees, a housing programme meant for the families of the martyrs of the Kargil war of 1999 but where the flats were sold to undeserving individuals. If one were to think that the Pakistani judiciary is corrupt then they should hear this: in 2008, the then Chief Justice of India Justice KG Balakrishnan wrote to the prime minister recommending that proceedings be initiated for the removal of Justice Soumitra Sen, judge, Calcutta High Court, for corruption.

Justice Nirmal Yadav of the Punjab and Haryana high court was found indulging in forgery and abuse of his official position as a judge while buying land in Solan in the adjoining state of Himachal Pradesh. In 2008, a sum of Rs1.5 million in cash was mysteriously delivered at the residence in the same city, Chandigarh, of another judge of the high court, Justice Nirmaljit Kaur. This could be just the tip of the iceberg of corruption in India’s 28 high courts.

Comparison with Pakistan is inevitable but we undertake it usually for two purposes: one, to satisfy our ill-will against India as the ‘enemy state’ apparently going down the tubes; and two, to lighten the burden of guilt of our own corruption in Pakistan saying so what if we are corrupt, India is corrupt too. Tragically, there is a third way of looking at it: corruption is rampant in both India and Pakistan but India is steadily seen as a successful state while Pakistan seems to qualify as a ‘failing state’. Transparency International has ranked India 87th out of 178 countries on its 2010 International Corruption Perceptions Index. Pakistan was the forty-seventh most corrupt state in the world in 2009; it has become the forty-second most corrupt in 2010. In two years, we have broken some past records of our own. The scale, no doubt, is different when framed against the growth rates posted by the two countries.

There is more to read about India if we want to correct our perspective on Pakistan. The corrective is aimed at the Pakistani obsession that every case of scam must lead to collapse of the state at the highest point of imagination and a mid-term change of government at the lowest. The mind is so used to ‘toppling’ of elected governments by the army in the past that we have lost our faith in democracy and want to return to a military or quasi-military rule where we perceive less corruption. India, like Pakistan, is a non-exporting country. Its taxation system is as defective as Pakistan’s. Its infrastructure is abysmal just like Pakistan’s and service delivery and other issues of outreach are as poor, if not more.

The economist in Pakistan complains that the retail sector pays hardly any tax. The retailing sector of India can be split into two segments — the informal and the formal — and the former, comprising small retailers, pay no taxes. In terms of value, the Indian retail industry is worth $300 billion and its contribution to India’s gross domestic product stands at 10 per cent, the highest compared to all other Indian industries. What about loss-making in the state sector of the economy? In Pakistan all state-owned corporations account for a whopping Rs400 billion loss to the exchequer every year because of the frequent bailouts when there is debt-overhang from money payable to the oil sector.

Not all of India’s state sector economy is something to write home about. Out of the 48 units deemed “troubled”, seven have been identified as loss-making and fit for closure, while divestment is seen as the only option to revive another batch of 11 in the red. There are nine profitable companies that won’t be touched. About 17 units are under scrutiny for options of revival ‘by inviting support from private sector’. Yet what is it that makes the world think India is ‘shining’ while Pakistan is experiencing a never-ending eclipse?

Pakistan is different from India only in its problem of law and order which is undermined by terrorism which, in turn, appears to the world as embedded in the state structure itself. Why does the world think the state in Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism radiating threat to other states? Because the state in Pakistan has used non-state actors in its policy of jihad and will not — or is unable to — act against the UN-banned terrorist organisations on its soil. Furthermore, because of its earlier policy of deploying jihadi organisations, it has created centres of power inside the country it can no longer control. Some observers, and this may include a few inside Pakistan as well, are of the view that the writ of the state no longer works or is absent in a large chunk of the country’s territory. That is definitely not the case with India.

[CENTER][IMG]http://i1.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Corruption-Index11-640x480.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER]
[B]The darkest regions represent the most corrupt countries and the the lighter regions represent the least corrupt countries in the CPI. PHOTO: TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL[/B]

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]‘Weak’ state and ‘disappeared’ people[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 26th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The attorney general of Pakistan has told the Supreme Court that the country’s intelligence agencies “could not be made respondents in any case.” He was speaking in connection with the ‘disappearance’, from Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, of 11 men acquitted by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) before they could be released. There was some evidence that they were handed over to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Both the ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) have denied that they took away the acquitted men.

Significantly, the men had been arrested and tried on the charge of an attack on the GHQ earlier this year, as well as an attempt on the life of former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. Now it is a case of habeas corpus, similar to the case of the ‘disappeared’ people that the honourable Court is pursuing, given the fact that habeas corpus is the foundation of criminal law and ensures legal process. If there is no habeas corpus, the state allowing people to be arrested without being presented before a court of law is often called fascist.

In Pakistan, ‘disappearance’ is said to be of two kinds. The first is the incompetence of the prosecuting agencies — the 11 men of Adiala jail were improperly ‘sued’ according to the attorney general — which has caused the release of known terrorists who have been killed after being released. The courts are not to blame: they must apply the principle of guilty beyond a shadow of doubt to all comers. And that applies to ATCs as well. The second reason is that terrorists are able to intimidate the legal and executive bureaucracy in letting them go. There are numberless cases where known killers were let off because the witnesses either mysteriously died or were cowed into reneging. There have been, no doubt, cases where the magistrate, unsure of state protection, saved his life by acquitting the killer.

The Supreme Court’s effort at putting the country back on the rails of habeas corpus is meritorious, but is increasingly coming up against the state’s much weakened writ in the face of terrorism. It has particularly faced a tough situation in Balochistan where the ‘disappeared’ people have belonged to all kinds of categories — members of private armies involved in acts of terrorism; people scared into escaping into Afghanistan during the insurgency; and those picked up by the security agencies — backed not so much by the legal community as by sub-nationalism in the province. Wherever in the world there has been uprising against the state, disappearances have been experienced.

The largest disappearances in per capita terms have been in Sri Lanka: 3,000. In Indian Punjab, thousands of secret cremations of individuals killed in police custody throughout the 1980s have been uncovered in just a single district. This is true of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh too. In Kashmir, in 1989 alone, some 7,000 people disappeared at the hands of Indian security forces. The United States organised the Guantanamo Bay camp to avoid habeas corpus. Aafia Siddiqi was not charged as an abettor of al Qaeda because that would have obliged the American government to produce 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Muhammad — currently at Guantanamo — in a New York court. Cases proliferate in Afghanistan, Bhutan and in the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh.

Letting terrorists go can be lethal. Abdullah Mehsud, let off from Guantanamo Bay, went on a killing spree in Pakistan, abducting and killing Chinese engineers working in Tribal Areas. Shia leader Hasan Turabi was killed in Karachi in 2006 after he warned that terrorists let off recently by the Sindh High Court will kill him. Speaking to Newsweek Pakistan (November 15), Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer complained that “the people suspected of involvement in the murder of the surgeon-general of Pakistan, the attempts on Musharraf, the attack on the GHQ and the attack on the Danish embassy have all been released”. There is the quaint example of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi killer Malik Ishaq whom the Punjab government keeps in custody but pays his family for it because he has been released by the court!

Demanding habeas corpus is the court’s effort to bring the country back to normal. But the process of bringing this ‘weak’ state back to normalcy requires fighting the armed terrorist who thrives on the basis of intimidation. There are two kinds of states in the ‘weak’ category: the ones that belong to the Third World roll call of disorganisation; and those that have lost their writ to embedded terrorists. Pakistan’s writ is lowest among the Third World category of disorganised states, and that too after counting Afghanistan and its warlords. There is practically no writ outside a couple of cities in Balochistan; there is no writ in most of Tribal Areas, federal and provincial; there is partial writ or ‘shared writ’ in such settled areas as Kohat and Hangu in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

There are alarming comparisons here, and they outmatch other states in South Asia. Cities like Peshawar and Karachi are at the mercy of terrorists and criminals who have adopted the modus operandi of the terrorists. They have no-go areas where security agencies too are attacked. There are no-go areas in a part of interior Sindh where tribal wars take place while the police stand aside and watch. There is a 75-kilometre long stretch of River Indus before it falls into the Indian Ocean where only dacoits rule and make people disappear in Karachi for money. The dacoits from this no-man’s land actually own entire communities in Karachi where some of the ‘goths’ they established have been regularised as towns by the government.

Yet the Supreme Court’s campaign to make state agencies answerable for the people they pick up is praiseworthy and the support it has in this regard from the entire world is justified. There are additional matters pertaining to the competence of state authorities, hardened by past immunity, that are also coming to the fore. Intelligence agencies have agreed to talk to the Supreme Court to explain their position. That is the right way to go. No one is above the law.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]The submarine affair[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The issue of kickbacks involved in the grant of a contract on Agosta submarines by France to Pakistan in the late 1990s refuses to die. Indeed, there seems to be a growing sensational dimension to the story which involves the death of 11 French naval engineers and three others in a suicide bombing in Karachi in 2002. The attack, blamed at the time on extremist elements, marked one of the first suicide attacks of this kind in the country and was widely believed to represent an assault against westerners.

Investigations in France, that suggest this may not quite be the case, lead us along a fascinating, if frighteningly dark, road. Relatives of the victims have demanded French President Nicholas Sarkozy, thought to be a party in the kickback deal, and other former French leaders to testify in the matter. The conjecture goes that, in a mafia-style murder, the Frenchmen died as punishment for failure to pay the kickbacks following a crackdown on corruption by a new government in Paris.

On the home front, some things are obvious. An attack of this nature could take place only with the involvement of the military and the agencies. No one else is capable of enacting it. This is all the more true as it took place during the height of power of a military regime. As we have become accustomed to hearing at every turn, the name of the president has been mentioned. But it is questionable quite what part he could have played in a sophisticatedly designed terrorist operation while in exile and with no known power within the country. The military has for too long been exempt from inquiry in wrongdoing of every kind. It is time our obsession with civilian politicians and with one man in particular, ended and was expanded to those institutions that have so far known immunity during every era. In the case of the Agosta deal in particular, the results could be quite fascinating, We owe it to our country, our citizens and to the Frenchmen who died here to get to the bottom of the matter.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A stroke of patience[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Pakistanis are impatient. For us, success needs to be instant. Every time one of our teams takes centre stage, the result should go in our favour. No one cares about a transition period or gradually building a team towards eventual success. Earlier this year knives were out for the hockey team that fared its worst in a World Cup — a dismal bottom place finish in New Delhi. Protests, retirements and new appointments followed but the results stayed the same. There were calls for the federation to undergo a revamp. Petitions were signed, press conferences organised and effigies burnt. Some players opted for a temporary break and some went into self-improvement mode, opting to rekindle the spark by turning their backs on Pakistan and participating in foreign leagues.

The Pakistan Hockey Federation insisted the Asian Games gold — and the 2012 London Olympics berth that accompanied — remained their primary target. Not many were prepared to listen, especially after fifth place at the Azlan Shah Cup and sixth at the Commonwealth Games. Worse than the results were the losses against India that complemented the humiliation. Even the hiring of a Dutch coach, with a whopping salary, failed to turn the fortunes around.

The voices still urged patience for the results that matter which, according to players and officials, were in the making. And as experience made a comeback to the squad, courtesy meek opposition, a rush of goals, and the oozing confidence that accompanied, allowed the nation to dream of the impossible. Pakistan edged past defending champions South Korea to play the final for the first time since 1990. The mighty neighbours suffered a shock defeat, presenting us with an easy ride to the podium.

With the achievement however, Pakistan hockey, similar to cricket, has set itself a dangerous precedent: to win every time they play.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Oil tanker encroachments[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

It is deplorable that, despite the Supreme Court’s judgment six months ago that oil tankers vacate encroachments in Clifton Block 1, the transport mafia is still using the residential area as a parking terminal. Oil tankers in Shireen Jinnah Colony have illegally encroached on public property and are a nuisance to residents of the area. Parked on both sides of the road, these tankers and trucks leave only one lane for the movement of vehicles causing frequent traffic jams. Meanwhile, transporters blithely carry on repair and maintenance, oblivious to the inconvenience they are causing citizens. As a result, auto workshops have opened in the area and residential property prices have plummeted.

When a judgment given by the Supreme Court of the country is so flagrantly disregarded, it goes to show how weak rule of law is and how feeble the institutions meant to uphold it. In April, the transporters agreed to abide by the Court’s ruling, but they appear not to have taken their commitment seriously and are now complaining that the alternate parking site provided by Karachi Port Trust (KPT) is ‘muddy’. The fact of the matter is that these law and order transgressions point to the rampant graft and corruption present in the system and occur with the connivance of local government and police officials. In the meantime, the KPT has failed to do its duty by not removing the encroachments or facilitating the transporters with appropriate parking space.

In a welcome move, the Supreme Court has now directed a probe in the matter, asking the Secretary of the Oil Companies Advisory Committee to submit a compliance report on its verdict. The registrar of the Sindh High Court has also been ordered to inspect the suitability of the parking site provided by KPT. Hopefully, this will be a wakeup call for civic service providers and bring some relief to citizens who know only too well the futility of laws and judgments without on ground implementation.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Mumbai’s 26/11 and later revelations[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 28th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

On November 26, 2008, ten terrorists rampaged across a well-known section of India’s commercial city, Mumbai, for three days and killed over 100 people before nine of them were gunned down. The one terrorist not killed was captured and has been talking to the Indians about his background. More revelations to prove Pakistani involvement in the attack have since come to light and now stand in the way of a dialogue of normalisation between India and Pakistan.

That is what Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was talking about when he said in Multan on November 26 that Pakistan had “strongly condemned” the Mumbai attacks and now hoped that the stalled dialogue with India over Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek and river waters would resume soon.

The Mumbai attack is yet another case in which Pakistan finds itself alone. The surviving terrorist was Ajmal Kasab, a trainee of Lashkar-e-Taiba (later Jamaatud Dawa), and a resident of a town in south Punjab. Lashkar-e-Taiba was banned by the UN Security Council. It then changed its name to Jamaatud Dawa, only to be banned again under that name by the same committee of the security council. Pakistan has been forced to run a trial against the military commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba and his cohorts but the process is taking long in the midst of a back-and-forth of the usual India-Pakistan inquiries for ‘more information’.

Meanwhile, more damning evidence has been provided by another individual, an American of Pakistani origin, David Headley, who was used by the plotters as an advance reconnaissance agent. He has spilled more beans, denied by Pakistan, but more or less believed by the entire world. Credibility leans the way it leans because of an earlier 1993 attack in Mumbai mounted from Pakistan with the help of a Mumbai don, Dawood Ibrahim, who is supposed to be currently living in Karachi. Here too, Pakistan’s response in the shape of a denial has been laughed away by the world.

We know Ajmal Kasab, but who is David Headley? People who knew him as he grew up in Pakistan have written that he is the son of a former director-general of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation and his American wife. Daud Gilani (the surname of his Pakistani father), or David as he is called now, was a perfect US-Pakistan physical and mental hybrid. He was caught while planning an al Qaeda attack in Denmark along with another Pakistani, Tahawar Hussain Rana.

Rana was born in Chichawatni in Punjab. According to one report, he was educated at Cadet College Hasan Abdal before becoming a citizen of Canada. It was in Hasan Abdal that he developed a friendship with his class fellow Daud Gilani and got to know other boys who were to rise within the military hierarchy of Pakistan and were allegedly a link in the chain that bound Pakistan to the Mumbai attack. Headley, now ‘singing’ to American intelligence officials, has named two retired army majors whom he claimed helped him in planning his reconnaissance work. He also alleged that these two officers, when in service, had worked in intelligence. No wonder, then, that the families of the Americans killed in the Mumbai attacks have asked the court in the US to summon the ISI. What is new and what actually puts Pakistan in deeper hot water is the revelation that it was al Qaeda — and Osama bin Laden personally — who thought up the Mumbai attack.

According to details revealed in a report, “Osama himself named the fedayeen team chosen for the terror strikes on Mumbai”. Headley has also said: “Lashkar commander Abdur Rehman, alias Pasha, is directly in touch with the top brass of al Qaeda, including Ilyas Kashmiri who is now number three in the al Qaeda hierarchy in Pakistan. Abdur Rehman has met Osama a number of times.”

Pakistan has not properly banned Jamaatud Dawa. Its leader Hafiz Saeed faced a trial at the Lahore High Court and was able to prove that he was improperly indicted and, after being freed, is now once again throwing challenges to India. He was allowed to hold a ‘mammoth’ rally in Lahore earlier this year to warn India against cheating Pakistan out of its waters — a false allegation — and was later allowed to hold another mammoth rally in Islamabad-Rawalpindi for the cause of Kashmir in the wake of the declaration of India-centrism at the highest military level in Pakistan.

The latest from Washington on the subject is the following statement: “Assistant Secretary US Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O Black Jr, in an interview with Times Now, (a TV channel in India launched as joint venture by the Times of India and Reuters), has said that the US has been serious about the Lashkar-e-Taiba since 2001 when it was involved in the parliament attack in India. US experts have identified the outfit as the single most serious threat to the United States after al Qaeda.”

Pakistanis were greatly put off when the British prime minister said something about Pakistan being involved on the wrong side of the war against terrorism. On the other hand, our Interior Minister Rehman Malik — if one can correlate his various statements made while trouble-shooting in Karachi — thinks that attacks inside Pakistan too are planned and executed under one authority.

The concept of the ‘good’ Taliban who will get us the status of kingmakers in Kabul is completely wrong and misleading. By not taking action against declared terrorist organisations, Pakistan is actually signalling where it stands in this war. Once again we are in a war we can never win, although most of us accuse the world of waging an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The 42 states fighting terror in Afghanistan will survive but Pakistan will have a tough time prospering under its current policy.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Farcical talks[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 29th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The element of farce that marks the effort to tackle the Taliban and win peace in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is sometimes hilarious but also immensely disturbing given the gravity of the situation. We have heard accounts recently of the totally inept and confused attempts by the American administration to find a means to tackle the situation. Problems of a different nature exist in Pakistan and now it seems that the Afghan government, which has for some time been promoting peace with the Taliban as a bid to win much-needed peace in a country that threatens to crumble into anarchy, may have been duped by an imposter who portrayed himself as top Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Mansoor, a member of the Quetta Shura, who reportedly met the top Aghan leadership, including President Hamid Karzai, in Kabul.

To rub salt — and a spot of chilli — into the wounds, Mansoor was stated to have been flown into Kabul by Nato — which has publically claimed it has no role in advocating peace with the Taliban, but is said to be tacitly involved. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke has been the latest to harp this line, which not everyone believes. The embarrassing story of the arrival of the convincing imposter has appeared in the US press and in the International Herald Tribune. President Karzai has denied meeting Mansoor, a man once tipped to take over as deputy head of the Quetta shura, but then the Afghan president’s credibility is not the best among world leaders.

Is it possible Pakistani intelligence had some role in all this? Their links with the Quetta Shura have been commented on often and it is hard to believe they would not know Mansoor. But this is only conjecture. What the latest little side story from a war, that simply refuses to end, tells us is that quite a lot is amiss. Till it is remedied we will see only more chaos, more disarray and, as such, a growing sense of the panic we now see in Washington and also Kabul.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]Violence against women[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 29th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

According to a report in this paper on November 24, 80 per cent of Pakistani women are victims of domestic violence. This is corroborated by the clinical experience of senior psychiatrists and by data collected by the Aurat Foundation, which showed that reported incidents of domestic violence have increased from 281 to 608 from 2008 to 2009. Overall, violence against women rose 13 per cent in 2009. The news report highlighted that while wife beating is generally associated with alcoholics and the less educated, the fact is that it is pervasive in pretty much all segments of society, including the so-called ‘educated’ ones.

Unfortunately, this kind of violence is difficult to monitor and almost always goes unreported, taking place as it does in a sphere of private life not open to scrutiny. Often, the victim herself becomes an accomplice, making excuses and covering up for the behaviour of the abuser. Lawmakers have a crucial role to play as far as equalising gender relations is concerned. The Domestic Violence (Protection and Prevention) Bill, introduced in 2004, has yet to be adopted as a law. In 2009, the opposition of the Council of Islamic Ideology to the bill came as a blow to those who had hoped for a level playing field for men and women.

It is fallacious to draw validation of domestic abuse from the Holy Quran, and it is time that the mullah brigade changes their stance and advocates civilised spousal relations to those who follow their teachings. Having said that, the pervasiveness of domestic violence shows that it is not merely the blind faithful who deem it appropriate to use force against the ‘weaker sex’ — members of the enlightened class, who may not necessarily ascribe to Islamic values, behave exactly the same way as their more ‘faithful’ counterparts. It is time we stop turning a blind eye to domestic violence and recognise it as a crime.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Ruckus over the RGST[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 29th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

It is impossible to raise new taxes without minor inflationary consequences. And it is evident that the government of Pakistan needs to raise new taxes. One would therefore conclude that debate over new taxes would revolve around which taxes would minimise inflationary impact. Instead, the opposition is convinced that while the government must raise taxes, it must do so with no impact on inflation. This is nothing short of highly irresponsible populism which may win them some votes but at the unacceptable price of jeopardising the financial future of the republic.

We understand that the government has been deficient in making the case for the value added tax, including renaming it the reformed general sales tax (RGST), which fails to explain what the tax is: it replaces an older tax and reduces the rate of taxation. It raises more revenue for the government by bringing more people into the tax net and helping to document an otherwise largely undocumented economy.

There will inevitably be a slight increase in the rate of inflation. But the experience of other countries suggests that the inflationary effects of the VAT are lower than those of most other taxes. And the administration seems to be actively designing the tax to minimise its impact on the poorest segments of society. If the opposition disagrees with the specifics, they should outline their arguments. But yelling populist slogans in parliament without presenting an alternative will not do the country any good.

It is also time to debunk the myth that the RGST will be more inflationary than the MQM’s proposed alternative: the agriculture tax. Food constitutes over half of what ordinary Pakistani household spends money on. To assume that it is possible to tax agriculture without an inflationary impact on food prices (which are exempt from the RGST) is folly at best and deliberate dishonesty at worst. The country deserves better from our elected leaders.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Three crashes in four months[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 30th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

With three planes having crashed on our soil in the last four months, Pakistan is fast becoming the new Bermuda Triangle of aviation. The latest incident took place in the early hours of the morning on November 28, when a Russian-made cargo plane crashed in Karachi, just minutes after taking off. Investigations into the causes of airplane crashes can take months, sometimes even years, but the initial assessment by the operator of the plane says that the crash was most likely caused after the plane was hit by a bird. As yet, there is no reason to believe that this crash was caused by either pilot error or the negligence of airport authorities.

The same cannot be said for the other two plane crashes in the past few months. On November 5, a small charter aircraft crashed in Karachi, killing all 21 people on board. Given that engine failure was suspected to have caused the crash, this points to a lack of oversight by the Civil Aviation Authority whose responsibility includes that airlines comply with flight safety standards. Similarly, many questions were raised as a result of the Airblue crash in the Margalla Hills. From the performance of air-traffic controllers to the age of the pilot, it seems that a series of errors and oversights led to the tragedy. However, the investigation report into the accident has yet to be made public and relatives of those who lost their lives have had to form an association to lobby for early release of the compensation that airlines are required to give after such incidents.

Quite understandably, the International Civil Aviation Administration has criticised Pakistan for its lack of qualified inspectors which it says leads to a lack of regulation of private airlines. As a long-term measure, the government needs to increase funding for training of inspectors and ensure they have the independence to operate without hindrance. As a more immediate step, all aircraft need to be carefully inspected to insure they meet international aviation safety standards and any planes that are not up to the mark should be grounded. The airlines will surely protest as this will lead to a loss of revenue at a time when the aviation industry in the country is struggling financially. But the government must start to put people over profits.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]More WikiLeaks damage[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]November 30th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

here is more damage to the US coming from the latest secret information released by WikiLeaks, the website that apparently obtained millions of secret ‘diplomatic’ messages downloaded by an anti-war US soldier. In October, much unsavoury information was revealed through 400,000 messages put out by Swedish WikiLeaks owner Julian Assange. Sensing that what the anti-war crusader might have in the shape of these diplomatic cables would be seven times more in volume and may contain more content embarrassing to the US, the Obama administration has swung into action.

In order to foreclose the imminent airing of US diplomacy, the Obama administration has called the leaks illegal, but that hardly matters since secrecy laws all over the world are now more observed in breach than in obedience — they don’t apply in the US except to officials from whose possession the information has leaked. But Mr Assange has taken the precaution of approaching US officials with the even more discomfiting request that it should point out the damaging items. It seems there is nothing the Obama administration can do but to approach all the governments on whom its diplomats were sending ‘frank’ secret assessments and beg them to ignore the revelations. This effort too will come to nothing.

The earlier batch of WikiLeaks had already embarrassed American diplomats trying to keep the US-Pakistan relations on an even keel. The lack of trust among the Americans dealing with Pakistan reflected Pakistan’s own ambiguities and strengthened the quarters in Islamabad that wanted the double-dealing to end in favour of a clear-cut anti-American policy articulation. The leaks further intensified the anti-US feeling in Pakistan born of the perception that America was in Afghanistan to nurture the Indian hegemonic designs in the region as a counterforce to the growing Chinese influence in Asia. They had also affirmed the scholarly studies made in the US about Pakistan’s concealed dealings with the Afghan Taliban.

The latest leaks focus on the Saudi king who dislikes President Asif Ali Zardari and wants the US to attack Iran to defeat its designs in Iraq which the king wants saved from the Iraqi leader Nouri al Maliki, whom he considers an Iranian proxy. There is confirmation in the leaks that terrorism in Pakistan is funded by Arab donors and that Qatar, where the Americans have their military-strategic headquarters, leads in this activity. The dispatches included in the leaks are embassy assessments of local leaders and their involvement in corruption. They also reveal lack of agreement with policies ostensibly followed by the host countries, which might affect relations currently based on expressions of trust. For instance, the leaks call in question the frequent American announcement that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe and under no threat of acquisition by the terrorists.

American secrets are never kept. There are two kinds of ‘unbuttoning’ that goes in the United States. There is the ‘instant bestseller’ source that is a kind of running commentary on pronounced policy telling us what the policymakers actually think. It happened to former US president Bush while he was busy fighting the Iraq war; it has happened to President Obama while he fights his ‘wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there is the second kind of ‘airing’ of secrets carried out by insiders of all sorts in the form of bestselling ‘memoirs’ while safely in retirement. This is how ‘open government’ is achieved in America after a ‘not-so-open government’ has handled world affairs and caused events to take place in distant lands.

Pax Americana has unfolded in our times in the midst of an unceasing stream of ‘illegal’ and damaging information. America has survived disclosures in the past; it actually may have benefited from them. It has learned to disavow and even apologise. Will it survive the current unprecedented virtual Niagara of information? Working on the basis of realism, the world will roll with the punch and allow America to bounce back too. All empires were hated by their competitors but tolerated because they imposed an order on an otherwise anarchic world. Till the hegemon was replaced by another.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Our dereliction in Kurram[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 1st, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

According to a report published in a newspaper on November 30, the government has allowed a very dubious meeting between the elders of the Kurram Agency, members of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) and “foreign” agents of the Haqqani Group from North Waziristan. The meeting was held “in a guesthouse” in Islamabad and the objective was “restoration of peace in Parachinar (Kurram headquarters) which has remained cut off from the rest of country for three years.”

Who were the interlocutors? MNA Sajid Hussain Turi representing the Shia of Kurram and some elders, while the opposite side was represented by Qari Taj, the commander of the Haqqani Group in Kurram Agency, and Karim Mushtaq, TTP commander for Kurram and Orakzai agencies. Another MNA, Munir Khan Orakzai, also attended the meeting. The talks were fruitless because the Shia Turi side was not willing to give the right of way to the TTP and Haqqani group militants through their territory. In retaliation, the other side refused to lift the roadblock on Thall-Parachinar Road that cuts Kurram off from the rest of the country.

The Turis are in a bind. They can’t leave or enter their agency and have to use Afghanistan territory where they are at risk of being killed by pro-al Qaeda terrorists. Al Qaeda is not particularly fond of the Turis because they are Shia and because they did not allow al Qaeda leadership to stay on their soil after its escape from Tora Bora in 2001. Well-off Turis spend Rs8,000 on a plane ride from Peshawar to get home. The Agency is no longer under any semblance of federal government control for the last three years. And the Haqqani Group from Afghanistan, which is being allowed to hold talks with the Turis in Islamabad, has no business being in Pakistan.

Pakistan is projecting its power into Afghanistan on the basis of warriors who don’t belong to Pakistan and is giving them a status inside Pakistan that violates the sovereignty of the state. The TTP is dominant under the banner of anti-Shia feeling spread in the region by the Sipah-e-Sahaba, a banned terrorist organisation of Punjab which inspires the tribes that live around Kurram. Kurram lies next to the three Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Nangarhar. It has half a million inhabitants out of which around two-fifths are Shia — besides, the capital Parachinar has a majority Shia population. The agency lies next to Waziristan, Orakzai and Khyber agencies where warlords harbour severely sectarian feelings. Down the road from Kurram to Peshawar, cities like Kohat and Hangu have Shia communities cowering before the power of the Taliban for the last decade.

Kurram has had to run the gauntlet of the first TTP chief, Baitullah Mehsud, who sent his Waziristan lashkar there under the blood-thirsty Qari Hussain in 2007. Around 400 Mehsud and Wazir militants fought against the Shia in Kurram, burning down villages and killing dozens of them. Two months later, another warlord, Hakimullah Mehsud, sent hundreds of fighters to outnumber the Shia offering resistance to him. After becoming head of the TTP, Hakimullah appointed Mullah Noor Jamal from Orakzai, known as Mullah Toofan, to lead the Taliban. Mullah Toofan, a brutal commander, indulged in carnage and blocked the above-mentioned road, cutting Kurram from the rest of Pakistan. Infamous warlord Mangal Bagh of Khyber Agency, successfully challenging the Pakistan army, has also dipped his hands in the blood of the people of Kurram.

Pakistan’s military strategy focuses on a quest to control territories not part of its map, at the expense of territory it does have. The bulk of the Pakistan Army faces India on the eastern border. Because of Pakistan’s ambivalence towards the TTP and the Haqqani Group, it has had to suffer a gradual diminution of its writ in small cities like Kohat, Hangu and Bannu, while virtually losing control over the provincial capital, Peshawar. On the eve of America’s exit from Afghanistan, the focus is on how to prevent India from retaining its foothold there. It is difficult to imagine how territories lost inside Pakistan in the pursuit of this strategy will be regained.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]SBP’s discount rate hike[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 1st, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

It appears that the battle between the finance ministry and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is set to continue for some time now. For the second time in a row, the central bank used its monetary policy meeting to increase its benchmark discount rate — the rate at which commercial banks can borrow from the SBP — by half a percentage point. The rate now stands at 14 per cent, close to its 2008 crisis-level peak of 15 per cent.

Yet the central bank has been very blunt about why such a rate increase was necessary. Inflation has been spiralling out of control, largely due to over-borrowing by the federal government. The State Bank has a single over-riding mandate: to control inflation. Its single biggest tool in doing so is interest rates, which it has used somewhat timidly in the past but is now beginning to get more comfortable with. When inflation rises, the SBP raises interest rates in order to curb borrowing and slow down price rises.

The business community has been reasonably irked by the rise in the cost of borrowing. But they should realise that the central bank is simply responding to the constant depreciation in the value of the rupee that has been precipitated by unchecked government deficits. The government does not actually spend too much money, just much more than it takes in as revenues. Think of inflation, then, as an alternative to the taxes that nobody seems willing to pay. Unfortunately, this replacement for taxation has a tendency to hurt the poor infinitely more than it hurts the rich or even the upper middle class.

Economists have pointed out that the real interest rate in the country — the nominal interest rate minus the rate of inflation — is actually still negative. This means that in real terms, lending is still an unprofitable enterprise. Yet we acknowledge that even nominally high interest rates are damaging to the economy. The solution, however, is not to decry the central bank’s moves, which seems to be the default response of many commentators, but to support an increase in tax revenues, such as the reformed general sales tax bill currently in parliament. Only a balanced federal budget can guarantee manageable levels of inflation.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]WikiLeaks and Pakistan’s nukes[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 2nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The latest batch of cables released by WikiLeaks says that in a September 2009 meeting between UK and US officials, “growing concern” was expressed about Pakistan’s nuclear programme; more precisely, about the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The meeting also noted that “China could play a big role in stabilising Pakistan”. Clearly, it is not so much Pakistan’s possible export of these weapons to other countries as their falling into the wrong hands “within” Pakistan.

The fear has been expressed subliminally before. The US has officially pronounced that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe, explaining that its security measures are state-of-the-art. However, Pakistan has a different take on American intentions. It unofficially thinks that the Americans are bent upon to somehow “take out” the bombs. Throughout 2009, the media in Pakistan was abuzz with planted stories about how Americans pouring into Pakistan on aid-related visas were actually the advance party of the conspiracy to barge into our nuclear facilities.

There is a background to why Pakistan suspects the US. Washington leads a UN Security Council move on the urging of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to investigate the Pakistani ‘father of the bomb’ Dr AQ Khan on his confession that he had handed over some nuclear secrets to other countries. Pakistan has been keeping Dr Khan under layered security to prevent his abduction, although he himself thinks very poorly of this arrangement. The US and its allies have been careful with Pakistan so as not to upset the applecart of their Afghan strategy in which Pakistan plays a critical role.

The “growing concern” expressed in the 2009 meeting reveals a fear not clearly articulated before: that the nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of more aggressive strategists within the army or those linked to al Qaeda through ideology. This fear is once again buttressed by past indications: that a senior Pakistani nuclear scientist with access to low enriched uranium had gone and met Osama bin Laden and presumably offered to make a dirty bomb for al Qaeda. The scientist was questioned in Islamabad and had fainted before being given a lie-detector test. Add to this the fact that Pakistan’s much “weakened” state suffers from a low writ in many parts of its territory where al Qaeda or its supporters are increasingly in control.

What is significant is the reference during the meeting to China as a stabilising agent. Pakistan has had problems with terrorism in its Waziristan area seeping into China’s western province of Xinjiang. A number of Uighur Muslims in training camps in Waziristan posed a threat to China. There are reports that Pakistan, under Musharraf, dealt with them and removed the Chinese complaint in short order. (This did not happen in the case of the Uzbeks despite protests from Uzbekistan’s president.) It is easy to imagine that China would be totally opposed to the rise of al Qaeda and its friends in Pakistan or their coming to power with the aim of controlling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. There is no one in Pakistan who actually believes that al Qaeda and its supporters will ever come to power in Pakistan. The political order is decisively tilted in favour of the political parties and not the clergy. National politics has settled down as a bipartisan system where the PML-N or the PPP routinely preside over the governance of the country. China is considered a “permanent” friend by politicians and the clergy alike and everybody knows China will not favour a takeover by religious extremists. Pakistan has tacitly accepted this position by attending sessions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) devoted, among other objectives, to countering the threat of religious extremism.

Yet external impressions about Pakistan are formed by the news that comes out of Pakistan. Some of it is not good at all. For instance, the strength of the clerical reaction to the generally felt need of changing the blasphemy law. Anybody comparing it to the past years’ reaction will say that Pakistan has become more radicalised in favour of the obscurantists.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]RGST — a necessary evil?[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 2nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

With parliament haggling over the imposition of the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST), it is likely that the next round of financing from the IMF will be delayed. There are many sound criticisms of the RGST, not least among them the fact that it is regressive in nature — it disproportionately affects those in lower income brackets than those who earn more. Furthermore, if the economy has to be documented, in terms of widening the tax net, then surely that can be done without having to raise the existing rate of GST. The third, and equally valid, criticism is that the RGST is inflationary and that is something that the economy can ill-afford at this point in time. That said, Pakistan does not have too much of a choice given that it is heavily dependent on funding from international lending institutions such as the IMF.

In that regard, the RGST may be a necessary evil right now, but at the very least its passage in parliament (by no means certain) and imposition should lead to the benefit of teaching the government that long-term planning can help avoid such painful measures. Successive governments have abdicated their responsibility by refusing to even consider taxing income from agriculture, which would have brought politically influential landlords into the tax fold and increased revenue generation and hence reduce our dependence on loans and prevent the government from having to pay massive amounts in interest alone. The additional menace of circular debt in the power sector, which is expected to reach Rs781 billion next year, is further depleting the treasury. This issue also needs to be given high priority because by itself it creates an environment where a sector as crucial as power and energy is having to operate with a large millstone around its neck.

When previous governments tried to enforce a GST, they caved in after protests from business interests. At least the current set-up has shown that it is ready to take tough measures. They will need to follow that up by taking this a step further and making sure that all who can afford it make their due contribution to the exchequer. Only then will the government have the independence to make decisions that are not forced on it by IMF dictates.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]An unstable power triangle[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 3rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

According to the latest batch of WikiLeaks cables, the triangle of power in Pakistan remains unstable because the man who actually runs the country, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, trusts Asif Ali Zardari and dislikes Nawaz Sharif. The writer of the cable, Ambassador Anne Patterson — who must be happy she is no longer posted in Islamabad — also notes that the general cannot afford to be seen being too cosy with Zardari because of his unpopularity (20 per cent public approval as against 80 per cent for Nawaz Sharif) and that Zardari fears he could be ousted by the army.

There was a time when Pakistan — wrongly — thought that a triangle of power in Islamabad ensured stability. The president under Article 58(2)(b), plus the army chief on one side and the prime minister on the other, was the three-way distribution of power that was supposed to preclude the imposition of martial law in the 1990s. What happened was a sad series of topplings in which the president repeatedly ganged up with the army chief to dismiss elected governments under the dreaded article. The decade turned out to be the most disastrous in the country’s history, a truth that was realised by two repentant mainstream parties when they wrote up the Charter of Democracy in 2006.

The Pavlovian reflex, however, is at work again, but this time the triangle is: the PPP in power at the centre, the PML-N in Punjab and the army chief in GHQ in Rawalpindi. What has the army experienced at the hands of the two parties? The GHQ has always thought that the PPP was too liberal and therefore not sincere to the country’s religious ideology; it was also not outspokenly against India and therefore not sincere to its anti-India strategy. It had to live down the memory of its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, humiliating an already defeated army in 1971 when he arrested its top brass. On the other hand, the GHQ, formerly affectionate towards General Zia’s protégé politician Nawaz Sharif, had to bear the shock of the rightwing leader’s firing of two army chiefs, Jahangir Karamat and Pervez Musharraf, one after the other.

Can one say that the GHQ has learned to fear Nawaz Sharif and that the PPP has learned to fear the GHQ? Actually, that is what the triangle looks like, which the WikiLeaks have confirmed. Nawaz Sharif is not properly a ‘national leader’ because his party has a weak showing in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; but he is the unquestioned leader of Punjab, which is over two-thirds of the population of the country, and the guardian of Pakistan’s India-centric nationalism. The paradox is that his worldview is closer to that of the army and his view of the war against terrorism affirms the scepticism with which the army views a pro-India American strategy in the region. His party thinks that the war against terrorism is not Pakistan’s war; and the army should normally go along with this posture because of its relationship with the Haqqani Group in North Waziristan.

General Kayani has interpreted the political situation right from the point of his force. He finds comfort in Nawaz Sharif’s views on foreign policy but would prefer to work with a PPP government which is weak at the centre and scared of the army. Yet, by increasingly distancing himself from the Charter of Democracy and talking of a mid-term change of government, Nawaz Sharif may be firming up his position within an increasingly outspoken second rung leadership in his party. But by so doing he is strengthening the clout of the army vis-à-vis the PPP government. The army chief indicates his approval of this strategy by allowing Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to meet him. It is normally accepted in Pakistan that Nawaz Sharif is popular in the Punjabi-dominated army while Zardari is not. The army watches TV channels and knows how unpopular Zardari is among the people; hence, General Kayani’s intervention in the judicial crisis in 2009 and his rejection of the Kerry-Lugar Bill later on.

That the army chief actually sought to strengthen his position further in Islamabad is proved by the WikiLeaks revelation that he thought of having ANP chief Asfandyar Wali as president of Pakistan. Had that happened, Mr Wali would have been presiding impotently over a government formed by another party with a majority in the National Assembly. He must have sensed that a figurehead president holding the post of the chief of the majority party would actually be dictatorial, despite the removal of chief executive powers from him. Since this did not happen, the chief had to fall back on the ‘fear’ that characterises the triangle: the PPP has been putty in his hands in the realm of foreign policy and has no interest in asserting itself, vis-à-vis India at the cost of getting toppled before its term. That he consorts with an unpopular and perceived corrupt party cannot but give him moments of anxiety.

The triangle of power in Pakistan remains essentially unstable simply because it is unnatural for a democracy to sustain this kind of arrangement. One may ask whose fault is that, and here the answer would have to be the army, with its multiple interventions and violations of the constitution in taking over power. A ‘pragmatic’ Zardari can get America to support Pakistan economically more willingly by expressing his hatred of the Taliban and al Qaeda in lockstep with the MQM and the ANP; he can normalise relations with India, rapidly ignoring the slow progress made by the dialogue process started by General Musharraf. On the other hand, a ‘principled’ Nawaz Sharif will move slowly on both these fronts despite his undimmed memory of inviting Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore for a patch-up that the then army chief did not like. That is why the UAE ruler has had to define the two by saying that whereas Nawaz Sharif is clean, he remains “dangerous” (for America) Zardari is not clean but he is “good” (for America).

What is needed is for the army to abide by its constitutionally-defined role, and that should be to guard the country’s borders and not get into the business of determining who will win the next election and become prime minister or president. As for civilian leaders, they must learn to be pragmatic and develop the kind of suppleness of approach needed to avoid being internationally isolated.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The truth about drone attacks[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 4th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

General (retd) Pervez Musharraf has finally admitted that he had allowed “the US to carry out drone surveillance inside Pakistan’s territory”. Had he gone on record earlier when he allowed public opinion to build up against these attacks by the Americans, he would have appeared more credible today. His effort to minimise the blame by saying that his permission was restricted to ‘surveillance’ — and that too for the benefit of Pakistan forces — is greatly suspect.

He says: “We wanted intelligence; we wanted them [the US] to locate targets. It was only a general kind of carpet agreement with the US, and surveillance was allowed on a case-to-case basis. Once we located the targets, we would decide on the method of striking either by helicopter gunship… or some other way. But that was a decision which was left to us.” And when the drone attacks did not abide by this ‘carpet agreement’ (sic) what did the general do, given the public furore against the attacks in Pakistan?

The present government knew that Musharraf had agreed with the drone option. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani says “the previous government” had given permission for “reconnaissance and surveillance flights by spy planes, but never for attacks”. Yet a member of his own cabinet and the allies in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa kept verbalising their approval of the attacks because they took out the leadership of the terrorists killing innocent Pakistanis. Only in October this year the PPP government, along with its allies, changed its stance on drones and began opposing them.

The American reaction has been a kind of policy double-take. The top officials kept on hinting that the drones were flying from Pakistani soil (photographic proof of this was provided in a report published in a Pakistani newspaper in Feb 2009) and attacking with the approval of the government. The statements were muffled and aimed at not embarrassing a government insisting on denial; also, there was the delicate matter of sparing the current army chief who was a part of the set-up that approved — partially or completely — the drone attacks under Musharraf.

If one believes the Pakistani side, the Americans violated the agreement which was that only Pakistan would act on the “location information” of the targets and not the former. That also means that the drones would not carry missiles but only the apparatus that identifies targets. The truth is that the drones too relied on information and tagging from the ground before they could fire their precision missiles. It is difficult to grasp how the Pakistan Army could benefit from the surveillance done without possessing the drone aircraft.

The media has turned against the drones and the Americans have gradually become vilified as allies that violated the sovereignty of the country they were supposed to help. Political parties like the Tehreek-i-Insaaf actually pegged their campaigns on the collateral damage they inflicted on the innocent inhabitants of the Tribal Areas. Is this is a mechanism devised to get out of a commitment that Musharraf had made? The government has now conveyed to the US that drone attacks are not acceptable. The Americans thought they had a clear mandate from Pakistan to use the drones but now the situation has changed. The Pakistanis want the attacks to stop and with the Americans thinking of leaving Afghanistan, the drones are assuming an increasingly greater strategic importance.

Pakistan is on a weak wicket because of its lack of control over areas from where ground attacks inside Afghanistan are being carried out. Moreover, some of the Pakistani territory being attacked by the drones is occupied by non-Pakistani foreigners over whom the Pakistani state has no control over (or it is not willing to exercise it).

Pakistan has to either keep quiet or challenge the American claim that a clear mandate for drone attacks was given. Keeping quiet would be advisable if the former doesn’t want a crisis in its relations with the US. When a decision to defy the American action is taken it will have to be carefully weighed who needs the other more, especially given the fact that many analysts think that America needs Pakistan more than vice versa.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The power of information[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 4th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Some people, through time, take a leap into the pages of history. The Australian founder of WikiLeaks has done just this, becoming, within months, one of the best known figures around the world — and one of the men most wanted by Interpol. He and his lawyer now say he also faces death threats, which stem from the thousands of documents leaked by the website. It is becoming harder and harder to ascertain truth and falsehood in the case of the WikiLeaks, but certainly it is conceivable that Assange has faced very real threats. There will, after all, be many who are infuriated by the revelations contained in the documents that have shaken the world almost as much as a terrorist attack or other event of such magnitude. In fact, calls have been made, primarily in the US, for WikiLeaks to be treated like a terrorist group. Assange and his lawyers also cite Swedish rape and molestation charges against him as an act of blatant persecution. The somewhat eccentric Assange has been in hiding since the latest set of documents appeared on the WikiLeaks site.

The questions of where the death threats may be emanating from open up all kinds of possibilities. There are so many around the world infuriated by the leaks that it is impossible to pick candidates. The documents from the US describing Russia as a ‘mafia’ state or a Saudi king criticising President Zardari have created their own furore. These are two of many examples. WikiLeaks has, in the past, been accused of endangering lives. But for some powerful figures around the world, public embarrassment may be reason enough to consider putting an end to the source or extracting revenge of the crudest kind (especially since this is the second time this is happening). Assange and his lawyer clearly believe this is the case. The death threats, if anything, further highlight the power of information, the astounding impact it can have and the manner in which it can shake up things even in countries which insist they respect the right of people to know the truth and the right for information to be circulated. For now, the WikiLeaks saga continues and we do not know how it will all end or if this is the last time it will create such controversy.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A clergy above the law[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 5th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

A cleric in Peshawar has offered Rs500,000 to anyone who will kill a Christian brick-kiln labourer, Aasia Bibi, sentenced to death for blasphemy by a district court. Maulana Yousaf Qureshi of Peshawar’s famous Mahabat Khan Mosque is outraged that some people are talking of letting the accused go free and repealing or amending or procedurally correcting the law that has terrorised minorities in Pakistan and has become a global index of intolerance of the Pakistani state.

It is a measure of the fanatic excess of the said Yousaf Qureshi that he should encourage all citizens to kill with the blandishment of money, reducing Muslims to paid killers while the process of law is unfolding in the case of Aasia Bibi. Confirming fears that some Pakistani clergy is interfacing with terrorists, he has called on the “mujahideen and Taliban” to kill her, probably knowing that the ferocious terrorist of Bajaur, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, had already made a statement to that effect earlier.

Maulana Qureshi belongs to the Deobandi seminary of Jamia Ashrafia that arose as one of the powerful sectarian madrassas under the patronage of General Zia in the 1980s, even issuing a fatwa against the Shia during the rise of Sipah-e-Sahaba in the country. Qureshi says: “No president, no parliament and no government has the right to interfere in the tenets of Islam.” But the fact is that it is parliament that has made the law, and since parliament is subject to human folly it is equally subject to correction.

What is wrong with the blasphemy law? Simply, it does not accord with the idea of universal justice in so far as it places the burden of proof on the accused. The part of Article 295-C most prone to misuse is where it says that the offender shall be punished if he insults the sacred name of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) “by words either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly”. The official interpretation of the Article lays down further that insult offered to any of the Prophets mentioned in the Holy Quran would also attract the death penalty.

In the case of Aasia Bibi, mitigation was present but was not allowed. The Christian woman was extremely poor, possessed minimal consciousness, and not literate enough to understand what was happening to her. A higher court may soon decide that mitigation was present but was ignored by the district court for various reasons. In many past cases, the lower courts were seen to be under pressure from extremist clerics present inside and outside the court. No one has ever been hanged for blasphemy in Pakistan. Judicially speaking, no one has committed blasphemy in Pakistan since the coming into force of this law. But innocent people have been made to suffer.

A ‘larger bench’ of the Lahore High Court in 2002 observed that “blasphemy cases had increased in recent times and were increasingly defective in evidence.” The court asked the police to get blasphemy investigated by at least two gazetted officers, to prevent the lowly functionaries of the police station, like the ‘muharrir’, to register a blasphemy case.

Nothing has changed since 2002 except that the power of the clergy in the face of a weakened state has increased. Terrorism has weakened the writ of the state and the vulnerable sections of the population are at the mercy of those who would use Islam to satisfy their urge to use violence. Not always conscious of the reasons behind the weakening of the state, we often point to the rise of extremism in the country. Extremism cannot take root unless the state that dispenses justice is weak.

And why has the state become weak? Because it has allowed multiple centres of power to emerge through the practice of proxy jihad. The state was attracted to the use of non-state actors because its nationalism mandated it to fight unequal enemies. Wiser ways of overcoming the superior enemy, like making rapid progress in education and achieving high economic development, were ignored by an establishment dominated by military thinking. One can only hope that this will change soon.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Shooting the messenger[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 5th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Given the sheer number of disclosures, both embarrassing for Pakistan’s leaders and damaging to its policy, it is no surprise that the cabinet’s defence committee has denounced WikiLeaks’ publication of American diplomatic cables. But the strategy the defence committee has chosen to take is illogical. It is to be expected that the revelations contained in the cables would be denied but the committee went a step too far in describing WikiLeaks and its activities as a conspiracy against Pakistan. Although only a small percentage of the over a quarter of a million cables have been released thus far, few countries have been spared embarrassment. If the WikiLeaks document dump is a conspiracy, it is one that has no obvious beneficiary.

Right now, Pakistan needs to worry less about who is behind WikiLeaks and concentrate on dealing both with the public-relations fallout of the leaks and, more substantively, fixing the governance issues that have been brought to the fore by the cables. It has always been an open secret that the military acts as a puppet-master, pulling the strings of democratic governments to ensure its interests and ideology is advanced. Only now do we have confirmation, though, of just how tenuous the hold of democracy in the country really is. Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani saw no problem in speculating about removing the president and installing his preferred prime minister. Such blatant interference is intolerable and, because it took place behind a veil of secrecy, more insidious even than direct military takeovers. Instead of condemning WikiLeaks, the government should be thankful that it brought military meddling to the fore. Now that the citizenry has some idea of the extent of army control of the democratic process, there is a chance that there will be a push-back against the men in uniform.

President Asif Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif will surely be upset that the extent of their unpopularity throughout the diplomatic world is now available for public consumption. Both need to resist the urge to scapegoat WikiLeaks for shredding their reputations. Instead, they need a bout of soul-searching to try and figure out just how their names and the collective reputation of the country has plummeted so much. The fault, the government needs to realise, lies not in WikiLeaks but in ourselves.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Stop being petty, Delhi[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 6th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The Indian government’s recent actions regarding Pakistani trade are somewhat confusing. On the one hand is the Indian high commissioner’s speech in Lahore earlier this week where he advocated an expansion of trade ties between India and Pakistan, suggesting that a full-blown effort at regional economic integration be undertaken in South Asia. On the other hand, the Indian government has been lobbying the World Trade Organisation to block the European Union’s (EU) move to grant concessionary trade access to Pakistan. Is India for free trade access for Pakistani goods or against it? It seems difficult to tell.

The reality is that India fears that even temporary preferential access to the European market will give Pakistani goods a competitive advantage over Indian goods and possibly reduce some of the trade between India and the EU. Yet it seems quite unreasonable to argue that since the industries most likely to benefit from the trade agreement are not located in the flood-affected areas, the agreement should be nullified. The Pakistani economy as a whole will benefit from trade access to European markets and the overall prosperity is in the benefit of flood victims, especially since India realises that the EU is not like to give any cash handout out of the fear that it will likely be squandered on corrupt or inefficient aid projects.

Getting the EU to grant preferential trade access in lieu of aid to the flood victims has been one of the few policy successes of the Gilani administration as a response to the flood. To have that taken away due to a grudge held by the Indian government would be unfortunate indeed. India has aspirations to become a regional or even global power. New Delhi would do well to realise that it is often incumbent upon larger states to show magnanimity towards their smaller neighbours. Or, at the very least, not be quite so openly petty.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Reign of terror[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 6th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The kind of terror the Taiban unleashed in Swat during their rule is now beginning to come forward in its entirety. Perhaps this is because terrorised people are finally finding the courage to speak out about their ordeal, as they gain confidence that the reign of militants in the valley is truly over.

Following the accounts of the public flogging of two other women — including Chand Bibi, the young woman whose beating by bearded men was captured on camera and shook the world — a third woman, Mairaj Bibi, has told of being beaten by militants in 2008 in front of her father-in-law and eight year old son. An attempt seems to have been made to force her to confess to illicit relations with her father-in-law. Initial suggestions focus around the possibility of family rivalry and revenge extracted by those who had power at the time.

This fits in with other accounts of Taliban rule. Far from being driven by any kind of religious zeal, the militants seem to have been driven by a lust for power and many of their worst atrocities seem to be a means to settle small scores. The arming of thousands of young men by the Taliban offered them the opportunity to do so with no one to stop them. The accounts coming forward, such as those from Mairaj Bibi, appear to confirm this. There is no other way to explain what happened to her. The phenomenon of the Taliban needs to be studied in this light and exposed before people.

There is another aspect to all this. It is so far unclear if any of those involved have been put on trial or penalised. This needs to happen. Extra-judicial killings and other kinds of abuses we have heard of in Swat are no answer. They only worsen matters. We need a fair process of justice so that some of what went wrong in Swat can be undone.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Smoother sailing?[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 6th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The Judicial Commission has begun the process of making recommendations for filling vacant slots in the superior judiciary. These include 32 judges to the high courts who had been granted an extension to avoid a crisis while debate raged on over the method of filling seats as well as the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court. The process will take some time, given that a long list of names is to be considered and debated with the chief justices of the high courts also set to attend the meeting, as will the attorney general and law minister as members of the judicial commission.

The list of names, once finalised, will be passed on to the parliamentary committee for approval as laid down under the 18th Amendment. For all the uproar that surrounded the matter, it seems things may work out quite well after all. For now, the storm that had hit the high seas and threatened to do a great deal of damage to the system seems to have died down. For this, the Supreme Court deserves credit. Its judgement in the matter was wise and respectful of the constitutional role of institutions. We hope this degree of maturity can continue and be expanded. We have suffered many times due to a fearful clash between institutions. This must not happen again. It is hoped that parliament will act with the kind of intelligence that can make individuals aware that the interests of the nation come above all else. The process of appointing judges is an important one. We need our courts to work efficiently and prudently but we also need a sense of stability, not just for the political front but also for the sake of our economy.

Over the past months, there has been much talk of a threat to the system. Problems between the judiciary and the parliament highlighted this. The key issue of the appointment of judges stood at the nucleus of the whole matter. It seems things may be working as per the requisites of the law. We must hope then that all institutions are ready to play their role. The appointment of judges is a test case. Let us hope all goes according to the requirements laid down in law and nothing is done to churn up calm waters.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The politics of dharnas[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 7th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami Dr Munawar Hasan moved his party another step forward in the pursuit of his rejectionist politics when he addressed what he called a dharna in front of parliament on Constitutional Avenue in Islamabad on December 5. The roster of his disaffection from the present order under the PPP coalition was already familiar: enslavement of the country to the US; pursuit of unjust war against elements fighting against the Americans; the perfidy of allowing America to carry out drone attacks; and rampant corruption under the PPP government.

As he asked army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani directly not to agree to the American demand of attacking North Waziristan, the past and present Jamaat leaders were at his side, including the inventor of dharna politics former amir Qazi Hussain Ahmed. Dr Munawar Hasan is the stormy petrel of national politics, believing in intensifying the Jamaat’s politics of rejection rather than toning it down. The argument behind this radical agenda is that politics of the status quo has run its course, at least for the Jamaat, and now only a promise of revolution will bring back votes absorbed by other rightwing parties, led by the PML-N.

The biggest strain borne by the Jamaat came from the ‘deal’ the ruling MMA made with General Musharraf when Qazi Hussain Ahmed was its leader. The deal resulted in the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment which gave legal cover to the general to carry on ruling the country. The ‘deal’ caused internal rifts and the MMA — which failed to protect its Shia component from terrorists — began to crack, losing the 2008 election and bisecting on the lines of Jamaat-JUI politics. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F) is in the government, playing a complex game of compromises; the Jamaat, with Qazi Hussain Ahmed gone, has Dr Munawar Hasan carrying the banner of an aggressive agenda in contrast to the JUI-F.

Dr Hasan has many likeminded small-party leaders. Imran Khan’s Tehreek-i-Insaf has been playing close to the Jamaat line, but Mr Khan was conspicuous by his absence at the Islamabad dharna. More dharna sessions have been announced, but will the politics of extremes win the day? Or will the politics of flexibility of JUI-F reap greater advantage for its considerable vote-bank which is larger than the Jamaat’s? Unfortunately, neither Imran Khan nor Dr Hasan will make much headway in Punjab where the former is looking for PML-N votes and the latter is hoping to recover the votes the Jamaat has lost to Mr Nawaz Sharif. The rise of the Tehreek-i-Insaf Party in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa may in fact damage Jamaat and JUI-F both.

Aggressive agendas are an enemy of the sophistication needed by political parties under democracy. Aggression needs forceful articulation and that is impossible without an outpouring of rage at the status quo. Only two leaders in the political arena are indulging in the politics of rage: Dr Hasan and Imran Khan. Most analysts think that the voting population, while being aroused by expressions of rage, are also scared of conflict and destruction as agents of change. Elections symbolise gradual evolution, not revolutionary uprooting of the system. Such analysis is reaching Imran Khan but Dr Hasan is insulated against it because of the continuity of the party line adopted by Qazi Hussain Ahmed whose personal style, however, was less aggressive.

The Jamaat is countered effectively by the rise of ethnic politics in Karachi; in Punjab, the PML-N is firmly in place, strengthened by its new contacts with Jamaatud Dawa and Sipah-e-Sahaba. On the other hand, a less ‘ghairatmand’ (honourable) but more flexible and sophisticated Maulana Fazlur Rehman is shoring up the internal strength of his Pashtun-dominated JUI-F by being in the ruling coalition, deftly placing his man at the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology. The Jamaat may be pleased to hear an octogenarian Roedad Khan delivering his usual philippic against the PPP government at the dharna, but Roedad Khan will help little in enhancing the Jamaat’s profile in national politics. The government was wise in its decision to give the ‘dharna’ a wide berth.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Blasphemy law saga[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 7th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The saga of Pakistan’s blasphemy law continues. Hearing a petition from a citizen challenging parliamentary moves to amend a law that has inflicted suffering on hundreds, the Lahore High Court has directed that the blasphemy law not be amended until a final ruling is made in the controversial case of Aasia Bibi — the 45-year-old mother of five who faces a death sentence on charges of alleged blasphemy. PPP member Sherry Rehman had planned to move a private members bill seeking changes in blasphemy laws while such amendments are said also to have support from other members of the party.

At the end of last month, the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court had issued an order preventing a presidential pardon for the victim of the latest blasphemy charge following indications from President Asif Ali Zardari that this was being considered. This move had been condemned by the president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association as well as by human rights activists.

The case of Aasia Bibi exposes the rift lines that run through our society. On the one hand, we have clerics baying for blood and even setting a price for the killing of the woman, while on the other we have those demanding an end to the misuse of the blasphemy law. This, of course, is not to suggest there should be any lack of respect for the religious sentiments of people and the fact of the matter is that the existing law, notably over the past two decades, has been used more often to victimise rivals or settle personal scores. It has also been a long-standing demand of minority groups that their sentiments be protected. It is vital that justice be done in this matter. Several government functionaries, including the Punjab governor, have said on record that the woman has been wrongly accused and convicted. The courts, parliament and other institutions must make this a key priority and do what they can to ensure that laws likely to be used as a means to harass the vulnerable or which add to the extremist trends that run through our society do not remain on statute books.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]WikiLeaks damage control[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 8th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Those who think the WikiLeaks were manufactured by the US to embarrass and defame certain individuals should take a look at the extent to which the US administration is going to take them off the internet. WikiLeaks.org is under attack from all directions. Those who have collaborated with the government include book-selling Amazon which has removed WikiLeaks from its hosting services. But some, like server DynaDot, are under pressure to do likewise. As a result the WikiLeaks.org web address is no longer functioning after an American internet company pulled the plug on the site.

Servers who removed WikiLeaks offered the excuse that they were under severe attack by hackers which endangered websites other than WikiLeaks, forcing them to remove the secret cables. Among other domain hosting companies, Octopuce in France had to remove WikiLeaks after being served a warning by the French government that said that it is unacceptable for a criminal site to be hosted in the country. Relying on a law that bans ‘criminal’ websites, the French industry minister wrote to the body governing internet use, warning that there would be consequences for any company or organisation helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.

So WikiLeaks has been inaccessable except through one Swiss domain. Julian Assange — the WikiLeaks founder who was arrested by British police on December 7 on a European warrant issued by Sweden — knows the American government and its collaborators are on a weak moral and legal ground and has struck back saying that the state has privatised censorship to avoid opprobrium: “These attacks will not stop our mission, but should be setting off alarm bells about the rule of law in theUS.” French company OVH, which hosts WikiLeaks, has warned it will consult lawyers to take on the French government, asking the court whether the government has the right to close down Octopuce.

WikiLeaks have done a lot of damage to America’s relations with friendly and unfriendly states alike; and the effort clearly is to foreclose on the leaks that are in the pipeline, some of them relating to nuclear weapons and, therefore, even more dangerous. American action is bound to meet a backlash from within America but the administration would be willing to weather that storm when it comes.

Damage control will, at best, be partial and its success will be judged against secrets that will not be put out for public consumption. Much also depends on how Mr Assange has arranged the storehouse of information in his possession. The leaks can surface again after some time; they are bound to resurface in the long run in any case. The damage done has been considerable, threatening the superpower’s diplomacy in the coming days. Always taking advantage of internal fissures in host countries, American diplomats gleaned crucial information from threatened politicians, pretending to help but practically deepening the rifts.

What has been revealed may not be as damaging to the US as to the leaders reported upon. In the case of Pakistan, it has brought into open the confusion of lack of trust among major players, especially three central figures: the army chief, the government and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif. Politics in Pakistan is a like a jungle where political instincts are centred on the survival of one at the cost of another. Among all kinds of ‘deficits’ in Pakistan, the one that should bother all citizens while facing the onslaught of a formidable al Qaeda is the deficit of trust in the basic tenets of the state.

What may be even more off-putting is the similarity between the conditions in Pakistan and those obtained in Afghanistan. The Americans are supporting President Karzai while talking about his corruption behind closed doors — now doors unlocked by WikiLeaks — and President Karzai leans on friends within Afghanistan who don’t really love him as their leader. This damage will not be controlled easily.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Tall talk[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 8th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Former president Musharraf has clearly changed, at least to some degree, following his years away from home. He appears to be, judging from an interview to this paper which was done in Dubai, calmer, and perhaps somewhat more subdued, than before. The manner in which he has gone about launching his party has been organised and, for the most part, principled. Besides, it is good that the retired general is going about the whole thing through the correct approach in that he has formed a political party and is canvassing for support.

That said, there are some things that have not changed at all. For instance, the former president still does not accept the extent to which his era gave rise to a great many of the problems we face today. Blaming his downfall on a breakdown in law and order, and holding the police chiefly responsible for this, does not really tell the whole story. His belief that he could be re-elected also seems just a trifle naïve. He has, however, had the grace to accept that the NRO was a mistake. His assessment that a breakthrough with India was close at hand also indicates the right intentions, though we cannot really be sure how realistic his analysis is.

In other respects, the ex-dictator has followed the patterns of the past. He has lashed out against civilian politicians and the politics of vendetta. It is precisely this kind of contempt for leaders chosen by people that has damaged our system in the past and prevented democracy from thriving. The fact that it continues demonstrates that the retired general still has a lot to learn. He should start thinking about these factors now. If he wishes to become a part of the democratic system, to seek the votes of people and to move to a tune not played out by the military, he must also demonstrate respect for all other players within it. These include the popular leaders he has so often denounced. The fact is, however, that they have been put at the posts they hold solely on the basis of the will of the people and Musharraf will need to realise that winning this kind of respect is a task that involves a great many factors. His party is yet to prove it possesses them.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]Death of a diplomat[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 16th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

It is considered bad form to speak ill of the recently departed and, truth be told, there is much to admire about US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who died on December 13. Over a five-decade long career, he helped broker the Dayton Accords that ended one of the Balkans’ intractable wars and established the state of Bosnia, worked for full diplomatic recognition of China and always spoke out for peace over force.

Holbrooke’s final assignment was probably his most difficult. As US President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a tumultuous region if ever there was one, he was responsible for convincing Afghan President Karzai to step up as the US slowly drew down its forces. He was also working with Pakistan to ensure the fight against militants was stepped up. It was here that Holbrooke’s famed penchant for bureaucratic infighting served him ill. Instead of treating this perilous assignment with delicacy, he was like the proverbial bull in a china shop. He could be as harsh on his country’s own failings as he was on others, describing US aerial bombing of Afghan poppy fields as “the single most ineffective programme in the history of American foreign policy.” His abrasive style didn’t make him many friends in this region and his importance was supplanted when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton edged Holbrooke out and took a more direct approach in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That Holbrooke was not entirely successful in his final mission was not for want of trying. One newspaper last year said, only half-jokingly, that Holbrooke spent more time in Pakistan than President Asif Ali Zardari. And he did win some significant victories in his complex, intractable task. Holbrooke was among those who convinced the Obama administration to distinguish between al Qaeda and the Taliban and to bring the latter to the negotiating table with Karzai.

Richard Holbrooke was a realist, one who understood the need for an exit strategy, who knew Pakistan’s problems were too complex to be solved at once and who tried to bring accountability to the oodles of aid coming Pakistan’s way. After the simplistic militarism of the Bush administration, Richard Holbrooke’s diplomacy was a welcome change.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Violence in Muharram[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 17th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The month of Muharram that once brought Muslims of all religious denominations together under the symbolic flag of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom, has become a season of violence. This year, the government is spending billions of rupees cordoning off imambargahs and procession routes with the help of the police and rangers to protect the Shia community.

Last year, Ashura processions were attacked in many cities, including Lahore, where such incidents had been unknown. Karachi saw people dying from suicide bombings twice, once on the occasion of Ashura and the second time on the occasion of Chaliswan (the fortieth day of Martyrdom). The cities that lie along the road that goes from Peshawar to Kurram Agency were always under threat because of the Sunni-Shia admixture there and the persisting parallel writ of the Taliban over them.

Quetta in Balochistan, where the Hazara-Shia community is ghettoised and therefore easy to target, is once again tense as the much-weakened provincial government ensures safety to the processionists of Imam Hussain. Much violence has occurred there and in the Shia-majority areas of Parachinar in Kurram Agency and in Gilgit–Baltistan. Parachinar has been cut off from the rest of Pakistan for the past two to three years because the Tehreek-i-Taliban, and particularly Hakeemullah Mehsud, have been killing people on the basis of sect for the past decade.

Why has Muharram become such a season of tragedies for us? The people of Pakistan are not fired by sectarian hatred. Wherever there is no clerical or terrorist coercion, they coexist happily and, not so far back in the past, used to intermarry as well. Scholars who have investigated the closing of the Pakistani mind agree that Pakistan’s sectarian war is a relocated conflict and is a radiation from the fire that was lit in the Middle East and the Gulf when Arab leadership passed from secular leaders to religious ones, and Iran arose as the champion of the scattered Shia communities in the region.

One can date the participation of the state in sectarianism under General Zia in this relocated war. He got the Zakat Ordinance promulgated in 1980 and wrongly applied it to the Shia on the advice — and draft of the law itself — of an Arab jurist sent to Islamabad by Saudi Arabia. In 1987, General Zia allowed the mujahideen fighting the war against the Soviet Union to attack two Shia strongholds, Kurram and Gilgit-Baltistan. In the 1980s, Maulana Manzur Numani of a famous Lucknow madrassa was paid by Rabita al-Alam-e-Islami to get fatwas of Shia apostatisation issued from the madrassas of Pakistan. Numani wrote a book Khumaini aur Shia kay barah mein Ulama-e-Karam ka Mutafiqqa Faisala (Consensual Resolution of the Clerical Leaders about Khomeini and Shiism) and this was widely circulated in Pakistan. The Iraq-Iran war poisoned minds in the region, and organisations linked to jihad began carrying out punishments in light of these fatwas. In 2003, when the Shia Hazaras were massacred in Quetta it was revealed that the fatwas from the major Deobandi seminaries were in circulation in the city before the massacre, but no one took notice. In fact, the Hazaras later put the fatwas on their website straight from the 1988 collection of Manzur Numani, but again the jihad-weakened state took no notice.

There are two ways the state will ‘exclude’ its unfavoured communities. One is by apostatising the identity of a community it thinks deviant; the other by intensifying the identity of the majority community. Both these processes have been resorted to. The Shia have responded by retreating into the non-consensual (with Sunnis) aspects of their religion and fear losing everything if they don’t do this. This conflict is at times bilateral but in most cases it is unilateral, with terrorists killing innocent Shias. But Karachi, more than any other city, has the potential of being the largest and most fearsome arena of this battle.

WikiLeaks has revealed that the region of origin of this conflict is still embroiled in sectarian politics. As Iran moves towards its nuclear objectives, the ‘relocated war’ of Pakistan will move up the graph of intensity. And the state in Pakistan is too weak to look after its people.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Deadly doings[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 17th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Pakistan’s occupation of places of ignominy on lists rating countries in various spheres is something we are accustomed to. But the evidence that we are adding to the areas in which we rank among the worst in the world is frightening. According to the annual report released by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Pakistan is now the deadliest nation in the world for journalists. The total numbers of journalists who were killed this year is 42, out of which eight were in Pakistan, the highest number in any one country. Suicide bombings and being caught in crossfire were largely blamed for the causes of these deaths. Iraq follows Pakistan in terms of numbers of casualties, with four journalists killed this year.

The statistic is an alarming one. It shows just how unsafe journalists are on the ground. Reporters, stringers and TV cameramen are among the most vulnerable, since the nature of their job requires them to be close to the action as it happens.

It is, of course, no coincidence that a number of those killed have died in tribal areas. It is here that conditions are most hazardous and media persons on the ground are most likely to be targeted by those involved in a conflict that has many complex dimensions. The death of so many journalists is, however, not entirely a matter of accident. It is also a fact that they receive too little protection from authorities whose duty it is to ensure they are able to carry out their work safely and without hindrance. In some cases, agencies and other groups linked to authorities have actually played a part in putting the lives of media professionals at risk.

Newspapers, TV channels and other media organisations need to consider the CPJ report carefully. In the first place, their employees need insurance. What is, however, even more crucial is to work to create a safer environment for journalists to perform their professional duties. Pakistan’s ranking as the most dangerous place in the world for journalists suggests the environment has changed rapidly for reporters. A new strategy needs to be worked out to keep them safe. The government and bodies representing working journalists and media organisations must work together to achieve this.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Our relationship with China[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 19th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s South Asian trip should come as a wake-up call to Pakistan, which has long considered China its closest ally. Yes, Wen was effusive in his praise during the Pakistan leg of the trip and signed $20 billion worth of business deals. But the visit was merely a re-enactment — at a much smaller scale — of Wen’s visit to India, where the two historical rivals agreed to increase bilateral trade to $100 billion. Alliances in South Asia are shifting and Pakistan has to ensure it is not left in the dust.

Despite the rhetoric surrounding the relationship, the China-Pakistan alliance, like all such alliances, is based on a mutual convergence of interest; in this case a distrust of India. With China and India competing for supremacy in the region, that rivalry is likely to ignite in the distant future. In the near future, though, China seems to have settled on wooing India for its own economic benefit rather than prolonging hostilities. This is likely to make Pakistan less valuable in the short-term. Not only will China not have as great a need to prop up Pakistan, it may also appease India by distancing itself slightly from Pakistan. As many observed, China was slow in reacting to Pakistan’s calls for flood relief aid. Given the impermanence of all international alliances, we should have been seeking alternative friendships anyway. Now we should have the impetus to do that sooner rather than later.

It is true that China has invested a lot of money in Pakistan and given more than its fair share of development assistance and technological knowhow, but there have been economic downsides too. The import of Chinese manufacturing goods, which are cheaper than local ones, have had an adverse impact on local businesses. We also have a significant trade deficit with China as we need their goods far more than they need ours. China has been the dominant partner from the start and, without abandoning the alliance altogether, we need more equitable friendships. Ultimately, as China gets closer to India, that decision may not even be ours to make. Before the tides of history overtake us, we should act quickly and build up regional alliances with India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Dying to learn[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 19th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The new report by the US-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch puts some rather shocking facts before us. The report, titled “Their future at stake” describes the death of at least 22 teachers in Balochistan between January 2008 and October 2010, the transfer of at least 200 teachers and professors either to Quetta or out of the province and the fact that due to militant violence, schools in Balochistan opened for only 120 days in 2009, compared to 220 in the rest of the country.

In the context of the ethnic and nationalist violent stalking Balochistan, the report shows that the group most adversely affected by the attacks on education are the Baloch, as opposed to the groups that nationalist forces target. The operations of extremists in the region add a further complexity to the problem.

The issue is one the Baloch nationalists, and other political forces with a following in the province, need to take up as a matter of urgency. Balochistan cannot afford for its children to be left so far behind those elsewhere in the country. There are too few schools, literacy levels in some districts fall to below 20 per cent and far too many Baloch children lack access to education. It is only when these shortcomings are corrected that there can be any real development in our country’s most under-developed province. This development is vital to the future of Balochistan and its people. All those with an interest in the welfare of the territory must find ways to end the violence which holds it back. The target killing of teachers must end and an environment created which allows others to take up work in an area that desperately needs their services. Unless this happens the province will continue to slip further and further into the age of darkness and all the many problems that come with this. This process must be stopped before it is too late to do so.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Free for now[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 19th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The founder of the whistle-blower WikiLeaks organisation is finally out on bail and recovering from his ordeal in a London jail at the country estate of a friend. He obtained bail only after an appeal by prosecuting lawyers was rejected by the High Court. A surety of $374,000 billion had to be raised by friends and Assange is being electronically tagged and must report daily to the police. He also faces extradition to Sweden where he faces charges of sexually molesting two women. These have been denied by Assange.

Is this the normal process of justice at play? There are as yet no answers but evidence is growing that, in what could prove to be a landmark case, Assange could be put on trial for leaking US diplomatic cables to the world. He says he fears attempts to extradite him to the US, with such a move apparently being planned in Washington. There, Assange could be tried under the US Espionage Act. An effort is said to be underway to detect those who leaked the documents to his organisation. They too face prosecution in a trial which, if it ever takes place, would open up new legal chapters. Persons accused of leaking information have only rarely before, in the US, faced action in courts.

Even in nations that pride themselves on democracy, it appears officials are willing to tolerate only a limited free flow of information. National security is being cited as a means to deny citizens access to information. It is this principle which is under dispute. The possibility that Assange has become a hunted man because he dared to break the rules and, metaphorically speaking, hung dirty US clothing up for the world to see, is very real. The leaked cables have given us an insight into how things work out in the corridors of power. More information continues to surface. Everything possible must be done to ensure this process can go on without hindrance.

[B][SIZE="5"][CENTER]Making sense of Af-Pak ambiguities[/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 20th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

US President Barack Obama has talked about the war in Afghanistan on December 16 with a growing background noise of American public opinion asking him to bring the troops home in short order. He had asked his National Security Staff (NSS) last year to lead an assessment of the war effort and was served a summary of it. He says he will not peg America’s security on results of opinion polls; but he will have to lean on Republican support if he wants to carry on and, in return for doing that, he may have to relent on some of the pet Democratic programmes at home.

He thinks his strategy on Afghanistan is on track and that the war is not yet unwinnable, though he conceded that it may take him long to win it. The policy review was focused on the effects of his troop-surge policy and his verdict was: “Today, al Qaeda’s senior leadership in the border region is under more pressure than at any point since they fled Afghanistan nine years ago. Senior leaders have been killed. It’s harder for them to recruit … it’s harder for them to plot and launch attacks. In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down.”

The document put before President Obama said that the Taliban had suffered a reversal too: “Progress had been made in some areas in Afghanistan, notably with tactics such as the killing of local Taliban leaders and in weakening the insurgents’ grip in the south of the country around Kandahar.” Therefore, he said, the start of the US troops withdrawal in 2011 was on track as the US tried to consolidate the gains it had made so far. The US National Intelligence Estimates, made by CIA and 15 other agencies, however say that the chance of success against the Taliban was limited “unless Pakistan tackled the insurgents’ safe havens on its territory”. To this, we would also like to add the caveat that a close reading of the review suggests that the Americans will not end their presence in Afghanistan even after 2014, which is the time by which the transition to the Afghans is to be completed.

President Obama said Pakistan was aware of the threat the Taliban terror posed for the country but “progress has not come fast enough” and that he “will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with”. The military opinion was less pessimistic but it, too, insisted on more cooperation from Pakistan. Hence, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen’s latest insistence to Pakistan that it “do more” by attacking North Waziristan.

The Americans can leave Afghanistan with good conscience if the Taliban are reduced to not being able to overthrow the post-withdrawal government in Kabul. They think this will be possible if Pakistan sorts out its approach to the problem. On the Pakistani side, the people have been made to think like the American people: get out because this war cannot be won. But Pakistani opinion says much more than just that. It questions the motivation of the war and wants it to end in defeat. The official line, made hostile by the perceived American softness to Indian presence in Afghanistan, indicates much more than that.

In fact, ‘official’ Pakistan is not only not interested in ‘doing more’ it wants to maintain the capacity of the Taliban to resist America, force it to leave Afghanistan and later to change the status quo in Afghanistan in Pakistan’s favour to counter India’s strategic outreach in Afghanistan. Politically, it is no longer possible for anyone to support the American policy. In fact, political parties are veering towards opposing American policy to retain public support. The popular line is: this is not our war; if the Americans leave, things will get back to normal; and terrorism experienced by innocent citizens in Pakistan is actually organised by America in tandem with India and Israel.

Strategies are not unfolding in a vacuum of information. Pakistan itself is flush with facts that do not buttress the current policy of waiting to see the Americans leave and then hoping to get the Taliban to do the right thing by us and take on the Indians in Afghanistan and make them run as they did in 1996. The stark fact is that the state has lost its writ in most of Fata, much of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and much of Balochistan.

Should Pakistan go on denying that al Qaeda is not located on its soil? General (retd) Pervez Musharraf has exploded this myth twice, once in his article in Newsweek and the second time in this newspaper (on December 15) saying: “Al Qaeda which has a presence in the mountains of Fata, though in small numbers, needs to be evicted”. The US insists that Pakistan remains its most important partner in the region as far as the war in Afghanistan and against terrorism is concerned. This plays out differently in Pakistan than what most outsiders may think.

It leads most analysts within the establishment to conclude that America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America, which means that Pakistan can do two things: resist American policy of fighting terrorism or dictate its own policy of forcing India to vacate Afghanistan and return to an antebellum Afghanistan where Pakistan calls the shots. What does not enter the calculations of these analysts is: does Pakistan need American aid and IMF assistance with any less intensity than America needs to get Pakistan to fight terrorism?

The last time there was a face-off between America and Pakistan, the latter won, which must have strengthened the thinking of the establishment. Pakistan achieved this victory over America when trucks carrying Nato supplies were torched in Pakistan. The Americans backed off and apologised. But the US policy review says drones remain a winning tactical device and insist that Pakistan go into North Waziristan and oust the ‘foreign’ Taliban from there. Pakistan can defeat America in Afghanistan, which means America will go home, but Pakistan will have surrendered itself to the forces of chaos for achieving this very dubious victory.

There are ambiguities about Afghanistan on both sides, in the American and Pakistani thinking. But sitting next to it, Pakistan is more vulnerable to what will follow the American exit. And its readiness to face the consequences of its Afghan policy is much in doubt.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Blasphemy law and lack of moral courage[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 21st, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

There is news that the Gilani government in Islamabad might lean on an old Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) recommendation on the ‘humanising’ of the blasphemy law to prevent victimisation of innocent Pakistanis under it. The CII report, unearthed in the ministry for religious affairs, says the government could put in place certain procedural routines to prevent the abuse of the law by a society increasingly vulnerable to religious extremism.

The report says there should be a pre-FIR investigation by the police every time someone is accused of blasphemy; concrete evidence must be demanded and accused persons provided with legal defence; a ‘first class’ magistrate should supervise the police investigation prior to advising the registration of the FIR; and after the FIR is registered, the case must go directly to the High Court of the province.

The government is under pressure from the phalanx of political and religious opposition to not do anything to alleviate the suffering of the people victimised by the blasphemy law. The political parties are quiet, some of them having actually helped stiffen the law into its present diabolical shape, especially Section 295-C which awards the minimum punishment of death without ascertaining whether blasphemy has occurred by intent or unintentionally. The clergy is out in the streets scaring off politicians by adding xenophobia to their campaign in favour of retaining the law, saying ‘foreign masters’ are dictating the government.

Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer had the moral courage to come to the help of an illiterate Christian woman accused of blasphemy. But he was taken aback by the backlash he has received from clerics and by the rejection of his humane gesture by the PPP federal law minister. President Asif Ali Zardari will not pardon the Christian woman as Mr Taseer mistakenly thought; and no one will even think of smuggling the poor woman out of the country.

The CII recommendation says nothing new and we don’t know how old the recommendation is. We do know that in the early 1990s, the PPP and PML-N both tried to water down the extremism of the blasphemy law without much success. The police did not carry out the new routines, blaming public pressure.

The Lahore High Court has shown bias in favour of the law rather than correcting the abuses that happen because of it. The present High Court has stayed the president from granting pardon to the latest victim, but a retired judge of the High Court Justice (retd) Nazir Akhtar has given a statement in favour of the dreaded law to confirm the bias of the conservative judiciary in Pakistan. As a sitting judge of the Lahore High Court, he used to tell people at social gatherings that they should kill the blasphemer instead of invoking the law against him.

Will the new CII, under Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani of the JUI-F, supinely accept the old recommendations, even as the JUI-F hits the streets together with the old MMA parties to oust the PPP government through a violent campaign in favour of the blasphemy law? Some members of the old CII were cowed by clerical reaction and one had actually left it under pressure from mounting extremism. It is not likely that the new members will support even procedural changes, especially as Maulana Faqir Muhammad of the Bajaur Taliban, a close ally of al Qaeda, has sworn to get even with the supporters of the anti-blasphemy law opinion in Pakistan.

Moral courage has vanished in an environment of intimidation. The conservative man in Pakistan has become more outspoken and more extreme; the moderates have looked at the battlefield and, seeing it bristling with odds against them, have bowed out of the contest of ideas. The debate is clearly bifurcated. It has not even started in Urdu. In English, it is getting nowhere because of the idiom’s lack of influence on national thinking.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Friendly words[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 21st, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Amidst a sea of hostility, friends are always welcome when they appear on the horizon. The Chinese premier’s words of support will, therefore, be received especially warmly in Islamabad. As he departed from the country, after a visit during which agreements worth around 35 billion dollars were signed, Wen Jiabao put up a robust defence of Pakistan and its fight against terror, directly countering US insinuations that it was not doing enough on that front. This is the first time China has risen to Pakistan’s defence in this manner on the issue of terrorism — and leaders in Islamabad who played a role in persuading Beijing to see things through its eyes must be commended.

The strong gesture of support from the Chinese premier should also make the US think about its own strategies and priorities. The heaping of ceaseless pressure on Pakistan to act against militants can really bring only limited results. What is required is support and practical assistance, which China has extended.

Wen Jiabao’s first visit to the country has gone well — even better than could be expected. This, of course, is important. As things stand now, Pakistan needs to build a network of friends. Its increasingly isolated position in the world leaves it vulnerable to attack. More friends need to stand with China in Pakistan’s corner. Islamabad must step up efforts to ensure this happens. Old allies, such as the Saudis, need to be brought back fully on board. Evidence from WikiLeaks cables suggests there have been tensions. At the same time, new friends too need to be won over. Pakistan, as the key victim of terror, needs to build around it a circle of friends who can help it combat a threat of immense proportions. China’s stance and its diversion from the US line may make other nations think just a little harder about the nature of terrorism and Pakistan’s actions. The drone attacks and related issue of sovereignty need to be addressed as well. Only when Pakistan’s own security concerns are put at rest will an all-out effort be made against militancy. Beijing and Islamabad need to play a role in this together by building an alliance against terror that spreads across the region and the world.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Terrorism and our neighbours[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 22nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Two neighbourhood complaints regarding terrorism emanating from Pakistan have come on the same day. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeated his condition of having friendly relations with Pakistan only if the latter ensures “that its territory is not used for terrorist activities against us.” Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has rung President Asif Ali Zardari to demand that Pakistan capture and hand over the Jundallah terrorists who killed 39 people during a Muharram gathering on December 15 in Iran’s province of Sistan-Balochistan.

It is ironic how the two complaints are viewed by the international community. The Indian plaint, intensified after the 2008 reign of terror in Mumbai, goes back at least two decades and started with the ‘condition’ of Pakistan stopping ‘cross-border’ terrorism (read Kashmir). The entire world sympathises with India and holds Pakistan responsible for not suppressing the responsible jihadi organisations. Since these organisations also threaten other states because of their nexus with al Qaeda, the demand that Pakistan take action in eliminating them has the backing of the UN.

The plaint from Iran goes to the root of Iran’s decades-old grievances against Pakistan. The Iranian press has become sensitive to news coming in from Pakistan, often about Shia-killings at the hands of outfits that have been practicing jihad on the side in Pakistan’s covert proxy wars. It looks at Jundallah as a Baloch nationalist organisation that functions with impunity inside Pakistani Balochistan. Pakistan, sincerely wishing to shore up its relations with its western neighbour since General Zia spoiled them, is faced with the problem of lack of control over its territory in Balochistan where it is contending with insurgency. Its hands are tied by the fact that the Taliban in Balochistan are steadily targeting the Hazara Shia in Quetta.

Pakistan is playing on a weak wicket, but its attitude towards the two complaining neighbours is extremely interesting. To India and the international community lined up at the UN, it says that it is going through the judicial process of indicting the said jihadi organisations and is taking time because credible proof is required to get them convicted. It tells India that it, too, is doing ‘parallel’ mischief in Balochistan from the bases it has unfairly acquired in Afghanistan with the help of the US and Nato countries. The response from the international community to this is dismissive because Pakistan has not been able to furnish any evidence of India’s culpability so far, in contrast to the testimony against it by terrorists such as Pakistan-linked David Headley who planned the Mumbai attack. Pakistan, less credibly, opposes the Indian complaint with its own complaint: that India does not come to the negotiating table to discuss bilateral disputes, including Kashmir.

Iran has enemies at the regional as well as global level. It threatens the US with its aggressive nuclear programme which it will not open for inspection and faces punitive resolutions from the UN Security Council. That under a challenging President Ahmadinejad it also threatens Israel may be favoured by some radical anti-government elements in the Middle East, but neighbouring Arab regimes despise this policy and think Iran has hegemonic designs against them. Needless to say, these regimes are friendlier to Pakistan, which irks Iran and compels it to interpret Shia-killings in Pakistan as a ‘relocated’ Arab-Iranian war. Hence, no one apart from Pakistan is disturbed over the Iranian plaint. But Pakistan can do little about it, given the fact that it does not control Balochistan and is, in fact, allegedly banking on the anti-Iran Taliban to provide it ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan.

What should Pakistan do? There is a lesson in what the Chinese have done to sideline difficult bilateral disputes with India: open free trade and create mutual vested interest in resolving issues in a more favourable environment in the future. Had Pakistan not been hamstrung by the dominance of military thinking at home, it would have followed this route, which would have allowed it to mop up the terrorists on its territory.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]MQM moves[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 22nd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

With the skills of an established healer, President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have succeeded in soothing ruffled feathers and, for now at least, keeping the MQM on board. Following talks with a delegation led by top party leaders, the president has won a little more time to take action against Sindh home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza, whose comments a few days ago on extortion mafias in Karachi created a potential coalition crisis. The kind of action sought by the MQM has not been elaborated on, with the MQM suggesting it had left it to the president to take a decision on this. Encouragingly for the federal government, which had seemed somewhat panic-stricken by the prospect of an MQM pull-out from government, the party has expressed trust in the president. The fact that the party is continuing contacts with other political groups, including arch-rivals such as the Jamaat-e-Islami, should be enough to keep the federal government on its toes. This is all the more so given that another former ally, the JUI-F, has shown no inclination to move back to treasury benches and is reported to be discussing a possible change of the chief minister in Balochistan with other opposition parties.

The president will also need to decide what kind of action to initiate against Dr Mirza. His explanation to the MQM about his remarks being entirely personal in nature also suggests measures may be required to enforce more discipline within the party. A situation where opinions not endorsed by the party are expressed by various stakeholders on highly sensitive matters will obviously lead to chaos. The MQM threat to pull out of government has already created a great deal of instability. More needs to be avoided at all costs. We need desperately to create an environment conducive to political and economic equilibrium.

This having been said, the president must be congratulated on handling a difficult situation successfully. Any immediate threat to the coalition government has been warded off and the lessons to be learnt are quite obvious. There is a need to handle matters which have an impact on relations with other parties with more dexterity and finesse, so that the kind of unnecessary crisis we saw over the last few days can be avoided altogether.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Another ‘abduction’?[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 23rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Even though intelligence agencies have informed the courts that no persons other than the 11 men taken from Adiala Jail are in their custody, people continue to be ‘picked up’ across the country. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed alarm over the abduction, apparently by intelligence agency personnel, of activist Siddique Eido from Pasni in Balochistan. He was taken away by several men in two vehicles. Mr Eido had been granted bail in the criminal case. The HRCP has launched an urgent appeal and called on people to write in to authorities.

Such appeals have been made before. The latest case highlights the fact that the tactics used by agencies have not changed. The wave of ‘abductions’ that began soon after 9/11 may have slowed down but it has not stopped. It is alarming that these abductions still take place in Balochistan, where nationalist groups say thousands remain missing. This can only add to the anger and angst that runs through the province. Most of those who have ‘disappeared’ in the country are Baloch who may, or may not, have links to nationalists.

The government must take up the issue of Mr Eido’s kidnapping as a matter of urgency. His whereabouts need to be ascertained and his illegal detention ended. The problem is complicated by the lack of command over agencies which have established themselves as an entity that exists beyond the authority of civilian governments. This must end. The Supreme Court has made it clear that agencies are obliged to follow the law of the land which makes it mandatory that anyone arrested be charged and specific procedures be followed. The failure to do so in the case of Siddique Eido is terrifying. It is time all those who have gone missing in Balochistan were tracked down and permitted to return home.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Nineteenth amendment[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 23rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

For the second time in the year, the constitution of the republic is going to be amended, this time in order to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the previous amendment. The Nineteenth Amendment was passed in the National Assembly on December 22 but still needs to be passed by the senate and signed into law by the president. While we were not opposed to the Eighteenth Amendment as it currently stands, we feel that the Nineteenth Amendment, which amends the procedure for the appointment of judges, is a good compromise that retains the system of checks and balances between the three branches of government.

Under the proposed amendment, judges would be nominated by a judicial commission and approved or rejected by a parliamentary panel, though a rejection would have to be accompanied by an explanatory note. This gives parliament some power over the judiciary while also protecting the judiciary from being politicised by parliament. The judiciary is prevented from being a largely self-selecting elite as it currently is and parliament, by virtue of having to publicly justify and defend its reasons for rejecting judicial nominees, is prevented from making such decisions for overtly political motives. The amendment, therefore, can be expected to result in a balance of institutional power and we would urge members of parliament to approve it as soon as possible.

While the legal challenges to the Eighteenth Amendment had been viewed by some to be a threat to the current administration, the prime minister deserves credit for resolving the situation without causing any further acrimony. The prime minister is correct in his assessment that this administration may well be the most powerful democratic administration in the country’s history, in large part owing to its ability to compromise at the appropriate junctures.

A special note of gratitude is due to Senator Raza Rabbani. Leading the parliamentary committee on constitutional reforms, which includes members from across the entire political spectrum, cannot have been an easy task and yet the senator has been able to produce legislation that the nation can be justifiably proud of.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Handling of rape cases[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 23rd, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

It is hard to ensure that justice will be served when authorities are not convinced that a heinous crime has been committed. The response of the police to the gang rape of a young woman in Karachi shows that they are indulging in odious blame-the-victim behaviour. It is not their job to cast aspersions on the moral character of victims or pass comment on their testimony. It is also inappropriate for anyone — be it the media or politicians — to identify rape victims by name, as happened in this case. There is a longstanding directive from the Supreme Court to not name rape victims unless they themselves wish to come out in the open, as was the case with Mukhtaran Mai. This is a universally accepted norm, as it brings undue attention to the victim and takes focus away from punishing the culprits.

The conduct of authorities in this case raises fears that justice may not be served. Sources in the police have hinted that the suspects may have strong political connections. As we saw in the Dr Shazia Khalid rape case of 2005, political clout can be an impediment to justice. It has been established by a medico-legal report that the woman had been raped. Now it is the media’s job to ensure that the case doesn’t suffer from collective amnesia once the initial flurry of attention has died down.

There is an urgent need to review Pakistan’s rape laws. In 2006, Pervez Musharraf’s government stipulated that rape cases be tried in civil rather than Sharia courts. However, if a woman is unable to prove that she has been raped, she can be tried for adultery in both courts. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimates that a rape occurs in Pakistan every two hours and a gang rape every eight hours. Not all these women are able to prove that they have been raped. Until laws against rape are modernised, justice for rape survivors will only be partially served.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Law and extremism in Pakistan[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 24th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Just as the nation was getting ready to face the onslaught of religious parties and their jihadi adjuncts on the question of the blasphemy law, the Federal Shariat Court has ruled sections of the Women Protection Act (2006), among other legislations, to be violating the Constitution and given the government till June 2011 to remove the flaws in it. It has asserted its remit over the matter saying it is expressly permitted by the Constitution to review all legislation in the light of Quran and Sunnah.

It is sad that the Court has kept its eyes closed to the situation on the ground and obeyed the conservative tradition of following the letter of Islamic jurisprudential interpretation. Already, many Islamic laws in Pakistan are more honoured in their breach than their observance simply because their literalist application has neglected to take into account the social conditions in which the laws have to be prosecuted. Unfortunately, the utopian outlook seeks to coerce society into obedience with divine laws as handled by fallible human beings, rejecting the more realistic approach of moulding the law to the social conditions in which it has to be applied.

There are two ways laws can be made: by amending the Constitution; and by acts of parliament. In Pakistan there is a third way: a law may be promulgated by a military ruler which is later validated by a two-thirds majority in an elected parliament. In regard to Islamic law, a large section of the clerical community considers their interpretation of Islamic Law as being above any legislative process. Opposed to this view is the non-clerical opinion which believes in the sovereignty of the parliament, but this opinion is divided on liberal and conservative lines. This division tilts the debate in favour of the clerics who are empowered beyond normal levels to intimidate the executive, the media and the judiciary.

The latest verdict handed down by the Federal Shariat Court actually removes the legislative method of moderating the intensity of the application of Hudood Laws in today’s society. For instance, the clergy is divided over the question of rape. Again and again, ‘ulema’ have appeared on TV programmes to declare that a victim of rape should be partially considered culpable, insisting that she be subjected to the condition of producing four male eyewitnesses to prove that she has been forced to submit to sexual assault.

The law relating to zina — a part of the Hudood that the Federal Shariat Court seeks to protect as Islamic Law — had registered marked negative effects on society in Pakistan. Women daring to report rape were made to face charges of false accusation because they could not produce four eyewitnesses and were thereafter punished under the Qazaf law. The honourable Court has annulled that section of the Women’s Protection Act which sought to remove, through procedural changes, the abuse of the said law. Thousands of women who had rotted in jail simply because they protested rape have borne witness to the flaw in the literalist approach.

Will the bad days return for women? Already, the literalist approach has divided the judges at the high court level on the question of child marriage as raised in the Family Law Ordinance, leading to dubious implementation. The law of Diyat ordained by law has been subject to abuse by the powerful section of society which commits crimes of oppression against the weak sections. Procedural difficulties also haunt those who come under the effect of Diyat. In other extreme cases like cutting of hands, and stoning of people — mostly women whose witness is not accepted as full — Pakistan has saved its skin by somehow not enforcing the sentences. The same kind of thing has happened with the victims of the blasphemy law.

The unfolding of legal evolution in Pakistan tells us that conservative military rulers hand down literalist laws which then cannot be rolled back; and liberal military rulers hand down realistic laws which are then either removed by a conservative judiciary or by violence on the streets. General Ayub’s liberal Family Law Ordinance was never properly made a law as Pakistan evolved into a more ideologically strict society as time passed; the parliament under Musharraf accepted ‘modern’ provisions like joint electorates and women’s seats but could not amend the Constitution after three Women’s Rights Commissions steadily recommended the removal of the Hudood Laws, and had to be content with the Women’s Protection Act.

As judicial evolution has tended to favour strict ideology, extremism has gradually increased in Pakistani society. As an agent of negative change, the decision of the state to wage jihad through non-state actors has enriched and empowered a certain kind of clergy and their madrassas. Extremism is always tempered by law which is called ‘adl’ in Arabic which, in turn, means the ‘middle path’ and forms the word ‘etadaal’ meaning moderation. But in Pakistan, because of the street power of the clergy and the increasing recourse by the common man to the powerful jihadi organisations for problem-solving, extremism has been ‘enforced’ and has now become a part of our minds.

The government has already been intimidated into passivity on the question of Aasia Bibi. The judges have stayed the president from pardoning the Christian victim of the blasphemy law, and the clerics have threatened Islamabad with dire consequences if she is made to flee Pakistan. In the 1990s, when another pre-teen Christian victim Salamat Masih was sent into exile, the reaction was not so extreme; today in the case of Aasia Bibi, it is. In fact, the government risks a fall in the coming month when the clergy of Barelvi and Deobandi brands gets together with jihadi organisations, banned by the UN Security Council as terrorists, to prevent the government from tinkering with the procedures under the blasphemy law.

Women and non-Muslims in Pakistan bear the brunt of this extremism and lack of tolerance, mixed with xenophobia because the international community protests at what is happening in Pakistan. The Federal Shariat Court has indirectly expressed itself against procedural changes in the blasphemy law too and has once again ignored factors responsible for the malfunction of Islamic legal provisions.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Lost vision[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 25th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Let us imagine that Mohammad Ali Jinnah were to step into the country he founded today, on his 134th birth anniversary, and walk down the streets of Karachi, the city he made his home. What he found would almost certainly shock him: slogans suggesting ethnic discord scratched out on graffiti-covered walls, drug users gathering at chosen spots to inject heroin into veins, a shattered civic infrastructure and an atmosphere permeated with intense political and sectarian tensions. Of course, he would encounter similar horrors in other places: from the Taliban in the north, to flood victims in the south, existing on the shores of a sea made up of mass despondency as a consequence of unemployment, inflation and social inequality. We can only imagine his feelings and his thoughts.

Quite obviously this was not the vision Jinnah had for the country he had carved onto the map in 1947, after three decades of assiduous effort. As Pakistan marked its first year in existence, Jinnah, on August 14, 1948, had said in a message to the people of Pakistan that the foundations of a state had been laid down for them and it was now up to them to build on these as quickly and as well as they could. The Quaid-i-Azam died less than a month later. But we wonder if much thought has been given to why the construction on the foundations he put down has been so shoddy. Could we really not have done better?

Jinnah had clearly articulated during his lifetime a desire for a state that was democratic, secular in orientation and just to all its people. His own death, barely a year after Pakistan came into being, was of course one factor in the failure to establish such a Republic. The unifying force that Jinnah offered was too quickly lost. Failings by leaders and faults in policy contributed to the problems that quickly crept up. But is this adequate explanation for why we have strayed so far from the path chalked out by Jinnah? Has enough been done over the years to demarcate it again so it can be followed? These are questions we need to ponder in some depth as we observe Mr Jinnah’s birth anniversary. The answers could help us determine our future.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]American courts and our sovereignty[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 25th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani — not a little egged on by parliamentary opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan — has bravely told off an American court asking Pakistan’s chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and two other army officers to appear before it to answer accusations made against them in regard to the 2008 Mumbai attacks in India. The suit has been filed by relatives of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, who were among the 166 people killed in the attacks. He, however, left a little opening by allowing that he could actually agree to the summons “after consulting the country’s top intelligence agency and other stakeholders.”

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, intending to put the government on the back foot, had condemned the US court for summoning the ISI chief and other officers in the case. He said: “It is not the decision of the court, but a political move to bring Pakistan under pressure.” He challenged the prime minister to “protect Pakistan’s sovereignty”, presumably under attack by the US. Mr Gilani thought he could steal Mr Khan’s thunder by launching into another subject where Pakistan’s sovereignty was under challenge, and added; “No one should have an impression that they can dictate when military operations should be conducted in North Waziristan and South Waziristan.”

Legally, there is nothing the American courts can do if Pakistan is not ready to surrender its ISI chief to them for trial and presumably conviction too. But what if there is something the US is doing which already seriously violates our sovereignty — like the drone attacks — and puts the onus of response on Pakistan? The red line drawn by Pakistan in this regard is that America can ply its drones in some areas of Pakistan but not in others. There have been occasions when the red line was crossed but Pakistan did nothing. Does that mean that Pakistan is not in a position to retaliate in order to assert its sovereignty? No, the last time American troops violated the territorial boundary of Pakistan, dozen of Nato supply trucks were attacks and burnt (in separate incidents) during transit and this continued till the Americans apologised.

There is apparently nothing the Americans can do to make Pakistan surrender its ISI chief, in which case the court will wait till the chief visits America and then get him to attend proceedings. Pakistan and the US have no extradition treaty, therefore it is not possible for the Americans to take up the matter effectively with Pakistan. But there are things that must embarrass Pakistan when it comes to its nationals doing funny things in other countries. Dual nationality terrorists caught in the US and the UK routinely reveal that they had taken their training in Fata.

There are safe havens for foreign terrorists inside Pakistan from where they carry out attacks inside the territory of other states like India, Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan — violating their sovereignty. Can they do anything about it under international law? Their courts can’t but they can approach the United Nations and get the UN Security Council and to pass a resolution under Chapter 7 to force Pakistan to stop this activity. But the UN is no court and, if Pakistan can manage a veto, there is nothing anyone can do. But ‘illegal’ actions can be taken against Pakistan’s perceived transgressions. Some of it is happening and some more can happen in the future. India and Iran have threatened action in their own different ways but America, aware that Pakistan is doing something positive but ‘not enough’, is already doing a little as a prelude of all that it can do in the last resort.

Pakistan’s plea that it is not violating other countries’ sovereignty, simply because Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism at the hands of the same non-state actors, will not hold. Its protest that the non-state actors destroying its law and order were created by America during the war against the Soviet Union will hold even less. What is difficult to establish is sovereignty over territory without effectively holding that territory. And there is no way Pakistan can prove its effective control over the territory where it is inconclusively fighting foreign elements who are trying to establish Pakistan as their platform for international terrorism.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Ominous show of clerical power[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 26th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

There is an unprecedented rallying of the clerical parties against any changes brought in the blasphemy law or its procedures by the government. The first glimpse of what the clerics can achieve on December 31 came into full view on December 24 all over the country. It was also an expression of the high degree of discontent, among the men of God, over the nature and function of the state in Pakistan. Looking back over the past years, this kind of rallying of clerical power has rarely been seen.

The target of these post-Friday prayer protests, in various cities of the country, was the PPP and its office-bearers who are seen as minions of their ‘foreign masters’ bent upon allowing infidels to insult the Holy Prophet (pbuh). In the crosshairs was Sherry Rehman who has very courageously tabled a watered-down version of the law in parliament, aimed at eliminating widespread abuse of the blasphemy law in the country. The other target was Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer who had dared to send a request of pardon for the Christian victim Aasia Bibi to President Asif Ali Zardari. After that the general target were the secularist renegades in all walks of life plotting to turn the state away from its Islamic identity.

The demonstrations were staged in Lahore, Karachi and Multan where the clerics have their strongholds and can mobilise their seminarian youths. The one at Lahore was 1,500 strong, calling aggressively for jihad to save the honour of the Prophet (pbuh). The JUI-F was up front, its leader shouting: “Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and we will not tolerate any attempt to amend the law.” The banned Jamaatud Dawa took out a rally of some 500 people in Lahore, its leader saying: “We will launch a national movement against all those lawmakers who support efforts to amend the law.”

In Karachi, over 2,000 clerics and their pupils came out protesting Ms Rehman’s draft law. In Islamabad, the upfront religious organisation was Tahaffuz Khatam-e-Nubuwwat led by the Barelvis whose tendency to defend the honour of the Prophet (pbuh) had at first put off the more strict Deobandis. But at this point, there is a convergence of interests among all the three schools of thought: Barelvis, Deobandis and Ahle Hadith or Wahhabis. The Islamabad rally was organised in part by the UN-banned Ahle Hadith Jamaatud Dawa whose lead in this campaign introduces a new intensity to the crisis. The Friday wave of protest was the result of an All-Parties Conference headed by the JUI-F’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Islamabad. Rawalpindi saw an impressive demonstration of clerical strength based on the mushroom growth of seminaries in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area. The target was widened to include president of the Supreme Court Bar Association Asma Jahangir, the internationally-known human rights worker under whom the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has produced voluminous literature cataloguing injustice done to minorities under the blasphemy law.

The Jamaat-i-Islami, one of the more organised religious parties in the country, has got the more tribal JUI-F on board finally, to raise the hope of reviving the religious alliance called the MMA which ruled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa under Musharraf. Now, there is virtually no division among the various schools of thought. And this coming together of the clerics could be very destabilising for Pakistan, already under pressure from the international community to mend its extremist ways. It must be scary to the outside world to hear the deputy commander of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulvi Faqir Muhammad of Bajaur say that the TTP will stand behind the nation-wide protest on December 31.

Al Qaeda, the global terrorist organisation that presides over religious extremism in Pakistan, has already pursued the policy of punishing those in the West who commit blasphemy through cartoons and by other means. It is a patron of the TTP and has its embedded cells in all the big cities of the country. The coming week could be an ominous demonstration of the extent to which Pakistan is politically unstable and to what extent its government has lost the capacity to control events that threaten the lives of the people.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Bajaur bombing[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 26th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Thousands of IDPs who have returned to Bajaur after fleeing fighting in the agency, will now face even tougher times. These IDPs, who had in many cases lost everything in the months of conflict, today struggle to survive; the task of re-building homes and restoring lands looms before them. In such circumstances we can only wonder at the sheer evil inherent in the suicide attack on a World Food Programme (WFP) distribution point in the town of Khar that killed at least 41 people, wounded another 60 and forced the WFP to wrap up operations in the area. As a result, there are families that will go hungry and children who will cry for food.

The militants behind the most recent attack have chosen to strike at their own people and have chosen from amongst their ranks the most vulnerable, who are least able to defend themselves. The motives behind the blast are unclear. It can only be assumed that the purpose was to hit a ‘foreign’ target, in this case represented by the WFP, despite the fact that its efforts aided local people. The agency has been targeted before, leading to a toning down of services. The attacks on NGOs engaged in humanitarian work through the years has obviously had a negative impact, causing a number to pull out or scale-down operations. There are not many countries in the world where relief workers are targeted by bombers and teachers or doctors are shot dead. Something has clearly gone terribly amiss in our society. We need to try and understand what it is.

We can now also see that the militants remain perfectly capable of operating across the tribal belt and perhaps beyond it. The loudly proclaimed ‘success’ of the operation against them needs to be reviewed. Raising victory cries can serve no purpose when defeat of the Taliban and their allies is still a distant dream. This week alone they have been horrific attacks in Mohmand and Hangu, apart from the latest in Bajaur. Some are sectarian in nature while others are driven by other motives. Are we then failing in the bid to vanquish militants? Are we destined to see more events such as the carnage at Khar? The thought is a terrible one and there seems to be no instant hope of salvation anywhere in sight.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Unsolved murder[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Two former policemen arrested from a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court on December 22, after their bail pleas were rejected in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, now say they were in touch with four or five top intelligence officials in the moments before the assassination. It is hard to say how significant this is. The contacts could have been innocuous or very significant. The public prosecutor has pledged to get to the bottom of the matter. Let us hope he succeeds.

Three years after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, we have a distinct pattern. Around the anniversary of the murder, a flurry of activity takes place — with discussions in the media focused on the events that occurred on that cold evening in Rawalpindi as she left Liaquat Bagh. Theories abound as to whether or not she was hit by a bullet or why she stood up in the vehicle that was taking her away from the venue. But the fact is that even today, we have no idea who killed Benazir, or what their motives were. Like other assassinations that have marked Pakistan’s chequered political history, this one stands in danger of becoming a mystery forever.

This would be extremely unfortunate. The doubts and speculation surrounding the case haunt us all. We, as a nation, cannot sustain the shock and the loss of strength that comes with the brutal killing of leaders. Our democracy is too fragile to withstand such blows. Most of all, we need our political leadership to help build the foundations for the future. The loss of Benazir means the possibility of this has decreased.

There have been many rumours surrounding the killing. Some may have been intended to inflict damage on certain individuals. But people want an end to conjecture and the uncovering of the truth. The premise that the Tehreek-i-Taliban was behind the carefully planned attack may be accurate. But the matter can be settled only by the uncovering of evidence. The trail that leads away from the murder may now be cold. But it is still not too late to walk along it and try and determine what really happened on that fateful day in 2007.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Caches, convoys and conspiracies[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

The arrest of Shahzain Bugti, the provincial chief of the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) and grandson of the late Nawab Akbar Bugti, has raised the temperature in Balochistan by several degrees. The icy winter winds of Quetta are insufficient to lower it. The JWP has called a strike and stated a long march, from Kashmore to Dera Bugti, to press for the return of displaced Bugti tribesmen. Shahzain was to have led the march. The central president of the JWP, Talal Bugti, says he was ‘set up’ by intelligence agencies in a bid to prevent this. Both Shahzain and Talal Bugti hold that the huge cache of illegal weapons allegedly found in a convoy of vehicles, which included one belonging to Shahzain as he returned from Chaman to Quetta, was actually planted, with other vehicles carryings rocket launchers, guns and other arms suddenly joining Shahzain’s vehicles as they approached Quetta.

Such actions have been carried out before by agencies. It is not beyond them to devise such a plot. This is especially true in the context of Balochistan. It is hardly surprising that the JWP has expressed a lack of confidence in the probe ordered by the interior minister and sought an independent judicial investigation. There appears to be no harm in ordering one. The matter needs to be investigated so that there is no further acrimony with JWP leaders and other nationalists in the province.

It is ironic that the grandsons of the late Nawab Bugti should count among nationalists. For most of his life, he had stayed aloof from nationalist politics. From one perspective, the one already adopted by the Frontier Corps which arrested Shahzain, the affair can be regarded as a criminal act which deserves to be punished. This is true. But given the delicate situation of Balochistan, it is necessary to try and take leaders from the province along and avoid adding to existing tensions within the federation.


[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Fathers and sons[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 27th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

Media reports of the arrest of the son of the aging leader of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, come at a time when there has been increased pressure from Washington on Islamabad to go after the North Waziristan-based group thought to be responsible for many of the attacks on US-led security forces in Afghanistan. Details coming in are sketchy, but it is thought the man detained is Nasiruddin Haqqani. Accounts as to where Nasiruddin is being held vary.

The Haqqani network marks the line of rift between Washington and Islamabad on policy against militancy. The Pakistani establishment had evolved a close working relationship with the network during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Haqqanis are said also to retain a friendship with Pakistan military elements and, unlike other Taliban or al Qaeda affiliated groups, choose not to launch attacks in Pakistan. Their assault on forces inside Afghanistan, however, has led to fervent demands that a military operation be conducted in North Waziristan. The Pakistan military has so far remained reluctant to venture into this territory.

It is possible that, recognising this, a direct bid to nab Haqqani was made from Afghanistan. The episode so far, like much of the war on terror, is locked in shadows. There have been suggestions that Nasiruddin had recently completed a visit to the Gulf to collect funds for the militant cause. This pipeline of money needs to be blocked off. It is now obvious the Haqqani network is in the centre of US and Afghan actions against terrorism. How this eventually latches in with Pakistan’s own efforts is something that will be closely watched over the coming days as more information begins to emerge about the arrest of a key Haqqani network leader.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The Taliban in Bajaur[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 28th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

After news that the Pakistan army had the Taliban on the run from South Waziristan, Orakzai and Mohmand agencies in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has struck a heavy blow in Bajaur, killing 47 innocent citizens collecting food items from a World Food Programme distribution point in Khar, the main bazaar in Bajaur Agency.

The TTP and its escaping warriors were hit hard by drones in Tirah in Khyber Agency recently and the speculation was that this represented part of an important reversal inflicted by the army on the terrorists. This could still be true, judging by the lethality of the retaliatory attack on Sunday, which was carried out by a girl suicide bomber. The TTP had remained quiet during the first ten days of Muharram and may have been licking its wounds till now.

The practice of inducting girls as suicide bombers was uncovered in February this year when a girl named Meena from Malakand was interviewed by the BBC as an escapee from an underground ‘factory’ where her father and brother were earning good money training and transporting suicide bombers from South Punjab to the Taliban for attacks inside Afghanistan. Her sister had met her death near Kabul as a suicide bomber but she had somehow overcome the effect of drugs to escape from the den where she was being ‘prepared’ as a ‘martyr’ to earn big money for her family.

Spokesman of TTP, Azam Tariq — named after the late leader of the Sipah-i-Sahaba — says his organisation carried out the attack in Bajaur to prevent the Salarzai tribe from fielding an anti-TTP militia with the help of the government. This makes us aware of the local reaction against the TTP and its Arab friends across the Durand Line in the Afghan province of Kunar. Bajaur is the smallest tribal agency in terms of area and largest in terms of population and qualifies to be integrated with the rest of Pakistan because of the high level of consciousness of its people. It has 70 percent television coverage which is comparable to that in Kurram Agency, which too qualifies for integration before other agencies.

The population, dependent on remittances from within Pakistan and the Gulf, is not easily persuaded to the cause of the Taliban war, but the neighbourhood of Kunar has produced a serious dent in the resolve of the local tribes — mostly of Uthmanzai origin — to resist the TTP. Aiman alZawahiri, the ideological boss of al Qaeda, lived here comfortably and married into a local pro-Taliban tribe, the Tarkani. TTP also got its most ferocious commander from the Tarkanis, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, who boasts of having collected the most number of suicide bombers after Hussain Mehsud of Orakzai. The army went into Bajaur in 2008 with all guns blazing but he survived the onslaught. Today, Maulvi Faqir commands around 6,000 fighters, including about 500 Afghans and 100 other foreign fighters, mostly Arabs and Chechens. Uzbek fighters — commanded by Qari Ziaur Rehman, who also trains other foreign fighters — are present in the Charmang area of Bajaur’s Nawagai tehsil.

Among the agencies, Bajaur is most inclined to resist the TTP and its patron al Qaeda, but the strength of the likes of Maulvi Faqir is more than they can fight. Thinking that Bajaur was strategically important — it abuts on Swat-Malakand and can easily reverse the military’s victory in Swat — the army has tried to clean it up. However, the two big sections, Salarzai and Tarkanis, are at loggerheads, and this has caused the TTP and al Qaeda to kill a large number of local elders to ‘persuade’ the population in their favour. The battle in Bajaur continues to fluctuate. The army is in control but the TTP warriors return to the cleared areas at night. There is a great misunderstanding in Pakistan that the Taliban are of two kinds, and that al Qaeda stands apart from them. Maulvi Faqir, the ruler of Bajaur has proclaimed allegiance to both the Taliban of Mullah Umar and Osama bin Laden and will send TTP warriors into Afghanistan to fight the Americans while the same Taliban kill innocent Pakistanis in our cities.

[B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Coalition concerns[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
[B][RIGHT]December 28th, 2010[/RIGHT][/B]

At the PPP Central Executive Committee meeting in Naudero, President Asif Ali Zardari has made it clear how much significance he attaches to the need to retain allies. In the wake of the JUI-F’s angry exit from the coalition and the MQM’s threat to follow suit, the President has imposed a gag order on PPP legislators, urging them not to make provocative statements. The move comes as both parties consider their future ties with the PPP. In some ways, at least the order makes sense. Running a coalition government is always a task that involves good sense and tact and the attack launched on the MQM recently by the Sindh home minister, Zulfiqar Ali Mirza, triggering the latest crisis, was obviously unwise. Some degree of restraint is definitely required because nothing is achieved when elected representatives wash their dirty linen in public.

Perhaps the president’s warning can persuade PPP members to more carefully consider what they are saying and what impact it could have. It is also sensible to work out internal differences through calm dialogue, rather than public airing them. This indeed needs to be made clear to all lawmakers.

But at the same time, a balance needs to be found between the requirements of coalition government and the question of offering people the kind of government they voted for. Too many compromises make the matter of sticking to principal rather hard, and this disillusions people. The key purpose of government is to offer leadership to people, to solve their problems and set a direction for the future. Too great a focus on pleasing coalition partners can only detract from this. In view of some of the comments we have heard from government members and the ugly squabble between ministers which led to the dismissal from the cabinet of the JUI-F’s Azam Swati, a little discipline would do no harm. Seeing more deeds and fewer words would do us all a great deal of good. The president’s attempts to control damage therefore seem wise under the prevailing circumstances. We need somehow to create greater political stability in order to move forward. Preventing lawmakers from expressing controversial opinions without obtaining approval from the party high command could help achieve this and lay the ground for more successful governance in the future.