October 18, 2016

Bilawal calling

The PPP’s annual October 18 rally in Karachi to mark the attack on Benazir Bhutto’s convoy in 2007 is always a reminder of the party’s continued street power, even in a city where its support is restricted to a few areas. This year’s rally – held on October 16 – was no different as tens of thousands of people marched from Bilawal House to Karsaz and a fiery speech by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari confidently asserted a return to the party’s glory days. There certainly is an opening for the PPP in Karachi, with the MQM in a state of disarray, and even at the national level. But the PPP, reduced only to its base of rural Sindh after five disastrous years of governance at the national level, has done nothing to expand its popularity in the country and one rally alone will not restore the party to its former glory. While the content of his address was not insignificant, the style of delivery drew special attention with the young Bhutto, who banks on his family name, resorting to the same high-pitched slightly histrionic tone that for him seems to have become the norm of public speaking. It is unclear who has tutored Bilawal, who also still struggles with language, in this style but it is not always pleasant to watch, while his jibes at other political leaders far his senior in terms of years and experience are sometimes in poor taste.

Bilawal tried to be stirring in threatening a long march to Islamabad on Benazir’s death anniversary if four demands of the PPP were not met. His demands included constituting a parliamentary national security committee, appointing a permanent foreign minister and implementing resolutions adopted by the All-Parties Conference on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is curious that the PPP has always often tried to distance itself from Imran Khan’s brand of politics and yet Bilawal was proposing the same solution – a long march to Islamabad – for the same complaint, of the government not accepting opposition demands on the Panama Papers leaks, as the PTI. Interestingly, in the same speech Bilawal also mocked the selection of a ‘player’ to hunt down a ‘lion’. There is no reason to believe the PPP would be any more successful than the PTI has so far been in following this strategy. In that respect, it is hard to declare the rally a success. But the rally did serve the purpose of demonstrating that the PPP is not an entirely spent force yet and that Bilawal may be able to step out of his parents’ shadows and emerge as the party’s true leader. He sounded passionate in standing up for the rights of Kashmiris and denouncing Narendra Modi. He was critical of the PML-N government’s policies on India. This is of course easy to do when one is not tasked with the responsibility relevant to such issues and only time can tell what the PPP under him can do that will be different to the policies not only of the PML-N government but also those of the PPP in the past. He talked about his party’s connection to Lyari but that will not be enough to get the PPP out of its electoral rut. The rally shows his party’s discontent at being practically reduced to a provincial entity and that it intends to attain a national presence once again. For this to happen, Bilawal now has to move beyond the politics that exploits martyrdoms of past leaders. Developing an ability to do so, gaining his own style of leadership and persuading the people that he has something to offer them will be his key challenges in the months and years ahead.

Hunger scores

Pakistan has improved its standing slightly as compared to 2008 with respect to hunger levels in the country. The latest Global Hunger Index released by the International Food Policy Research Institute gives it a rating of 33.4 as opposed to 35.1 in the 2008 index, placing it at 108th place amongst the 118 countries included in the Index. This essentially reads to state that 22 percent of Pakistani people are undernourished, a status gauged on the basis of child mortality, child wasting and child stunting. Pakistan has fared worse than India and Bangladesh, which scored 28.5 and 27.1 respectively. The comparison with India in particular needs to be examined and thought about given that that country sustains an immense, growing population with hunger levels that have for decades stayed unacceptably high. The central message delivered by the IFPRI report is that countries need to do more to reduce hunger. It estimates that if the current decline in the ability to feed people continues, then by 2030 more than 45 countries including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan will have ‘moderate to alarming’ hunger scores.

Hunger is something we need to look at as beyond a mere statistic. In real terms, it is brutally ugly, accounting for children who die, children who are unable to reach their mental or physical potential, and to acute tensions within families, communities and countries. The social divide we currently face is reflected in patterns of food consumption and food wastage. Hunger and deprivation lead also to a whole host of other social problems including crime, child labour and much more. Pakistan has paid too little attention to the problem over the years. The marginal improvement it has demonstrated since 2008 is encouraging. But essentially a great deal more needs to be done to feed people and ensure no one is left unable to feed themselves or their families. Only then will we be able to count ourselves as a civilised nation capable of guarding the most basic needs of our people. We need to climb out of the abyss of hunger faced by far too many people across a country which has abundant agricultural resources and should be able to provide food for all its citizens. We can ensure the sustainability of this by reducing population growth and discrepancies in food distribution across the country.

Alliances and rivalries

The shape of regional alliances and rivalries in South Asia has become clearer in the past few days first during the BRICS summit in Goa and then with further Chinese statements on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The announcement that the nuclear reactor in Chashma, funded and constructed by China, has now been connected to the grid came just days after China once again rejected Indian membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. China also said it was eagerly awaiting Iran’s inclusion in the CPEC, which will be viewed in Delhi as an attempt by China to build an alliance that will act as a counterweight to Indian influence. All of this will come as encouraging news to Pakistan as it pushes back against Indian attempts to isolate it and have it denounced as a sponsor of terrorism. The BRICS summit itself showed both the expansion of India’s international influence and the limits it still faces, especially now the China has taken a more adversarial role. India had hoped to use the summit to not only get expanded trade and defence deals with the attending nations – Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa – but to get them to denounce Pakistan as the epicentre of world terrorism. China, whose foreign office spokesman mentioned the sacrifices Pakistan had made in combating terrorism and described us as being as much a victim of terrorism as India, blocked any such move. Modi had wanted the final statement of the summit to denounce Pakistan as the ‘mothership of terrorism’ but not only was China able to ensure there would be no mention of Pakistan in the text, it also said it would continue to block India’s move at the UN to have Masood Azhar blacklisted. It has now even pulled out of the trade session at the BRICS summit. The China-India rivalry for regional dominance is now the only counterweight to India’s campaign to have Pakistan tarred and feathered on the global stage.

There was a danger that India’s ties to Russia too would come under strain after Putin went ahead with his country’s first ever joint defence exercises with Pakistan right before the summit. However, Russia said it had no intention of giving defence equipment to Pakistan and signed deals for the sale of missile technology to India on the sidelines of the summit. Russia’s greater interest in Pakistan was explained as part of its strategy for fighting the Islamic State. So Russia’s relationship with India, dating back to the early days of the cold war, seems intact. India’s influence was seen not so much in what was discussed at the summit but in what was left out. At a time when India is carrying out a brutal campaign of violence in Kashmir, not one country brought up the situation or urged India to show restraint. Multiple UN resolutions on Kashmir did not merit any mention. China was the only country to release even a tepid statement urging India to seek a peaceful resolution of its problems with Pakistan. This is how India has managed to get away with its illegal occupation of Kashmir for nearly 70 years and this is why it is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. It may take Pakistan’s alliance with China and the expansion of the CPEC to include other countries for India’s influence to wane even a little bit and its atrocities in Kashmir to start being questioned.

An informal life

There is some good news for Sindh’s poorest residents after Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah’s announcement that 100 informal settlements, or katchi abadis, would be upgraded to the level of urban towns. In principle, this would mean that the infrastructure provided to these settlements would be improved and brought in line with the infrastructure provided for recognised settlements. While it is unclear how exactly the government is planning to take on the endeavour or even what the budget or timescale of the infrastructure upgrade would be, this is in principle a positive step which recognises the rights of some of the city’s poorest residents who are forced to live in undignified living conditions due to the apathy of the state sector. Despite the fact that at least 948 of the 1,409 katchi abadis in Sindh are recognised and notified, they remain stuck in a cycle where they remain low-priority areas in terms of state service provision. The katchi abadi legislations in each province, despite offering ways to recognise informal settlements, almost condemn them to always be considered katchi abadis. Being recognised as something different from a regular township begins to define their life.

In the context of Karachi, one major example is Orangi Town which has been long ignored for the simple reason that it was considered an informal settlement by city authorities. The area houses around 2.4 million people who have continued to suffer from government apathy. The same fate is suffered by the almost 60 percent of Karachi’s population which lives in katchi abadis. Orangi’s residents, working with the Orangi Pilot Project, however, decided to help themselves. While the model is celebrated throughout the world, the provincial and city governments have had no part to play in it. How can over half the population of a city simply be ignored for the failure of city developers? In principle, it seems that the new Sindh chief minister has recognised this and is looking to implement a way to move forward. The shake up in the Sindh government earlier this year could be said to have brought fresh eyes to address the issue. For now, however, the commitment to improving the conditions of katchi abadis is just a promise. We will have to access it again to see whether it has been met.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Our right to know

Back in 2010, a clause in the 18th Amendment acknowledged the right to information as a basic constitutional right of all Pakistanis. It took till 2013 for the PPP-led Senate, through the Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting and National Heritage to approve the Right to Information Act. The act was widely praised by civil society and NGOs as among the strongest in the region. Since then, however, the federal government has endlessly delayed tabling the act in the National Assembly, with Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed continually vowing it would be taken up by the cabinet soon and never following through. Now, finally, the PML-N government has produced its own RTI bill – which undoes much of the good that was contained in the Senate bill. The government bill has been rated as among the weakest in South Asia by the Canada-based Centre for Law and Democracy, an NGO which produces the Global Right to Information Rating comparing various right to information laws around the world. The government version more closely resembles the Musharraf-era Freedom of Information Ordinance of 2002, a misnomer of a bill which exempted such huge swathes of government and the judiciary from making information public that it ended up completely toothless.

The Senate bill had only created disclosure exemptions for narrowly-defined information that needed to be kept secret for reasons of national security. The government is now trying to broaden that category and has also watered down the right of citizens to inspect public documents. It has further made the bill toothless by allowing the government to appoint anyone from the legal community, civil society or bureaucracy to ensure information is made public without specifying how many members should be from each community. There is a worry that the government will end up appointing only bureaucrats, who have their own vested interest in keeping information from being public. PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar, who was part of the effort to draft the original bill, said at a seminar at the Rawalpindi Bar Association that national security needs to be clearly and narrowly defined so that it isn’t used as an excuse to deny people information. He also called for the workings of the judiciary to be made more transparent by taking another look at how contempt laws can have a chilling effect. The government should heed Babar’s words and also use the lauded RTI bills passed by the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments as a model to craft legislation that acknowledges the right to know what the government is doing in our names.

The battle for Mosul

Iraq is entering a new phase in the fight against Isis. After months of planning, the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces have launched an attack on the city of Mosul, which has been under Isis control for around two years. Two days into the fight, we have another set of refugees – this time from Mosul. Those leaving Mosul have spoken of fears among people that peace would never return to their home city as the commitment of almost everyone to taking the fight to Isis remains in question. Some refugees have reported that Isis was able to take back its positions a day after the Iraqi army began its fight. Reaching Mosul itself is likely to take at least two more weeks as the armies wade through complex regional politics and poor weather to reach this Isis stronghold. Even US President Obama has warned of a long and difficult fight ahead. While the predicted timeline is two months, the fight will most certainly take longer. Even if the Iraqi army is able to take back Mosul, residents worry that there would be a spate of sectarian killings in reprisal.

As the war continues, there could be as much as 1.3 million more refugees that flee Mosul. There are also fears that civilians could be used as human targets – which would mean more civilian death tolls. Even if Mosul is won back, the divisions within Iraqi society are likely to intensify. The situation has become complex with Turkish troops training a militia 10 miles north of Mosul as well as Turkish President Erdogan deciding to choose this time to make claims on northern Iraqi territory. US, British and French troops are reportedly also playing a supporting role in the offensive. All said and done, conquering Mosul might not be the most difficult part of the journey ahead. What is far more important – and difficult – will be winning back hearts and minds and restoring a semblance of governance to a region that has been terrorised by war. The battle for Mosul could either unite Iraq or leave it divided forever. Or it could just be another false dawn.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Papers, petitions and foot soldiers

Imran Khan has maintained all along that his only wish is for there to be accountability over the revelations in the Panama Papers leaks. On Thursday, he got his wish as the Supreme Court started hearings on five petitions relating to the matter. These petitions include the formation of a judicial commission, the potential disqualification of Nawaz Sharif and inquiries by investigation agencies into the owners of offshore companies. Analysts and commentators are of the view that if Imran Khan has any faith in the judiciary, he should now accept that there is no good reason to go ahead with his plan to shutdown Islamabad on November 2. But then there are those who will say that Imran’s true aim is to ascend to the office of the prime minister himself and he is not one to let respect for democratic institutions to stop him. As we saw during the 2014 dharna in Islamabad, the PTI is not above using intimidation to get its way. Shutting down the capital, especially now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the petitions, will be yet another bad decision by the PTI since it will look like the party is using the street to affect the SC proceedings. This of course appears to be one of the aims. The government and the prime minister have welcomed the Supreme Court’s intervention and this attitude should now be translated into acts that can be seen as manifestations of the ‘welcome’ extended to the SC.

If the anti-corruption slogans of the PTI had even an iota of sincerity about them, we would be seeing a different PTI strategy, but as an ‘impatient’ fragment of the status quo, Imran can only do what he is doing with the ‘godsend’ that the Panama leaks are. No matter what one says or thinks about how the government bungled matters in this case, the PTI’s argument with the government over the terms of reference for the proposed Panama Papers leaks commission is far too ‘arcane’ to ignite public passion and does not justify an attempt to dislodge the government. There are now reports that the PTI is using, for the Islamabad protest, foot soldiers from a madressah its government is funding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The reference here appears to be to Maulana Samiul Haq’s Darul Uloom Haqqania, which the PTI is funding to the tune of Rs300 million over a period of two years in return for carrying out reforms. The madressah is known for militant sympathies and connections. If this is true, then the potential for the protests in Islamabad to spiral out of control has only increased. If this is true, then the PTI and its government, the Punjab government, the federal government and the security apparatus of the state all are answerable to the people for what may happen and for what can and should be done to prevent it. If this is true, it only shows the extent that Imran Khan is willing to go to while playing out his fantasies of attaining power without any regard for what damage it causes not just the government but the country. We do hope this is not true. However, the PTI and Imran Khan have made it clear how they are once again ready to take any step to overthrow the government.

This time, the PTI is not the only party going on the offensive. The PPP has announced its own plans to take out a long march, with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari making a list of demands. Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Ahmed Shah has followed up with a plague-on-both-your-houses speech, accusing both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan of hurting democracy. The PPP, whose electoral base has been reduced to rural Sindh, is hoping Imran’s over-the-top theatrics and Nawaz’s various scandals alienate the public, creating space for the PPP to once again be in a position to compete all over the country. But as the more responsible member of the opposition, Shah has also made it clear that, unlike the PTI, it does not want to disrupt democracy by overthrowing the government. Nawaz Sharif, too, does not seem ready to give up the fight. In an aggressive speech after he was elected ‘unopposed’ as the PML-N president, he predicted his party would gain power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since Imran is interested only in the streets and not the problems of the province. But we hardly need a Sharif to tell us that the correct path for the PTI would have been to focus on governance. But it has now committed itself fully to ambitions and actions that, in the long run, will not let it grow as a genuine political force. If only the possible consequences were limited to the PTI’s own fate.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Talks in Qatar

The reported resumption of peace talks between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban in Qatar for the first time since 2013 was long overdue. The war in Afghanistan is at a stalemate. The government and its Nato allies know that they cannot militarily defeat the Taliban. The Taliban know that they cannot hold major cities for too long and certainly cannot take over the entire country. A negotiated settlement is the only possible solution and the arduous task of figuring out the details of that settlement needs to begin in earnest. Media reports indicate that the Taliban are demanding the release of their cadres, the removal of their leaders from a UN blacklist and formal recognition by the Afghan government as a precondition of their participation in further talks. While the release of a few symbolic prisoners as a good-faith gesture may be possible, the other conditions are what the Taliban are likely to receive in return for laying down arms and not as a reward for just agreeing to hold talks. One demand of the Taliban’s – that all foreign troops withdraw from the country – should be enthusiastically taken up by the Afghan government since a decade-and-a-half of foreign occupation has shown that it only acts as an accelerant to a country already on fire.

The question of foreign actors has been at the centre of speculation about the Qatar meetings. The Taliban claimed that the US had an official present at the meeting, although that has not been confirmed by anyone else. Pakistan, which was the original go-between for the Taliban and Afghanistan, seems to have been shut out of the process altogether, with the Taliban saying we no longer have much influence over them. If that is true, it does mean Pakistan will have less say in the reconciliation process but it also puts the lie to Afghanistan’s tiresome assertions that Pakistan is behind every militant attack in the country. The only reason we could lose influence with the Afghan Taliban is if we actually are going after them as part of Operation Zarb-e-Azb. The Pakistani state has always claimed that it was doing so and our absence from Qatar would give some credence to that. Whoever else is involved in the talks, ultimately it will be up to the Afghan government and the Taliban to reach an understanding that they are mired in an unwinnable war and a peace agreement is the only way to end it.

Same coin

The unedifying mudslinging match between Pak Sarzameen Party chief Mustafa Kamal and Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad began when Kamal accused the governor of taking bribes and being in contact with Altaf Hussain. Ebad retorted by blaming Kamal for the violence on May 12 and the Baldia Town factory fire. Kamal then fired back with another outburst in which he said Ebad was the guilty party in both these violent events. It didn’t take any time at all for the whole affair to descend to the gutter. The language Kamal used against Ebad was base and deplorable, which has unfortunately always been the case with him. Ebad himself need not be defended since he can give as good as he gets but the entire spectacle, sparked by Kamal, showed our politics at its absolute worst. Matters weren’t helped by the media mostly playing their paroxysms of rage on a loop in a clear attempt to titillate viewers. The actual substance of the allegations being hurled requires some unpacking since there are kernels of truth mixed in with heaps of disingenuousness. When Kamal accuses Ebad of being close to Altaf he is correct that the governor, who has been in office since 2002, had a close relationship with the founder of the party. But exactly the same accusation can be levelled at Kamal, whose tenure as mayor of Karachi was marked by frequent paeans to the greatness of Altaf Hussain. For well over a decade they were at the centre of power in a city that was wracked by politically-motivated violence. No party was as willing as the MQM to use violence as a political tool at the time when the likes of Ebad and Kamal were in charge. When they accuse each other of being involved in the May 12 violence and the Baldia Town factory fire they are both correct. What is even worse is how shameless both are. Ebad proudly declares that as governor he is a member of the establishment. In saying that he is not only indicting himself but our entire political system. Kamal’s crude behaviour shows him to be equally unsavoury. They both are spot on in their description of each other’s character but seem to lack the self-awareness to realise they are no better themselves.

Mustafa Kamal’s obvious aim in linking Ebad to Altaf Hussain was to create the impression that MQM-Pakistan and MQM-London are still one and the same and any divisions are meant for public consumption. But it has become clear over the last few weeks that MQM-London has as much in common with the real MQM in Karachi as the PSP has with the MQM. The London party has been decisively cast aside by the MQM. Ironically, it is the MQM which continues to suffer arrests and raids and is still being blamed for Altaf Hussain’s behaviour even as those who publicly support him are allowed to come to the country and move around freely. The MQM has done all that was asked of it in getting rid of Altaf Hussain and yet it is still facing daily harassment. This has led to both tension and confusion, as no one is sure who will be targeted and for what reason. Just take the resurrection of the May 12 and Baldia Town cases. The very people pushing these cases are those who were supporting the MQM when these crimes were committed. They pick and drop such cases based on the level of their antagonism towards the MQM rather than any desire to provide justice to the poor and marginalised who were the true victims of these crimes. Karachi’s politics right now is at a crossroads. The PSP promised to be an alternative to the MQM but Kamal has shown just how degraded it is. There is and should be no constitutional space in Karachi for the so-called MQM-London. It is the MQM-‘Pakistan’ which has made the decision to ditch Altaf Hussain and it now needs to be given the room to function. This does not mean letting them off the hook for past and future crimes but for them to be treated fairly. Should they not be allowed to govern, the only alternative is going to be the sight of a population being held hostage by politics engineered from above and the violence that has always been associated with such politics.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Justice can’t be blind

The facts are not in dispute in the case of 50-year-old Imdad Ali. He killed a cleric in 2001 and was sentenced to death for the murder but he was also certified as suffering from schizophrenia by government doctors. Since Imdad’s condition means he cannot understand both his crime and the punishment handed out to him, he should not be awarded the death penalty. But a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Anwer Zaheer Jamali, rejected his appeal using the reasoning that schizophrenia is not a permanent condition and so does not fall within the definition of mental disorders. This is, to put it very mildly, an unenlightened view of mental illnesses. The Supreme Court relied on dictionary definitions of schizophrenia and a 1988 judgement by the Indian Supreme Court. Our understanding of mental disorders has progressed greatly in the last 30 years so that case was perhaps not the best precedent and it would have been better to rely on expert definitions rather than consulting a dictionary. The US National Institute of Mental Health calls schizophrenia a “chronic and severe mental disorder” and says “people with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality.” Since Imdad’s schizophrenia is not in dispute, under this professional definition he should not be given a death sentence.

Pakistan’s justice system has struggled to keep up with the times. When much of the world has made use of DNA testing to bring a greater degree of certainty in the guilt of accused criminals, we have been arguing about its merits. It was only in April of this year that Pakistan set up its first DNA testing lab. We have now shown ourselves to be similarly archaic in our understanding of mental disorders. It should be the duty of the state and the courts to provide defendants with every possible chance to prove their innocence, especially when the state has the power to take their lives. But, since the reintroduction of the death penalty, capital punishment has been handed out hastily and we are now seeing the consequences of that. Earlier this month, two brothers Ghulam Sarwar and Ghulam Qadri were successful in appealing their death sentences to the Supreme Court. The only problem was that they had already been hanged in Rahimyar Khan a year ago. How they were given the death penalty when all their appeals were yet to be exhausted will have to be explained and those who carried out the sentence made to face the consequences for what is essentially murder. Such cases do not get the attention they deserve because those given the death penalty are overwhelmingly poor and without the resources to properly fight their cases. They languish in jail for years – 15 in the case of Imdad – as the courts are too slow in taking up their appeals. That people who should not be imprisoned in the first place have to wait that long for verdicts is a denial of their rights to begin with. That they are then still executed only compounds the offence, turning it into a crime. Imdad, Ghulam Sarwar, Ghulam Qadri and many others like them deserve better from the justice system.

Slap in the face

The now viral video showing a female reporter/anchor, from a relatively small TV channel, being resoundingly slapped by an FC guard at a Nadra office in Karachi where she was on a reporting assignment has stirred up a storm. The incident, in which the camera team accompanying the anchor was initially prevented from filming at the office, leading her to step in and demand they be allowed to do so has led to a debate on feminism, misogyny and media ethics. Naturally, the kind of violence we witnessed is simply unacceptable, and this applies irrespective of whether it was directed against a man or a woman. The fact that the victim was a woman does, however, make matters worse. We wonder what the FC constable, against whom an FIR has now been registered, is capable of doing when he is not on camera. His actions speak also of the power that law-enforcement agencies wield, confident that they will be spared any action no matter how they treat the public.

The question of media ethics is a far trickier one. The argument goes that this poorly defined code had been violated by the anchor and her team as they attempted to enter a public office. Behind the widespread condemnation of the incident, we hear a smug sense of suggestion that the anchor somehow deserved the treatment she received. This is ironic given that the larger and more powerful media houses, which in fact control the rating system that ranks channels, have often been guilty of far graver violations of media ethics but have generally defended these actions on the grounds of media freedom. Anchorpersons or reporters have harassed individuals and groups on camera, small children who have been recently orphaned have been compelled to deliver the clichéd sound bites the reporter sought, and images of child victims of crime, including heinous sexual abuse, have been flashed across screens. There can be no justification for this and no reason for the media not to speak up against these. Why should media ethics become an issue only when a small-time channel and a relatively obscure female anchor are involved? The matter of media ethics is in fact a very serious one. Our channels have in recent years sunk to new lows. There can be no defence of what happened at that Nadra office. But the incident should also be a reminder of the need to draw up a code so that the desperate yearning for popularity and ratings does not lead to unprofessionalism. Right now, we need a united voice against that slap, rather than broadening out the debate to cover issues which require deeper and more dignified articulation.

The league is back

All the right sounds came out of the players’ draft for the second edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) which was held in Dubai recently. With several big stars like Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Kevin Pietersen, Shane Watson and Eoin Morgan lining up with Pakistan icons like Shahid Afridi and Misbah-ul-Haq, PSL 2 promised to be bigger and better than the successful launch edition held in the UAE in February this year. On top of it, there was the good news that a ‘fly-in, fly-out’ final of the eagerly-anticipated Twenty20 tournament will take place in Lahore. Such plans, if successful, will provide a boost to the Pakistan Cricket Board’s campaign to bring international cricketing action back to the country. We haven’t seen top-flight foreign cricketers in action since March 2009 when the Sri Lankan cricket team was ambushed by terrorists in Lahore – an incident that turned Pakistan into a no-go zone for foreign sportspersons and resulted in us playing home cricket on foreign soil. The sight of big crowd pullers like Gayle or McCullum entertaining a packed crowd at the Gaddafi Stadium with their six-hitting prowess will certainly be a welcome change.

However, despite the PCB’s optimism, a PSL final in Lahore remains an iffy proposition as many of the foreign stars roped in by the league have linked their participation to the security situation in the lead up to the title clash. The Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) has already raised a big question mark over safety issues with one of its top officials stressing that ‘playing cricket in Pakistan for foreign teams and players constitutes an unacceptably high security risk’. Pakistan will have to assuage such fears otherwise there will be little hope that the high-profile PSL final will take place in Lahore. The PSL has quickly established itself as a major T20 league but it will only serve its real purpose if it is held on Pakistani soil. At the end of the day, it is a domestic tournament featuring international stars – an event that should be played in front of domestic audiences. The state-of-the-art grounds in Dubai and Abu Dhabi look good on TV but it’s all cosmetic considering that our own stadiums continue to fade into oblivion.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Merchants of war

With the current tensions between Pakistan and India on a high, focus has again shifted to the arms race in South Asia. Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Tehmina Janjua raised the concern once again in a meeting of the UN’s Disarmament Committee last week. Pakistan has insisted that it is following India’s lead on the arms race. We turn to the Western world as potential allies and ask them to use their good sense to force India to curb the expansion of its military force. India responds to questions asks about its military expenditure by raising the Pakistan card. The Western powers look at us and politely agree with both before doing nothing about it. And they are hardly serious about disarmament. What would it do to the billions of dollars in arms trade that keep their economies flowing? No one seriously wants disarmament. Given the complicity of most Western powers in the arms trade, we would instead suggest a change of focus and tone. We need to begin to talk about who benefits from the arms race in South Asia. It is not the population of these countries. And, in the long run, it is also not their armed forces. The arms sold are never enough to fight back against the countries who sold them. They are merely enough to create regional instability. It is easy to forget that the global weapons trade fuels the many violent conflicts raging across the world, from the Middle East to Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. And we are not talking even talking about the illegal arms trade. It is the biggest global peaceniks, such as the US, France and England, that compete for major arms deals with big spending countries.

The military-industrial complex, first named by US President Dwight Eisenhower back in 1961, is now more global than ever. Even as the Middle East descends into chaos, major Western countries continue to supply arms to any and all countries willing to buy. Alliances are formed and broken on the basis of agreements to purchase arms. The Western powers remain the biggest arms suppliers to Afghanistan while Russia remains the biggest arms supplier to the Syrian state. The most obvious contradiction between the stated desire of global peace and the reality is that the countries that say they desire peace more are the ones selling the most weapons. The Pakistani permanent representative to the UN spoke of the risk of unending war provoked by an imbalance in conventional weapons. This has been correctly identified. But what has not been pointed out yet is the source of these weapons. How the West manages to still retain its moralising streak despite knowing the weaponry it is funding will be used in crimes against civilians is one of the greatest mysteries of the world. These same arms are not only provided to governments but, in the fog of war, invariably end up in the hands of groups like the Islamic State. But the merchants of war care little for that so long as their coffers keep getting filled.

Turning ten

Which part of Pakistan’s population is worth investing the most in? The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has provided a convincing answer: the 10-year-old girl. During the launch of the State of World Population Report 2016 , the UNFPA country representative noted that 35 percent of Pakistan’s population was between zero and 14 years of age. Out of this, two million are 10-year-old girls. This is the group that the fund feels has the most potential. It argued that if Pakistan invests in them, each of them could contribute $18,773 in income instead of the current $8,928. This high potential is contrasted against the poor state of basic services provided to adolescent girls, who remain less educated than boys despite performing much better in their schooling. Forced marriages, child labour and other social practices restricting the potential of these girls remain very much in place as their potential to contribute meaningfully to society is not tapped in. According to data, 44 out of every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19 years in Pakistan are reported to have given birth, which confirms that at least five percent of Pakistani girls are married off before the age of 18.

According to the UNFPA, the age of 10 is the right age to focus on the development of young girls into active members of our society. It suggests that if all 10-year-old girls completed secondary education in the 48 countries with the most gender inequality, they could contribute $21 billion a year to their economy. This means that there is not only a moral case for providing girls their rights, but also an economic one. Families living in poverty can begin to think of a brighter future. What is interesting is that every additional year of a girl’s education increases her income more than every comparable year for a boy. Despite this, around 16 million girls around the world never start school. It should be our duty to provide young girls with many possibilities for their future, instead of offering the single choice of marriage and domestic work. The process that excludes girls from fulfilling their potential is a systematic one. As a society, Pakistan is faced with a stark choice. Does is want to integrate women into its social and economic life as full citizens or does it want their contribution to remain impaired by forced marriages and denied access to schooling? Fulfilling the rights of the children we bring into the world is one of our most important duties. We would do well to take the UN’s advice and come up with ways to make sure the potential of our girls does not go wasted.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Fields of poppy

A new UN report has confirmed that the financial might of the Afghan Taliban is possibility stronger than ever. The report, released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has confirmed that the area cultivated in Afghanistan for the production of opium increased by 10 percent this year. The total area for opium cultivation increased from 183,000 hectares last year to 201,000 hectares this year amidst a clear weakening of both international and national efforts to curb the drug trade in the country. Opium production itself increased by 43 percent to reach 4,800 tonnes in a year where the weather favoured high crop yields. Combined with rising insecurity and lower levels of commitment from international donors, opium is back on the rise as a major cash crop in Afghanistan. Opium production reached a new peak in 2013 and 2014 as counter-narcotics efforts in the country seem to have completely failed.

Not only has Afghanistan’s inability to curb the drug trade fuelled the Taliban’s war against the Afghan government, the country is also suffering from a severe drug crisis as youth in the war-ravaged country turn to drugs to escape the horrors of everyday life. The failure of 15 years of efforts to curb the production of opium in the country is also clear. Use of force to burn down opium fields has not worked in a country where the economy has never recovered from almost 40 years of constant war. In this context, it is not difficult to see why opium remains the crop of choice for so many farmers in Afghanistan. It is the only crop which guarantees a steady income and is probably one of the few economic sectors which shows growth. This has cemented the country’s status as the world’s leading producer of opium. Amongst the provinces known for poppy cultivation, Helmand still shifts in and out of the control of the Afghan government. With the challenge of fighting a real war, the Afghan government seems to have little incentive to destroy poppy fields. Poppy eradication teams have been targeted by direct attacks and the security of the officials involved cannot be guaranteed. The problem is that the confrontational nature of these efforts is always bound to fail. It is only by restoring the economic health of the country that farmers can be convinced to leave opium production in favour of more productive forms of work.

Justice for survivors

The new anti-rape law, passed by a joint sitting of parliament earlier this month, offers the hope of greater justice to victims of rape by addressing some key issues that had stood in the way of this. In the first place, overriding a ruling by the Council of Islamic Ideology, the bill permits the use of DNA evidence in tracking down a perpetrator – a vital task in any rape investigation. It also disallows evidence pertaining to the character of the victim, a factor which under the Qanoon-e-Shahadat law of 1984 had been used again and again to allow rapists to get away with their crime. While the law lays down a specific maximum punishment for rape, assigning a life sentence to perpetrators and death sentence in the case of the rape of a minor or a mentally disabled person unless the family of the victim grants a pardon in which case the death sentence will be converted to life imprisonment, there are still major loopholes that stand out.

In the first place, no minimum punishment has been assigned, a factor which often means giving out guilty verdicts is something courts steer away from in practice. Also, the previous assault history of the accused person cannot be brought on record although, as legal experts have pointed out, this is often of crucial significance in determining if the offence was committed. The onus for proving rape also lies with the victim, while there is no clause covering the sexual assault of a man – a common crime in the country where according to figures collected by NGOs up to 1,000 male children are sodomised each year. The key issues in the process of convicting rapists will become clearer in the months ahead. But the fact that testing facilities for DNA, are very limited, as is the expertise in collecting such evidence is something that is almost certain to stand in the way of convictions. Passing the law is just the first step. If the government is truly serious about dealing with rape and cutting down on the number of cases in a country where four rapes are reported each day, then steps need to be taken to bolster the law by backing up the measures it lays down and ensuring these go into practical effect each time a victim makes an accusation.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Quetta again

The home minister for Balochistan has informed us that reports had been received some days ago that terrorists had entered Quetta and would strike soon. They did. At least four terrorists targeted the Police Training Centre on Saraib Road on Mondaynight, killing at least 60 young cadets and injuring over 117 others. All three assailants, including two who had detonated their suicide vests after entering the premises, causing the majority of casualties, were killed in the prolonged action that followed this latest attack. It is quite obvious then that we have won no war. The terrorists continue to score the kind of victories only they can rejoice in. The police academy should have been heavily guarded since militants have attacked training schools before – in 2009 the Manawan police academy in Lahore was the site of a day-long gun battle between the TTP and the police – and the Balochistan IGP had requested a boundary wall at the academy just last month. That boundary wall still hadn’t been constructed and made it easier for the attackers to access the academy. The young men training there in the hope of earning a living have paid the price for this negligence.

The finger of blame has been immediately pointed towards Afghanistan, and we have been told that the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Aalmi, which has claimed responsibility for the horrendous act of terrorism and the snuffing out of so many young lives had been in touch with groups in that country. The contact has apparently been traced through telephonic calls. The question is that if so much information had been gathered, why was it not put to better use and a greater effort made to detect these men of violence before they struck? This is the question that arises again and again after every new attack. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Aalmi did claim the attack and so did the Islamic State later. A security meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and attended by COAS Raheel Sharif was told that the attackers were coordinating with people in Afghanistan but the most likely explanation is that they were working with the TTP leadership which is based there. It may not be far off the mark to assume that militants in the country have assistance from across the borders. But this cannot change the fact that they essentially have roots within our own soil and that these have grown over the decades. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been active in Punjab and other places since the 1990s. By now, the state and its army should have been able to destroy these groups and identify those who recruit people to them. The failure to do so has resulted in hundreds of deaths over the years. Are we are still in denial about the extent of the homegrown militancy problem? The Quetta attack makes it apparent this toll will continue to mount. We need internal action to cement over the weaknesses that enemy agents use to carry out their acts of destruction. Local security forces, including the Frontier Corps, deployed in Quetta for years, need to accept they are responsible for such failures, and so do the rest of the state and the government.

Whichever group may be behind the attack, this was a time when we needed to demonstrate unity and resolve to defeat militancy and terror. That, unfortunately, is not how things panned out with Imran Khan feeling not an iota of shame in feeding the dead bodies of young cadets into the grind mill of his ambitions to power, by quickly implying that India and the PML-N together were behind the attack and that it was no coincidence that it took place so close to his planned shutdown of Islamabad. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif thought it necessary to join Imran in the gutter by suggesting that a nexus of India, Afghanistan and the PTI was to blame. It is no revelation any more that our politicians have become incapable of dealing with each other with a sense of honour. Can they at least try and mourn our dead with dignity?

For Yasin Malik

Yasin Malik, the charismatic leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, is in intensive care and said to be in critical condition after being detained by Indian security forces for over three months. He has now been shifted to a hospital but his family says he has lost use of one arm. His wife Mashal is also believed to be unwell. Malik is no stranger to being a guest of the Indian state, estimating that he had been arrested more than 200 times. He has been tortured and vilified and now it seems as if India might have finally successfully managed to physically break the seemingly relentless Malik. He began his life of resistance as a student leader in the 1980s and rose to prominence in the run-up to the rigged elections of 1987, when he was arrested for the first time. It was his time in jail, where he was mercilessly tortured and interrogated, that convinced him to join the insurgency.

It is the presence of people like Malik at the forefront of the revolt which gives the lie to the Indian claim, maintained to this today, that the revolt in 1988 was not homegrown and rather directed by Pakistan. Malik was always too independent and iconoclast to accept direction from any state. After his release from prison in 1987, he joined the Hizbul Mujahideen and then become one of the main members of the JKLF. He was never a favourite of any establishment because his ultimate aim has been the independence for all of Kashmir. A four-year spell in jail from 1990 to 1994 led to a change of tactics from Malik. He renounced violence and announced an immediate ceasefire. This made him a target of not only the Indian army but also groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen. At one time or another, Malik has worked with and fallen out with just about every political leader in Kashmir, be it Mufti Saeed or Omar Abdullah. His own JKLF has splintered multiple times. But he has never given up his idealism. He has borne the indignities heaped on him by the India state with grace and charm. All lovers of liberty wish him and his wife a speedy recovery and hope they will soon return to fighting on behalf of the Kashmiri people.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)

Games afoot

The PTI’s planned shutdown of Islamabad on November 2 is beginning to take the same shape as its last major protest in the capital two years ago. The argument that the 2013 election had been rigged was the apparent moving force behind the dharna which effectively paralysed Islamabad for days. This time the slogan being raised is that of corruption, with the Panama leaks and the alleged involvement of the prime minister in the affair acting as the apparent trigger point for Imran Khan’s latest string of tirades and his warning that Nawaz Sharif will be forced to step down. The Supreme Court is due to hear the case on the Panama petitions on November 1, but of course it must act within legal parameters and cannot simply remove the PM as Imran craves. This can, under Pakistan’s constitution, only be carried out by parliament through a vote of no confidence. Imran has already bypassed this option by refusing to play any part in parliamentary politics while also doing all he can to discredit the judiciary in the past two years. Sheikh Rashid is around whenever a democratic government has to be threatened, and he is working hard to bring on board others who prefer the politics of conspiracy acted out on the streets to that of the ballot box which they despise. It was Rashid who acted as an intermediary between the PTI and Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek, convincing the Canadian cleric to once again show inclination to join Imran Khan. Whether he is the only factor behind this change in mood has been a matter of speculation like the old London plan.

Both Imran and Qadri enjoy being in the limelight and had fallen out after the 2014 dharna but seem to be coming together again – for now. Sheikh Rashid is also trying to convince Maulana Samiul Haq and other members of religious parties from the Difa-e-Pakistan Council to join the protests. Samiul Haq – whose giant madressah was allocated Rs300 million in the 2016-17 budget by the PTI government in KP – heads the Council which includes somewhat unsavoury forces including the Jamaatud Dawa and Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat. The Shuhada Foundation, which speaks for the Lal Masjid, has indicated that it may join Imran. As we saw in 2007, those associated with the madaris run by the Lal Masjid are capable of creating a severe disturbance acting to cripple the capital. These ‘religious’ forces certainly can bring the numbers to ensure an Islamabad shutdown, but their dubious pasts and extremist views will serve only to raise further worries about the true intentions of the participants. Imran himself has been getting even more extreme in his rhetoric, going so far as to denounce Nawaz Sharif as a security threat. He is trying to paint the PML-N government as a puppet of the Indians. Imran’s protest then may go beyond allegations of corruption and harm whatever possibility is there for a sane debate over and rethinking of ‘national security’ in the country. All this is happening at a time when we mourn our dead, when the state says it is curbing extremism and fighting terrorism and when it faces tension and aggression on the eastern front. The forces Imran is flirting with have never been known to bring good tidings and there is no reason to assume that violent frenzy is not what is being aimed at. The memories of the Red Zone being breached and the PTV headquarters being raided are still fresh. No matter how Imran Khan sees his future and his standing, it is becoming difficult to see him a genuinely political figure and a man of wisdom. He is certainly not a man who leads ‘progressive’ forces even within the status quo. Other ‘democratically’ elected parties including the PPP seem willing to simply watch and wait. Perhaps they will decide later which side to align themselves with. The PPP for now has distanced itself from the shutdown saying it will take no part in it, while keeping the option of taking to the streets up its sleeve. The government, which is perceived to have done little to help its own cause, can rely on the PPP to resist indulging in excesses and try negotiations first. The rest on this front is yet to unfold. The end game may play itself out both in the streets of Islamabad and the corridors of power.

IMF’s views

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde’s visit to Pakistan – the first by an IMF head for many years – seemed on the surface to show that the international financial organisation is optimistic about our economy. She said that the economy is out of crisis and the country has achieved macroeconomic stability. That Lagarde’s seeming vote of confidence came just two months after the IMF released the final tranche of a $6.4 billion lending programme would indicate that the spigot will stay turned on should we need it. But the government should pay more attention to the criticisms Lagarde made, both because it highlights the work still left to be done and as a demonstration of the IMF’s priorities, which often do not match those of the country. Lagarde said we needed to widen the tax net, a problem that has always afflicted Pakistan. Rather than finally get serious about collecting income tax from the rich, the government has chosen the easier path of raising indirect taxes. It has tried to increase the burden of non tax-filers by making it more expensive for them to carry out banking and other transactions but it has not improved collection of taxes from the industrial and agricultural elite. So long as we are unable to collect sufficient tax revenue, we will be mired in a debt spiral and be dependent on the likes of the IMF.

More ominously, Lagarde said that the state will have to take action on the expenditure side too. Past experience with the IMF tells us that this will translate into a further reduction in subsidies for gas, petrol and electricity and perhaps another bout of privatisation too. The IMF is ideologically committed to what it euphemistically calls ‘structural adjustment’ – essentially telling the government to stop providing subsidies to the poor – and the PML-N seems to share that ideology. She did pay lip service to social security programmes like the Benazir Income Support Programme but wanted the money for that to come from reduced expenditures elsewhere. Lagarde pointed out that both corruption itself and the perception of corruption would need to be reduced to increase foreign investment and keep confidence in the economy high but tried to stay out of the political controversy caused by the Panama and Bahamas leaks. Ultimately, the improvements in our economy have a lot to do with the low international price of oil and Chinese investment thanks to the CPEC. We have placed all our economic eggs in the CPEC basket and would do well to take Lagarde’s advice on increasing tax revenue so that we are not so reliant on outside actors in the future.

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To succeed,look at things not as they are,but as they can be.:)